Sahndringham or Hahvard, the world’s grahndest locations were Jeffrey Epstein supplicant centers, full of people peeing themselves at the prospect of moolah from the captain of the Lolita Express.
Writers at the Harvard Crimson have selected some real beauts among expressions mixing memory and desire from a swath of Harvard éminences. The Harvard prof quoted in my title, now hiding out in LA, hits all his marks: Fond memories of our lowly origins before we got fahncy; reminders that since we come from the streets we don’t give a shit about any fucking justice system (cue Jets Theme, West Side Story); loyalty pledge.
At once poignant and hilarious, a wee legal assistant to Epstein’s best beau The Dersh strives earnestly to answer Epstein’s odd inquiry about transporting minors for sex. “I’m sorry I was a little confused about what you were asking on the phone,” he wrote to Epstein. The lad is clearly trying to get up to speed on the dirty big boy world into which his massive LSAT score has catapulted him.
As Charlie Javice is led off to serve seven years in prison for defrauding JP Morgan of $175 million, UD once more asks, What is it with high-priced lawyers? Their most compelling keep her out of jail arguments in this case were
1.} Hey we’re surprised that big ol bank even noticed the piddling 175 mill she stole. They’ve got SO much money the theft of almost two hundred million is nothing, judge. Nothing!
and
2.} What, really, is the point of jailing a criminal, especially within the guidelines? “Justice” is such a broad, ambiguous, concept; if you look at the matter with fresh eyes, judge, you’ll see that nothing is ever served by incarcerating someone who has done something illegal.
***************
Wharton notes that Javice of course graduated from that school, which grinds out world historical crooks like nobody’s business. Read my many Wharton posts for their immense mafia.
Suicide’s a funny thing. When a healthy 28 year old dies out of nowhere it could be something else (undetected heart condition, epileptic seizure, sudden bacterial sepsis, murder…), but it’s probably suicide. And eventually news coverage will straightforwardly include the S-word; but there’s often a slow walk, as it were, to the scaffold.
This Daily Princeton article about a brilliant cutting-edge engineering postdoc, for instance, notes that no cause of death has been given, but also says in its last sentence:
[Haoran] Li’s death is at least the eighth of a current or recent student at Princeton in the last four years, including four determined to be suicides.
And the word “suicides” will get the article’s last word. Nuff said.
I’ve already said on this blog that there are certain sentences that only seem to show up in the New York Times, like this one, which features the phrase “only $100 million.”
One of New York’s vilest billionaires, Ronald Perelman, sued his insurance company because, far from paying him $410 million for fire damage to five artworks, they paid him NUTHIN cuz the paintings weren’t damaged and in any case (again see this post’s title) even if the insurers were in a mood to pay up, Perelman’s goodies were only worth the paltry sum of one hundred million (sniff).
So Perelman suffered not only a money diss, but today he lost his lawsuit because like everyone else – except some massively compensated expert witnesses – the judge can’t see a speck of damage.
As England debates assisted dying, a charismatic couple in their late nineties decides they’ve had enough of “merely existing.” They went to Switzerland, although the friend quoted in my headline points out that if England had legalized assisted dying by now, they’d have been able to stay home and die among family and friends.
They sent a note to their loved ones:
Sorry not to have mentioned it, but when you receive this email we will have shuffled off this mortal coil. The decision was mutual and without any outside pressure. We had lived a long life together for almost 75 years. There came a point when failing senses, of sight and hearing and lack of energy was not living but existing that no care would improve.
We had an interesting and varied life, except for the sorrow of losing Jeremy, our son. We enjoyed our time together, we tried not to regret the past, live in the present and not to expect too much from the future. Much love Ruth & Mike.
Critics decried the [2018] law as discriminatory, but Denmark viewed it for what it truly is: a defence of secular values, civic participation, and national identity.
Now the ban has been expanded to schools and universities.
Civic life depends on visibility, communication, and engagement. Classrooms are not private spaces—they are the arenas where citizens learn to interact, debate, and participate. Full-face coverings obstruct all of that.
It is confusing to people when the freest, best countries in the world ban face-coverings. One of the reasons these countries are the best is that they ban face-coverings.
Secularism is non-negotiable. Public institutions, particularly schools, must be neutral spaces. Clothing that isolates or excludes individuals from shared norms compromises that neutrality... Visibility is not oppression—it is the foundation of civic life.
These themes are playing out right now in the political and legal wrangling in Canada over proudly secular Quebec’s insistence on some controls over things like burqas and hijabs. This blog is firmly (as you well know if you read me) in the secular camp, and will follow the Canadian story closely.
Guns pop up here and there in the piece, but never as a crucial part of the explanation. Isolation, alcohol, yadda yadda, but zillions of places have these characteristics. What they don’t have is a zillion guns on a bedside table ogling you.
A worthy successor to the first Hangover film, in which four drunk lads steal Mike Tyson’s tiger, Hangover 4 (release date scheduled to coincide with Nicholas Sarkozy’s first day in prison) finds the foursome gleefully pinching Qaddafi’s sculpture of a gold clenched fist crushing a silver American military jet. Hijinks ensue as an enraged Qaddafi orders his pal Sarkozy to fire up the French military to get it back.
