September 6th, 2019
Protect Our Suicide Rates Alaska…

… is a nascent movement born of the latest attack on gun rights – the rollback of open carry while grocery shopping. Studies show that absent regular visual and physical access, inside and outside the home, to AR-15s, Alaskans’ impulse to detonate their heads will be significantly mitigated.

As famed for red pulp as Florida is for orange, we Alaskans have stood at the top of America’s suicide rate until recently, when we were very slightly overtaken by Montana. As local legislators keep an anxious eye on that slippage, POSR joins ranks with the Alaskan Independence Party to militate for nationhood, and the self-determination that accompanies it.

Meanwhile, join with us in singing our anthem:

TO HIS COY PULPER

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s aim and that gun’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I reach for thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
       For thy sweet barrel finger’d such pulping brings
       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

September 4th, 2019
Hey, maybe it is, as the NRA says, a “stunt.”

But it’s the kind of stunt that could catch on. That would be fun to watch.

September 3rd, 2019
Singalong, My Minnesota State Fair

Once a year I’m lyin’ here
Stuck in a
firing line
Momma’s pissed herself with fear
And the kids begin to whine
I see the cops I’m all worn out
All I can do is pray
I paid ten bucks
To park my truck and watch the bullets spray

    If you ask me why I go
   I would answer I don’t know
  Maybe we’ll stop going there
  Next year oh god forbid
   They’ll maybe kill my kid
   That hot, cheesy, way sleazy
   My Minnesota State Fair

August 31st, 2019
Love them ‘bama headlines.

‘Coastal HS football roundup: Williamson wins game marred by gunfire’

Yeah, who won? And how many shot?

Ten.

***********

Violence-porn-viewing here. The true south: Guns, Football, and (children screaming out to) God.

***********

If you have any doubt that ending a high school or college football or basketball game with gunfire has become a ritual in parts of this country, like a cigarette after sex, put the words football and shooting in my search engine.

*************

UPDATE: And in Texas:

POLICE ACTIVITY ROUNDUP: TRAFFIC STOP MARRED BY GUNFIRE

August 30th, 2019
Folks is gettin’ jumpy, ain’t they?

Time was ’round here in Nevada you’d see a AK-whatever and 2,000 or so rounds of ammo in a parked car at a university and walk on by. People have a right to defend themselves! Guns are no big deal! It’s the west ’round here! Et cetera.

Well now everybody’s scared cuz of what’s his name that guy that killed all those people in Las Vegas and some snowflake went and reported the stuff in the car to the police and now they’ve arrested some poor guy just trying to go to class.

And he forgot! When he saw the cops around his car he explained that he just forgot about the gun and ammo being there.

So now you’ve punished a guy just trying to go to class. Nevada needs campus carry.

August 29th, 2019
North Carolina’s universities have had SO much sports/academic scandal and mass murder (actual; threatened) lately that maybe we should squint at the place a little harder.

I mean, the latest anxious freshman eighteen year old preparing to mass kill if he failed to get into a frat made a point of leaving gun-unfriendly Boston (where he went to a real expensive private school) and coming to Highpoint University in North Carolina because, he explained to the authorities, it’s easier to get guns in that state. Acquaintances from the private school recall his obsession with guns and mass killing; he clearly made a logical decision to move to a place where – unlike Massachusetts – that would be easy. Crazed reject loner mass killers like the guy down the street at the University of North Carolina Charlotte last April just seem drawn to North Carolina, whose state motto appears on this shirt…

August 28th, 2019
“Every country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them.”

Yeah.

Today’s crazed eighteen year old family-slaughterer is a real religious dude. And God is good! Only gave him a rifle. If he’d had a better weapon, he could have killed the whole neighborhood.

August 25th, 2019
A sixteen year old girl, depressed and anxious almost to the point of catatonia…

… finds with ease the .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol her parents told her to use in case of an intruder. (The household has ten more weapons locked in a safe, but this one is in a bedroom, loaded.) She kills herself while her mother checks her email in an adjacent room.

Her mother says “she won’t live with guns in her home again.”

Remember 21 year old Tyler Hilinski. His college roommates had an AR-15 all ready for him.

August 23rd, 2019
Thanks to guns, they didn’t have a chance.

Mom had a moment; Mom had a gun. Her kids – two very promising people, the daughter a journalism student at Boston University – were dispatched with ease. Give Mom (who killed herself after killing her kids) a knife, or any other weapon, and these two strong life-loving young people might have been able to fight back, to overpower her, to defend themselves.

There’s nothing like a gun to give your psychotic impulsivity episode full scope.

Did no one at all have the slightest inkling this woman was… troubled? Excessively vengeful toward her ex? Was her medical supply company being investigated? Did she have a substance abuse problem? Why did this troubled woman have a gun at home? For safety in her ultra-safe gated community? Did it occur to anyone to think about the safety of her children?

Oh, and kudos to the mayor of Atlanta, who offers us this: The peace of God… surpasses all understanding. Really?

August 7th, 2019
USA Today…

… at USA TODAY! WHEEEEEEEE… HOLD ON TIGHT HERE WE GO AGAIN…

************

Updated. Phony war.

Next?

August 6th, 2019
The truest words UD has read about gun control in America.

“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

August 6th, 2019
‘Uruguay cautioned citizens against traveling to the US, citing hate crimes and “the indiscriminate possession of firearms by the population.”‘

Hey babe that pop POPOPOPOPOPOP pop pop POPOPOP is the sound of freedom!

And you ain’t seen nuthin yet. Wait til our 18 year olds with AK-47s organize. They’ll make Columbine look like a picnic.

August 4th, 2019
NRA SETS thoughtsnprayers APP ON…

semiautomatic.

August 3rd, 2019
Bloodbath and Beyond

Seem to be up to around twenty in today’s butchery in El Paso. Could we at least begin to agree that since shooting up public spaces has become a rite of passage for remarkable numbers of attention-seeking young men, we must stop recording the killers’ names and photos and manifestos? If they’re at large, tell us who they are and what they look like so we can protect ourselves; if they’re dead or arrested, move on.

June 13th, 2019
Why neighbors get a real bang out of gun stores.

When close to one hundred percent of the people in a part of Arlington Virginia registered opposition to a gun store opening in town near an elementary school, a lawyer for the shop owners expressed bafflement. “What’s the danger they anticipate? Do they think 2- and 3-year-old children are going to come over and buy guns? … Or somebody at the store is going to start shooting up the place? I don’t know what they think is going to happen.”

Perhaps UD can help him out. At 3:00 AM last night, about a mile away from her house…

Four suspects are on the loose and one person is dead after a burglary at a Rockville, Maryland, gun store…

… As there are four possibly armed suspects on the loose, police are urging local residents to navigate the area with extra caution.

… The five suspects rammed into a police cruiser as they were fleeing the scene, causing police to shoot at the car, officials said.

Police later found the car a few blocks away from the area with a dead man inside, according to police.

Police say they found a bag with multiple firearms inside in a backyard not far from the scene. Three other guns were found outside the car the suspects tried to get away in. It appears two stolen cars were used in the incident — one to ram the storefront and a getaway car.

I just don’t know what people think is going to happen.

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UD REVIEWED

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.
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The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
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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...
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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. ...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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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.
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University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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