Sniff-sniff. I mean… AS IF. As if Ken Griffin, who as of 2019 (this list must be way out of date) owns
the most expensive home in America, a $238-million Manhattan penthouse. According to Bloomberg, he already owns two floors of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Chicago ($30 million), a Miami Beach penthouse ($60 million), another Chicago penthouse ($58.75 million) and another apartment in Manhattan ($40 million).
… as if this guy is going to lower himself to respond to the mayor of NY choosing to announce “a [proposed] annual fee on luxury properties valued above $5 million whose owners do not live in New York full-time” while standing in front of Griffin’s always empty four-floor penthouse.
Griffin did feel compelled to make a statement awhile back, when people noticed the emptiness.
[His apartment is] not a short-term investment, but a home where [Ken] Griffin will spend considerable time, said Zia Ahmed, his spokesman.
I don’t follow the guy around, but far as I can tell he’s spent somewhere between zero and zero days in his warm authentic inviting home.
Construction crews rebuilding the sepulchre to Griffin’s invisibility standard have, however, moved in for the long haul, and neighbors have not been happy, all these years, about the noise.
Given all this civic yumminess, it’s no surprise that Mamdani chose Griffin’s sarcophagus as ground zero.
The practice is not religious and thus not protected by Article 25 or 26. Even if it were, it cannot be constitutionally protected; it is a form of torture that results in the permanent dismemberment of a girl-child’s body, leading to long-term psychological and physical suffering, and can result in death. The Court must separate the constitutionality of FGM from issues of religious freedom…
The respondents argue that FGM is “an integral part” of the Bohra religion. This is patently untrue. Even if it were true, no claim of religious freedom can justify a violation of bodily integrity, human dignity, or fundamental rights. Under the SC’s jurisprudence, even if a practice is intrinsic to a religion, it cannot supersede other essential fundamental rights, particularly the right to life. The respondents argue that the right to life is not implicated by FGM as it is voluntary. This is a flawed interpretation, as consent has no bearing on the right to life. And no child can provide informed consent at age seven…
Hope now rests with [the Indian Supreme Court] to expressly reaffirm the grave illegality of this practice.
A breakaway radical Christian sect has, in the wake of super-natalist Viktor Orban’s defeat, turned its attention to super-natalist JD Vance, and in particular to his wife’s latest pregnancy. The belief seems to be that Vance’s wife is carrying the Second Coming of Christ, which will mark the end of the world. Crèches featuring the Second Lady cradling her newborn have begun appearing in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee; and Usha Vancelike variants of Mariolatric shrines can be seen in churches in those states. We’ll keep an eye on developments.
… why Hungary’s schools are failing, why its hospitals are crumbling, why it has become the poorest country in the European Union. Victor Orban maintained a sophisticated propaganda apparatus to reframe what were ultimately not policy failures really at all but the entirely predictable results of a system designed to enrich his cronies. There’s only so much propaganda can do when a citizen can’t get medical care in a hospital but knows their prime minister has exotic animals roaming a palatial country estate.”
Wowsa. An answer that really packs it in. Not many people can offer so much substance, detail, and argument in an elegant way.
A second grader brought a loaded gun to school in Swansea Mass., on a Friday, and showed it to schoolmates.
The principal knew of it and did nothing. He decided to wait until Monday.
Police got an anonymous tip on Monday and came to the school that day.
The armed student lied to the principal (who spoke to the student on Monday) and said he brought no gun of any kind to school.
The parents of the armed student lied to police about having firearms in the house.
After the police found five firearms in the house, some loaded, the father of the armed student said he forgot about having five weapons, and said that he was not licensed to carry.
India’s Dawoodi Bohra community is wild about clit-stripping, and won’t stop with the dirty knife thing until authorities can put their leaders in jail.
The question of what to do with this cult’s enthusiasm is finally before the Supreme Court in New Delhi, which will determine if, as the DB argues, cutting off babies’ clitorises is “essential to our religion.”
I’ve been delighted to give lectures at this library on poetry, James Baldwin, and Jane Austen. I’m grateful to Jay and the staff for the invitations.
A few months ago, when Jay suggested I give a series of talks, lots of people were reading, and were very moved by, the essay you have in front of you – A Battle with My Blood by Tatiana Schlossberg – and I happened as a result to be thinking about the essay as a literary form, and why it can be so powerful. It seemed only natural for me to take advantage of the attention being riveted on this particular essay to focus on that genre. Why did Schlossberg choose the essay form? What is the essay, a genre whose name means an attempt, a stab at, something? What types of essays are there? How can we account for the intense effect of the very best essays?
Before I run away with praise of the essay, a word about its neglect and dislike. For many of us, the only place we actually spent time reading, analyzing, and writing essays was in the dreaded required English Comp class in high school or college. Few schools call it that anymore, so unpopular has the course become; but under whatever name, it tends to be the same deadly mix of rather formulaic polemic about the usual suspects – the death penalty, abortion rights, assisted dying. Even worse, buying or plagiarizing your college admissions essay seems something of a national sport. So the whole subject of the essay – there is a vast BUY YOUR ESSAY HERE industry – has a tendency to arouse emotions of boredom and cynicism.
And yet that same formulaic thing – that five paragraph thing where you first state your argument, then move it along with evidence and personal narration and the use of transitional phrases; and conclude by restating your argument in your final paragraph – ain’t at all bad as a way to begin learning to write and appreciate the essay. Note, for instance, that this is precisely what Schlossberg, in a much more complex way, does. Her final paragraph indeed reiterates her first, giving her essay not merely structural shapeliness, but also, in its circularity, a sense of her entrapment in therapeutic repetition rather than actual improvement. One could go even further with that circularity as a figure for her inability emotionally to get anywhere past a stubbornly recurrent sense of incredulity about what she beautifully calls “the strangeness and sadness of what I was being told about myself.”
A 34-year-old mother has been charged after her 8-year-old son allegedly got ahold of her loaded handgun and took it to his elementary school.
Gloria Luster, 34, of Kent [Ohio], pleaded not guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor count of endangering children …
Municipal court records show Luster was also charged in September with a first-degree misdemeanor count of child endangering after another one of her children, a 2-year-old girl, was found wandering in the dark of a parking lot outside Luster’s apartment complex.
A complaint states Luster “did not know the child had left, where she had gone to, or how long she had been gone.”
**************
When does Child Protective Services decide Gloria’s a bit too much?
The long day’s journey into court that is Rutgers – a bastion of filth and corruption (read the sports posts I just linked to) even by Jersey standards – moves appreciably closer to an actual court date. To revisit my Rutgers athletics posts over many years is to marvel again at the special brew of shiftless greedy presidents, vile and violent coaches, criminal gang team players, invisible and indifferent fans, etc etc, that has made Rutgers what it is today.
When removing student fees ($138.1M), university support ($146.2M) and state funding ($42.1M) from the revenue total, Rutgers’ deficit since joining the Big Ten surpasses $516 million, marking the biggest in the league by a significant margin.
Most Big Ten schools rely on some form of subsidy, NJ.com analysis shows, but none come close to Rutgers. In the past four years, the New Jersey school took in the most combined state support, direct-university support and student-fee revenue ($109.6M) by a wide margin.
Some American universities are, because of economic/demographic changes, in a state of near-existential crisis. It’s adorably retro to watch Rutgers kill itself for the oldest reason – football/spectacular greed.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam. New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days. The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading. Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life. AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics. truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption. Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings. Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho... The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo. Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile. Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure. Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan... Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant... Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here... Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip... Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it. Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ... Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic... Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ... The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard. Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know. Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter. More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot. Notes of a Neophyte
