Wild about my wild indigo.
When you put on too much bronzer…

look out!

Aw, they grow up so fast!

In the land of the gun, it’s never too early to terrorize entire communities and then get blown to bits by a police battalion. Too cute!

LOL

Sometimes, people here quietly admit, it goes too far. Like the students who loudly proclaim how often they go to Mass, or the young man who quit his classics course because he refused to read the works of ancient Greek pagans.

‘South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem will headline a fundraising dinner for the Jefferson County Republican Party on Saturday.’

Swag bag contents:

HOW TO KILL YOUR DOG

In UD’s garden, a new feature:

The Cave.

In UD’s garden, a spectacular…

… whatever specimen. UD‘s bad at identifying her plants.

Kristi Goat-Girl

An Arizona goat farmer who asked not to be named for fear of being embroiled in partisan politics said Noem’s decision to use a weapon on the goat that required more than one shot was tougher on the animal than it was on her.

“The goat gets shot… but the brain’s intact, it’s aware of what’s going on,” the farmer said. “And then she has to go and futz around and get another shell and then come back and do the same thing and it finally expires.”

The farmer suggested that Noem’s account “reveals not just callousness toward life and poor political acumen, but also a limited understanding of the basics of farm life.”

Come to UD’s talk about James Baldwin this ….

…. Saturday.

‘South Dakota was the last of the 50 states to make animal cruelty a felony, passing legislation in 2014.’

Figures.

Kristi Noem: Wrapping up the…

Michael Vick vote!

Noem’s canicide defense lacks one obvious element: It’s a little-known fact, but there are no animal shelters of any kind in the state of South Dakota!

She’s trying this and she’s trying that, but she’s forgetting the most salient fact of all: She couldn’t have taken the puppy to a shelter, because none exist in the entire state! Shooting the dog to death in a gravel pit was her only option.

‘Pat Fagan, the director of the Marriage and Religion Institute at the Catholic University of America, says good children are the product of stable, two-parent Christian households, away from the corrupting influences of public school and sex ed. (Christian couples, he adds, have “the best, most orgasmic sex,” citing no research or surveys to support this.)’

Obviously UD wants to know more, more, more about Catholic University’s Pat Fagan; but on searching for him and his, er, institute, initiative, whatever, she finds nothing.

I mean — not nothing, but … well, take a looksee. Here’s the first CU hit you get on his name. Then a link to a faculty-in-the-media list, which takes you to an article about sex, and then a link to Fagan’s initiative (not institute); but CU’s only mention of the initiative (MARRI) includes no link

Given Fagan’s natalist hysteria about the incipient death of Christian populations via low birth rate, I’m wondering why CU seems a bit coy about acknowledging his existence, let alone his institute/initiative. Fagan holds the key to healthy numbers of incoming CU students, etc.

Plus UD is panting to find out more about superorgasmic Christian sex.

‘Ms. Noem, a Republican who is widely seen as a contender to be former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, shared details about shooting the 14-month-old dog, a female wirehaired pointer named Cricket, and an unnamed goat.’

LOL unnamed goat.

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

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, she tied with Vivek Ramaswamy for first place in a poll of whom attendees wanted to see Mr. Trump select as a running mate.

In what is regarded as a desperate bid to overtake Noem, Ramaswamy was quick to claim a dog named Juno, an unnamed goat, and a local skateboarder.

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

Shelley’s “To a Skylark,” rendered by Kristi Noem.

 Hail to thee, blithe Cricket!
        Dog thou never wert,
    That from heaven, or near it,
        Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated bark.

Higher still and higher
        From the earth thou springest
    Like a cloud of fire;
        Dead birds to me thou bringest
And bringing bringest more, and yet more thou bringest.

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

Chorus canineal
        Your triumphal chaunt
    Now seems to me of a sudden
        But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein I feel there is some hidden want.

Yea now thy clear keen joyance
        Doth put me in a snit
    Shadow of annoyance

O’ertakes me for a bit…

And so I killed you in a gravel pit.


Gevalt.

The sun provides light, warmth and life for us on Earth, but it’s also a star—a massive ball of thermonuclear and electromagnetic fury—and it would do us all well to never forget that…

Think of [a solar flare] like a bag of mousetraps: one snaps shut and jostles the bag, making others snap over and again, rapidly discharging their stored energy in a single explosive event.

Now imagine each one of these mousetraps is the equivalent of, oh, say a few hundred million thermonuclear bombs, and you will start to get the idea of how the sweatiest sci-fi apocalypse doesn’t even come close to the power of a solar flare…

Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are also ridiculously powerful solar phenomena. If solar flares are like tornadoes—local but intense—CMEs are like far larger hurricanes. They don’t emit much visible light, but they blast upwards of a billion tons of hydrogen into space, sometimes at speeds of several thousand kilometers per second.

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

And, you know, the point of the piece is that you really don’t want to be home when a big one comes calling.

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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