UD (over breakfast): Caroline from across the street asked me the names of various plants in our new garden, and I had to explain that I mainly relied on the landscaper and didn’t know what was there on a … granular … level…. GRANULAR! I think this is the first time I found granular while conversing! It just came out. GRANULAR!!

MR UD: Very nice.

UD: It’s like orthogonal. (Snobby Brit accent:) That matter is orthogonal to the point in question… ORTHOGONAL… Wait. Wasn’t there some hilarious Supreme Court back and forth about orthogonal?

MR UD: ?????

UD (Checks cell phone.) Here it is! (Reads.)

MR. FRIEDMAN: I think that issue is entirely orthogonal to the issue here because the Commonwealth is acknowledging –
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I’m sorry. Entirely what?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Orthogonal. Right angle. Unrelated. Irrelevant.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Oh.
JUSTICE SCALIA: What was that adjective? I liked that.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Orthogonal.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Orthogonal.
MR. FRIEDMAN: Right, right.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Orthogonal, ooh.
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE KENNEDY: I knew this case presented us a problem.
(Laughter.)
MR. FRIEDMAN: I should have — I probably should have said –
JUSTICE SCALIA: I think we should use that in the opinion.
(Laughter.)
MR. FRIEDMAN: I thought — I thought I had seen it before.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Or the dissent.
(Laughter.)

Oldest story in the book. Football factory knows a guy is off his rocker violent and the guy has a police record to prove it but the school admits him anyway because it loves him because that beautiful violence wins games.

Love is funny, or it’s sad
Or it’s quiet, or it’s mad
It’s a good thing, or it’s bad
But beautiful…
Beautiful to take a chance
And if you fall, you fall
And I’m thinkin’
I wouldn’t mind at all…
Love is tearful, or it’s gay
It’s a problem, or it’s play
It’s a heartache either way
But beautiful…
And I’m thinkin’ if you were mine
I’d never let you go
And that would be just beautiful I know

Mad and bad but beautiful on the field and who gives a fuck about the women who go to school there.

A hedge fund investor named Hodge

Had dummies he had to massage

To get into schools

That weren’t even cool

And now he is locked in une cage

… (see post just below this one) — way to kill your kid.

She has a bunch of other kids. If the state has any function at all, it is to remove innocents from depraved caretakers. Take them away.

“Shamima Begum should not be banished – banishing people belongs in the dark ages, not 21st-century Britain,” complains a person who thinks keeping Begum – a veteran ISIS member – out of England is a bad idea. But the British courts have now ruled unanimously that she can’t come back; she has a right to Bangladeshi citizenship, they point out, and should go and claim it. That ain’t banishment.

And anyway – England’s full of sharia law councils, and their decisions are way dark ages — at least for women! The more power England gives sharia courts, the darker the ages right in your own home town, hon. So no lecturing us about 21st-century Britain. To be sure, we ain’t in the ninth century – the century in which Begum opted to live – but, as the Council of Europe notes, we’re definitely backsliding.

***********

UPDATE: And here’s how not to argue that Begum belongs back in England. Let’s take a close look at Aina Khan’s argument.

Headline: Shamima Begum is a product of Britain. She should face justice here.

What’s the logic of this? In an ecstasy of violence Begum repudiated England and joined the Islamic State. Just because the origins she rejected were British, she has to be tried in Britain? No. No reasonable trial can in any case be conducted, since no records exist of her activities in ISIS territory.

She’s a victim of child grooming by a death cult. And her banishment tells all ethnic minorities that they’re not seen as fully British.

Who says? Pure speculation, the bit about grooming. I mean, so she was a teenager. That doesn’t mean she was, in Khan’s word, “naive.” Richard Loeb was 18 when he murdered Bobby Franks. He wasn’t treated like a naive victim of grooming. The bit about her fate sealing the dire fate of all ethnic minorities in famously tolerant Britain is just bullshit. Fear mongering.

Khan says the public was “dismayed” when in an interview Begum boasted of feeling nothing when she saw severed heads. Let’s look at some sentences from the Cambridge Dictionary which use the word dismay.

She discovered, to her dismay, that she had locked her keys inside her car.

They enjoyed the meal but were dismayed by how much it cost.

She discovered, to her dismay, that her exam was a whole month earlier than she’d expected.

We discovered, to our dismay, that the ISIS member was fine with severed heads.

Last one doesn’t quite work, does it? Not quite strong enough.

[W]e need to know why a straight-A teenager from east London would willingly leave Britain to embrace a death cult.

Richard Loeb was a brilliant, straight-A teenager at the University of Chicago. Like straight-A Shamima, he felt great curiosity about/attraction to sadistically killing people. Smart doesn’t necessarily make you a good person, does it? Is it possible Aina Khan doesn’t know this? Is it also possible she’s unaware of the contradiction involved in arguing that Begum was super-smart and au même moment so sub-basement stupid as to find an ISIS come-on irresistibly seductive? Weawy?

The rest of her opinion piece is more insistence that the Begum precedent means that if Khan, as a minority, jaywalks, she could be sent back to the country where her grandparents were born. Gevalt.

**********

It gets worse. At least Khan bothers arguing her case. This dude doesn’t even try. Way to come across like a scolding, arrogant, elitist.

… I’ll just rerun this post from 2015.

I’ll also point you here.

And I’ll ask you, as you review footage of the latest brawl, to notice that there is virtually no one in the stands.

********

UD thanks tp.

The decision [at one university] includes the entire female academic staff, in addition to the medical staff and nurses who… teach classes and… lecture.

The decision was taken “based on a recent court ruling by Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court and following reports presented by managers of the university’s teaching hospitals and deans of faculties who claimed they frequently received complaints from students against having to deal with fully veiled female members of staff or workers at the university,” Ain Shams University President Mahmoud al-Metiny said in a statement.

He stressed that the decision was also made to ensure the rights of patients, and for the best interest of university work.

Let’s unswaddle that highlighted bit, okay? Frequent complaints from students about “having to deal with fully veiled…”

Naughty Islamophobes. Boo.

Okay, let’s move on and try to understand what possible objection people trying to learn things might have to invisible professors inside fanatics’ clothing. Or to doctors and nurses they can’t see. Hm… hm…

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is one thing; blessing nuclear subs another.

Russian priests have long appeared in images sprinkling holy water on submarines, ballistic missiles, Soyuz space rockets and other pieces of hardware …

Reminds Mr UD of the Corpus Christi story.

Because [huge] network money has to come from somewhere, we can anticipate more and longer commercials in games that already subject fans’ patience, bladders, and backsides to what amounts to a four-hour stress test. Those who head from the stadium to the local motel instead of fighting traffic and fatigue on the long drive home are almost certainly looking at two-night minimums on rooms at grossly inflated rates. Throw in gas, food, and tickets for a family of four, and your credit card tally will scream of a weekend in Paris, not Clemson.

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

James Cobb, Spalding Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Georgia, goes on to describe

the sinister contagion of unadulterated commercialism now enveloping college football at every level. Left unchecked, it promises to make exiles of the students, alumni, and loyal fans in general who long saw games, not simply as athletic contests, but the centerpiece of a deeply personal, culturally affirming ritual.

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

UD thanks Jim.

… in which the student is brought into personal contact with, is made vulnerable to, the aura and the threat of the first-class. In the most direct sense, this is a matter of proximity, of sight and hearing. The institution, particularly in the humanities, should not be too large. The scholar, the significant teacher ought to be readily visible. We cross his or her daily path. The consequence, as in the Periclean polis, in medieval Bologna, or nineteenth-century Tubingen, is one of implosive and cumulative contamination. The whole is energized beyond its eminent parts…

What could, by the lights of the utilitarian or hedonistic commonwealth, be more irrational, more against the grain of common sense, than to devote one’s existence to, say, the conservation and classification of archaic Chinese bronzes, or to the solution of Fermat’s last theorem…

In the critical mass of a successful academic community, the orbits of individual obsessions will cross and re-cross. Once he has collided with them, the student will forget neither their luminosity nor their menace to complacency…”

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

George Steiner (1929-2020), from Errata.

The Before and After; the Hi Di High and the Hi Di Low; the Mother-Teresa-to-Maserati in Ten Seconds Flat… You gotta get a kick out of this recent article about CEO of the Month Larry Gerrans, who

considers Mother Teresa as the person whose life contribution is the most inspirational, because of how selfless and pure of intention she was.

Larry — now, er, formalized in court papers to Lawrence —

has been convicted of wire fraud and money laundering for “siphoning millions of dollars” from his company to buy a $2.6 million home, a diamond ring and a Maserati, federal prosecutors said.

LOL. ME LIKE!

When one of your most ruthless traders turns out to steal pretty much everything he encounters in his daily life, he is displaying exactly the grasping arrogant psychopathology you’re after. Despite his millions in compensation, he finds nothing too small to steal – bike parts, commuter train tickets… and now, cafeteria food. The boy can’t help it.

The response to this compulsion is not oooh you’re immoral and we’re a saintly hedge fund so satan get thee hence. The proper response is a nice fat bonus.

Whether it’s autumn or winter, young mass murder’s always in season at Texas A&M Commerce and environs. Those of us trying to follow today’s double homicide among the impulsive tyke demographic were sent over to last October’s bloodbath among the babes. So that’s… October, November, December, January… We almost made it through three months without a big ol’ Texas A&M killing.

Now this one, UD‘s thinking, probably involves Commerce having admitted a mentally unstable freshman… This sorta little feller, say… Down Texas way a man – even a nineteen year old man – ain’t raised to go all boohoo and talk to some counselor or what have you. In our manly states (Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska) you tend to deal with your problems by killing yourself (an extremely popular thing) and/or killing other people but the point is it’s gonna be something with a gun. Montana has the highest suicide rate in the nation and I think there’s like ten psychiatrists in the state. Who needs a shrink when you have a schwarzlose?

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

I was wrong. A random thug, from whom his ex-girlfriend (who was visiting her sister, a student at Commerce) should have been given protection (a career criminal, he was released from jail when he, uh, shouldn’t have been) killed the ex-girlfriend and her sister. Specifically, he was

free on bond related to an alleged assault family violence incident that took place last week. The report was filed by Abbaney Matts, one of the shooting victims.

... Abbaney said Smith assaulted her Jan. 26 … with a frying pan, lamp and then pulled out a knife …. Though she was not hospitalized, Abbaney reported injuries to the right side of her head, her eyes and had red marks and abrasions after the alleged attack.

[Jacques Dshawn] Smith was arrested and an emergency protective order was issued on Abbaney’s behalf. Smith was freed Jan. 29 after posting $15,000 bond.

… Smith has a string of priors dating back four years with charges including evading arrest, theft and aggravated robbery.

Three whole days in custody! I’m sure Abbaney’s surviving family feels real good about that.

… the British are beginning to think this might not be the best way to manage your local ISIS enthusiasts. I mean, jailing the little fuckers to protect your population, but then pretty quickly letting them out of jail, and then monitoring them so that when they do – pretty much right away – start killing people, they don’t kill too many, cuz the cops are following them day and night… Does this strike you as efficient, economical, rational, safe? To be sure, you always end up killing the terrorist; but is this outcome worth the injury and death?

How about this. First, try stripping them of their citizenship (if they’re citizens) and getting them out of the country. Italy’s been doing this with their terrorists, and funny how you rarely hear about Italian terror incidents, si? If you can’t get rid of them, keep them in prison until they’re too old to get an erection, let alone mount a terror attack.