‘Everyone was citing a survey from 2020 which suggested that 57 percent of young Muslims believed that the law of God was superior to the law of the French Republic.‘
Results like these are kinda funny, if you ask ol’ UD. I mean, at the gathering of French Muslim intellectuals and secular French intellectuals described in this NYT essay (the essay is about the increasingly popular French political right), somebody cites this numerical result, and quite a few Muslim attendees get all huffy. One of them walks out.
Yet how big a deal, really, is the result? After you draw a shocked breath, do you pause to ask how this belief is liable, in most cases, to play out in actual civic life? A lot of religious people, if you asked them pointblank, would probably say they feel like this – that divine trumps secular law. Why do you assume this means that they would fail to obey secular law if they live in a secular state? How often are they compelled to choose between the two? To take an example I’ve talked to death on this blog – The French have with remarkable success, far as I can tell, imposed a burqa ban. Nobody seems too bent out of shape about it. Most even marginally rational people know that they will have to make some concessions when their religious enthusiasms hit hard against the rule of law in a non-theocracy.
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I’ve drawn the comment in my headline from the same essay.
This is the first sentence of a 2015 UD post about super-perverted Nebraska, a state routinely forgotten until its university’s football team (see Lawrence Phillips, Richie Incognito, etc., etc.) drills its way into the nation’s head…
Speaking more broadly, you don’t want to inquire too closely into the, uh, political unconscious of Nebraskans, out there on the starry plains all night spinning fantasies…
Frinstance. State Sen. Bruce Bostelman, representing the misnamed Brainard, shared his kitten-with-a-whip scenario with all of Nebraska, and the larger country, during an election debate the other day. The way he sees it, nubile high school students “meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion. And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?”
Oooh Little Miss Coed Filthy Kittikens Baring Your Rear Golden Showers Daddy Punish You
But since Meadows and Thomas did it all under orders from Jesus (their texts are shot through with Good v Evil), we can only join the editorial board of Compact (see post below) and applaud these servants of the Lord. Satan stole the election, but they fought the good fight and will be granted sainthood by President Waldstein in the Cathophate to come.
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Meanwhile, Justice Thomas has been hospitalized with Lying Low Syndrome.
As you know, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” and at some point gun-mad, cheap hotel and booze-mad, no-government-interference-mad states like Texas and Florida are going to have to get sane, which UD thinks in this case means accepting the fact that when you proudly broadcast your gunny rummy scummy ways to the world, the world will respond. If you build tacky, they will come. And as the violence gets worse year after year, you’re going to need police-state-quality surveillance, which UD is sure your permanent residents are going to love. They bought their five million dollar condo for sunny, carefree Florida, after all.
Now, Florida – all shot up and beaten and exhausted – is grandly claiming that it never wanted spring breakers. “We don’t ask for spring break, we don’t promote it, we don’t encourage it, we just endure it, and frankly it’s something we don’t want to endure.” Fine words, Mr Churchill, and, now that it’s not just a source of revenue but a human and public relations disaster, you will fight it on the beaches etc. But of course you have promoted it; yours is not just a party city, but a mega-club party city, and a warm, longtime home for drug and gun dealers.
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Note what an even more sleaze-friendly city – New Orleans – did before last year’s Mardi Gras:
[The governor put] a statewide mask mandate in place as well as occupancy limits on bars, restaurants and other businesses.
New Orleans Democratic Mayor LaToya Cantrell,also a Democrat, went even further by closing barscompletely in the city, even those allowed to operate as restaurants. City officials also closed iconic Bourbon Street to cars and limited pedestrian access for the final weekend of the season.
Next thing you know they’ll be confiscating weapons!
With the spring come all the paeans to the spring, especially to the spring garden; and while UD – an enthusiastic gardener – likes to read all the regeneration-swoons, she’s also partial to the Bronx cheers — like the above comment from a New York Times writer. Or, you know, the famous first lines of The Waste Land, etc.
I mean, who has not watched Prince Charles sidle among his manure stocks and kind of wanted him to say “Mind you, it’s all rather a stinking bloody mess.”
Here are Mr UD and the dog enjoying our just-mulched layout.
China still has a ways to go. But better late than never.
That leaves Tucker Carlson andhis odeto you know who:
You and me against the world Sometimes it seems like you and me against the world When all the others turn their backs and walk away You can count on me to stay
Remember when Zelenskyy came to town And you were frightened by his frown Wasn’t it nice to be around someone that you knew Someone who was big and strong and looking out for
You and me against the world Sometimes it feels like you and me against the world
And for all the times we’ve cried I always felt that Xi was on our side
And now that he is gone And only two are left to carry on Then remembering will have to do Our memories of massacres will get us through Think about the days of me and you You and me against the world
Seems reasonable to ol’ UD, and in making this law for at least one of its regions, India is acting in accord with a lot of other countries.
Karnataka’s high court, that is, has ruled that the hijab is not a required religious garment. Those who want a different outcome can appeal the ruling to the supreme court, though I doubt a higher court will reverse it.
The fear … is that the BJP is trying again to impose its Hindu majority agenda on the minorities by depriving them of their right to religion and their freedom of choice.
That’s a very reasonable fear; yet given the routine nature, around the globe, of restrictions on school uniforms, I’m not sure it pertains in this case. In the matter of India, UD is more scandalized by this:
[A recent] government introduced Vedic astrology as a subject in college curricula, despite opposition from several leading scientists.
[The British government sought] to find a way to make sure that Chelsea could continue to function, roughly as normal, once Abramovich’s other assets were frozen. The players, the staff and the fans — especially the fans — must not suffer, the government said. A few hours earlier, Russian artillery had shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. But the government was clear: The sanctity of the Premier League could not be sullied...
His arrival marked the start of what will come, in time, to be thought of as soccer’s oligarch age. It was Abramovich, as noted last week, whose arrival kick-started the inflationary spiral that has fractured European soccer beyond repair, with only a handful of clubs hoarding all of the wealth of the game, ruthlessly stripping its natural resources for their benefit...
Soccer’s age of the oligarch is over. This time, there can be no excuse for failing to understand what the game has become. On that, we have clarity.
The recent academic history of UNC Chapel Hill is really stinky — just a shitload of scandals — so you might think faculty and administrators there would be superdupercareful not to add to the world’s growing sense that a once-respectable school has become a cesspool. But the awesomely titled vice-chancellor — FOR RESEARCH — a man not only eminent, but also distinguished, has been outed as a plagiarist.
In a grant application … but you and I know that soon enough many other instances of his plagiarism will be uncovered… though he seems to have convinced the ninnies at Chapel Hill that this is his one and only eminent distinguished theft from multiple sources, cuz they’re not really punishing the dude.
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Remember UD‘s tripartite plagiarism scheme (refresh your memory here). In this instance, we have Category One: ATELIER. Dude’s simply too esteemed and illustrious to bother writing his own grant applications or (UD feels certain we’ll discover) research papers, etc., etc. He relies on an atelier, his very own workshop of Santa’s elves, to do all his work for him, and he has fallen victim to the same thing all the other busybusybusy atelier-overseers (see oodles of Harvard law professors) fall victim to – he doesn’t review the work that goes out under his name. If you’re going to oversee, you need to oversee!
In short: I didn’t plagiarize! The dumb-dumbs that plagiarize on my behalf plagiarized. I give you my pledge: There’s gonna be a helluva shakeup on my staff and the new crew will know how to plagiarize and not get caught.
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Mr UD: “A reasonable punishment would be a fifty percent reduction in his adjectives. He’s currently the Kay M. & Van L. Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor of Genetics. The choice is his, but he must lose either Eminent or Distinguished.”
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Update: Yeah. Well. Initial reports that he’d get a slap on the wrist sounded way dumb to ol’ UD, and, as she suggests up there in this post, you don’t deal with a plagiarist in that way. You fire a plagiarist. Esp. one in charge of research for the whole school! Mamma mia.
… by legitimate scholars uncovering his long history of plagiarized sports-injury research.
One could dismiss this jerk as one more no-account, plagiarism-addicted nonentity, except that he’s actually a very high-profile, influential concussion-enthusiast, always in search of ways to justify letting concussed athletes keep playing.
Finally cornered, he’s letting out with all sorts of explanations and apologies (UD has no idea why he’s not blaming underlings, but as more of his plagiarism is discovered, McCrory will no doubt take this time-honored route), and he’s removing himself – or being removed – from this and that committee. Let’s see if the scummy schools and organizations keeping him on board will… keep him on board.
