When Pittsburgh swooped in to snatch a likely-to-be-dismissed Kevin Stallings from an underachieving Vanderbilt basketball program, it raised eyebrows. When he failed to win a single game in ACC play in his second season as the Panthers head coach, it raised fans’ ire. And now that it looks like it will cost the program nearly $10 million just to get rid of him, Stallings is raising one last thing — a question.
Just how incompetent IS the University of Pittsburgh athletic department?
Britain’s most senior woman judge has called for tougher rules on compelling women who wear the Muslim veil to show their faces when giving evidence in court.
Baroness Hale of Richmond, the deputy president of the Supreme Court, said “ways have got to be found” to ensure that the Islamic face coverings, such as the niqab, are removed for key parts of a court hearing.
Eventually Britain will join the civilized world and ban the burqa/niqab altogether. These are some of the steps one takes toward it.
Lesson: The lad needs access to more guns so that he can work on his handling skills.
UD‘s home – not just the place she lives now; the place she was raised – is practically the best place to live in the whole state. Maryland is the nation’s wealthiest state, so competition for best place to live must be pretty fierce…
Of course UD has always been proud of her town (as those of you who have been reading this blog a long time know). She ended up here at the age of nine because her mother, just returned from a year in Mill Hill, a charming British village near London, found in Garrett Park an approximation of what she’d grown to love in England. It didn’t hurt that all of GP’s streets are named after locations in the novels of Walter Scott.
For those keeping count, Tariq Ramadan has so far filed two disease claims in hopes of getting out of jail (MS and neuropathy); three rape claims have so far been filed against him. Expect his lawyers to come up with a third disease (UD suggests early prostate cancer) to even the score.
Fun read on the rectitude-look.
How the fuck do we not comply with this?
Harvard University: Famous for holding tight to its stupendous endowment, and just as famous for holding tight to its sexual harassers.
… coming up, UD remembers her favorite play title.
The drama is by Jorgen Lovberg (originally Lövberg), and it’s one of his most tortured embittered and agonizing works: While We Three Hemorrhage.
… you know there’s hope for that religion.
A big win for our side.
George Washington University’s law school should have bragging rights on this one. One of its graduates has been chosen to handle a lawsuit against the highest-profile person in the world. It’s already a very high-profile suit, and will almost certainly become even more high-profile.
So: GWU press release on its way!
***************
But there’s the question of how to word it.
PORN STAR STORMY DANIELS CHOOSES
GW LAW GRAD TO KILL HUSH MONEY
AGREEMENT WITH SEX PARTNER TRUMP
That’s a bit… sensationalistic. Let’s see…
****************
First, go with her birth name. Use formal titles. Tone down other elements.
MS. STEPHANIE R. CLIFFORD CHOOSES
GW LAW GRAD IN HIGH-PROFILE CASE
AGAINST PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.
Ah. That’s better. Scathing Online Schoolmarm gave her a middle initial because it sounds more respectable, and because it creates an equivalence between her and Donald J.
****************
The GW law grad is a master of the mixed metaphor. SOS has rarely seen such a strong one.
“[A] Supreme Court Justice once said that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ And we fully intend on bringing as much sunlight to this matter as possible. Let the chips fall where they may.”
Bravo.
Ladies, read up and understand the pattern. They’re your literary and/or spiritual heroes, and you go to them for guidance and a blurb for your book of poems and they jump you.
After they succeed or fail at having their way, they threaten your career if you tell anyone.
The post just below is one of several on this blog chronicling the adorable father/son pairs in this country who roll around together at home on top of thick warm layers of illegal loaded guns and explosive devices (see photo). It’s an all-American thing, and chances are you just don’t get it but lookee here – a three-generation human interest story to warm the Glockles of your heart!
Here’s Grandad – the only family member not currently in jail or out on bond awaiting trial – talking to the media about the wonderful world of family weaponry, the way his close-knit clan has used a home environment strewn with hyper-powerful, ready-to-shoot firearms to treat their son’s autism, and the way satanic anti-second amendment forces have invaded the sanctity of their treatment facility/armory.
“It’s not entirely clear how the grandfather of a boy arrested for making threats at the Academy for Sciences and Agriculture in Vadnais Heights is helping the family cause with an interview he’s given,” sneers elitist Minnesota Public Radio about grandaddy’s dark warning that if the gummit don’t leave his people the hell alone, “Fire is coming down from hell.”
From hell, gramps?… What exactly do you mean? Fire from… haha… one of your big ol’ semi-automatics…? … Zat what you’re getting at?
Gramps is pissed: “This has violated our second amendment” right to raise an autistic kid to threaten to shoot up his school with every single one of the loaded guns on his bed.
You got that right. After their thirteen year old son repeatedly threatened to shoot up his school, his mother insisted there were “no weapons in the home.” A search revealed that she and the kid’s father
owned several illegal firearms and kept loaded guns out in the open…
[The father was charged] with two felony counts of prohibited possession of machine guns and short-barreled shotguns and one count of gross misdemeanor negligent storage of firearms where a child can access them.
Authorities on Friday seized a cache of firearms, ammunition and at least two explosive devices… Some of the firearms were unsecured, and a ballistic vest was also recovered…
“Law enforcement officers also recovered several trigger kits hidden in the ceiling of the residence,” said the charges … “They appeared to be conversion kits for converting weapons to automatic weapons. Deputies also discovered literature on how to convert a semi-automatic weapon to a fully automatic weapon.”
America’s family.
****************
[O]nly about one-quarter of [US] gun owners think it essential to alert visitors with children that guns may be present in the home. (Twice as many non-gun-owners think so.) Only 66 percent of gun owners think it essential to keep guns locked up when not in use. (Ninety percent of non-gun-owners think so.) Only 45 percent of them actually do it.

The third day of massive multiple trucks
breaking and shredding and hauling
“a large healthy pine that snapped in
the wind,” says my neighbor.
“It didn’t uproot.”
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
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