… when UD spent so much time covering academic plagiarism that she evolved a tripartite motivational structure for the act:

ATELIER

AMBITION

ADDICTED

See details here.

A recent high-profile case falls cleanly into AMBITION. A UC Irvine professor is young, smart, already remarkably successful, and admirably ambitious for her education reform ideas to gain traction. She picks up significant material from other sources without bothering to quote it, giving the reader the impression she herself wrote it.

If this woman is like most other plagiarists, more instances of this behavior will almost certainly be found among her published works.

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

So far a typical Ambition case. What distinguishes this person from other non-attributors is not her silence in regard to press inquiries – everyone caught doing this sort of thing is very tight-lipped – but rather the random appearance of a colleague of hers at Irvine, who has written a threatening, semi-literate email on her behalf to Retraction Watch.

UD must say – this doesn’t seem to me a red-letter day for women’s liberation. A woman is challenged, and in gallops some guy to snarl for her.

The Sackler Wing, India.

“To be perfectly frank, I feel like a lot of our clientele is fairly insulated from the current situation. I don’t think anything would change in terms of how they’re buying or collecting wine.”‘

Yep, life round these parts is jest bout the same, thanks for asking.

… on those airlines that haven’t yet figured out how to deal with the ultraorthodox.

[Melanie] Wolfson had paid an extra fee for an aisle seat on [an Easyjet] flight to London that took off October 10. An ultra-Orthodox man and his son were already sitting in the row when she arrived. As soon as she sat down, the son got out of his seat, climbed over to the row behind, presumably to avoid physical contact with her, [LOLOLOLOLOLOL] and proceeded to look for a male passenger who would be willing to change seats with her. A few minutes later, he returned, and the father asked Wolfson to switch seats with a man a few rows ahead. 

It gets better.

The father insisted that she move but made sure not to look her in the eyes while speaking to her…

Wolfson, enraged and humiliated, eventually felt compelled to move in order not to delay the flight, but flight attendants (who’ve obviously had more than enough of this shit) insisted she sue, and IRAC has gone ahead and arranged that for her. She’s only asking for a pittance; I’d have advised her to ask for a hundred thousand – not only for public humiliation and bullying, but for being forced to watch that guy climb over the seats. Can’t have been pretty, and she wasn’t warned in time to shade her eyes.

Although the airline is not based in Israel, IRAC will argue that it was subject to Israeli law while the plane was on the ground at Ben-Gurion International Airport, where the incident took place.

사랑하는 지도자 없이는 우리는 아무것도 아닙니다!

사랑하는 지도자 없이는 우리는 아무것도 아닙니다!

“They are the unmasking of a long-standing hypocrisy that has fed off the resources and goodwill of a Christian institution while despising the truths it was established to uphold.”

Rev Garman nails it.

As the illustrious spectacle of twenty-first century American politics rolls on.

[Goldie Hawn] took to Instagram to share a photo of Ken [Robinson], which had been edited with one of his inspirational quotes. It read: “Every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams under our feet. We should tread softly because we tread on their dreams. – Sir Ken Robinson.”

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

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

… Not Going.

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

Ha. Cost you ten mill plus to get me hence.

And I’ve left behind the gift that keeps on giving: Your reputation is in tatters.

Libertine University has zero tolerance for its spiritual leader’s fucking and cucking going public. Now that everyone knows what Jerry Falwell’s boy’s been up to (Saint Christopher! I know that you are smiling down from heaven!), the man must be tossed out on his tushy, even though the real villain twere that jezebel wife o’ hisn whose satanic wiles done led him astray.

O Liberty! O Libertine! Established and led by Jerry Sr; burnished after his death by Jerry Jr. With Becki, he lifted his voice in sacred Handelian song: “Come, ever-smiling Liberty… For thee we pant….”

Now – who’s next?

Ain’t it obvious? Donald Trump didn’t hold that Bible up in front of that church across from the White House for nothing. He too sits at the right hand of God and will soon be pastoring this great American institution.

***********

And as for the intellectual future of this university: UD suggests a required course in not exchanging extensive texts with your secret fuck/cuck boy.

At its core [the Republican party] is now ethnonationalist and populist, meaning that in its anti-establishment fervor it incites rather than refines public passions; it is increasingly antagonistic toward free markets, inward-looking and reactionary, hostile to diversity, pessimistic rather than optimistic, encased in cultural grievances, more interested in looking backward than forward…

[The party] has jettisoned [its family values orientation], defending a rogue who paid hush money to a porn star while cheating on his third wife…

[L]arge segments of the party are anti-intellectual, anti-science and dismissive of medical experts, to the point that it has turned wearing masks during a pandemic that’s spread by respiratory droplets into a “culture war” issue.

The party of law and order aggressively defends a president who is lawless. A party that for many years positioned itself as the defender of objective truth, a bulwark against subjectivism and ethical relativism, has as its leader a serially dishonest man who is engaged in a daily assault on reality.

During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump praised the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who spread the false narrative that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax — and just last week the president praised QAnon, which Kevin Roose of The Times describes as “a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.” The lunacy and paranoia that was once on the fringe is now becoming more and more mainstream…

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

Qua the sex thing (porn stars, sex-trafficking rings…) — far as UD can tell, the only Trump balls left to drop, now that The Crook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover have splattered all over Libertine University (“Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room.”), are those belonging to our vice-president. Talk about enjoying watching… Mr and Mrs VP have had front row seats all this time for all the kink, and UD for one is not fooled by their whey-faced wholesome waaaaal put er there friend pose. UD ain’t buying the Modesto Manifesto, the Mike Pence Rule, the squeezy-eye glorytime

on display here inches from the fuck-friendly Falwells… No, the devil will drag you under by the sharp lapel of your checkered coat and don’t think you’re any better than anyone else, Pences! Your story will emerge, and I’m thinking it will be even farther out than the Falwells.

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

[Photo: Reuters, Jonathan Drake.]

NYC to Florida: Drop dead.

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

(UD thanks Jon.)

Sing it.

Tis of a thieving highwayman this story I will tell
His name is Steven Bannon and on superyachts he dwells
Twas as an avid Trumper he commenced his wild career
And many a fellow countryman before him shook with fear

And it’s Bannon on the Wall, Bannon on the Wall
Bold, brave and bail-bonded is Steve Bannon on the Wall

One day in Mar-A-Lago as Stevie he went down
He met the biggest grifter, the one of world renown
The grifter knew his features and he said, Young Steve, said he
Your name is Steven Bannon, come get rich along with me

And it’s Bannon on the Wall, Bannon on the Wall
Bold, brave and bail-bonded is Steve Bannon on the Wall

When Bannon got a Fund Me page his dollars rose and rose
They all poured in from suckers who demand the borders close
He said, Hand me your tenpenny, I swear I’ll keep them out
Then stood aside and marveled as he watched the money spout

And it’s Bannon on the Wall, Bannon on the Wall
Bold, brave and bail-bonded is Steve Bannon on the Wall

But now this loaded blunderbuss – the truth I will unfold –
Has blundered into Audrey Strauss, who robbed him of his gold
The Coast Guard and the fed’rals they seized him on the seas
To grant us yet another garish spectacle of sleaze

And it’s Bannon on the Wall, Bannon on the Wall
Bold, brave and bail-bonded is Steve Bannon on the Wall

When Clinton said that she wished Trump could have been presidential, I thought: I wish he could have been human.