[North Korean] authorities have reportedly been holding mass meetings in various parts of the country to warn people against making sarcastic remarks about the regime and its supreme leader. … Officials pointed to the phrase “this is all America’s fault” as an example of sarcasm it doesn’t want uttered. It’s common for North Koreans to use the phrase ironically to criticize the country’s leadership.

[P]rosecutors showed graduate students in [Yujie] Ding’s lab at Lehigh University did all of the work to develop an atmospheric sensor for NASA, while Ding and Zotova pocketed most of the $700,000 through a shell company to which the contract had been awarded.

Of the myriad thieving engineering professor stories UD has covered over the years, this one has it all: romance (Ding’s co-fraudster was his loving wife), slavery (what are graduate students for?), endless, fun, court machinations by the accused (“You have one of the best attorneys in the city,” [the judge] told Ding. “It appears you are attempting to delay this matter.”), and just, you know, even by the standards of thieving engineering professors, one of the most comprehensively sucky human beings that the human comedy, la condition humaine, the human animal, has to offer.

No one at Lehigh’s bothered to take his faculty page down. Could be they’re waiting until after sentencing. Ding “faces a statutory maximum of 120 years in prison,” and maybe Lehigh wants to add this impressively high number to his profile, but is waiting for it to be official.

… our scholar/athletes, wildly honored by their schools, go on to complete remarkable tackles in the NFL:

[Dallas Cowboy Greg Hardy] allegedly threw Nicole Holder, his then girlfriend, on a couch covered in loaded rifles and shotguns after tossing her into a shower, where she fell into the bathtub, and he drug her out by her hair and then strangled her with both hands.

The football hero with loaded guns on the couch and a girlfriend dragged by the hair and strangled … Nothing to see here. We Americans reserve our rage for Colin Kaepernick failing to salute the flag.

Aldon Smith

was arrested five times in three years with charges including DUI on three different occasions, vandalism, hit-and-run, and felony weapons charges, which were later reduced to misdemeanors. Smith was also taken into custody at LAX and charged with a false report of a bomb threat.

Chicago Bear Ray McDonald

was arrested three times between 2010 and 2015 and was named in a sexual assault investigation in 2014. His arrests were for drunken driving in 2010; assaulting his ex-fiancee, who was pregnant with his child; and once again for misdemeanor domestic violence and child endangerment. The latest instance involved McDonald assaulting a woman while she was holding his son, who was born six months prior.

Bruce Miller

has been arrested twice in the past 17 months, both for some form of assault. He was arrested in March 2015 for assaulting his girlfriend and breaking her phone. The initial report stated that Miller shoved his girlfriend and broke her phone after a verbal argument. Later, he stated he never shoved her, and she changed her story to coincide with his.

Then, this past Sunday, Miller was arrested for assaulting a 70-year-old man and his son at the Marriott, where he was told he was at the wrong room.

Before tackling the 70-year-old, Miller got thrown out of a restaurant:

Miller stared at the buffet line for about 20 minutes, then approached the queue and started arguing with guests over a sandwich…

“I believe he wanted their sandwiches,” said [a restaurant employee].

Giants kicker Josh Brown is every bit as great a tackler as these other guys.

His now ex-wife has accused him of domestic violence on over 20 occasions, and yet, even with his latest arrest, the Giants re-signed the 37-year-old kicker. Meanwhile, the NFL suspended him for just one game…

… is now a clean well-lighted place
with beautiful views over the square.

The house it’s in is on the market.

Read Good Riddance by David Halperin. ‘Tis all ye need to know.

La Kid joins New Dublin Voices.

… fabric.

In olden days, a glimpse of woman
Was looked on as quite inhuman
But now God knows
Anything goes!

Good womenfolk who once faced jailing
Now all find themselves unveiling
Their long black clothes.
Anything goes!

… and Indiana State University is reaching that potential! Desperate for good players and arrantly disregarding anything else, it keeps recruiting people it eventually – under pressure – has to let go.

The latest one was kicked out of the University of Kansas and then some assistant coach who knew him there and now works at ISU recruited him cuz you know he knows the guy and though two women are suing Kansas because they say he sexually assaulted them he’s a good player and that’s no reason – in today’s who cares about sexual assault on campus climate – to keep him off the field… I mean, ISU can issue warnings to its female students: Accused sexual predator on campus LOOK OUT. Something like that. Then they couldn’t say they didn’t see it coming.

Missouri legislators are furious: Football players at the University of Missouri can’t carry handguns. Coach says so.

Rep. Joe Don McGaugh, R-Carrollton, called the policy “unbelievable.”

McGaugh is clearly shaken. He will need time to himself before he’s able to focus on countermeasures. I’m sure his fellow legislators are in the same boat.

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

Once McGaugh and other lawmakers feel able to act, UD can guarantee that the kids will get all the handguns they want. Relax.

Caleb Helsley threw a touchdown pass to Taylor Armbristor to make it 14-0 after a missed two-point attempt with 7:36 remaining. He then ran for another with under a minute left as the Indians (1-0) led 20-0 at the break. In the fourth quarter, Helsley found Armbristor again to make the lead 33-6.

Gunfire on the McLain side of the stadium forced the game to be called with 2:30 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Because the weather is finally mild.

… we find one of their specialized coaches – he’s solely about conditioning and strengthening the lads – paid the sixth highest such coaching salary in the country. With contract extensions and all, he’s well on his way to half a million dollars a year. (His most recent salary is a “126.25 percent increase from his initial [2010] $160,000 salary with the Seminoles.”)

Now I want you to put aside petty distractions about FSU that are all in the past: the rapes, the thefts, punching women in bars, animal abuse, the conniving local police force, blahblahblah… I want you to think about this hagiographic Showtime special on this great team, this great school, this great community.

Watch the trailer – it features this guy, this strength and conditioning coach. One of FSU’s heroes.

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

So – the nexus? The very crux of what makes a great academic institution?

Well, you’ve got the coach, and you’ve got the Showtime special. Now you need that ineffable combination of elements that makes for scholarly excellence. Let us put these elements together.

Let’s have this coach get stinking drunk in his campus office with the Showtime crew and then pile into his car and crash into a stop sign.

AND let’s let this class operation give him a slap on the wrists and insinuate in its public statement that it was all the evil Showtime crew’s fault for forcing whiskey into the hands of this great good and innocent man.

Now you’ve got it. The life of the mind, Florida State University.

Trump surrogate Mark Burns offers a long list of excuses to cover his long list of lies about himself.

… Member … of the European Parliament, was innocently masturbating in a store, not far from a couple of young people also in said store.

Le vice-président du MoDem a été interpellé mercredi dans un magasin de bricolage [yes, that’s a “do it yourself” store] de Vélizy-Villacoublay (Yvelines). Il a été surpris par un vigile alors qu’il était en train de se masturber devant deux enfants. Robert Rochefort a reconnu les faits et a expliqué aux policiers avoir “besoin de se masturber” quand il était “en situation de stress”.

The police were called, and Member Rochefort explained to them that he’d (as you see if you read French) had to masturbate that very moment in that very place because he was currently in an unspecified stressful situation.

M. Rochefort, whose areas of concern in the Parliament include “Emission Measurement,” has been asked to step down from his high-ranking party position in France.