In a recent Forbes interview, Penn State legend Joe Paterno discussed power, ambition, and glory within the confines of ancient classics. It seems like JoePa has a pretty good understanding of literature and history, something you don’t see in a lot of NCAA Football coaches (certainly not the brutes over at Ohio State, am I right?).
Forbes: Tell us about a time when lessons learned from the ancients contributed to your success.
Paterno: I’ve always admired the way Aeneas stood tall in the face of adversity knowing he had a destiny. I have tried to let that help guide me.
He even …

Penn State Athletics finished 19th nationally in the 2008-2009 Director’s Cup standings for Division I programs. The final results were released yesterday by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
The Director’s Cup is awarded to the school whose athletic program is successful in all NCAA acknowledged sports, with equal weight placed on all sports. That means that Football and Men’s Basketball are equally as important as the sports that get less national coverage (Women’s Water Polo, for example). Each school may have up to 20 sports count towards their score (10 men’s and 10 women’s).
Penn State finished with a …

Governor’s Reduction
Governor Ed Rendell released the latest of his increasingly drastic budget reductions for the 2009 fiscal year. The governor has now reduced the budget proposal by $2 billion dollars.
Overall, 229 line items would be impacted by the latest round of spending reductions. Compared to the current fiscal year, the Governor has now cut three out of every four line items, totally eliminating 163 of them and reducing another 328.
One of the details in the most recent revision, which was released on Thursday, is that the public-related institutions will not be receiving federal stimulus money, resulting in a loss of …

The blog at Penn State’s alumni magazine had a post about Steve McCurry, the alumnus photographer who shot the famous Afghan Girl picture… it got us interested in the whole story, so here it is.
Kodachrome
First, some technical stuff… see, the photograph was shot using Kodak Kodachrome film. Kodak announced the discontinuation of that film type on Monday. To honor the famous film, Kodak asked some famous photographers who had used it to shot the last remaining rolls.
Since Steve McCurry’s picture of the Afghan Girl is one of the most iconic images of our time, he was one of the selected …

Michael Jackson died this afternoon after suffering cardiac arrest at his home in Holmby Hills. TMZ has the rough-draft of his obituary up already… Twitter has the rest.
Our tribute is a little more animated though. We found this video from 1998 of the Penn State Blue Band lip dubbing ‘Thriller.’

A new study came out last week ranking the Smeal College of Business’ Supply Chain Management department as first nationally among universities that offer the program.
The study surveyed 126 companies in an industry survey and asked 19 universities for data regarding their programs. The study then broke down the responses into three catagories:  Industry Value, Depth of Program, and Scope of Program.
Penn State finished first in both Industry Value and Depth of Program, and was tied for second in Scope of Program, with scores of 14 out of 15, 19 out of 20, and 15 out of 20 (respectively) for …

This past December, a website came into existence that offered procrastinators yet another tool for getting deadline extensions.
Corrupted-files.com does exactly what the URL would suggest. For the small price of $3.95, corrupted-files.com will sell you an unreadable Word, Excel or PowerPoint file. The idea is that you rename the file to whatever your assignment is, and then submit the corrupted file to your professor. The professor assumes something went wrong during submission or download, and a few days later asks you to submit the file again. By this point you should have hopefully finished the actual assignment.
However, the Chronicle of …

We overheard on Twitter today that the Cirque de Soleil will be performing in eight shows over five days at the Bryce Jordan Center this fall
Here’s the schedule, which we pulled from the site for the Amex presale.

Here’s the official description of the show…
Alegría is a mood, a state of mind. The themes of the show, whose name means “jubilation” in Spanish, are many. Power and the handing down of power over time, the evolution from ancient monarchies to modern democracies, old age, youth–it is against this backdrop that the characters of Alegría play out their lives. Kings’ fools, minstrels, …

Many upperclassmen bought season tickets earlier this week… now it’s the sophomore class’s turn. (Sophomores are defined by the university as people with between 27.1 and 54 credits.)
Ticket sales begin tomorrow at 7:00 am. You can access the sale here. Hopefully you remembered to preregister back in May!
Here are some additional tips from an earlier post:
Add your billing information to your Ticketmaster account before the day of the sale. This will make it a little less stressful during that early morning crunch.
Don’t bother going to the site before the time the sale is supposed to begin. You’ll just frustrate yourself, …

As if the Penn State/Centre County community needed any more reason to worship Joe and Sue Paterno, Thursday morning they announced that they were donating $1 million to the Foundation for Mount Nittany Medical Center to help fund current and future expansion projects. The Paternos join other prominent Penn State benefactors Lloyd and Dottie Huck (Huck Institute for Life Sciences), who donated $1.5 million.
All together the foundation has raised $9 million so far in their efforts, known as the Commitment to Distinction: The Campaign for Mount Nittany Medical Center.
The East Wing expansion, currently entering the final stages of construction, …

Last Wednesday, Penn State Fantasy Football Camp officially “kicked off” (please pardon my tacky football pun. It won’t happen again, I promise) on Penn State’s campus! According to the official Penn State Fantasy Camp site, the camp consists of
Football practices, based upon the Nittany Lion traditions, directed by coaches and former star players. Football is non-contact, with emphasis on skill development, learning the offensive and defensive schemes used by Penn State, as well as the kicking game.
The highlight of the Camp is the Blue-White flag football game played in Beaver Stadium with complete GameDay action. Varsity locker room dressing, training …

Last Friday, Penn State Live reported that the Penn State Alumni Association Governing Board has decided on a new board of thirteen members: 10 elected, 3 appointed. Of the elected members, there is an even 5-5 split between incumbents and newly-elected members. If you are not savvy on the general activities of the Alumni Association, you may be wondering, “what exactly is that Penn State Alumni Association that all of the kids talk about these days, and what do these new-fangled elected and appointed members do?”. Fortunately for you, Penn State Live described their purpose succinctly:
Alumni Council is an all-volunteer …

Penn State Athletics has named Seniors Nicole Fawcett and Casey Sandy as the Penn State Athletes of the Year for the 2008-2009 season.
Nicole Fawcett led the women’s volleyball team to back-to-back NCAA Div. I National Championships her final two years at Penn State. During her time at PSU, the women’s volleyball team posted a record of 134-8. Fawcett was a four time AVCA All-American and was named the 2009 AVCA Division I National Player of the Year. She leaves Penn State second all-time in Penn State program history with 1,934 kills (8th all-time in the Big Ten).
Casey Sandy leaves Penn …

The tweet’s one thing, but what exactly is a FartboX?