South Carolina. LOL
Bullying, threatening sports parents we have always had with us, but now that everyone’s got a gun, watch out.
Offended that his kid didn’t get enough time on the playing field, a NJ father subjected coaches and principals to extensive verbal violence/threats, because of which he’s been banned from the kid’s high school graduation. Boring details here.
One of the great things about everyone packing is that comments like you better watch your back and you wanna fight? have gone from irritants to declarations of war. People who used to be regarded as manageable assholes now present as terrifying machine gunners, and quickly the police are called in.
This particular asshole has announced he might watch the graduation standing atop a big truck in the street next to the event. Who will be surprised when this latest shit from the guy includes him pointing his AR15 at the happy families?
… Prince George’s County … implemented a youth curfew last year following [several violent] incidents involving [large gatherings of] teens.
“We haven’t had any problems since,” said Prince George’s County Council Chair Edward Burroughs, who backed the county’s curfew.
***************
Apparently sometimes they do work.
Brilliant writers, they brought steely accuracy and lyricism to their writing. Both carried to their prose a broody disposition, capable of being lifted up at times to a kind of gallant stoicism. Like Albert Camus in his Lyrical Essays, they infused their language with an undifferentiated but basically spiritual sadness, drawing the tragic nature of existence along as a drone through everything they wrote.
It didn’t matter whether the manifest subject was split elevators on an EgyptAir flight, or the way silos look against the flat fields of Kansas. They brought to their superb prose an ambient sensibility which I’d characterize as an incessant sensitivity to the enigma of earthly lives.
**************************
Langewische, on the 2001 EgyptAir crash:
A computer captured what [Ann Brennan,the ATC] would have seen—a strangely abstract death no more dramatic than a video game. About two minutes after the final radio call, at 1:49:53 in the morning, the radar swept across EgyptAir’s transponder at 33,000 feet. Afterward, at successive twelve-second intervals, the radar read 31,500, 25,400, and 18,300 feet—a descent rate so great that the air-traffic-control computers interpreted the information as false, and showed “XXXX” for the altitude on Brennan’s display. With the next sweep the radar lost the transponder entirely, and picked up only an unenhanced “primary” blip, a return from the airplane’s metal mass. The surprise is that the radar continued to receive such returns (which show only location, and not altitude) for nearly another minute and a half, indicating that the dive must have dramatically slowed or stopped, and that the 767 remained airborne, however tenuously, during that interval. A minute and a half is a long time. As the Boeing simulations later showed, it must have been a strange and dreamlike period for the pilots, hurtling through the night with no chance of awakening.
*************************
Strangely abstract, “XXXX,” metal mass, strange and dreamlike period… You can extract, if you want to be analytical about it, moments when the surrealist substructure of this prose pokes out of its essentially technical content, and if you’re UD you’re reminded of Don DeLillo, also on the subject of flight:
At the boarding gate, the last of the static chambers, the stillness is more compact, the waiting narrowed. He will notice hands and eyes, the covers of books, a man with a turban and netted beard. The crew is Japanese, the security Japanese… He hears Tamil, Hindi, and begins curiously to feel a sense of apartness, something in the smell of the place, the amplified voice in the distance. It doesn’t feel like earth. And then aboard, even softer seats. He will feel the systems running power through the aircraft, running light, running air. To the edge of the stratosphere, world hum, the sudden night. Even the night seems engineered, Japanese, his brief sleep calmed by the plane’s massive heartbeat.
In our time, when even the nights are engineered, our best writers will sweep the darkness up, right along with the technology, to which they will give a heartbeat. Langewische could do all of that.
OTOH, it has an abundance of suicides by gun; and of course it features baby killing by open-carrying not-far-from-babies-themselves at events like adorable little village festivals.
Adorable little village festivals where we gather to celebrate how wonderful is our little village, where sixteen year olds open lethal fire on mothers and babies!
How amazing are we and our little village and our guns and our exchange of fire with police that even the New York Times covered our festival? How many little village festivals get NYT coverage? Our little village bloodbath got noticed by the premier paper in the country and maybe the world! We’re showing everyone how you hold a festival in gun country!
**********************
“The violence and deaths at the WestFest celebration in West Valley are tragic and seem to be the result of youth violence,” Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said.
No dear. Youth violence of various sorts is routine everywhere. Baby killing is the result of youth possession of guns. Which Utah specializes in.
The killer was sixteen years old.
Just another day at an American mall.
[In his second road rage shooting incident,] Joe Harvey fired off at least nine bullets in the busy shopping area around 11:30 a.m. … With the two vehicles just 10 to 15 feet apart, he stepped onto the running board outside his door and started shooting.
I wondered what those running boards were for. Good place to get your footing and stabilize yourself before emptying your weapon. Maybe provides some protection from incoming/being seen. Maybe he practiced this maneuver in his first road rage shooting.
***********************
That was Georgia. Just down the road in Florida:
Candace Marie Naughton told police
she was involved in a road rage incident with the occupants of the victims’ vehicle. [Four people reported she pointed a gun at them.] She said she had two guns in her car, but they were both in holsters under the front passenger seat. When the GPD officer asked how the victims knew she had a gun if both guns were under the seat, Naughton said, “They must have seen it on my dashboard,” but she was reportedly unable to explain how the gun was moved from under the passenger seat to the dashboard, since she was the only person in her vehicle. She reportedly changed her statement and said she “always drives with firearms on her dashboard.”
The officer reportedly saw two 9mm magazines in plain view in the center console of Naughton’s vehicle and a live round on the floorboard.
********************
I could go on. Oh, I could go on. We’ve covered on this blog mainly school shootings, threatened shootings, loaded guns brought in by elementary school students, blahblah. It’s getting dull cuz twenty of these a day. Haven’t done much road rage with brandished gun cuz… I don’t know why. They make better stories than the gunny kids and their gunny parents who put Glocks in their lunch boxes. TOO common. Yawn.
Gunny road ragers are even more common, but their stories are often better cuz like this woman they be real dumb and they lie real bad.
How bad does she think it could get? Matter-of-factly, she says: “My fear is we’re headed to civil war.” She restates a basic truth about the US. “There’s a lot of guns. There’s a lot of gun violence. There’s a habituation to violence that’s very American, that Europeans don’t understand.” Her worry is that the guns are accompanied by a new “permissiveness” that comes from the top, that was typified by Trump’s indulgence of the January 6 rioters, even those who wanted to murder his vice-president. As she puts it: “You can feel that brewing.” …
[W]e talk about those US citizens who put Trump back in the White House, even though, as she puts it, they knew who he was. “Nothing was hidden. People had plenty of time to think about it, and they chose this. And that disgust, I couldn’t shake that. I thought: ‘People wanted this – and I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’”
There’ll always be a South Carolina.
Bloomsday is tomorrow, and I suppose UD‘s little contribution to it would go like this:
Leader’s bio of Ellmann, who himself wrote the great bio of James Joyce, is currently much talked about. Ellmann was a friend/colleague of my then-boyfriend (and I mean then! we’re talking about what? the early ‘seventies?) at Northwestern University.
One afternoon Ellmann came over to our place to ask him a favor.
Ellmann had written a long angry defense of himself against some hostile reviewer – my memory is that the review appeared in the NY Review of Books, and Ellmann intended the defense to appear there? – and he wanted my bf to submit it under his name. As if he had written it!
Wee UD sat on a couch by the fireplace, listening to my bf, a professor much-junior to Ellmann, agree — uncomfortably — to do this. I recall the two of them reading over the letter together, my bf making occasional edits, and then the official handing off of the thing from Ellmann to my bf.
I was shocked! Tried talking to the bf about it and he shrugged. Let’s not talk about it.
It was a strange early lesson for UD (must have barely been in my twenties) in the ways of the world. The ways of some worlds.
The United States of America: Where we give everyone a gun and then watch what happens.
The focus on 2025 Ocean Boulevard shootings [in Myrtle Beach] began on April 26th when 11 people were sent to the hospital in a police officer involved incident where the juvenile who fired into a crowd was killed.
Several Ocean Boulevard shootings on successive weekends have happened since. Day trippers from towns approximately 100 miles in circumference to Myrtle Beach cause much of the violence … downtown on Ocean Boulevard.
Unsupervised teenagers ranging from 16 to 18 carry guns with them to the beach. Despite the pattern, Myrtle Beach police have yet to come up with a system for dealing with these unsupervised teens before the violence begins.
SC does not have truancy laws enabling MBPD to detain unsupervised juveniles until their parents retrieve them. Even when they identify potential violent teens, their hands are tied until the shootings start.
******************
Can this really be? A police force can’t detain suspicious people? They have to stand there waiting for them to start shooting?
… Garrett Park’s NO KINGS protest this morning. Good turnout, and tons of honks, raised fists, waves, and thumbs up from cars.

Latest UD posts at IHE
Archives
- 2025 (474)
- 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 (197)
- beware the b-school boys (157)
- beach blogging (6)
- blog (98)
- blogoscopy (31)
- blood blogging (12)
- bright red shorts (1)
- chesapeake (4)
- chief inspiration officer (49)
- 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 (936)
- demon rum (70)
- diploma mill (118)
- dispatches from the classroom (16)
- end the erasure of women (108)
- evil dr phil (1)
- EVITA (6)
- extracts (187)
- faculty project (34)
- failure to yield pun (3)
- father/son gunnies (10)
- FGM (59)
- floridly overwritten (4)
- foreign universities (159)
- forms of religious experience (742)
- free speech (74)
- fresh blood (53)
- Genius of the Carpathians (219)
- gevalt (4)
- ghost writing (54)
- goathean (2)
- goddess (2)
- Gomer (26)
- good writing (114)
- great writing (146)
- guns (932)
- harvard: bar fly (5)
- harvard: foreign and domestic policy (104)
- harvard: gearing up for the winter (7)
- harvard: handouts (10)
- headline of the day (391)
- henry purcell (13)
- heroes (147)
- heroines (107)
- high as a kite (43)
- hoax (262)
- how to make ud happy (21)
- How We Learn (37)
- hymnal (1)
- intellectuals (67)
- it's art (121)
- it's good to be the king (10)
- james joyce (74)
- jesus thinks you're a jerk (5)
- just plain gross (391)
- kind of a little weird (540)
- limericks (167)
- lion's willy (3)
- little hitler (4)
- Little Ick (12)
- march of science (241)
- merchandise (194)
- 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 (435)
- PowerPoint Confidential (15)
- powerpoint pissoff (50)
- professors (664)
- program support coordinator (2)
- protect yourself from bad poetry (2)
- satanic two-party system (1)
- Scathing Online Schoolmarm (295)
- screwed (132)
- 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 (1,391)
- 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 (2)
- snapshots from prague (2)
- snapshots from rehoboth (181)
- 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. (58)
- somewhat baffled online schoolmarm (2)
- sounds and looks very samuel beckett (21)
- sport (2,758)
- Sport (148)
- STUDENTS (440)
- suicide (43)
- swaddled masses yearning to breathe free (8)
- tax syphon u. (2)
- tea (31)
- TEACH NAKED (2)
- TEACHING BEAUTY (2)
- technolust (216)
- 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 (424)
- 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 (6)
- 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