September 23rd, 2018
Emerging Photographic Theme: The Post-Nuclear Football Stadium.

As the enterprise collapses, photographers vie to see who can take the most compelling shot of a virtually empty stadium.

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Go here for the glorious history of Colorado State University’s brand new empty stadium.

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UD thanks John.

September 23rd, 2018
“I spoke metaphorically. —My metaphor was drawn from …

agriculture. Ahem!

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[About Christine Ford, Senator Mitch McConnell recently said:] “We’re going to plow right through this.” Plow right through this, meaning, we’re going to plow right through this woman’s, you know, accusations and she’s, you know, presumably, if she does testify, it’s going to be her trauma and her — it’s going to be a very emotional kind of presentation.

Lisa Lerer, New York Times

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UPDATE: Schumer can’t resist opening his remarks today with the same quotation.

And why is it so popular to hit McConnell on the terminology? Because, uh…

Royal wench! She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed. He plowed her, and she cropped.

September 22nd, 2018
“I’m with you and screw all the customs that have deprived us of freedom.”

Taraf Alasiri kicks off a now-viral facial equality movement in Saudi Arabia. Much like Iran’s My Stealthy Freedom, Solidarity with Taraf features Saudi women photographing themselves unveiled and writing about personal freedom.

September 21st, 2018
In Snits at the Ritz

Two women in burqas who were refused entry to London’s Ritz hotel expressed serious annoyance.

But the hotel has a dress code and the code includes people who refuse to show their faces. End of story.

September 21st, 2018
Daphne the Exonerator Strikes Again.

A curious writer, Daphne Merkin. She repeatedly gets into trouble by writing high-profile journalism white-washing besmirched family and friends. Back in ’09, she wrote a notorious New York Times column down-playing her brother’s involvement in the Bernard Madoff scheme and up-playing the responsibility of people dumb enough to invest with said brother and his partner in crime Bernie.

Times readers who realized the connection [between Merkin and her brother] protested that the newspaper had given Ezra Merkin’s sister a platform to make what they saw as a veiled defense of his conduct without coming clean about the depth of his involvement.

Since her piece was written, her brother has been successfully sued for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in payback to people he and Madoff destroyed. Tragically, Merkin has had to sell his entire Rothko collection. And he continues to be sued for hundreds of millions of dollars more, so he has to be eyeing his other collections.

Now Daphne Merkin has done it again, for her friend Woody Allen. Her New York magazine article attacking those who have attacked Allen’s behavior is as hopelessly corrupted by personal interest as was her piece about Madoff.

UD has got to tip her hat to Merkin, however. How the hell does she keep doing it? Ian Buruma had to resign. Merkin’s no doubt putting finishing touches on her 10,000-word profile of unfairly maligned Harvey Weinstein.

September 20th, 2018
His bullshit claims about endless bowls of soup won a 2007 IgNobel …

which he proudly lists on his web page, but neither that long-ago spoof award nor many bright red flags since then have attracted the attention of serious scientists to his methods (Fold six retractions into seven retractions; mix briskly.).

Now, as the Cornell paper reports, things are on the boil for Professor Wansink. Once Cornell has concluded its review of his research, it will call a … Wansink Conference, announcing its results.

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Mix all thirteen retractions together and… voila!

Retraite Forcé avec Urgence.

September 20th, 2018
Girls Get in on the Act.

When everybody’s got a gun, every day is a massacre. Cuz we all have problems to solve, and guns solve problems. That’s why everybody’s got a gun.

Now, women have kind of been a holdout, in that although they own pretty much as many guns as men, they have seemed reluctant to use them to kill everyone.

But just down the road from UD‘s own Port Deposit, Maryland, where her grandfather owned a department store, a woman took out her … whatever … AR-15? … and blew everyone away today.

Thursday’s incident was the third mass shooting in the past 24 hours.

September 20th, 2018
‘It’s kind of the American dream for a lot of people, a working class fantasy, the chance to walk off your steady job that makes you miserable … taking care to not just burn the bridge with your employer, but to napalm the shit out of that bridge on your way out the door, middle fingers waving, while your coworkers applaud.’

TrendingOn-field retirements in the NFL … Half the ticket-holders leave at halftime; why not players too? New staff specialization: Stay in the Game Coaches exhort wavering players to win one last one for the Gipper, while from just behind the sidelines phalanxes of Estate Planners rush the field…

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UPDATE: Interesting! Could this actually become a trend?

September 19th, 2018
Failed to…

inglatiate himself.

September 19th, 2018
Hail, Hail, Estonia!

Hail hail Estonia!

We will not stand for anything that’s crooked or unfair
We’re strictly on the up and up so everyone beware
If anyone’s caught taking graft and we don’t get our share
We stand them up against the wall and pop goes the weasel!

September 19th, 2018
“Breaking News: Drake Davis receives scholarship offer from Baylor.”

The witty commenters at Deadspin do it again, as Louisiana State University finally dumps professional girlfriend beater, Drake Davis.

But of course it won’t be Baylor that gives him a scholarship, much as that self-righteous institution adores violent men. It’ll be East Central Southern Mississippi All Praise To Our Savior Junior College.

September 17th, 2018
“I am not suggesting anyone use the burning bed approach for dealing with an abusive man, but it was effective, and it is a fact that they do all eventually go to sleep.”

LOLOLOLOL

September 17th, 2018
Football! All for Football!

In the span of a few weeks, my university announced completing a new $2 million giant scoreboard for the basketball arena replacing four small but perfectly functioning scoreboards, finished a new $6 million “academic center” ostensibly to provide athletes (but no non-athletes) a luxurious place to study but importantly also to host game day alcohol-driven hospitality for gung-ho athletic boosters, many of whom probably have no idea where the school library is. It also paid Howard University $350,000 so it could beat them (barely) in football, enhancing the probability of becoming “bowl eligible,” giving it the right to play, at some meaningful additional cost, some other second tier team in some obscure location in early January before perhaps 10,000 fans. Simultaneously, students were sweltering in the largest classroom building on campus because the undoubtedly ancient air conditioning decided to temporarily die.

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Sing it, brother.

Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be
Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into your hands
All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into your hands

For it’s only in my team that I am free
For it’s only in my team that I am free

Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be
Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be

September 17th, 2018
“There are all sorts of ways to try and explain how an NFL team in one of the country’s biggest markets fails to fill its stadium for the first home game of the season—the high cost of tickets, traffic, worries about Hurricane Florence, the generally bad experience of attending a live NFL game…”

The Redskins – UD‘s local team, I guess – go the way of most football lately (university and professional); and UD finds it refreshing that Deadspin‘s writer just says it: “the generally bad experience of attending a live NFL game.”

I mean, UD figured she was weird when, having scored a coveted ticket to a Redskins game a few years ago from a friend of a friend, and having even gotten good seats, she sat next to her comatose husband and did two New York Times acrostics. In the blurry pit down there, anonymous, heavy-suited men staggered en masse a few feet forward and a few feet back for what felt like hours. All around her in the stands, people acted like jerks — they were just as bored as Les UDs, but they were also drunk. Life felt tedious and hardly worth living.

And you think it’s bad in the NFL! University football games, with very few exceptions, are really emptying out.

September 17th, 2018
“[W]e should not let drug companies buy the hearts and minds of researchers.”

Marcia Angell has follow-up thoughts on the latest medical research corruption case.

The cost of [the corruption] is high, and not just in drug prices. It means both doctors and patients believe prescription drugs are better and safer than they really are.

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