Update: University of Florida has taken the original videos offline. Many BoingBoing readers yearning for a hit of the Baked Biz Professor have written in requesting mirror site urls. We'll post them if you'd like to point us to them.
Now this is what I call higher education. BoingBoing reader Shawn says,
It appears from the content of this video that this University of Florida professor — whom everyone has to take in the business school — got REALLY REALLY REALLY HIGH before one of his classes.
As I am told, he was fired the next day. Minute 28 is hilarious.
I'm including links to the windows video files hosted at UF in the hopes someone remixes this.
Looks like the lecturer's name is Howard J. (John) Hall, and he remains listed on the faculty of the University of Florida, Warrington College of Business. Video of his September 5, 2006 lecture: Link 1, and Link 2. He does ramble, but he's far more entertaining than any of the business school professors I ever sat through.
And as hilarious as the notion of a professor doing bong hits, then delivering a business school lecture may be, we don't know the truth here. Was he sick, and on medication? Maybe he's using medical marijuana to treat a serious condition? Perhaps there's a not-funny story behind the videos.
Reader comments: Henry Stokes says,
In the first video, the apparently-baked prof lectures/rambles about the origin of the middle finger about 15 minutes in. Well, according to Snopes, the origin he presents is in fact an urban legend: Link.
Shawn, who originally pointed us to the item, updates us:
I did a little more research and found the video
for the week after (luckily UF uses a good file naming structure) and
found that a new professor takes over the next week. She doesn't
elaborate on the issue but just assures the class everything is going
to be ok. I also looked at the video for the week *before* and while he is a little
goofy as profs go, he is much more coherent and to the point.
Unfortunately I can't find *any* news story related to this (looked in
the Gainesville Sun and Google News). Maybe your readers can find some
hard facts?
Alanna says,
I had another baked professor for first-year philosophy: Link. From the Toronto Star's article, I now understand why he was so hard to follow in lectures; he smokes pot with a medical clearance from the government. I'm not sure how it can be that he's just allowed to lecture whilst high. One of the questions on our term test involved correlating Plato with an excerpt of lyrics from one of the prof's favourite reggae songs.
Jeff says,
don't forget boston university mythology professor carl ruck, who freely admits to using psychodelic mushrooms on regular basis as part of his research, and as wikipedia says, "he currently teaches a mythology class […] that presents this theory in depth."
