WHEEEEEEEEEEEEMEWINNNNNN
This Bloomberg headline helps you understand why mixing metaphors ain’t a great idea.
A parochial school … baptized 100 students without permission from parents—some of whom were left angry by the surprise. “My daughter calls me from the school and says, ‘Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes? I got baptized today,’” the parent of an 11-year-old told the Fayetteville Observer. “I said, ‘WHAT?’” At least three parents complained to the Northwood Temple Academy principal, who said a handful of students were scheduled to receive the sacrament and the others “just began to respond to the presence of the Lord.”
********************
The Honey, I Baptized the Kids! problem is more widespread than you might think.

… is a wife, mother, and anti-abortion fanatic. You don’t get more NO EXCEPTIONS than Yesli, whose views were recently featured in an ABC news report. Let’s see…
[T]here should be no abortion even in the case of rape. A woman does not sit and get raped without wanting it… There can be no conception as a result of rape. [A woman’s body prevents pregnancies from rape because] it’s not something that’s happening organically [and the rapist is doing it] quickly.
As to possible deaths of mothers, Yesli says let God sort it out…
**********************
Yes, yes, as you see I’m doing a mashup of Yesli and Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Dodoni; and that’s because once Virginia voters vote her in, they will essentially be living under the rule of a mentally unbalanced Greek bishop.
[A] majority of Texas voters are expressing strong support for abortion rights.
In a new survey, six in 10 voters said they support abortion being “available in all or most cases,” and many say abortion will be a motivating issue at the ballot box in November. Meanwhile, 11% say they favor a total ban on abortion.
But not to worry! The miniscule minority will simply run roughshod over the majority.
Proud that the US makes international news so often. In this case, it took seconds for the foreign press to pick up on the four-year-old with a loaded handgun at his elementary school in Texas.
Of course Texas doesn’t have any lower age limit on gun possession,** so it’s fine; and in fact his parents are the talk of Corpus Christi for proactively arming their kid as he sets out on his first week of class!
‘[W]e do not believe that students and staff were in any kind of imminent danger,’ wrote the principal to parents, and god why did he even need to say that, since a loaded gun floating around an elementary school is safety personified.
********************
** Along with fetal personhood bills, some states (Texas is one of them) are now looking into the legal/technical viability of so-called Fetal Firearm legislation, in which as soon as arm buds appear on embryos, tiny guns are implanted in the amniotic sac, ready for the fetus to clasp and, if need be, use to defend itself against an impending abortion. Advocates point out that this procedure – if practicable – would have the further advantage of accustoming the unborn to safe and responsible gun ownership.
‘Fellow Pennsylvanians: If we go by the most recent numbers, around a million American women had abortions last year, AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE WOMEN (AND RAPED CHILDREN) IS A MURDERER. As I said in a recent townhall:
“If life starts at conception, why do you care what age the heart starts beating at? It’s, you know, it’s still murder, if you were to terminate a child whether their heart’s beating or not.”
But Dr Oz! I hear you say. That’s a lot of women and children to put on trial for murder. Won’t that strain our justice system?
It might. But consider: For a lot of these murders, there are medical records attesting to them, and if I’m elected I will work with others to give the FBI special access to all women’s and female children’s medical, and pharmaceutical purchase, records. We will also of course work to be able to confiscate all abortion clinic patient paperwork going back to let’s say 1980. None of these murders will entail a trial, because irrefutable proof of them exists.
Another question I get a lot is: If hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania women know that under Senator Oz they will be pursued for murder, won’t most of them flee to states where they will not be hunted down?
Yes, many of them will. This represents a win-win for the state. These scum are removed from the premises without our justice system having to deal with them at all. It’s called exile. Those unable or unwilling to flee will be subject to the death penalty.’
… Donald Trump’s attorney, Alan Dershowitz, has announced that his client will be demanding $2.6 trillion from the Democratic Party for pain and suffering consequent to the stolen election.
“In trying to arrive at a reasonable damages figure, we used Poland as a benchmark,” said Dershowitz. “Doubling the dollar amount brings us to a place where we both compensate the president for his ongoing tribulations, and make the penalty significant enough to discourage Democrats, or for that matter any other political organization, from overturning a landslide victory. I look forward to pressing ahead with the Trump Reparations Campaign as soon I finish suing the Chilmark Public Library for not inviting me to speak there.”
Palin’s failin’.
But it’s so much more than that.
For instance, Mary Peltola, the winner of Alaska’s special house election, couldn’t be more different from her arrogant, mentally challenged predecessor, Don Young.
The winner’s agenda? ‘[S]upport for abortion rights, … concern about climate change and … calls for developing Alaska’s resources with greater sensitivity to the needs of local communities.’
Let’s look more closely at abortion in Alaska:
The Supreme Court’s move in June to overturn Roe v. Wade was another major theme of Ms. Peltola’s campaign. More than 60 percent of Alaskans favor abortion rights, breaking with the position held by Republicans like Ms. Palin…
************************
‘Peltola’s victory is the latest in a string of overperformances for Democrats in special congressional elections since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade… ‘
I know you’re not paying attention to Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox, but UD’s a huge fan of it, and she highly recommends that you start paying attention – especially cuz the cast of crazed conspiracists we’ve all been missing since the change of regime is back, and better than ever, courtesy of this ongoing case.
Lately we’ve merely gotten tantalizing glimpses of people like Sidney Powell via the Jan 6 hearings; it’s been far too long since the team assembled at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, etc. The beauty of Dominion’s $1.6 billion action is that through depositions and other forms of information gathering, the whole journalistic/legal derangis personae promoting Trump’s stolen victory will again be paraded before us. Watch for it.
Background here.
Oberlin College packs up its legal baggage and moves on from the Ohio Supreme Court to – I don’t know – the United States Supreme Court …? The European Court of Human Rights …? in a pointless, expensive quest to evade an already-crushing penalty for having bullied a venerable, much-loved local bakery practically out of business. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected Oberlin’s appeal without comment because nu? You did the deed; you never even attempted an apology; you hired the airhead apparatchik dean who made the magic happen. Own it, babe.


[A] handgun and ammunition [were] found in his backpack [of a seven-year-old second grader at Cochise Elementary School in Cochise, Arizona.]
[A] second gun also was discovered [in the backpack].
Until now, narco-billionaires seeking to avoid capture by the authorities through living in gated/patrolled high-rises have always risked exposure when leaving their cars, giving the keys to the parking valet, and then walking, in complete view of other people, into the building, into the elevator, and down the hallway of their floor, where they risk running into neighbors.
Beyond the obvious fact that narco-billionaires are unlikely to be pleased that strangers (even building staff) are getting inside their cars, where they can look around and find god knows what, there’s the larger point of all the exposure involved in walking into the building.
Bentley Residences has solved every one of these problems, allowing international criminals to enter all the way into their apartments without ever getting out of their car. Owners drive into sophisticated car elevators that lift them directly into their apartment, where they leave the car in a glass-enclosed garage which allows them to look at it while eating dinner (see images in this article).
The death, in New York, of a young, successful, recently engaged, outrageously beautiful actress was, her rep has announced, due to – well, there it is in my headline.
It’s an awkward formulation. Sudden and unexpected go with an accident, or with an incident like a heart attack (think of the shocking death of skater Sergei Grinkov); they do not go with illness.
This is the vague, confused, type of formulation that arises in the traumatized hours and days after a totally out of the blue death; typically, the family is overwhelmed with an impulse to protect the complexity and vulnerability of the person from the world’s cruel and prying eyes. They therefore describe an elusive and odd turn of events… Which of course achieves the opposite of their intent, since everyone loves a mystery, and now people are speculating like mad.
Here are the possibilities, if you ask ol’ UD. From most to least likely.
Suicide. The People article I cite quotes her alluding, recently, to “one of the hardest times in my life,” and, by featuring that statement, People is already sort of going there, already implicitly wondering if this woman was troubled and self-destructive.
Drug Overdose. Substance abuse is endemic to the world in which this woman moves. Her loved ones may not be ready to disclose this about her.
Chronic, controlled condition that suddenly goes out of control. Maybe she was, say, epileptic, but drugs had handled it for years. Until they didn’t; and she died of a grand mal seizure.
Actual mystery. People die for unknown reasons more often than you think. It’s not impossible that a coroner could conclude that no discernible organic reason for a death reveals itself.
***********************
Update: Looks as though I’m wrong on every score. Might have been an overwhelming viral infection.
Latest UD posts at IHE
Archives
- 2025 (834)
- 2024 (822)
- 2023 (733)
- 2022 (852)
- 2021 (751)
- 2020 (789)
- 2019 (753)
- 2018 (803)
- 2017 (749)
- 2016 (863)
- 2015 (861)
- 2014 (1052)
- 2013 (1019)
- 2012 (1187)
- 2011 (1399)
- 2010 (1372)
- 2009 (1450)
- 2007 (1)
Categories
- 54: The new elderly (1)
- ADA DOOM (196)
- amy bishop (32)
- AYE (6)
- bad writing (24)
- Balinesia (1)
- be still my heart (199)
- beware the b-school boys (157)
- beach blogging (7)
- blog (98)
- blogoscopy (31)
- blood blogging (12)
- bright red shorts (1)
- chesapeake (4)
- chief inspiration officer (50)
- class (17)
- CLICK-THROUGH U. (6)
- CLICK-THRU U. (126)
- code brown (16)
- conflict of interest (312)
- contest! (8)
- da guy's got balls (13)
- defenses of liberal education (33)
- delillo (81)
- democracy (938)
- demon rum (70)
- diploma mill (119)
- dispatches from the classroom (16)
- end the erasure of women (129)
- evil dr phil (1)
- EVITA (6)
- extracts (192)
- faculty project (34)
- failure to yield pun (3)
- father/son gunnies (10)
- FGM (67)
- floridly overwritten (4)
- foreign universities (159)
- forms of religious experience (760)
- free speech (75)
- fresh blood (58)
- Genius of the Carpathians (222)
- gevalt (4)
- ghost writing (55)
- goathean (2)
- goddess (2)
- Gomer (26)
- good writing (117)
- great writing (148)
- guns (1,063)
- harvard: bar fly (5)
- harvard: foreign and domestic policy (104)
- harvard: gearing up for the winter (7)
- harvard: handouts (10)
- headline of the day (399)
- henry purcell (13)
- heroes (152)
- heroines (110)
- high as a kite (43)
- hoax (274)
- how to make ud happy (22)
- How We Learn (41)
- hymnal (1)
- intellectuals (67)
- it's art (126)
- it's good to be the king (10)
- james joyce (74)
- jesus thinks you're a jerk (5)
- just plain gross (419)
- kind of a little weird (559)
- limericks (173)
- lion's willy (3)
- little hitler (4)
- Little Ick (12)
- march of science (244)
- merchandise (199)
- merkin muffley (2)
- merkins (12)
- Ministry of War (14)
- misconceived literary adaptations (1)
- morning mantra (1)
- newspaper poem (17)
- notes from a broad (1)
- nothing gold can stay (1)
- oedipus madoff (9)
- Of Mice and Men (1)
- Online Makeover (14)
- pill mill u. (7)
- plagiarism (329)
- poem (436)
- PowerPoint Confidential (15)
- powerpoint pissoff (50)
- professors (668)
- program support coordinator (2)
- protect yourself from bad poetry (2)
- satanic two-party system (1)
- Scathing Online Schoolmarm (303)
- screwed (133)
- screwed up (7)
- sentences that make UD laugh (28)
- smackdown (11)
- snapshots from a country (3)
- snapshots from assateague (10)
- snapshots from australia (1)
- snapshots from bath (1)
- snapshots from cambridge (9)
- snapshots from cherry springs (3)
- snapshots from corning (4)
- snapshots from dublin (21)
- snapshots from galway (9)
- snapshots from hawaii (1)
- snapshots from home (1,415)
- snapshots from houston (2)
- snapshots from hungary (1)
- snapshots from hyde park (2)
- snapshots from iceland (1)
- snapshots from india (11)
- snapshots from ireland (16)
- snapshots from kent island (1)
- snapshots from key west (66)
- snapshots from kurdistan (1)
- snapshots from la (1)
- snapshots from lisbon (1)
- snapshots from london (7)
- snapshots from malaga (1)
- snapshots from marbella (1)
- snapshots from mexico city (3)
- snapshots from munich (1)
- snapshots from naples (5)
- snapshots from new york (13)
- snapshots from Paris (5)
- snapshots from phoenix (2)
- snapshots from poland (3)
- snapshots from prague (2)
- snapshots from rehoboth (183)
- snapshots from sanibel (14)
- snapshots from scotland (3)
- snapshots from sedona (16)
- snapshots from shenandoah (17)
- snapshots from summit (30)
- snapshots from thailand (1)
- snapshots from the alps (1)
- snapshots from the azores (1)
- snapshots from the caliphate (1)
- snapshots from the Chesapeake (7)
- snapshots from the dolomites (1)
- snapshots from utah (7)
- snapshots from venice (11)
- snapshots from vermont (2)
- snapshots from Virginia (5)
- snapshots from warsaw (17)
- snapshots from west virginia (2)
- snapshots from zakopane (2)
- soltan inc. (59)
- somewhat baffled online schoolmarm (2)
- sounds and looks very samuel beckett (22)
- sport (2,765)
- Sport (149)
- STUDENTS (440)
- suicide (53)
- swaddled masses yearning to breathe free (8)
- tax syphon u. (2)
- tea (31)
- TEACH NAKED (2)
- TEACHING BEAUTY (2)
- technolust (217)
- THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL ME (3)
- the melnyk chronicles (1)
- the most irresponsible university in america (5)
- the piece that passeth all understanding (4)
- the rest is silence (37)
- the shame of a nation (11)
- the university (427)
- This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (2)
- tiny (2)
- TRUMP DEATH WATCH (2)
- trust me – i'm a doctor (7)
- trustees trashing the place (225)
- ud officially embarrassed to be a woman (7)
- ud's hippie years (12)
- UD/DC (6)
- unhoused (1)
- VERY LIKE A CME. (4)
- We'll get through this. (46)
- what do english professors dream? (1)
- where the simulacrum ends (33)
- you're wrong (1)
- Your Morning Giggle (48)
Bookmarks
- A Don’s Life
- Acephalous
- Acta Online
- Adbusters
- All Things Shining
- Andrew Sullivan
- Ann Althouse
- Ars Psychiatrica
- Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
- Baseline Scenario
- Carlat Psychiatry Blog
- Charles Lipson
- CLIOPATRIA
- Cold Spring Shops
- Colonialist
- Critical Mass
- Culture Industry
- Dank Professor
- Easily Distracted
- Ferule and Fescue
- FIRE
- Grad Student Madness
- GW English News
- Hardscrabble Creek
- Health Care Renewal
- In the Middle
- Inside Higher Ed
- Joanne Jacobs
- John&Belle Have a Blog
- Jonathan Mayhew
- Left of Centre
- Liberty and Power
- Lucky Jane
- Minding the Campus
- MOO 2
- Nobody Sasses A Girl in Glasses
- notes of a neophyte
- Photon Courier
- Polysigh
- PROFANE
- Rate Your Students
- Retraction Watch
- Scenic Overlook
- Sherman Dorn
- Signifying Nothing
- Slaves of Academe
- Tenured Radical
- The American Scene
- The Collegiate Way
- The Cranky Professor
- The Education Wonks
- The GW Patriot
- The Interpreted World
- The Monkey Cage
- The Periodic Table
- The Usual Prophets
- The Valve
- Unabgeschlossenheit
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