The longtime director of the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center describes UD‘s wild and crazy city. Last time UD visited the city of her birth there had just been a big riot. Inner Harbor, once a real draw, has apparently all but collapsed. Hotels are closing.

… a typically gallant Ukrainian, gives an interview (it’s in German). Ukraine, she points out, is a democratic shield. If that shield breaks, global democracy is under grave threat.

She lives and teaches in Germany; she and Mr UD for a number of years co-directed, in Ukraine, the European Summer Institute of Civic Studies.

The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus.

Nobody was that shocked when, a few years ago, a Clemson administrator reported that ‘on surveys distributed by U.S. News, the Clemson brass “rates all programs other than Clemson below average.”‘ The main reaction to this revelation was laughter.

But when a math professor at Columbia accuses it of gaming rankings, things look more serious.

But still amusing. Michael Thaddeus describes, among other things, a school suddenly deciding that its entire immense medical faculty – overwhelmingly engaged in research and patient care – is actually an instructional unit.

Even on its own terms, the ranking is [for all schools] a failure because the supposed facts on which it is based cannot be trusted. Eighty percent of the U.S. News ranking of a university is based on information reported by the university itself. This information is detailed and subtle, and the vetting conducted by U.S. News is cursory enough to allow many inaccuracies to slip through. Institutions are under intense pressure to present themselves in the most favorable light. This creates a profound conflict of interest, which it would be naive to overlook… Even as Columbia has [lately] soared to 2nd place in the ranking, there is reason for concern that its ascendancy may largely be founded, not on an authentic presentation of the university’s strengths, but on a web of illusions.

During a feminist theory class in my sophomore year, I said that non-Indian women can criticize suttee, a historical practice of ritual suicide by Indian widows. This idea seems acceptable for academic discussion, but to many of my classmates, it was objectionable.

The room felt tense. I saw people shift in their seats. Someone got angry, and then everyone seemed to get angry. After the professor tried to move the discussion along, I still felt uneasy. I became a little less likely to speak up again and a little less trusting of my own thoughts.

I was shaken, but also determined to not silence myself. Still, the disdain of my fellow students stuck with me. I was a welcomed member of the group — and then I wasn’t.

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

Try saying we can criticize people who cut off Dawoodi Bohra Indian girls’ genitals! That’ll make your UVa classmates even angrier.

Isn’t there a law in Mexico against bringing children to soccer games? The games are so bloody (this latest brawl featured at least two deaths and over twenty serious injuries), it’s definitely a form of negligence to allow children into the barbarity.

Soccer riots are an old story – the ones I cover are mainly in Europe – with the only wrinkle being an ongoing escalation of the slaughter. It’s also mildly interesting to see whether security can get the players off the field in time to save their lives.

… by legitimate scholars uncovering his long history of plagiarized sports-injury research.

One could dismiss this jerk as one more no-account, plagiarism-addicted nonentity, except that he’s actually a very high-profile, influential concussion-enthusiast, always in search of ways to justify letting concussed athletes keep playing.

Finally cornered, he’s letting out with all sorts of explanations and apologies (UD has no idea why he’s not blaming underlings, but as more of his plagiarism is discovered, McCrory will no doubt take this time-honored route), and he’s removing himself – or being removed – from this and that committee. Let’s see if the scummy schools and organizations keeping him on board will… keep him on board.

Dude already had a violent crime record.

‘Court records from Wyandotte County show Elmore was convicted in a Feb. 6, 2020, robbery where he stole a wallet from a person “by force or by threat of bodily harm, and did inflict bodily harm.”’

Why was he still enrolled in a mainstream public high school?

Is it because he played for the football team? If so, that’s really fucked up. Putting the safety of everyone at the school at risk because he made the team more competitive…

Of course, having covered the legions of Richie Incognitos out there, UD knows perfectly well that this is a calculation high schools and colleges all over this country make every day: He’s a dangerous person, sure, but he can really play the game. Coaches who make the call – see Art Briles – occasionally have to pay a price for it. The real price is paid by the people raped and beaten.

Background here.

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Richie Incognito! Isn’t that what Roman Abramovich just re-christened his yacht?

My jet tried to make aliyah

It’s always loved Israel, da da
We approached Tel Aviv

But they forced us to leave

So now we fly on to Fatah

UD thanks Al.

Megayachts are being snatched all over Europe.

All our current attention rightly focuses on Mr Puti’nhead; but it’s still fun to read George Will on the long fart trail left by the last president.

Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation’s sleeve… [His] interventions in Republican primaries continue to be unimpressive …

A European war is unhelpful for Trump because it reminds voters that Longfellow was right: Life is real, life is earnest … Trump’s strut through presidential politics was made possible by an American reverie; war in Europe has reminded people that politics is serious.

We are the sum of our choices, and Vladimir Putin has provoked some Trump poodles to make illuminating ones. J.D. Vance, groveling for Trump’s benediction (Vance covets Ohio’s Republican Senate nomination), two weeks ago said: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.”

Heck, nobody should be surprised that when a youngster in a Kansas school gets annoyed by the assistant principal and the security guard, he’s gonna pull out his gun and pop both of them. Everybody ’round there’s got a gun; he’s probably been shooting that gun off since he was five years old. No doubt as the years went by his parents noticed he was a little… strange… But ain’t no reason to take his guns away! Most natural thing in the world for him to whip it out and draw blood when school-folk started ragging on him. I mean – SHUT UP – and if you keep talking to me DIE.

Looks as though these two ninnies – it’s their fault for annoying one of their armed students – are gonna pull through, and the lad himself – the security officer shot back, so there was a shoot-out – should be up and running, fully armed and psychotic, in not too long a time. Nobody died, and as I say, those two should have known better.

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Update:

An 18-year-old student shot [School Resource Officer] Erik Clark and [the vice principal] after sources tell FOX4 the student was called to the office area over suspicions he had a gun.

Clark returned fire, injuring the student and disarming him. He then called dispatch to report the shooting all while applying a tourniquet to himself.

Ha ha guess the suspicions were right! But the mistake these guys made was trying to separate an American and his gun. What were they thinking? If you suspect an 18 year old American male living in the heartland has a gun, have everyone hide under their desk and call SWAT.

This is exactly what Richard Rorty would have written if he were still alive. Read Achieving Our Country, Rorty’s urgent, late in life, defense of liberalism. As people have noted, he saw Trump coming way before the rest of us did. He warned us about Trump/Putin.