… orientation, Donald Trump has adopted a fierce Lysenkoism in regard to science. Scientific American is not amused:
Donald Trump also has shown an authoritarian tendency to base policy arguments on questionable assertions of fact and a cult of personality… [T]he major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago…
… appointment, WSU will want to hire as his replacement Montana’s Bruce Knerr — who just happens to be looking for a job!
The Livingston Public Schools Board of Trustees voted 9-0 to relieve second-year Park High football coach Bruce Knerr of his duties, according to the Billings Gazette.
Videos obtained by the Gazette show students sparring in lightweight boxing gloves under Knerr’s watch at the center of the gymnasium floor at nearby St. Mary’s Catholic School, where Park High’s football program was hosting a leadership camp.
Park junior Austin Peterson suffered five fractures to his eye socket and nasal cavity during a boxing match and required reconstructive surgery at a hospital in Spokane, Wash., the 17-year-old’s father told the local paper. Making matters worse, Knerr was aware Peterson had suffered two previous concussions, the boy’s father added.
“His skull was smashed in a depth of nine millimeters, putting pressure on the brain,” Austin’s father Tim Peterson told the Billings Gazette.
Atta boy! Far more scope for your coaching philosophy in college! Go for it.
That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When orange hairs, or none, or few, do hang
Upon this brow which lately raged against the polls.
But now bare silent Tweets! where late my Twitter sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such ire
That on the ashes of my pride doth lie,
The reality-show whereon it must expire
Consumes that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes my spite more strong,
To love that well which I must leave ere long.
Ken Starr to Leave Baylor Law School Post
*****************
This latest news allows me to update Trump administration appointments/personnel:
Chief Advisor, Women’s Issues: KENNETH STARR
Inaugural Poet: FREDERICK SEIDEL
Treasury: MARTIN SHKRELI
Fitness Czar: RYAN LOCHTE
Czarina: HOPE SOLO
Office of Ethics: ISHMAEL ZAMORA
Health and Welfare: MIKE LEACH
I ranted to the knave and fool,
I acted the obscenest tool,
To transform the polls.
Fit audience I found, but Clinton rules
The voter rolls.
I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport.
Nothing said or done can reach
My sadistic heart.
From a penthouse have I come.
Great pride, great rooms,
Maimed me at the start.
I carry to my bronzéd tomb
A sadistic heart.
Pledges to Coach and Fans that He’ll Get Better at It.
Ah Baylor Baylor Baylor Baylor.
Ah Waco Waco Waco Waco.
That university. That town. A very American crossroads.
I’d turn some of this into a song, but at the moment I’m exhausted from mowing my lawn in hellish heat.
Donald Trump’s doctor confuses the American College of Gastroenterologists with Trump University.
A lot of people are saying that this confusion on his part (coupled with multiple verbal anomalies in his letter about Donald Trump’s fitness for the presidency) suggests Dr. Bornstein has serious medical issues which could put into question his official endorsement of the candidate’s physical condition.
As we’ve been reminded by the ridicule Donald Trump has generated by his hectoring, mechanical repetition of phrases or words in his speech, redundancy makes you look both angry and empty of substance.
Scathing Online Schoolmarm would think that a school superintendent would understand this simple fact. What are you modeling for your students when you talk like Charlie Van Zant Jr., superintendent of Clay County Florida’s schools?
Under pressure for alleged plagiarism and fraud, Charlie recently told an interviewer the following:
[Liars] are trying to take me to task for my principles and values that they can’t stand… These liars are making accusations that are over a year old, that should have been reported to either the Florida Commission on Ethics or me as the superintendent of schools, as per school board policy. But these liars do not want an investigation. These liars want to play the media. These liars knew we would be out of town last weekend, and our staff would have a three-day weekend… The media is being played. They’re playing right into the hands of lying Mrs. Studdard [a school board member], the lying teachers union…
Superintendent Van Zant has certainly learned the word “liar” and some of its variants, and for that we applaud him. But SOS wonders if his efforts to paint his many enemies as, er, liars are really working here.
Conservatives allied with Chancellor Angela Merkel are seeking a ban on Muslim women wearing full-face veils or burqas in schools and universities and while driving in Germany…
Merkel herself has criticized the burqa as incompatible with integration into Germany.
The pedagogical absurdity of faceless people trying to teach faceless people makes schools the obvious first place for a ban (as does the equally obvious danger of people driving around with seriously impaired vision), so it’s no surprise that the German effort to get rid of the hideous burqa starts there.
***************
UD‘s thoughts on the burqa.
Donald Trump statues hit below the belt.
************
Bravo, Washington Post. Very delicately put.
Unlike monuments of most political figures in cities across the globe, the Trump statues are far from flattering. They’re oddly shaped, lack one key element of the male reproductive system and dramatically play down another.
Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she suffered a “stumble of the tongue” on Tuesday when she seemed to call Hillary Clinton a “lying killer” …
“People want a fighter. They’re tired of the lying killer, uh, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clintons of the world,” Brewer told [an interviewer].
When reached by phone by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Brewer said she just mispronounced Clinton’s name.
“I was trying to say Hillary Clinton,” Brewer said. “It was a stumble of the tongue.”
****************
An Anglican priest in Australia plagiarizes three books of biblical commentary. Finally his publisher figures this out.
Three volumes by Peter T O’Brien, a theologian, author and priest, have been recalled and destroyed by Eerdmans publishing. Editors found several instances where the text ran “afoul of commonly accepted standards with regard to the utilization and documentation of secondary sources”.
… The initial allegations were made against O’Brien’s ‘The Letter to the Hebrews’. But further examinations of his ‘Letter to the Ephesians’ and Epistle to the Philippians’ found they were also “untenable”.
But this is by far the best part:
“In the [three] New Testament commentaries that I have written, although I have never deliberately misused the work of others, nevertheless I now see that my work processes at times have been faulty and have generated clear-cut, but unintentional, plagiarism.”
(Act Two is here)
Characters
Loose Bannon
Manthefort
Miss Kissy
Pa Trubu
Secessions
Tense Rictus
Watch Their Tails
Location
A room in Trubu Tower.
Tense Rictus, Miss Kissy, Manthefort, Secessions, and Watch Their Tails seated at a splendid table. Excitedly talk over one another as they eat and drink.
Secessions: A toast! To the latest poll! It has us up by twenty points in northern Idaho.
Manthefort, Miss Kissy: A toast! A toast! We’re killing her!
Watch Their Tails: It’s the beginning of the end for that epileptic.
Tense Rictus: I thought we were going with Alzheimer’s.
[Laughter. Shouts of Whatever! Okay!]
[A sudden hush.]
Tense Rictus: Here he comes.
[Enter Pa Trubu with Loose Bannon. The men at the table eye Bannon warily.]
Tense Rictus: Uh, hi, Bannon. What brings you by this lovely afternoon?
Pa Trubu: Gentlemen, I give you my new campaign manager. Manthefort, give Bannon your seat.
[Manthefort’s face flushes. He abandons his seat.]
Manthefort: So where do I sit now?
Pa Trubu: How about… KIEV?
[All laugh except for Manthefort.]
Pa Trubu: My friends, change as we know is a part of life, it’s a part of life, change, change, part of life, and although we’re doing great in Hayden we’re doing unbelievable in Hayden, we’re winning so much in Hayden they’re begging us to do less winning, there’s always room for improvement. Loose Bannon is the attack dog we need at this point in the election cycle.
Loose Bannon [on all fours]: Rrrrrrfff! Rrrrrrrffff!
Pa Trubu: Manthefort – you and Miss Kissy go to the wine cellar and get us another bottle. Tense Rictus, Secessions – walk my dog. [All four leave.] So – Loose Bannon, Watch Their Tails – it’s time for the three of us to get to work.