President A. Bartlett Giamatti, in one of his only too frequent fits of political correctness, banned Yale’s traditional annual game of Bladderball for being an affront to liberal wussiness in 1982.

In previous years, individual Yale students and impromptu teams representing residential colleges, undergraduate organizations, and imaginary or facetious combinations celebrated the weekend of the Dartmouth game by battling on the Old Campus, a large quadrangle surrounded by the freshman dormitories, to keep aloft and move a 6 foot (1.8 meter) leather ball in no particular direction.

The Bladderball game was a pure scrimmage lacking specific rules or goals.

The game normally ended when some combination of persons finally succeeded in getting the Bladderball over a fence or out one of the gates of the Old Campus, whereupon a flying wedge of Yale Campus Police would seize possession of the Bladderball and hastily deflate it, terminating that year’s contest.

I recall that, one year, the undergraduate community bested the Campus Cops by successfully moving the Bladderball through New Haven streets for blocks and blocks, finally putting it over the fence into the yard of the residence of the University President on Hillhouse Avenue, as President Brewster cheered them on.

Since there was no actual set of rules or system of scoring, it was traditional for every team to compete in loudest, and earliest, and most preposterous claims of victory.

Student demand seems to have persuaded Richard Levin, the current Yale President, to do the right thing and restore a popular tradition. I noticed disapprovingly, looking at the video, that they seem to be using a lighter, synthetic ball. Still, they did get it out on to the street successfully. And, as is traditional, the team from the Calliopean Society clearly won, while Jonathan Edwards continued to suck.

The Oldest College Daily reports.

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Wikipedia entry

After the game, the Wikipedia entry for “bladderball” was edited more than 160 times. The name of the winning college changed constantly until one editor locked the page at 5:51 p.m. because of “excessive vandalism.”

This item, originally from Illinois Review, has become a viral email humor item.

Johannesburg, South Africa… A secret committee of three people of the 59th Miss World pageant, has shocked the beauty pageant world with an announcement that its judges have already chosen President Barack Obama of the United States to win the crown as Miss World 2009 and he will be crowned on December 12, 2009 at the Standton Convention Center in Johannesburg.

The 2008 Miss World, Kesenia Sukhinova off Russia , told reporters in Moscow that she was “stunned” by the news. “I swear I did not know President Obama was a contestant. The first 120 contestants were not even supposed to arrive in South Africa until Nov. 7,” Sukihinova said.

“This is so soon, it just does not seem right,” said a tearful contestant Joyce Mphande of Malawi. “President Obama did not even show up for the preliminary evening gown competition in Dubai last week.”

Another contestant, Diana Nilles of Luxembourg, said the Miss World crown for Mr. Obama is “a very good thing.” Nilles said, “We will show beauty contestants everywhere that our pageant is inclusive of diversity and we will never go back to the old pro-beauty prejudices of former President George W. Bush.”

But a very different opinion was expressed by The 2006 Miss World, Taťána KuchaÅ™ová of Slovakia who said, “This is so wrong on so many levels. I think he’s cute enough in an odd way, but he just passed up the swimsuit and all the other events. How is this fair to all the other 120 girls who have worked for this crown all year?” …

David Axelrod said at the White House that “the President did not seek this honor.” Axelrod also said that this crown should be “a source of pride to all Americans and proves that the three South Africans have “turned an important page” in rejecting “their past history of intoleance.

Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Valdimir Putin, Korean President Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez all sent telegrams of congratulations to President Obama. Brown said, “If the IOC had been as enlightened as the Miss World committee is, they could have at least had the gallantry recognize the sacrifice of Michelle Obama in going to Copenhagen and award her the 2016 Olympic Gold Medal for the Decathalon. That would have been justice for humiliating the President’s home town of Chicago in losing the host city bid.”

David Axelrod also assured White House reporters that Presient Obama’s telepompter will not be allowed to accept the Pultizer Prize for nonfiction next year should it be offered.

In evaluating the absurdity of the Nobel Committee’s Peace Prize Award to Barack Obama, as Bruce Walker suggests, it really puts the whole thing into perspective when you look at who didn’t win.

Few spectacles so clearly show the politicization of life than the surreally silly award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama. The Nobel Prize has long been a reflection of the whims of those who run political correctness. …

(For proof, consider) all the people who did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, the greatest triumph for peace in world history. Pope John Paul II boldly reached out to end the historic distrust between the Catholic Church and Jews; he also showed how passive resistance could work in Poland; he also went around the world preaching peace and love; he also forgave the Moslem who tried to assassinate him. Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but not for Peace, even though he proved, perhaps more courageously than any man in modern history, that the pen could be mightier than the sword. Konrad Adenauer worked hard for a peaceful Germany at the end of the First World War; he opposed the Nazis and spent time in a concentration camp for that; after the Second World War ended, Adenauer reunited the three western sectors of Germany and reached out to Israel and offered, without being asked, for the Federal Republic of Germany to pay reparations to Israel. None of these magnificent champions of peace won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize, like the support of Code Pink is based upon ideology and nothing else. So Obama, Gore, Carter, and Wilson have won the Peace Prize, but Reagan, who dedicated his last term in office to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and who actually won a world war without violence, does not. Willy Brandt, a thoroughly unlikable socialist West German chancellor, who left office in scandal, wins the award, while a magnificently noble conservative West German chancellor does not. So two Soviets who buy the rhetoric of the chic left – Gorbachev and Sakharov – win the award, while a much braver and clear voice for peace, Solzhenitsyn, does not?

We should know by now, if we ever needed to know, that the awards, compliments, and honors which the establishment of the world offers is offered only to those who have first paid homage to the ideology of the left. Awards given to communist terrorists, like Le Duc Tho, or anti-Semitic ogres like Jimmy Carter, are no badges of achievement: such awards are evidence of moral surrender.

Reuters photo

LA Times:

In a brazen attack on Pakistan’s military nerve center, gunmen disguised in army uniforms broke into the grounds of the country’s army headquarters today, sparking a furious firefight that left four attackers and six military personnel dead.

By late Saturday, the tense scene at the compound had evolved into a hostage crisis. As many as five gunmen remained holed up in a security building and were holding 10 to 15 security officers and civilian workers as hostages, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

The initial attack, which lasted about 90 minutes, illustrated the breadth of the militants’ ability to launch attacks virtually anywhere in the violence-wracked Muslim nation — even the epicenter of its vaunted security establishment.

At about 11:30 a.m., Abbas said, the gunmen drove up in a white Suzuki van to a perimeter checkpoint outside the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi, a garrison city adjacent to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Armed with automatic rifles, the gunmen opened fire at guards at the checkpoint, jumped out of the van and then took positions outside a second checkpoint about 330 yards down the road. Four of the military personnel killed in the siege died in that initial exchange of gunfire, Abbas said.

Officials said they believed the use of camouflage military uniforms, along with military plates on the van, probably helped the gunmen approach the first checkpoint without an initial reaction from guards. The strategy mirrored the tactics used in a suicide bomb blast at the U.N.’s World Food Program office Monday. In that attack, in which five World Food Program employees were slain, the suicide bomber wore a Pakistani paramilitary police uniform and got by the heavily guarded main entrance by asking for permission to use the restroom.

Once at the second checkpoint Saturday, the militants opened fire again and lobbed grenades at guards. Witnesses said bursts of gunfire continued to ring out for several minutes, punctuated by the sound of grenade blasts. Overhead, Pakistani military helicopters and Cobra gunships hovered.

While the gun battle raged on, some of the Army’s top generals and commanders were trapped inside the compound’s buildings. There were unconfirmed reports that explosives were found in the attackers’ van.

Police and soldiers established a cordon around the gunmen to keep them from fleeing. By early afternoon, security officials reported that four gunmen had been killed. Among the military personnel killed were a brigadier general and a lieutenant colonel responsible for security at the compound, Abbas said.

Early Saturday evening, military officials said they had traced the location of the gunmen at large to a security building within the compound, where they were holding hostage several security officers and civilian employees assigned to the army headquarters. Pakistani commandos surrounded the building, military officials said.

1:16 ITN News video

These kind of contemptible suicide attacks are really the tactic of an impotent and irrational enemy lashing out in a useless and unproductive manner. Except that in the contemporary era, the dominant voice is that of the militarily unsophisticated Western public, in whose eyes a news headline is equivalent to winning a major battle.

Terrorism’s real battlefield is in the reports of the media.

Charles Krauthammer notes that Barack Obama and the democrats painted themselves into the corner they presently occupy. Watching how they deal with the situation will be interesting. Krauthammer compares Obama to Hamlet. I think Obama is more like Aethelred the Unready.

The genius of democracy is the rotation of power, which forces the opposition to be serious — particularly about things like war, about which until Jan. 20 of this year Democrats were decidedly unserious.

When the Iraq war (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly antiwar. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war.

“I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as ‘the right war’ to conventional Democratic wisdom,” wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was elected. “This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration, but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy.”

Which is a clever way to say that championing victory in Afghanistan was a contrived and disingenuous policy in which Democrats never seriously believed, a convenient two-by-four with which to bash George Bush over Iraq — while still appearing warlike enough to fend off the soft-on-defense stereotype.

Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the “Iraq war bad, Afghan war good” posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern. No more games. No more pretense.

So what does their commander in chief do now with the war he once declared had to be won but had been almost criminally under-resourced by Bush?

Perhaps provide the resources to win it?

You would think so. And that’s exactly what Obama’s handpicked commander requested on Aug. 30 — a surge of 30,000 to 40,000 troops to stabilize a downward spiral and save Afghanistan the way a similar surge saved Iraq.

That was more than five weeks ago. Still no response. Obama agonizes publicly as the world watches. …

Less than two months ago — Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans — the president declared Afghanistan to be “a war of necessity.” Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause.

SNL answers the obvious question of what exactly Barack Obama has done in less than a year in office to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Ann Althouse explains why he didn’t get the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Bruce Kesler has 10 reasons we should all be glad Obama won, starting with: Everyone should start their day with a good laugh. My wife laughed loudly when I shouted the news to her down the stairs.

Micky Kaus thinks he ought to turn it down. Lots of luck with that.

Sometimes a review panning a film can be fun to read. C. Robert Cargill turns in an exceptionally amusing review of Lars von Trier’s new movie Antichrist, which actually contains both savage mockery and high praise.

Widely panned at Cannes by some, praised by others, and completely spoiled in the press, especially on the Drudge Report in which its final scenes were spoiled in headlines splashed across the front page (can’t find Drudge’s posting, but here’s a nice spoiler. – JDZ) It is not a nice film. It is dark, brooding, melancholy, and more than a little mean-spirited. Loaded from top to bottom with nudity, sexuality, and even a slow-motion shot that will itself ensure that this gets the dreaded NC-17 rating (as well it should for the level of adult content in this), it is at times a bit distracting. There’s so much nudity in this thing that I almost feel as if it should be renamed Lars Von Trier’s I Hate Pants! There are even a few scenes in which the characters lack pants for no good reason. But then again, there’s a lot of things in this that some would argue are here for no good reason. It is violent, bloody, and disturbingly sexual for a goodly portion of the film. Not in small doses. The majority of the film aims to offend you in one manner or another.

Read the whole thing.

Happily for me, I already know that I loathe and despise Lars Trier (who is no kind of “von” whatsoever, the “von” he uses is just a joking cinematic reference to von Stroheim and von Sternberg, who both, for very different reasons, appropriated the preposition characteristic of names of Teutonic armigers) and all his works. Trier is a representative of the worst sort of European communist sensibility. Take an airsickness bag if you plan to see this one.

Walter Olson, at Overlawyered, responds to the new FTC guidelines on disclosure affecting bloggers.

Come to think of it, I usually link books mentioned using Amazon’s Associates program, but Amazon has not had a sale from one of those in a very long time, as best I can recall. Does that count as disclosing?

Publishers sometimes send me books in hopes I’ll review or at least mention them. I occasionally attend free advance screenings of new movies (typically law-related documentaries) that filmmakers hope I’ll write about. This site has an Amazon affiliate store which has from time to time provided me with commissions after readers click links and proceed to purchase items, though it’s been almost entirely inactive for years. I get invited to attend the odd institutional banquet whose hosts sometimes give away a free book or paperweight along with the hotel meal. I’ve been sent “cause” T-shirts and law firm/support service provider promotional kits over the years, pretty much a waste of effort since I don’t much care for wearing such T-shirts and am not exactly famed for posts that sing the praises of law firms or their service providers.

Under new Federal Trade Commission guidelines in the works for some time, I could apparently get in trouble for not disclosing these and similarly exciting things. In addition, the commission’s scrutiny will extend to areas less relevant to this site, such as targeted Google advertising and results-not-typical testimonials.

Robert Ambrogi at Legal Blog Watch finds it hard to see why the blogosphere has raised such a big fuss about these rules. After all, the rules (to be precise, “guidelines” backed by government lawyers with relevant enforcement powers) make clear that nondisclosure of a single minor freebie will not in itself suffice to trigger liability but instead will be counted “among several factors to be weighed” in evaluating the continuum of behavior by individuals engaging in social media (it seems the rules also apply to Twitter, Facebook, and guest appearances on talk shows, to name a few). FTC enforcers will engage in their own fact-specific, and inevitably subjective, balancing before deciding whether to press for fines or other penalties: in other words, instead of knowing whether you’re legally vulnerable or not, you get to guess.

Olson also quotes Ann Althouse, who identifies the crucial point here quite succinctly.

The most absurd part of it is the way the FTC is trying to make it okay by assuring us that they will be selective in deciding which writers on the internet to pursue. That is, they’ve deliberately made a grotesquely overbroad rule, enough to sweep so many of us into technical violations, but we’re supposed to feel soothed by the knowledge that government agents will decide who among us gets fined. No, no, no. Overbreath itself is a problem. And so is selective enforcement.

What do you suppose are the odds that Obama’s FTC is going to go after Kos for taking “consulting fees” (Kosola) from particular democrat candidates?

“Cerca Trova” (Seek and Find) appears on a banner on Vasari’s mural of the Battle of Marciano

Only 15 surviving paintings are generally attributed in whole or in part to Leonardo. His responsibility for another six is disputed.

Dr. Maurizio Seracini, an engineering professor from UC San Diego, had been pursuing a quest to recover Leonardo Da Vinci’s largest painting, a 1505 fresco depiction of the 65 year earlier Battle of Angiarhi between Florence and Milan which once ornamented the Hall of Five Hundred in Florence, which disappeared in the course of a mid-16th century remodeling by Giogio Vasari, for a number of years.

The New York Times reports that scientific instruments are now ready to test Seracini’s hypothesis that Vasari simply walled-up the Da Vinci fresco.

“The Battle of Anghiari,” (was) the largest painting Leonardo ever undertook (three times the width of “The Last Supper”). Although it was never completed — Leonardo abandoned it in 1506 — he left a central scene of clashing soldiers and horses that was hailed as an unprecedented study of anatomy and motion. For decades, artists like Raphael went to the Hall of 500 to see it and make their own copies.

Then it vanished. During the remodeling of the hall in 1563, the architect and painter Giorgio Vasari covered the walls with frescoes of military victories by the Medicis, who had returned to power. Leonardo’s painting was largely forgotten.

But in 1975, when Dr. Seracini studied one of Vasari’s battle scenes, he noticed a tiny flag with two words, “Cerca Trova”: essentially, seek and ye shall find. Was this Vasari’s signal that something was hidden underneath? …

(N)ew analysis showed that the spot painted by Leonardo was right at the “Cerca Trova” clue. The even better news, obtained from radar scanning, was that Vasari had not plastered his work directly on top of Leonardo’s. He had erected new brick walls to hold his murals, and had gone to special trouble to leave a small air gap behind one section of the bricks — the section in back of “Cerca Trova.” …

Dr. Seracini was stymied until 2005, when he appealed for help at a scientific conference and got a suggestion to send beams of neutrons harmlessly through the fresco. With help from physicists in the United States, Italy’s nuclear-energy agency and universities in the Netherlands and Russia, Dr. Seracini developed devices for identifying the telltale chemicals used by Leonardo.

One device can detect the neutrons that bounce back after colliding with hydrogen atoms, which abound in the organic materials (like linseed oil and resin) employed by Leonardo. Instead of using water-based paint for a traditional fresco in wet plaster like Vasari’s, Leonardo covered the wall with a waterproof ground layer and used oil-based paints.

The other device can detect the distinctive gamma rays produced by collisions of neutrons with the atoms of different chemical elements. The goal is to locate the sulfur in Leonardo’s ground layer, the tin in the white prime layer and the chemicals in the color pigments, like the mercury in vermilion and the copper in blue pigments of azurite. …

Once he gets permission, Dr. Seracini said, he hopes to complete the analysis within about a year. If “The Battle of Anghiari” is proved to be there, he said, it would be feasible for Florentine authorities to bring in experts to remove the exterior fresco by Vasari, extract the Leonardo painting and then replace the Vasari fresco. Of course, no one knows what kind of shape the painting might be in today. But Dr. Seracini, who has extensively analyzed the damages suffered by many Renaissance paintings, said that he was optimistic about “The Battle of Anghiari.”

“The advantage is that it has been covered up for five centuries,” he said. “It’s been protected against the environment and vandalism and bad restorations. I don’t expect there to be much decay.”

If he is right, then perhaps Vasari did Leonardo a favor by covering up the painting — and taking care to leave that cryptic little flag above the trove.

Rubens chalk, ink, and water-color copy of Da Vinci study for “The Battle of Anghiari,” Musée du Louvre

WorldNetDaily:

Just one week before Michael Savage was scheduled to debate via video link at the Cambridge Union in England, the co-presidents of the two-century-old society informed the top-rated radio host they have canceled the event.

…(T)he invitation from the Cambridge Union Society for the Oct. 15 debate was issued in July after Savage was banned from entering the United Kingdom by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government along with Muslim extremists and leaders of hate groups.

In an e-mail today to Savage producer Beowulf Rochlen, Cambridge Union leaders Julien Domercq and Jonathan Laurence wrote, “It is with great regret to inform you of the difficult decision we have taken to cancel the event.”

Domercq and Laurence pointed to problems with the cost and feasibility of setting up the necessary video link, but they also cited “legal issues.”

“We have reconsulted with our counsel, and been informed that there are numerous legal issues with Dr Savage speaking here,” they wrote, “and so because of all of the technical, financial and legal problems involved, we have come to the reluctant conclusion that the event cannot proceed.” …

The July 2 invitation to the debate said the Cambridge Union had been following his case “with great interest” and believed he was “more qualified than anyone to talk about the subject of political correctness in American and Britain.”

The student society at the University of Cambridge wanted Savage to speak for the opposition in a debate titled “This House Believes Political Correctness is Sane and Necessary.”

The society, founded in 1815, has hosted the likes of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American presidents Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt.

The cancellation of speaking appearance by controversial political figures on the right at student debating forums at elite universities as the result of pressure from on high has quite a long tradition.

I don’t think much of Michael Savage, née Weiner, myself, but this sort of thing only ever happens to controversial speakers from the political right. The most loathsome communist, the most extreme anti-humanity environmentalist, the noisiest representative of any kind of leftwing craziness can be allowed to speak on campus. Columbia can even host Mahmoud Ahmedinejad for a speech denouncing the United States.

An invitation to George Wallace to speak at the Yale Political Union was canceled by union officers under direct pressure from Yale President Kingman Brewster in the early 1960s. A decade later, the administration intervened again, forcing the YPU to rescind an invitation to speak to William Shockley. That second time, Yale conservatives determined to test free speech at Yale simply passed the responsibility for the invitation from one captive student organization to another, as the Yale administration continued to try forcing a cancellation. When the event actually was held, leftwing activists prevented Shockley from speaking at all. The embarrassment of a second public address at Yale (the left had also forcibly shut down a speech by General William Westmoreland a bit earlier) prevented from happening by force provoked a serious reexamination of Yale University’s commitment to free speech by the Woodward Committee, which issued a report strongly affirming the principle of Free Expression.

The Woodward Report resulted in Yale being one of relatively few major universities to escape the adoption of politically correct civility codes.

It sounds like the Cambridge Union caved in the face of pressure from the Labour Government rather than from the University. Free expression in Britain is clearly in trouble not merely at the university but at the national level.

Times are hard, indeed!

The Crimson reports:

(Harvard’s) first Faculty meeting of the year kicked off without a regular staple: cookies to complement professors’ tea and coffee.

“This is the first time in modern times with no cookies,” Faculty Council member Harry R. Lewis ’68 said as he held a white mug of tea. “We are sharing the pain with the undergraduates.”

“As part of our cost-cutting efforts, we’re doing our little part here in our Faculty meetings, saving about $500 per meeting for cookies and coffee,” Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith explained during the meeting.

Hat tip to David Nix.

Marc Morano, at Climate Depot, reports on the frantic moves by the prestigious left-coast university to prevent an Irish documentary film-maker publishing an interview with an activist faculty member who switched (when the weather changed) from blaming mankind for initiating a New Ice Age to identifying human agency as to blame for Global Warming.

Stanford University has banned a skeptical documentary film from airing a climate change interview with one of its prominent warming activist professors, Stephen Schneider. After legal threats from Stanford University — apparently on behalf of Prof. Schneider — the documentary filmmakers were forced to use a blank screen and an actor had to read the transcript of Schneider’s already taped but legally banned climate interview. The skeptical global warming documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong”, set for its international premier on October 18, 2009, interviewed Schneider about his flip-flop from a coming ice age proponent in the 1970s to his current advocacy of man-made global warming fears. Schneider is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University. …

Stanford University sent a scathing letter to the documentary makers declaring: “You are prohibited from using any of the Stanford footage you shot, including your interview of Professor Stephen Schneider. Professor Schneider likewise has requested that I inform you that he has withdrawn any permission for you to use his name, likeness or interview in connection with any film project you may undertake.”

The Stanford letter concluded: “Please confirm to me in writing that you have received and will comply with Stanford’s directive that all shots of Stanford University (both indoors and outdoors) and all parts of Professor Schneider’s interview will be removed from your footage. We appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.”

Climate Depot has also obtained the exclusive pre-release video and the transcript of Schneider’s interview which Stanford University lawyers deemed too hot for broadcast. McAleer called on Stanford to withdraw the legal threat which has forced the filmmakers to use a blank screen and an actor’s voice to read the text of Professor Schneider’s interview about his changing climate positions.

“The lawyers at Stanford sent the unprecedented letter after we asked Schneider about his flip-flopping on climate alarmism,” the film’s director McAleer explained. McAleer said he is shocked at the legal maneuvering by Stanford to censor an interview with one of their most prominent professors.

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