Caretaker! take care, for we run in straits.
Daily, by night, we walk naked to storm,
some threat of wholesale loss, to ruinous fear.
Gift us with long cloaks & adrenalin.
Who haunt the avenues of Angkor Wat
recalling all that prayer, that glory dispersed,
haunt me at the corner of Fifth & Hennepin.
Shield & fresh fountain! Manifester! Even mine.
[At school, Evelyn Waugh founded] the Corpse Club, “for those who were weary of life.”
A lede that packs in a lot.
… as she does every December,
for a Polish Christmas.
Blogging continues unhindered.
An Iowa State University fraternity received a sanction for indecent exposure on Tuesday …
FarmHouse Fraternity, which stands for Faith, Ambition, Reverence, Morality, Honesty, Obedience, Unity, Service and Excellence, was sanctioned, or penalized, for indecent exposure, which according to the university’s code of conduct, is defined as intentionally exposing genitals or other intimate areas in a public place where others are present. The exposure must take place where it is “reasonably likely” to offend, annoy or alarm another person…
… The organization received another sanction in December 2015, also for indecent exposure.
A second crew with whom to mourn
Th’ uncaptained flight of being
Back-up pilots from the planetary bush
Their super-accelerator a higher-order joke
On our common want of a destination
An estimated time of the arrival of meaning
*******************
Flying at 88,000! Boiling the calm Pacific!
*******************
Then, taking a seat in our cabin to share
Camusian notes on the silence of the universe
What else are you going to watch? “General Hospital”? “Young and the Restless”? “Rachel Ray”? “Maury”? The Liverpool-Swansea EPL match?
**********
UD thinks of her friend Paul Laffoley at this moment. He didn’t live to see the Navy footage.
A 26-year-old woman reportedly pulled a loaded handgun from her pocket Tuesday when her Front Range Community College instructor confronted her about cheating on a test.
Fort Collins police said student Brittany Schoonover reportedly pulled the gun from her pocket and “racked the slide” — the process of moving a round into the chamber of a semi-automatic handgun manually — when her instructor confronted her outside a classroom, arrest records show.
… The instructor told police he feared for his life and the lives of other students, but he was able to disarm Schoonover and call for help, according to arrest documents. Other specific information about how the instructor disarmed her was not available Wednesday.
Mandatory faculty workshops in how to disarm students threatening you with semi-automatic handguns are on their way. Training will also feature helpful hints, such as: Never walk away from a student until she gives you permission to do so.
[The student] brandished the handgun when her instructor began walking away – to prevent him from leaving.
A song of praise for NFL football.
… The grunting, juddering, anti-flow of the broader game, the rote brutality and steak-headed backwardness of the action at the play-by-play level, the sudden blundering intrusion of all those honking commercials — for achingly sincere domestic macro-pilsners, for strapping trucks and their loud and swaggering drive-train warranties, for extremely emotional insurance companies and also weirdly ironic insurance companies — at every stoppage of play. In the most basic sense this is just what the average NFL game is, but more worrying for the lords of the league, it is also a description of what is an objectively not-great television show — one with the queasy pacing of rush-hour traffic, the jarring violence of a car accident, and the fuddy legalism of traffic court, and that somehow manages to be three hours long.
… In recent years, [these sorts of] games, resembling out-of-body experiences, have become worryingly common. The sudden glut of ultra-shitty games probably isn’t the greatest long-term problem facing the sport, but it’s also the most obvious and inescapable challenge to all the solemn covenant-pageantry of the NFL; it’s hard to civically sanctify the experience of being bored.
… The league’s signature corruptions have unmistakably diminished both the quality of the games and the broader health of the sport; things just can’t go on this way.
************
UD thanks Dirk.
UD‘s been telling you for years about the spectacular synergy between online courses and filthy university sports programs. When it comes to anonymous online courses, it’s so easy to fall in love! It’s so easy to fall in love! It’s so easy (so easy) … yeah yeah yeah its so easy (so easy).. yeah yeah yeah…
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
