Santa leaves all kinds of toys / For lucky little girls and boys

A police officer in Virginia is facing firearm charges after his 2-year-old son [fatally] shot himself with a gun his father left sitting on a couch.

When Newport News Police Officer Stefhone Christian McCombs Sr., 25, returned from work on October 29, he allegedly took out his fully loaded 9mm semi-automatic Glock from his holster and placed it on a couch in his living room…

His children came home about five hours later at about 9 p.m. But McCombs allegedly forgot that the gun was left unsecured on the couch, according to a criminal complaint.

During an investigation into the shooting, the officer told investigators that he does not normally leave guns unattended within the reach of his children. But when officers searched his home, they found another gun unsecured on a kitchen counter…

LOL
Frozen Swiss Cassis …

… the latest European confection, served very cold.

Admittedly, UD’s primary Harvard-professor interest has long been Alan Dershowitz; but lately, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she finds herself thinking quite a lot about Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer.

You remember Shleifer.

Some U.S. neoliberal advisers to Russia in [the Yeltsin] era even served as role models for [oligarchic] corruption. A personal adviser to [Anatoly] Chubais was Andrei Shleifer, a Russian-born émigré and tenured Harvard professor, who ran the Moscow office of the Harvard Institute for International Development, which had the main Russia contract from USAID. Shleifer was prosecuted in 1997, after it was revealed his wife operated a hedge fund that speculated in privileged information based on Shleifer’s official work. Harvard paid fines totaling $26.5 million to settle the case, and Shleifer paid $2 million.

Shleifer must be buddies with a lot of the guys now being blacklisted all over the world. Is there a story there?

Oh raaaahlly. Oh “concerns about applicants having acquired their wealth illegally.”

How very …. timely of you to have begun worrying about this. Perhaps if you’d worried about it decades before you let in hordes of Putain whores, you wouldn’t now be faced with this… urban renewal project…

An increasing number of Russians began to move in during the 2000s after the introduction of the so-called “golden visa” scheme allowed wealthy people to enter the UK if they invested at least £2m and Chelsea’s billionaire owner, Roman Abramovich, moved the club’s training ground to nearby Cobham. The government axed the visa scheme earlier this month amid concerns about applicants having acquired their wealth illegally.

Ya got trouble right here in River City

The Iranian ambassador to the UK has been ordered back to Tehran and is to be removed from his post after a video circulated showing an embassy reception at which some women did not have their heads covered.

Who can be surprised that FIFA, world’s most disgusting international body…

… finds Russia a perfectly acceptable soccer team? I mean, why not… ? What’s the problem… ?

Well, the main problem is that all of Russia’s opponents refuse to play them.

What is Sepp Blatter’s (the song is ended, but the melody lingers on) FIFA going to do?

In response, the Hemingway estate has agreed to excise all references to, and depictions of, fishing in the …

novel.

Netrebko says she’s just a dummy, and Abramovich gives millions to Yad Vashem.

Putain’s money whores and fascist whores are scurrying like тараканы, seeking a safe place under the sink while the… unpleasantness… in Ukraine works itself out. A longtime, active supporter of her idol’s Russian aggression throughout Europe, the opera singer now declares herself “not a political person,” and begs to continue warbling. Look what they’ve done to my song, Vlad!

Chelsea football owner Roman Abramovich has tended to get lost among the much more insane and violent Putainists in European football (Ivan Savvidis, Putain-lover and would-be referee-slaughterer, I’m looking at you!), but now he’s handed control (he retains ownership) of the team to others, and hopes that transferring millions of Putainist dollars to Yad Vashem (ethnic cleansing cleansing) will save him. On the dead bodies of Jews, I shall rise like a phoenix.

Support Ukraine
Support Ukraine.

‘Supermassive black holes will smash into each other and warp space and time, scientists warn’

The dog was asleep on a chair, Mr UD was stepping into the shower, La Kid was waking up in her room at the celebrity-packed Four Seasons Surfside Miami… In short, all was well, when UD spied this headline and anxiously stopped Mr UD in his tracks.

Space and time are warping, she said.

He did one of his patented haughty dismissive gestures that so annoy UD.

Space and time, he said, I’m sorry to tell you, have been warping for approximately thirteen billion years.

So why is it a big banner headline this time?

I don’t know. Don’t worry.

It won’t affect regular deliveries of my Harney and Sons Paris? I know this sounds like a provincial concern…

No.

psycho
‘Russian users who tried to go on PornHub were presented with a message saying the content is blocked along with a Ukrainian flag and a message of support to Ukraine.’

They’ve got all the obscenity anyone could want in their head of state.

Why is a paranoid lunatic walking around with a gun in Kentucky?

Because this is America, that’s why. Arming murderous maniacs is just the way we roll.

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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