LOLOLOL. The words Italian, football, and fraud in one sentence — of course. The word shock in the same sentence? Scompisciarsi dalle risate…
LOLOLOL. The words Italian, football, and fraud in one sentence — of course. The word shock in the same sentence? Scompisciarsi dalle risate…
‘Nice work if you can get it.
Provided you live long enough to see results. “Instead of 60-year-olds giving to 30-year-olds, it’s going to be 90-year-olds giving to 60-year-olds,” says Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies.
My heart bleeds for the late-middle-aged children of healthy old rich people, it really does.
It’s a problem for all of us: baby boomers now account for half the combined net worth of the US.
Is this another one of those stories about boomers ruining everything?
I’m afraid it is, yes.’
************************
Amusing back and forth in the Guardian.
Hungary’s new National Core Curriculum
pointedly excludes the work of Imre Kertész, Hungary’s only Nobel Prize winner for literature, surrendering a national point of pride in order to erase the contributions of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. And it adds to the core curriculum Ferenc Herczeg, a minor right-wing nationalist playwright who was celebrated and praised by Miklós Horthy, the World War II Hungarian leader who brought about an alliance between Hungary and Nazi Germany. Previous revisions of the core curriculum in prior Orbán administrations had already elevated similar minor writers into the pantheon on an obvious political basis, such as József Nyírő, a member of Parliament for the fascist Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, who harbored a passionate hatred of Jews. The new curriculum presents far-right Hungarian nationalist leaders of the past as heroes.
LOL unnamed goat.
**********************
‘At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, she tied with Vivek Ramaswamy for first place in a poll of whom attendees wanted to see Mr. Trump select as a running mate.‘
In what is regarded as a desperate bid to overtake Noem, Ramaswamy was quick to claim a dog named Juno, an unnamed goat, and a local skateboarder.
**********************
Shelley’s “To a Skylark,” rendered by Kristi Noem.
Hail to thee, blithe Cricket!
Dog thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated bark.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
Dead birds to me thou bringest
And bringing bringest more, and yet more thou bringest.
******************************
Chorus canineal
Your triumphal chaunt
Now seems to me of a sudden
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein I feel there is some hidden want.
Yea now thy clear keen joyance
Doth put me in a snit
Shadow of annoyance
O’ertakes me for a bit…
And so I killed you in a gravel pit.
“Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison,” Fairfax-area Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a statement to POLITICO.
… Asked if he had any response to the legislation, an aide to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) replied: “lol.”
**********
Apparently a breakaway group of SuperMAGAs in the House proposes the Vladimir Putin International Airport.
[Maxwell] Berry graduated in May from Ohio Wesleyan University, where he received a values in action award from the Greek life community for being a “perfect role model” and for leading “the fight to dismantle fraternity stereotypes.”
The last time I saw Gorka
My limerick flowed free;
A bearded Trumper with a past
That some might call Nazi.
Just yesterday he surfaced
A Duce in the sun:
“Attend to me, my Proud Boys all!
SOOOOOOOO Ubu!
Rudolph the Big Attorney
Had a very shiny chode
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glowed
All of the other lawyers
Used to laugh and call him names
They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph
Join in any lawyer games
Then one dark and stormy night
“Rudolph with your chode so bright
Won’t you join my film tonight?”
Then all the lawyers loved him
As they shouted out with glee
“Rudolph the Red-Chode Trumper
You’ll go down in history”
Just… read it. Just work your way through it. I promise it will bring a smile – and maybe even laughter! – to your face.
Excerpts:
‘Merchants Hospitality has filed an explosive lawsuit against former partner Adam Hochfelder, accusing him of running a Ponzi scheme, embezzling investor money and retaliating against his former associates after he was fired in June.
In a complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court last week, Merchants claims it went out on a limb to help Hochfelder get back on his feet after a two-year prison stint, only to catch him stealing from the firm and using its name and assets to defraud unsuspecting investors and partners…
Hochfelder went to prison in 2010 after pleading guilty to 15 counts of grand larceny and three counts of scheming to defraud his uncle, in-laws and other investors out of more than $18 million. He left prison and was hired by Merchants in 2012.
Now, eight years later, Merchants accuses Hochfelder of embezzling funds from its West 42nd Street hotel project — the site of a failed effort to run a high-priced Playboy Club in New York — and using his affiliation with the firm to run a $400,000 Ponzi scheme through his company email…
[Hochfelder] accused Merchants of fabricating the scheme by breaking into his computer and creating false documents…
Merchants brought Hochfelder on board during his prison stint to spearhead acquisitions and development for the firm…
In 2014, Merchant, the firm’s CEO, called hiring Hochfelder “one of the best decisions we ever made.” And in 2017, after allegations of sexual harassment against Hochfelder surfaced, [the CEO] defended Hochfelder, saying, “It’s easy for him to be a pinata because of his past. But I think everybody deserves a second chance.”…
Merchants claims it conducted an investigation into [one particular] embezzlement … and Hochfelder ultimately admitted to the scheme and begged his partners to let him repay the money, citing “his own psychological issues and problems with drugs,” according to the September lawsuit…
Hochfelder [allegedly] collected $125,000 for an investment in the Bryant Park Hotel, which Merchants does not own. The complaint also alleges that Hochfelder offered an interest in Merchants’ Z Hotel in Long Island City but had the investor wire $75,000 to an LLC owned by his wife.
On top of those accusations and the alleged $4 million payment withheld by Roche, Merchants says Hochfelder has left the firm with months of overdue car payments, traffic violations and an ongoing eviction proceeding at his Midtown apartment…’
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