… heroes, now a professional football player, dealt with a recent defeat of his team by taking out his gun and shooting it in the vicinity of players on the winning team.
Leon Mackey’s explanation – “It was an accident.” – is a real poser. UD looks forward to his attorney making the case that taking your gun out and shooting it in the direction of people with whom you’re fighting is an accident.
Or does he mean it’s an accident that he didn’t kill anybody?
… a noble reformist Muslim and an equally noble reformist ex-Muslim (Maajid Nawaz, Ayan Hirsi Ali) by putting their names on their “haters” list.
Logically enough, Nawaz sued for defamation; but the immensely wealthy SPLC is standing by its judgment, refusing to back down, digging into its deep pockets to defend…
Um.
No.
Someone lobs a lawsuit at them and the moral conscience of a nation immediately rips down the entire list, hurls itself to the ground, and goes veery veery quiet… Me wee mouse in little hole me not squeak to press…
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SPLC has gone underground to consult the ghost of Joseph McCarthy on how to bring a new haters list back online.
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More on this organization.
Lo! The People turn aside and do not attend, while the High Priests hide their ledgers and take money from slaves.
Yea though the Lord sees and is full of wrath, we can do no other for we see as through a glass darkly.
More and more American parents are getting on board the Nancy Lanza Express!
On Aug. 24, 2017, sheriffs deputies in Tazewell County, Illinois took a state-issued card from Reinking that Illinois requires for someone to own a weapon. During a Sunday news conference streamed online, Tazewell County Sheriff Robert M. Huston said [Travis] Reinking volunteered to give up his four weapons.
However, Reinking’s father was present when those deputies came to confiscate the guns, Huston said. The father had a valid state authorization card and asked the police if he could keep the weapons. Deputies gave Reinking’s father the weapons, Huston said.
“He was allowed to do that after he assured deputies he would keep them secure and away from Travis,” Huston said, referring to Reinking’s father.
Huston and Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson said they believe Reinking’s father returned the weapons to Reinking.
Give your insane child an AR-15 today.
U Conn basketball is constantly in trouble – mainly recruiting violation trouble, but throw in failure to meet academic standards – with the NCAA.
Its last coach – fired under the pressure of the most recent, ongoing, NCAA investigation – is suing the school for ten million dollars because his predecessor as coach, the sainted Jim Calhoun, was really a far sleazier figure, but was treated far better by the university.
Which is correct. Calhoun was significantly more disgusting (though, in fairness, Calhoun coached U Conn for many more years than Kevin Ollie, so had much more time to collect violations) than Ollie, so why should Ollie not get the ten million left on his contract?
Lawsuits, NCAA investigations – and probably, eventually, investigations from a US Attorney or two. Life of the mind, USA.
… UD enjoys this video (scroll down) from a Harvard talk about the blinding muting burqa as a vehicle of female empowerment.
… is the name of the upcoming show at the Zachęta Gallery which features UD‘s father-in-law and two other Polish luminaries.
The announcement in English.
Opening: May 21.
First full day: May 22.
Zachęta Gallery
pl. Małachowskiego 3, 00-916 Warszawa
Sing it, l’il fella!
O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street
Oh please let it be for me!
O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is a-comin’ down the street
I wish, I wish I knew what it could be!
I got a box of ammunition on my birthday
In March I got a Glock 42
Once I got a semi-automatic
And Smith and Wesson sent revolvers: one for me, one you!
He was prez but the world was bare
He didn’t feel love anywhere
He told himself he didn’t care
He pushed a window open wide
He felt an emptiness inside
To which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate
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So.
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UD has long wondered whether she’s got what it takes to write for the tabloids. She was reminded of this when she saw the quick cheap way some woman who works at a university in Fresno just got herself MUCHO publicity by calling Barbara Bush a racist.
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Don DeLillo says
Everything we need that is not food or love is in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and the extra-terrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity, the cults of the famous and the dead.
My Bush/Daniels shocker – whose fundamental idea derives from simply conjoining two big names in the news – goes in one of several directions.
1. Supernatural: Stormy Daniels is inhabited by the ghost of Barbara Bush; she now shamefully repudiates her adult industry past.
2. Religion: It can now be revealed that in her last days Barbara Bush reached out to Stormy Daniels and converted her to the true faith.
3. Illegitimate Child: Stormy Daniels is the wayward child Barbara and George Bush were never able to acknowledge: UNTIL NOW.
4. Lesbian Affair: George Bush the Elder privately resented the powerful and possibly consummated attraction between these two famous women.
5. Political Conspiracy: Barbara Bush was put to death by the same man who threatened Stormy Daniels because both represented forces threatening the political and financial empire of the Trump family.
Police said they’ve broken up a drug ring that included eight students and a professor at William & Mary.
Brookdale Community College is investigating a professor of sociology who cursed at a conservative student.
The incident, which was captured on video by a second student and has since been shared online, happened last week during a class on intercultural communication.
[A] majority of the NFL’s consumer base simply doesn’t care about the character of players off the field. I’m not doubting the sincerity of people when they say they care, but when the rubber meets the road, a rash of domestic violence cases around the league won’t stop the masses from tuning in.
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
