… whether you like it or not, at the 40 x 80 American flag out on Interstate 77! It’s there to sell RVs at Gander RVs in Statesville NC and it’s WAYYY beyond that town’s limits on stuff you can fly to attract attention to yourself.

Like all hucksters appealing to patriotism with grotesque flags or to piety with ten ton crosses, Mr RV says shit no the entryway to Statesville will remain a mega-kitsch Betsy Ross and anyone who says boo hates this country. I’m a big fat patriot taking up a lot of space to sell big fat gas guzzlers and y’all just try to shut me down.

Bout time Mr RV got introduced to the concept of law, huh?

… aren’t maybe AS exciting as walking directly into a seal (see an earlier post for that amazing moment in UD’s life), but I’ll take them. After dinner in Rehoboth with friends last night, the return trip along the boardwalk featured an electric sky – constant, blazing, chutes and ladders!

Foreground: Silver clouds that turned to gold with each bolt.

I’ll be back to regular blogging soon – need time to adjust to a new computer, etc., etc. As I feel more proficient with this thing (new keyboard too!), I’ll be back to my old self. Ne quittez pas.

… she practically walked into a seal on a completely empty beach.

Today she leaves for two weeks in Rehoboth. She doubts she’ll see any seals.

Of course she’ll blog from there.

Jane Buckingham built a career as a parenting and lifestyle guru, giving advice to young people and women about raising a family, building a career and even how to survive “sticky situations.”

But on Friday afternoon, Buckingham, author and CEO of the youth marketing company Trendera, became one of three new parents to plead guilty in the nation’s largest-ever college admissions scandal. 

Listen up, cuz I’m gonna be brief:

Who wrote the thing, Sontag or Rieff?

Conservative; Sorelist —
Who wrote Mind of Moralist?

Was someone around here a thief?

Make it TWICE as big, man.

It does no good to state the obvious to some people – quoting here from Christopher Hitchens –

[W]e have no assurance that Muslim women put on the burqa or don the veil as a matter of their own choice. A huge amount of evidence goes the other way. Mothers, wives, and daughters have been threatened with acid in the face, or honor-killing, or vicious beating, if they do not adopt the humiliating outer clothing that is mandated by their menfolk. This is why, in many Muslim societies, such as Tunisia and Turkey, the shrouded look is illegal in government buildings, schools, and universities. Why should Europeans and Americans, seeking perhaps to accommodate Muslim immigrants, adopt the standard only of the most backward and primitive Muslim states? The burqa and the veil, surely, are the most aggressive sign of a refusal to integrate or accommodate. Even in Iran there is only a requirement for the covering of hair, and I defy anybody to find any authority in the Quran for the concealment of the face.

Some people will still enjoin us to “listen to women’s voices,” as if annihilating yourself as a presence in the world by wearing a burqa or niqab is a page out of Our Bodies Ourselves. They will assure us that banning the burqa makes the state into an “active instrument of patriarchy” – as if the burqa itself is not, for millions of people, the globe’s most eloquent expression of the most repressive patriarchy imaginable.

At least this writer is honest enough to note the huge, and growing, number of full or partial burqa/niqab bans, especially across Europe; but she’s not honest enough to note the absence in those countries of significant social problems arising from the bans. Or to note the enormous majorities – including, in many cases, among Muslims – for the bans.

How did it train them to do that?

This guy did the math.

When grilled at trial in the lawsuit over Asian-American admissions about the “Dean’s Interest List,” a confidential list of applicants with ties to big donors whose admission rate is higher even than legacy applicants, Harvard’s dean of admissions, William Fitzsimmons, called the list “important for the long-term strength of the institution.” Earlier, during a deposition, he described legacy as “essential to Harvard’s well-being.” But Fitzsimmons couldn’t point to a shred of data to support these claims. In any case, the colleges don’t need the money. The eight Ivy League schools have a combined endowment of more than $100 billion, which they retain from their wealthy alumni in part because of the massive tax break they receive as nonprofits, a status that seemingly only can be defended on the premise that they promote class mobility.

TS Eliot on human composting.

… Duke officials said that the university was settling [a lawsuit] only to avoid the costs and incoveience of literation.

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It’s been corrected.

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UD thanks Jeremy.

I mean, talk about overcoming adversity. She had her heart set on being a suicide bomber and killing hundreds of men, women, and children. She got arrested all dressed up and ready to go — in full suicide-bomb gear.

Instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself for undeploying, she applied to university. Something to do between vest fittings.

But her past keeps catching up with her. Universities keep throwing her out.

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

UD proposes that this woman approach Rick Singer with some serious money. Surely she’s got some ISIS cash. He can get her into Stanford.

You jest cain’t keep a good ol’ boy on script.

His mentor, Jesse Helms, would be proud.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm appreciates the fine Italian hand of this NYT writer, who weaves a subtle tapestry of aesthetics and larceny in this article.