Ivory Tower

This incident illustrates one of the reasons many people dislike the
academic world:

We are in the middle of the biggest economic crisis for 70 years. All
kinds of things are happening. The news is piling up faster than we
can process it. Old assumptions about the world are being called into
question. Ideas are being tested. Things are happening that will
affect the economic, social, and political environment for decades.
Clearly, it would be very valuable to talk about what is happening, to
use our knowledge to discuss and make sense of the world.

So what does the professor in my macroeconomics class say when he comes in?

"Today we are going to derive the Turnpike Theorem."

So we spend an hour and 15 minutes artfully rearranging Greek letters.