Says here they’ve identified…

… the shooter.

As 2024 winds down…

UD contemplates an enormous American Elm leaf blown into the Bonhoeffer Garden by yesterday’s wind, and this year’s BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD award.

The Week in Men

State Senator Filmed Urinating On Himself During DUI Arrest

Football Chairman Fined for Gun Photo in Programme

Brianne probably wants to kill her kid…

… but not be incarcerated for murder, so she came up with this.

What humor looks like when everyone has a gun.

Now the cops just need to narrow down their list of suspects to anyone in America who hates their health care plan and has access to guns… This guy [wrote on his bullet casings because] there’s so many bullet casings on the streets of New York … he wants to make sure we knew which ones were his.”

‘[T]he appointment of cabinet officials with absolutely zero subject matter expertise, such as RFK Jr., and the promise to clean house of the bureaucratic state, augur at a future when experts are booted from the seat of government.’

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: I don’t think you need augur at; I think you only need augur. Also: Too much figurative language in here, clashing away: clean house, booted, seat.

You could also quibble with the repetition of experts and expertise.

Leaves Can Only Be Raked Backwards, But They Must Be Mulched Forwards.

A gloss on Kierkegaard. UD‘s meditation garden is already generating insights!

The closer the authorities get to his identity…

… the closer Brian Thompson’s assassin possibly gets to suicide. Recall the very similar broad daylight ambush of Gianni Versace; his killer offed himself as the police zeroed in.

Curly grapevine twigs resting on a planter.
HMS Hegseth

When I was a lad I served a term
As leader of a US veterans’ firm.
I spent all its money and I shtupped the gals
And I polished off the liquor with my army pals
I polished off that liquor so thoroughly
That now I am America’s Defense Secret’ry!

(He polished off that liquor so thoroughly
That now he is America's Defense Secret'ry!)

‘Helpless, Helpless, Helpless’ is the soundtrack…

… running through this defense of the politicized humanities.

 [A]dministrators — in thrall to university donors at private institutions, and who at public ones serve at the whim of state governments — represent the beachhead by which the academic Trumpism [William] Deresiewicz lusts for will arrive on campus.

Orwell, in “Politics and the English Language,” couldn’t have found a better example of a sentence squirrely with militancy (lusts? beachhead?), and intellectually lost in a strange old world. “Academic Trumpism” might as well be Revisionist Menshevism.

The NYT is providing running updates.

It’s a big story when the CEO of the country’s largest, massively successful, health insurer (Les UDs have used it for years) is ambushed entering his New York hotel early in the morning and shot to death. Right there on the broad daylight streets of the big city, hit in the chest. Masked gunman at large.

So. What’s all this about? Let’s speculate.

For some reason, UD wants to go ahead and put it out there that this was personal. Not corporate villainy, not terrorism aimed at American capitalism, but one nut with a grudge against this guy. We’ll see.

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

Thompson had recently received several threats, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. The police are still investigating the source and exact nature of those threats, the official said. Chief executive officers of health care companies often receive threats because the nature of their work.

Cultural Diversity is so Invigorating!

In America, you could have two opposing armies exchanging fire in a nightclub and no one would ever dream of revoking its license.

In England, just one wittle gunfight and BAM. Down comes the iron fist of the state!

Sunrise through the trees, Bonhoeffer Garden.

Looks awfully serene – and it is.

But don’t forget the MARC, Amtrak, and CSX trains chuffing through.

Incoming Defense Secretary

H is for your Horny jigs with strippers
E is for inEbriation WOW
G is for repeated Gross malfeasance
S is for your Shout: KILL MUSLIMS NOW

E is you’re inEbriate again
T is Take your drunk paws offa me
H is I’m a Holy man amen

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

UPDATE: Rats. He’s already outgoing.







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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