Today’s skull.

Found on a walk through my woods with my dog. Think it’s a fawn.

It needed a woman. It needed an English major.

But finally the election has found Bloomberg spokeswoman Julie Wood. After Trump attacked her man, she tweeted

The president lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.

What was that about places like Georgetown (Wood’s college) graduating politically correct wussies?

Super Stupid Sunday

Kobe Bryant was killed by pharma, Hillary, China, the NBA, and the Jews.

The US Constitution says we should shoot socialists.

Aw cmon. When you do it to 87% of your female population, a few mishaps can be expected.

It’s so unfair to go after her parents and the butcher! Just consider the following:

  1. She was begging for it.
  2. It’s a much-loved national tradition.
  3. Islam demands it.
  4. If she retains a clitoris she will be a whore.
  5. If we used anesthesia that would cost more; it would as well fail to communicate to the child that a girl’s agonized bleeding to death is beautiful in the sight of god.
  6. Egypt hasn’t jailed anyone else for slaughtering little girls via their genitals. Why us?
“I was crossing the road when I saw a man with a machete and silver canisters on his chest being chased by what I assume was an undercover police officer – as they were in civilian clothing.”

Another terror attack in London; this one seems to have ended quickly. A number of people have been stabbed.

SHOCKER

“Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez’: Former Pro Football Player Claims the NFL ‘Is in the Violence Business’ in Netflix Documentary”

Egypt’s Top Public University Bans the Niqab…

… for teaching staff.

… Egypt’s High Administrative Court turned down … appeals against the ban in an irreversible verdict…

The swaddled masses yearning to breathe free are getting lots of good news from around the world lately – burqa and niqab bans proliferate left and right, particularly in the Muslim world. But there’s always a new story from Europe too, as in a Norwegian municipality where no public employee may sport full swaddling. (Norway already has a well-established ban on burqas and niqabs in academic settings.) The debasement and absurdity of total veiling in a world of human interaction is proving increasingly unignorable almost everywhere. No doubt all them adorable ISIS pix helped rivet attention to the garment.

La Kid, currently enjoying…

… Los Angeles.

‘There is no reason, literary or otherwise, to challenge an author’s legitimacy to tackle any topic, much less based on her ethnicity or nationality. In both literature and journalism, examples abound of brilliant authors who have illuminated countries and themes that were, initially, outside their familiar milieu. (Under the Volcano is just one of many great ones.)’


Ah, UD‘s beloved Malcolm Lowry gets a mention in the big ol’ dustup about American Dirt. Here are her Lowry posts.

Dershcon-1

Dershowitz’s l’etat, c’est moi argument in front of the nation has sent the country’s defense apparatus into a spin. The Pentagon’s first act: Banning him from the well of the Senate and letting the tabloids take over as his sudden flight to Miami (“the Harvard professor surfaced in Florida”) becomes a diverting sideshow. Operation Send Out the Clown smuggles the 81-year-old to the retirement capital of the world and keeps him there under supervision, allowing him out for media appearances so demented as to make the president look normal. Long-range goal: With Thomas Markle as their model, intelligence strategists will allow Alan Dershowitz’s gibbering self-regard to reduce him to an innocuous joke.

Dershcontrition

Look, I only started writing about the guy because of his outsize enthusiasm for infant genital cutting; I had no idea he’d become… this. America’s most ridiculed, most reviled, person… America’s Meursault…

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Only the famous last lines of The Stranger can capture what Dersh has in the last years of his life achieved…

But UD will admit that (to quote one of her heroes) she’s now out of her element when it comes to this man. He’s simply too nuts.

‘Roger respected other cultures a great deal more than most progressives of my acquaintance do. He learned Arabic in order to read the Quran, and he admired the tradition-transcending contributions of the great medieval Islamic philosophers. He made careful, in-depth studies of Hindu and other Eastern traditions of faith precisely in search of the wisdom he regarded them as possessing.’

Appraisals of the late philosopher Roger Scruton keep appearing. Some people dismiss him as a reactionary; others, like Robert George, see things differently.

‘Why are cats associated with the devil and evil?’

you ask. Sure you ask! You might well ask! And here’s just the start of an answer – for centuries cats have been understood to be the devil himself.

What do cats do?

Cats lick wires.

Yes, they lick wires. They … lick… wires…

Take the letters of LICKWIRES and turn them around a little bit and what do you get. WHAT DO YOU GET. The same letters that make LICKWIRES make…

RICK WILES. Rick Wiles, Satan in Disguise, Satan jumbling up his name to confuse us so we listen to him purr and let him pounce.

Not enough for you? Still skeptical? How about the WILES of the devil?

“The Chiefs were counting on the fact that there’s so many incidents involving NFL players that many fans move past their outrage quickly.”

LOL

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

Sometimes it even looks as though the whole gig is up. Thank God for our very dumbest states.

Mein Lieber Herr
Farewell mein Lieber herr
Goodbye mein Lieber herr
It was a fine affair but now it's over
And though we made you Chair
You're not allowed to share
We're better off without you mein herr

Your talent was a Thousand Talents wide mein herr
Your chemistry with China mesmerized mein herr
It's really no surprise to find you lied mein herr
But that's why
FBI
Watched you spy...

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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