Near-total abortion ban: How’s that going, Idaho?

 I’ve been sort of involved with some of the recruitment efforts and interviewing of some of the potential candidates. Last year, we had five potential candidates, and … all five decided to go elsewhere. Idaho used to be a state that attracted OBs for the outdoors, for the family values, the recreation — it’s a good place to live. But I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade had an impact…

What I heard from others was that those who were interviewed in the last year expressed concerns regarding the legal climate and concerns of prosecution, which led them to not take our offer of employment. 

A doctor at Idaho’s third shuttered obstetrics unit talks about why the total abortion ban is also becoming a total birth ban.

Another HOOKAH BAZOOKA!

But this one’s like why hasn’t a mass shooting already happened forty times in that lounge. I mean, maybe it has, but locals are still pretending to be shocked at the mass shooting at another hookah bar down south.

As you know if you read this blog, there’s nothing more banal of late than mass shootings inside hookah bars in southern cities. And this one happened in Baton Rouge, and man I mean ROUGE like flowing all red in the streets!

Apparently there’s a grassroots movement down there to change the city’s name to SANG ROUGE. Better fit.

 Louisiana’s capital city [has made] it big in the world of crime and murder. Baton Rouge has outdone the rest of the state, which is [itself] 40 percent more violent than the nation as a whole. New Orleans is more popular, so Baton Rouge seized the opportunity to top the violent crime list. Baton Rouge isn’t a very large city, but it manages to attract attention by having 49 murders annually. If you have a death wish, it’s a great destination.

A few details here. Some locals – a few – feel kinda bad about the “lack of effort by the state government to address gun violence,” but baby baby baby that’s cuz they love their guns and they love it when they get a chance to shoot ’em off! Hookah bars concentrate large numbers of incapacitated victims in easily accessible, charismatic, locations, and, you know, take any random Saturday night and conditions are RIPE.

Given that everyone knows shooting’s gonna happen – note that Dior’s advertising stresses the word “safely” — wonder why – why does it… well… keep happening?

Look more closely at what Dior offers: Incredibly cheap booze. A dark chaotic place to whip out your guns and get some real killing off before someone notices. Rooms packed with idjits from LSU, one of America’s most violent and stupid locations.

Bloodbath keeps happening because Bloodbath is the state sport of Louisiana, and everything the state does — from basically zero gun restrictions to the proliferation of hookah bars – promotes the sport.

Shut down the bars? Are you fucking nuts? Death’s a way of life down there. UD‘s had enough of inauthentic local pols getting all ‘senselesstragic.…’ … I mean, being all negative about it. Millions of Americans adore violence and go out of their way to legalize, mainstream, and personally experience it. Bloody, almost dead, and dead people scattered everywhere is Sang Rouge’s effing calling card, it’s their Graceland, their Machu Picchu, their one reliable tourist destination. Find a violent psycho like Jim Jordan to run the city – someone who revels in blood – and GO TO IT.

Remember White Noise, the most important American novel of the last fifty years:

“Look past the violence. There is a wonderful brimming spirit of innocence and fun.”

“He’ll do anything he can to find a way to win a game,” she said…

… and the little missus done got that right. Back in 2017, when the state’s newspaper gushed about LSU’s basketball coach boy wonder, Will Wade‘s wife hit it right on the head: Like virtually all of LSU’s storied basketball and football coaches from the word go, young Wade was dirty as the day is long. And as he now departs the school in the time-honored way of its sports leaders — driven out by years of every conceivable violation — we can only comb through our many LSU is the scummiest school in America except maybe for Baylor posts and ponder, as we like to do, America’s poorest, most corrupt, most violent state and its long dedication to three million dollar a year filthy rotten coaches.

Let’s narrate this from the POV of a Bama boy – Bama itself definitely competitive in the southern jock school corruption sweepstakes, of course:

There’s squat going on today, but — dear reader — your Gump Day comes in strong with a bit of schadenfreude, as the sweatiest man this side of Al Golden, at the dirtiest program this side of SMU, finally had the NCAA hammer drop on them.

Or, at least the first part.

To the absolute surprise of no one, a man under investigation by the FBI, at a school under investigation for widespread sexual assault and Title IX violations, and two programs with a history of dirty dealing, have all finally received their Notice of Allegations.

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

Oh yeah. Forgot SMU. Lawdie! [flicks hankie o’er lightly sweated brow] Hard to keep up, ain’t it? … But let me add, and I mean this in the nicest way, that we don’t need no big-city Yankee scolds telln us how to educate our youth at our fine universities! Take all the pleasure you want in our anguish, Mr Fancy Pants; we’ll be back bigger and better than ever ‘fore you can say Dave Bliss!

“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

George Wallace would be so pleased with Cornell University’s segregated rock climbing class.

Lwam Asfaw ’21 explained that when choosing a P.E. class, it was the BIPOC label that ultimately encouraged her to enroll in the course. She explains that the BIPOC label works to make participation more comfortable, accessible and encouraging in an unfamiliar environment. Asfaw said that people should be focusing less on why segregation exists and more on why there’s a need to segregate.

‘The honor code of “guarding your respect” and “he had it coming” endures, [one expert] said, adding that it’s possible to “risk your life just by insulting the L.S.U. Tigers.”’

Update/recap of the idjits in Louisiana who maintain that state’s distinction: America’s highest murder rate, now for the 31st year.

“People are armed to the teeth.”

I know you’re thinking New Orleans, but don’t forget Baton Rouge, home of LSU.

Defenseman Duckworth: He’s Got it All!

The compleat Louisiana State University student, Li’l Cade The Frat Man smiles at you from his latest mug shot. Get lost in his baby blues and you’ll find everything that makes LSU the fabled school that it is: Sports, Sadism, and Stupefacients.

Witnesses described being forced to lie on broken glass, face down while they both sprayed with a hose, had milk crates thrown at them, and were urinated on.

Duckworth was booked on three counts of misdemeanor criminal hazing (misdemeanor) and one count each of attempted second degree battery, second degree battery and false imprisonment — all felonies.

This was not Duckworth’s first brush with the law. In 2017, he was arrested following a home invasion and burglary near LSU. During a search of the home where the reported robbery took place, police found marijuana and MDMA, also known as ecstasy. Duckworth was booked on one count of possession with intent to distribute …

Honey, only two things missing – sexual assault and possession of an illegal AK47 – and you know the cops is gonna find them iffn they just look more careful.

You can read up on LSU right here on this here blog iffn you want some background on how a university becomes famous for spawning vast colonies of students like this here Li’l Cade. I mean, the place’d be nuthin without its Greek life.

‘I’ve spent my whole adult life in rarefied academic circles, where everyone has a good income and excellent working conditions. Yet I know many people in that world who are seething with resentment because they aren’t at Harvard or Yale, or who actually are at Harvard or Yale but are seething all the same because they haven’t received a Nobel Prize.’

SING IT.

Welcome to my world
Won’t you come on in?
Ivies and Nobels
Are there for me to win

Step into my heart
Leave your cares behind
Welcome to my world
Built with me in mind

Knock and all doors will open
Seek and I will find
Ask and I’ll be given
The key to this world of mine

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

Seething all the same
A hedgie lives next door
See how they rig the game
He makes ten million more

Krugman’s in the Times
Every week or two
I am far behind
In the Chronicle‘s The View

Ivy? Sure. Cornell.
But it’s rated last.
Life’s a living hell
My rage is unsurpassed

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

Related:

[T]he eliter-than-elite kids [at Ivy League schools] themselves help create a provisional inside-the-Ivy hierarchy that lets all the other privileged kids, the ones who are merely upper-upper middle class, feel the spur of resentment and ambition that keeps us running, keeps us competing, keeps us sharp and awful in all the ways that meritocracy requires.

His bullshit claims about endless bowls of soup won a 2007 IgNobel …

which he proudly lists on his web page, but neither that long-ago spoof award nor many bright red flags since then have attracted the attention of serious scientists to his methods (Fold six retractions into seven retractions; mix briskly.).

Now, as the Cornell paper reports, things are on the boil for Professor Wansink. Once Cornell has concluded its review of his research, it will call a … Wansink Conference, announcing its results.

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

Mix all thirteen retractions together and… voila!

Retraite Forcé avec Urgence.

“Breaking News: Drake Davis receives scholarship offer from Baylor.”

The witty commenters at Deadspin do it again, as Louisiana State University finally dumps professional girlfriend beater, Drake Davis.

But of course it won’t be Baylor that gives him a scholarship, much as that self-righteous institution adores violent men. It’ll be East Central Southern Mississippi All Praise To Our Savior Junior College.

You have to beat up a woman at least seventeen times to get thrown off the Louisiana State University football team.

Four, five, six, beatings won’t do. They’ll suspend you while you’re working your way through the legal system, sure, but that’s it. None of this Me Too nonsense at LSU; a man’s a man, and a football player’s a tackler.

So wide receiver Drake Davis was just arrested for multiply beating his girlfriend (an LSU student) while out on bail for having beaten his girlfriend, and I think he’s up to six arrests at this point but whatever the number he’s clearly well under the number of beatings that would trigger any serious punishment from LSU football.

A word of advice for Davis: See if you can keep it around fifteen. Fifteen is perilously close to seventeen, and I’m thinking seventeen is the absolute limit for LSU.

*******

Local commentators are wiping their brows and wringing their hands over Davis and certain others on the team.

The presence of three LSU Tigers in the toils of the law raises obvious questions about the team’s cultural values.

Pretty hoitsy toitsy phrase you got there, fella… Cultural Values… Are you uncertain if they have them, or are you wondering what they are?

UD thinks she can distill them down to something very very simple:

Louisiana State University will recruit absolutely anyone who can play football. It does not give a shit if its players beat up its students.

Scholar-Athletes Take the Field as Football Season…

begins!

“A male international student in the class made a comment during the discussion that the speaker has a ‘moral obligation’ to her audience to dress conservatively during her thesis presentation.”

That’s the moment that would have done it for me. Not my professor rather obnoxiously complaining about my decision to give a presentation in front of class wearing short shorts, but the yutz who felt free to tell the presenter (in their public presentation class at Cornell) that she was an immoral woman because of her short shorts.

There’s a long distinguished history of women protesting various forms of repression by, en masse, taking off their clothes, and Letitia Chai, Cornell undergrad, made the perfectly reasonable decision, in this classroom atmosphere, to join that movement.

Rather than obey the young man who scolded her for immorality, Chai – and a bunch of other students whom she invited to join her – presented in bra and underwear. And then of course she went viral with the protest via her Facebook page.

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

What did the male international student do in this shocking situation?

UD trusts he drew his burqa more tightly around his face so as not to see.

Alma Mater

High above Cayuga’s waters
With its waves of blue
Stands our schizoid Maximilien
Aiming right at you

Blast the shrapnel, speed it onwards
Loud explosions tell
Hail upon thee alma mater
Hail upon Cornell

High above the busy humming
Of the bustling town
Like his hero Stephen Paddock
Looks he proudly down

Lift the rifle, speed it onwards
All his classmates fell
Hail to thee our alma mater
Hail all hail Cornell

‘Should the Heisman Trophy be a character award?’

[Johnny] Manziel … won the Heisman in 2012… Other recent Heisman winners with questionable off-field problems include Auburn’s Cam Newton, who was in the middle of an NCAA eligibility investigation when he won the 2010 trophy.

In 2013, Florida State’s Jameis Winston was being investigated for a rape accusation in the middle of his Heisman run. There are more than 900 Heisman voters, and Winston was left off 115 ballots entirely. He still won the award with the fifth-largest margin ever, and he was never convicted in the investigation.

Other Heisman winners include O.J. Simpson, who was charged in an infamous murder case and later convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in a separate 2007 case. Then there’s LSU’s Billy Canon, the 1959 Heisman winner who later in life spent more than two years in federal prison as a result of a massive counterfeiting scheme.

But the only player ever to have to vacate a trophy was USC running back Reggie Bush, who was found guilty in an NCAA investigation of taking improper benefits from an agent while at USC.

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

[Last February, University of Oklahoma Heisman candidate Baker Mayfield was arrested for public intoxication.] In a dash cam video that went viral, Mayfield was seen shouting and cursing at police officers. When confronted, he attempted to run, only to be tackled into a wall. The video also showed him on the brink of crying in the back of a police car.

… Mayfield grabbed his crotch and shouted expletives in OU’s game against Kansas. Combined with the arrest and Mayfield’s flag-plant at Ohio State that caused a stir, Mayfield was forced to deliver his third public apology in less than a year.

To the Women Joining Sororities at Northwestern University: Save Time. Just Become a Moonie.

I can barely make time to attend drawn-out sorority meetings that usually consist of practicing chants, lining up at a door, or archaic traditions in a dimly-lit basement.

Prior to joining my chapter, I had no idea the time commitment that Greek life required. For events such as initiation, I’m trapped in the house all weekend, repeatedly chanting the same rituals on a loop every 20 minutes.

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

And as for further dispatches from the frats… Not sure how many of these you can take, but…

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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.
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