Agosto 16, 2014
"People used to feel sorry for us Muslim women and think we must be ashamed of ourselves for covering up..."
"... but now they see all these pictures online of us smiling and looking happy and fashionable and realize it’s not a sign of oppression," says Zulfiye Tufa, 24, who Instagrams a hijab selfie every day.
"Modesty is the opposite of what Instagram is about, so it can certainly be controversial," said Melanie Elturk, 29, founder of a Chicago company that markets head scarves and modest clothing. We're told she "tries to limit the number of selfies she posts to keep her ego in check."
Quoted in "A Makeover for the Hijab, via Instagram/Muslim Women Add Personal Style to a Traditional Garment," where I learned a new word: mipsters (i.e., Muslim hipsters). But somebody tell Urban Dictionary, which seems to think it's either a hipster in the Mission District of San Francisco ("Says things like 'Clean is the new dirty,' with no sense of humor") or a Mainstream Hipster ("They are hipster because it's the mainstream. They listen to primarily chart music, but some of this is a little indie/alternative because it's in the charts (eg Ed Sheeran)"). I wonder if there are multiple -ipster words for all the letters of the alphabet.
"Modesty is the opposite of what Instagram is about, so it can certainly be controversial," said Melanie Elturk, 29, founder of a Chicago company that markets head scarves and modest clothing. We're told she "tries to limit the number of selfies she posts to keep her ego in check."
Quoted in "A Makeover for the Hijab, via Instagram/Muslim Women Add Personal Style to a Traditional Garment," where I learned a new word: mipsters (i.e., Muslim hipsters). But somebody tell Urban Dictionary, which seems to think it's either a hipster in the Mission District of San Francisco ("Says things like 'Clean is the new dirty,' with no sense of humor") or a Mainstream Hipster ("They are hipster because it's the mainstream. They listen to primarily chart music, but some of this is a little indie/alternative because it's in the charts (eg Ed Sheeran)"). I wonder if there are multiple -ipster words for all the letters of the alphabet.
"They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole."
"... until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting — which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question — make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is."
Writes Jonathan Chait in "This Indictment Of Rick Perry Is Unbelievably Ridiculous."
Writes Jonathan Chait in "This Indictment Of Rick Perry Is Unbelievably Ridiculous."
A football note.
I think we can all agree that after the opening drive of a preseason game, Packers are now the favorites to win the Super Bowl this year.
— Christian Schneider (@Schneider_CM) August 16, 2014"Robin... was afraid Bobby [De Niro] was going to blow him off the screen."
"I said, ‘I won’t let that happen.’ So it was my job to keep Robin from being funny. We had a shorthand signal for when he got a little flamboyant, improvising," said Penny Marshall, the director of "Awakenings."
She curled her fingers tight and dropped the fist to her groin: “It meant ‘More balls.’ ”
"A recent report showed that 64% of China's rich are either migrating overseas or have plans to leave the country...."
"Politics, though, isn't the most important issue on the mind of Ms. Sun, a 34-year-old Beijing resident who's bailing out.... Her 6-year-old daughter is asthmatic, and Beijing's chronic pollution irritates the girl's lungs. 'Breathing freely is a basic requirement,' she says. The girl also has a talent for music, art and storytelling that Ms. Sun fears China's test-driven schools won't nurture."
WSJ link. Google the text if my link doesn't work for you.
WSJ link. Google the text if my link doesn't work for you.
"Rosemary's Revenge."
A nice presentation of the Rick Perry story at Drudge:
Here's the video everyone's watching:
This will raise Perry's stature, right?
Further down on the page, you can see Drudge has a "frowns" theme going:
Perry in synch with Merkel and Putin.
ADDED: Notice that in the still shot, Rosemary is making a gun-shooting gesture and the "GOTCHA!" headline implies that she's hit her target. Rosemary's last name is Lehmberg, but you won't find it on Drudge's page. She hit the big time as a first-name only person: Rosemary. "Rosemary's Revenge" sounds like the name of a sequel to the movie "Rosemary's Baby."
AND: "She talks kinda lazy/And people say she she's crazy/And her life's a mystery/Oh, but love grows where my Rosemary goes/And nobody knows like me..."
Here's the video everyone's watching:
This will raise Perry's stature, right?
Further down on the page, you can see Drudge has a "frowns" theme going:
Perry in synch with Merkel and Putin.
ADDED: Notice that in the still shot, Rosemary is making a gun-shooting gesture and the "GOTCHA!" headline implies that she's hit her target. Rosemary's last name is Lehmberg, but you won't find it on Drudge's page. She hit the big time as a first-name only person: Rosemary. "Rosemary's Revenge" sounds like the name of a sequel to the movie "Rosemary's Baby."
AND: "She talks kinda lazy/And people say she she's crazy/And her life's a mystery/Oh, but love grows where my Rosemary goes/And nobody knows like me..."
"We’ll hammer you with ten thousands tiny nails. You’ll love it."
Things I highlighted reading "The Circle" by Dave Eggers.
Overnight, all comment boards became civil, all posters held accountable. The trolls, who had more or less overtaken the internet, were driven back into the darkness...
"She has her hands all over him... Why is she touching him like that?"
"He’s just been hanging out with the wrong crowd. I told him he has to stop hanging out with those boys."
Said the mother of a 13-year-old who was allegedly chased down and held in a "bearhug" by a woman who wanted her cell phone back.
ADDED: Two women compete in a game called "Empathy."
Said the mother of a 13-year-old who was allegedly chased down and held in a "bearhug" by a woman who wanted her cell phone back.
"He was so pudgy and was slowing down, so that’s why I caught up to him," [the victim, Clara] Vondrich said, adding she felt sorry for the kid.The teen was wearing sneakers and Vondrich, 36, had on wedgie sandals that didn't even have a strap around the heel to hold them on. And we're told she held onto the kid for 2 minutes until the police arrived. This happened in Brooklyn, and of course, there are photographs of the scene, published in the NY Post, which withholds the name of the alleged thief but not the photographs of his face and the body-shaming statements about him.
ADDED: Two women compete in a game called "Empathy."
What's the whole story behind the anecdote that begins Paul Campos's Atlantic article "The Law-School Scam"?
Here's the article, which is subtitled "For-profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and socialized losses. But for their debt-saddled, no-job-prospect graduates, they can be a nightmare." That's a story we've seen many times, from Campos and others, and it's a common journalistic practice to begin with an attention-getting anecdote that's supposed to set up the sober, evidence-based analysis to follow, even though it's often not all that connected. But this anecdote is just so weird, and it's lacking in the details I would need to make sense of it even aside from whether it has much to do with the "law-school scam" topic.
Last April, David Frakt, a candidate for the deanship at the Florida Coastal School of Law was giving his job talk, we're told, discussing "what he saw as the major problems facing the school: sharply declining enrollment, drastically reduced admissions standards, and low morale among employees."
(If the lawprofs are modeling this insidious new form of classroom participation, they will get their comeuppance when students use it on them. The professor attempts to conduct a discussion, perhaps of some touchy issue like affirmative action or abortion, and the students look disengaged, but they are really having an intense discussion, hurling accusations around. The professor is a racist. The professor is a sexist. Next thing you know, the dean has been summoned, breaks into the classroom, and conducts and on-the-spot trial. Whoa! Get ready, lawprofs.)
Second, what did the faculty find so insulting that they demanded an intervention from an outsider? What would have been enough to propel Stone into the room to interrupt a candidate — mid-presentation — and kick him out? To threaten to call security?! It doesn't make sense to portray this — as Campos does — as distress over the same old "law-school scam," which is about the ratio of jobs to students and the high tuition, and so forth. Even if Frakt presented the statistics vividly and the economic situation at the Florida Coastal School of Law is dismal and disturbing, it would not justify the weird drama. The normal response would be to push the candidate with questions or to look at him blankly and, after the time for the talk was over or close enough to over, drift out of the room having decided to vote against him. It must be something more, and I'm irked at Campos for sticking this anecdote at the top as if it will make readers see the dreadful emergency that is the "law-school scam."
Can somebody email me about what really happened that day? Without more, I would hypothesize that Frakt said some things about race and/or gender that got texted into what felt like a realization that racial/sexual harassment is going on right now. I would guess that Stone got a message that the school itself was condoning some kind of harassment and that he had an immediate duty to end it. Am I right?
Somebody talk to me.
UPDATE: David Frakt has a long blog post at The Faculty Lounge detailing what he said that day he was so rudely interrupted. Does it answer my question? He doesn't know what the faculty were texting and emailing or what Stone was thinking. What could have been perceived as "insulting"? In his account: "I explained that, according to my interpretation of LSAT scores... over half of the students in the 2013 entering class at FCSL [fell] in the 'extreme risk' of failure category." I don't know the precise words or tone of voice he used, but conceivably, the statistics are so horrible that it felt intolerably insulting just to hear the facts stated. Frakt said he "suggested that it was unfair, ethically questionable, and a potential violation of ABA standards to admit students with such poor aptitude for the study of law," and he predicted that the ABA might put the school on probation, which would drive students away and exacerbate the problem. That's pretty frightening, but it's still not enough to justify cutting off his talk. It may nevertheless make Stone's unwise reaction comprehensible.
Last April, David Frakt, a candidate for the deanship at the Florida Coastal School of Law was giving his job talk, we're told, discussing "what he saw as the major problems facing the school: sharply declining enrollment, drastically reduced admissions standards, and low morale among employees."
But midway through Frakt’s statistics-filled PowerPoint presentation, he was interrupted when Dennis Stone, the school’s president, entered the room. (Stone had been alerted to Frakt’s comments by e-mails and texts from faculty members in the room.) Stone told Frakt to stop “insulting” the faculty, and asked him to leave. Startled, Frakt requested that anyone in the room who felt insulted raise his or her hand. When no one did, he attempted to resume his presentation. But Stone told him that if he didn’t leave the premises immediately, security would be called. Frakt packed up his belongings and left.First, we're seeing the way social media can work within an institution. A speaker may be in a room, experiencing dominance and control over the group by standing and lecturing while they silently and seemingly politely listen, and yet a whole revolution could be going on in text. Objections to phrasings can be texted and twittered about. No one includes the speaker, who rambles along according to his plan. The audience — instead of interacting in the normal manner of human intercourse through the ages — summons an authority from outside the room, and this clownish character rescues the passive-aggressive audience from their oppression.
(If the lawprofs are modeling this insidious new form of classroom participation, they will get their comeuppance when students use it on them. The professor attempts to conduct a discussion, perhaps of some touchy issue like affirmative action or abortion, and the students look disengaged, but they are really having an intense discussion, hurling accusations around. The professor is a racist. The professor is a sexist. Next thing you know, the dean has been summoned, breaks into the classroom, and conducts and on-the-spot trial. Whoa! Get ready, lawprofs.)
Second, what did the faculty find so insulting that they demanded an intervention from an outsider? What would have been enough to propel Stone into the room to interrupt a candidate — mid-presentation — and kick him out? To threaten to call security?! It doesn't make sense to portray this — as Campos does — as distress over the same old "law-school scam," which is about the ratio of jobs to students and the high tuition, and so forth. Even if Frakt presented the statistics vividly and the economic situation at the Florida Coastal School of Law is dismal and disturbing, it would not justify the weird drama. The normal response would be to push the candidate with questions or to look at him blankly and, after the time for the talk was over or close enough to over, drift out of the room having decided to vote against him. It must be something more, and I'm irked at Campos for sticking this anecdote at the top as if it will make readers see the dreadful emergency that is the "law-school scam."
Can somebody email me about what really happened that day? Without more, I would hypothesize that Frakt said some things about race and/or gender that got texted into what felt like a realization that racial/sexual harassment is going on right now. I would guess that Stone got a message that the school itself was condoning some kind of harassment and that he had an immediate duty to end it. Am I right?
Somebody talk to me.
UPDATE: David Frakt has a long blog post at The Faculty Lounge detailing what he said that day he was so rudely interrupted. Does it answer my question? He doesn't know what the faculty were texting and emailing or what Stone was thinking. What could have been perceived as "insulting"? In his account: "I explained that, according to my interpretation of LSAT scores... over half of the students in the 2013 entering class at FCSL [fell] in the 'extreme risk' of failure category." I don't know the precise words or tone of voice he used, but conceivably, the statistics are so horrible that it felt intolerably insulting just to hear the facts stated. Frakt said he "suggested that it was unfair, ethically questionable, and a potential violation of ABA standards to admit students with such poor aptitude for the study of law," and he predicted that the ABA might put the school on probation, which would drive students away and exacerbate the problem. That's pretty frightening, but it's still not enough to justify cutting off his talk. It may nevertheless make Stone's unwise reaction comprehensible.
Agosto 15, 2014
"A grand jury in Travis County, Texas, indicted Governor Rick Perry today. Why?"
"For exercising his constitutional prerogative by threatening to veto, and then vetoing, an appropriation to support the public corruption unit in Travis County’s district attorney’s office...."
The Travis County district attorney’s office has long been a cesspool of corruption. It was that office, controlled by the Democratic Party machine, that infamously indicted Tom DeLay for nothing. It took years before DeLay could finally clear his name, and his career was ruined.ADDED: The quote above is from Power Line. Instapundit writes:
Even many of the Dems on my Twitter feed think this indictment is a reach. But, as with Scott Walker, the Democratic Deep State is trying a spoiling attack aimed at clearing the 2016 field.
But if threatening a veto is indictable, well, how many vetoes has Obama threatened?
"The U.S. public health establishment buries overwhelming evidence that abstinence is a cause of heart disease and early death."
"People deserve to know that alcohol gives most of us a higher life expectancy—even if consumed above recommended limits."
That's abstinence from drinking alcohol. I don't know about the evidence about other forms of abstinence.
That's abstinence from drinking alcohol. I don't know about the evidence about other forms of abstinence.
"To get that ultra look, that Tilda Swinton thing, you have to go in there and strip all the melanin away."
"It’s practically like introducing albinism."
Quote from a character in a novel about race-reassignment treatments, reviewed in the NYT here.
1. Read "Black Like Me," the bestseller that seared America's conscience in the early 1960s.
2. Or — from the same era — read this short piece in Jet magazine:
3. Select something from Wikipedia's incredibly long "List of entertainers who performed in blackface." I picked Doris Day:
4. Listen to Lou Reed sing "I Wanna Be Black" one more time.
Quote from a character in a novel about race-reassignment treatments, reviewed in the NYT here.
One day Kelly meets a familiar-looking black man. This turns out to be his old friend and bandmate Martin Lipkin, a Jewish guy who has undergone what he calls “racial reassignment surgery.” Inside, Martin always felt black.Alternatives to reading that novel:
1. Read "Black Like Me," the bestseller that seared America's conscience in the early 1960s.
2. Or — from the same era — read this short piece in Jet magazine:
3. Select something from Wikipedia's incredibly long "List of entertainers who performed in blackface." I picked Doris Day:
4. Listen to Lou Reed sing "I Wanna Be Black" one more time.
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