The Rugged Beauty of Cowboy Country

Steve Dillon directs the UW School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice, but said he spoke Thursday as a citizen and teacher. 

He said that when he first moved to Laramie he encountered men in orange hats with guns at a trailhead. They’d asked him what he was doing, and he told them he’d just moved there and wanted to go for a hike. 

“They raised their guns, pointing them at my chest and said, ‘You just moved here? Go the F back where you came from,’” Dillon said. 

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

Part of a campus discussion about whether concealed carry should be allowed on campus.

Looks as though strong majorities don’t want to go to a school where anyone you see might be carrying a big gun. But they’ll get concealed carry. Will they ever get it.

Year or two after that, they’ll get open carry at the University of Wyoming. Already got it in the rest of the state. Permitless. Only gotta be 18.

She could play anything, including a beguiling…

… fascist.

RIP

Why was this man out of jail, let alone in charge of a child, let alone armed?

Big ol’ rap sheet, just a really dangerous person, and he has a kid who’s allowed to live with him? He got ten years in 2016 for malicious wounding etc etc, and he’s not in jail? Thinks it’s funny to put a loaded gun in his six year old kid’s school backpack? Why does this convicted felon have guns?

Lemme tell you. It’s hard enough for gun-soaked Americans to protect themselves from quiet schizy little nobodies who decide to shoot up schools; shouldn’t it be easier for us to defend ourselves from shriekingly rampant criminals among us? Easier to defend innocent children from them? WTF.

Dried Up Lake

Another day, another heaping helping of disaster for Arizona’s reigning queen of the Make America Great Again movement.

When this election is over, Republicans really should begin asking themselves when and if they ever want to win again — because if it wasn’t clear after already losing two Senate seats and every key statewide office, it’s about to become undeniably clear to all but the fiercest MAGA diehards.

Hungarian National Anthem

Violate me in the violet time

In the vilest way that you know

Desecrate, savage me, utterly ravage me

On me no mercy bestow

‘Wojciech Fangor Has His Own Street in the Center of Warsaw.’

UD‘s old friend has been immensely honored in Poland, and here’s the latest thing!

He was a quiet gentle giant of a man, engrossed in his painting, in love with his wife, and, in his off time, busy maintaining his one hundred upstate NY acres, and the beautiful house/pond at their center. A lover of the night sky (like UD), he built himself an observatory. He and Magda drove around most weekends finding the quirky Americana that filled the house. They often had guests (not in the winter!), many of them famous Polish artists, and Magda cooked everyone spectacular meals, topped off with dusky strolls through the woods.

Then we’d all sit on the big front porch and gaze at the pond Fangor made until we started falling asleep.

Post-Disbarment Rudysnark.

“About damn time,” tweeted former Senate staffer Jim Manley.

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

[A]ttorney Philip T. Kingston wrote: “Do you know how hard it is to get disbarred?”

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

“You lie and make false statements in court to try and overturn ONE lousy election, and suddenly people are all mad about it,” [wrote] civil attorney Daniel Aguilar.

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

Coming attractions.

That’s the beauty of open carry.

If you’re in a hurry to get your pain pills and you pull your car in front of other people waiting in the pharmacy drive-through and the people in one of the cars object to what you have done, you can brandish your loaded gun right in their faces as they approach your car window! That’ll shut em up. HAHAHAHAHA

‘Yesterday was my lucky day! Got me a free gun.’

‘Kinda tricky and gross cuz lots of glass and blood at the scene plus two messed up and I’m pretty sure dead bodies but main thing is FREE GUN IN ONE OF THE CARS.’

‘An 11-year-old has been accused of brandishing a gun at a Camas [Oregon] middle school.’

“While this incident occurred on a school campus, it was not directly related to Skyridge Middle School activities,” officials wrote in a press release Wednesday.

Whew. I can’t stand middle schools where 11 year olds brandishing guns is part of official school activities.

‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT AND I LOVE MARK ROBINSON!’

Trump’s man in NC continues to impress.

“If the cops wanted to shoot an elderly black man they should have shot Al Sharpton … Closing his mouth would do this Nation good.”

“Obama IS a blackface step-in fectch-it [sic] for liberal white America.”

… “It’s Oprah the wicked witch, leading the way to sexing up the children!”

Nobody does front yard spider webs like UD.

I mean, it’s natural. A spider (see it in the middle at the top?) somehow fashioned a web — from my nearby dogwood? from the electrical wires? — seemingly in midair.

‘[T]he GOP [has] elevated the sorts of candidates the party base has come to love: carpetbaggers, TV personalities, perverts, and aspiring werewolves.’

Should the GOP—at either federal or state levels—play a stronger role in primaries to prevent candidates like Christine O’Donnell Roy Moore Blake Masters Herschel Walker Dr. Oz Mark Robinson from being nominated? The GOP base clearly wants crazy…

HEY HEY K. AND K. HOW MANY DOGS…

… DID YOU KILL TODAY?

‘[T]he Birmingham mass shooting was something of a blip. NPR did lead its Monday afternoon newscast with the story, but the New York Times buried its print article on Page A14. In an age of school shootings and presidential assassination attempts, bursts of gunfire on crowded city streets are getting shorter and shorter shrift. This was, after all, the third quadruple murder in Birmingham this year, including one outside a public library. Didn’t hear about that? Me neither.’

If a mass shooting happens in the dead of a Saturday night and America has forgotten about it by the time Sunday’s 1 p.m. NFL games kick off, did it make a sound?

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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.
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

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