The Harvard Crimson uncritically reports the sexual assault survey which proves that it’s a lot more dangerous to send your daughter to an elite Ivy League school than to have her walk home at midnight through the worst neighborhood in Chicago.
But, hey! at least Yale comes out on top!
A national sexual misconduct climate survey administered to universities across the country earlier this year revealed that most schools did not see a significant change in the prevalence of sexual assault compared with incident rates four years ago, according to the results released earlier this month.
The American Association of Universities survey found that among similarly sized peer institutions, Harvard’s rate of sexual misconduct tended toward average.
Harvard’s prevalence rate of “nonconsensual sexual contact†for undergraduate women was within a percentage point of both Stanford’s and Brown’s. Harvard and Stanford both saw rates of roughly 33 percent, while Brown’s rate is 34 percent. Yale’s rate is higher at 39 percent, while MIT’s is lower at 27 percent.
Martin Scorsese, one of cinema’s most venerated current directors, has decried superhero movies – the dominant force in today’s industry. The director of films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas told Empire magazine that his attempts to get up to speed with contemporary superhero films had failed.
“I tried, you know?†the director said when asked if he had seen Marvel’s movies. “But that’s not cinema.â€
He continued: “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.
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Now, Francis Ford Coppola is reported to have seconded Scorsese’s opinion with a bit more vehemence.
The director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now has joined Martin Scorsese in dismissing the dominant series of superhero films.
Speaking to journalists in Lyon following his acceptance of the Prix Lumière for his contribution to cinema, Francis Ford Coppola, 80, said: “When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration.â€
Coppola continued: “I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.â€
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I can understand these directors’ perspective. I’m also a geezer from the same generation. Like Scorsese and Coppola, I’d read some Marvel Comics, decades and decades ago, but I was never a collector or a serious fan. I could vaguely remember a few of the characters, but most of them were invented after my time, and new to me.
When I tried watching Avengers films the first several times, they were just a confusing mishmash of loud, endlessly complicated spectacles that seemed pointless, just sound and fury signifying nothing. I actually kept nodding off and losing track of who was who and what was happening.
But Hollywood kept making them, and I inevitably wound up seeing more of them. I am the sort of person who gets frustrated when he sees things he doesn’t understand, so I eventually looked up the order of the films and began streaming them one by one and making an effort to pay attention.
I came to realize that the Marvel Avengers series films provoke the kind of hostility and criticism they received from me previously and from Scorsese and Coppola precisely because they are so dense and complex and filled with fictional history and insider-jokes that cursory viewers d’un certain âge will inevitably find themselves confused as all the complicated, elaborately choreographed fighting goes by and will become alienated and bored, feeling these films were not made for them. Really, one needs to see these films multiple times and to bone up on the Marvel fictional universe and familiarize oneself with each of the hero characters, his or her history, quirks, abilities, and relationships to appreciate them. Scorsese and Coppola condescending from their rocking chairs about the Avenger films being just noisy, violence-filled kid stuff is really the same kind of obtuse Philistinism that finds the films of Bergman or Antonioni merely boring. I’d argue that their “cost of entry,” the effort and attention required to appreciate these films demonstrates per se the value and intelligent design they contain. And, if the late Susan Sontag were here, I bet she’d agree with me.
Arnold Gingrich, once upon a time the editor of Esquire.
Long ago, Esquire used to publish articles celebrating masculinity and male interests, including contributors like Ernest Hemingway. The quality of those 1930s and ’40s issues was such that people now collect them.
Today, Esquire is an excruciatingly irritating voice of metrosexual soyboy hysteria endlessly denouncing Trump and grovelling apologetically on behalf of all mankind before the idols of politically correct wokeness.
Brian Patrick Eha notes that the same thing is happening today across the entire men’s lifestyle magazine genre and subscriptions are everywhere precipitously declining.
When the culture changes,†Esquire contributing editor Wesley Yang wrote earlier this year, “each of us must either seek an accommodation or choose a hill to die on.†He was reviewing Bret Easton Ellis’s White, a collection of jeremiads, many aimed, like poison darts, at millennials, the cohort Ellis has dubbed “Generation Wuss.†The voice of an earlier generation, Ellis, who is gay, finds himself shocked by—and contemptuous of—the weak-mindedness and quickness to take offense typical of some millennials. …
In June, Hearst promoted Esquire.com editor Michael Sebastian to replace Fielden as editor-in-chief. As with Pels at Cosmopolitan, the idea is to bring a digital sensibility to the print product—while making digital the top priority. Esquire, a source told WWD, will be getting “a full Cosmo.†I take this to mean that the trends identified in this essay will only accelerate, and that the commitment to social-justice ideology will only harden; that Esquire will soon descend into the sucking morass of what Yang aptly calls “woke clickbait.†No doubt the magazine will struggle on for a time, like a punctured blimp leaking helium, deflating while still aloft, but if it grows in prominence—if the metrics that men like Troy Young care about improve for a time—it will be only as a wounded airship, once high up in the atmosphere, grows larger in the eye as it sinks slowly groundward.
Just as one can’t reinflate a leaky blimp, there is little reason to believe that Esquire’s editorial quality will improve under Sebastian, however much he juices web traffic. The great men’s magazines may eke out a lucrative afterlife hawking clothes and branding nightclubs in India; but as magazines, they are dying or dead—and the dead do not improve.
Japanese Twitter user @thumb_tani (aka Tanu) has mastered the art of balance. He uses his keen sense of equilibrium to create small, fascinating sculptures from carefully-positioned coins. Although many of us have probably attempted this same sort of coin stacking, Tanu takes these arrangements to a whole new—and totally epic—level.
Using a variety of denominations, Tanu creates intricate structures that range in shape and size. Often, he’ll first build a strong base using staggered coins. Then, he does the seemingly impossible. Tanu stands the coins upright and places them edge-to-edge without the discs falling or even wobbling. From there, he’ll sometimes stack even more coins (or other objects) on top. It’s a mesmerizing sight, but also one that you’ll want to hold your breath for. The precarious sculptures look as though they could tumble at any moment.
Have you ever eaten Froot Loops and thought, “This cereal isn’t gay enough?” Do you seek a safe space to eat your Rice Krispies? Are you concerned that your Corn Flakes aren’t sufficiently woke? Well, now Kellogg’s has the solution!
On Thursday, the gay site PinkNews reported, “Kellogg’s is launching an LGBT-themed cereal so you can start your day with maximum gay… If you’re a fan of breakfast and being gay, we have grrrrreat news for you – Kellogg’s is launching an LGBT-themed cereal.â€
And to think, we’ve been eating straight, cisgender cereal all this time.
Timed to coincide with GLAAD’s Spirit Day on October 17, they teamed up to produce the “All Together†cereal, which Kellogg’s says is the first to offer Corn Flakes, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini Wheats, Raisin Bran, and Rice Krispies “exclusively together.â€
Unlike the mix of cereal the image on the box implies, it’s actually a Limited Edition Variety Pack with 6 individual sized boxes inside, but consumers are free to create any combination they like. Froot Loops and Raisin Brain together? Let your freak flag fly, honey!
Kellogg’s chief diversity officer (why does a cereal company need such a thing??) Priscilla Koranteng said, “At Kellogg, we are firmly committed to equality and inclusion in the workplace, marketplace and in the communities where we work and live.†As part of the Spirit Day partnership, Kellogg’s is donating $50,000 to GLAAD.
I’ve found today the icing on the Australian poison cake: a deadly fungus that kills you and shrinks your brain.
Poison Fire Coral is the only known mushroom with toxins that can be absorbed through the skin, and causes a “horrifying” array of symptoms if eaten, including vomiting, diarrhoea, fever and numbness.
If left untreated, it can cause multiple organ failure or cause a person’s brain to shrink leading to death.
“The fact that we can find such a distinctive and medically important fungus like Poison Fire Coral right in our backyard shows we have much to learn about fungi in northern Australia,” Barrett said.
Guys like George Will and Bill Kristol ought to read this USAToday article and wake up.
All Andy Johnson wanted to do was build a pond.
Andy, a welder, and his wife, Katie, have four girls and a small farm in Wyoming, and they needed a place for their horses and cattle to drink and graze.
Working with state engineers, Andy and Katie spent hours, as well as most of their savings, constructing the pond, filling it with filtered water, providing a habitat for trout, ducks, herons, moose and bald eagles.
Approximately two years later, the project came to a screeching halt when bureaucrats from the Environmental Protection Agency knocked on Johnson’s door, informing him that, by building a pond on his own property without their permission, he had violated the Clean Water Act.
And so began a years-long back and forth between Johnson and the EPA, with Johnson presenting documentation from the state showing that his stock pond was exempt from the Clean Water Act and studies that showed his pond provided positive environmental benefits. The EPA, however, claimed that the rocks, sand and concrete Johnson used to create the dam and spillway were pollutants.
And the EPA — an agency in possession of armed enforcement — was not about to let Johnson live peacefully with his pond. He had 90 days to rip out the pond and fill it in or be subject to $16 million in fines.
Though he likely didn’t know it, Johnson was in good company.
In 2007, Mike and Chantell Sackett were threatened by the EPA with $75,000 a day in fines for trying to build a house on their own property, across the road and 500 feet away from Priest Lake in Idaho.
Charles Johnson, a Massachusetts cranberry farmer, spent millions of dollars fighting the agency for 22 years for the right to farm his own land. He finally settled in 2012, at the age of 80.
Kevin Lunny lost his family’s oyster company in California when the Department of the Interior granted itself limitless discretion to reissue the required permit and argued that Lunny didn’t have the right to sue.
In Alaska, the Army Corps of Engineers denied Richard Schok the ability to expand his pipe fabrication business when they claimed that permafrost — the subsurface layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the year — was actually a wetland.
All of these cases share a common feature: They arose from unelected bureaucrats making completely selective decisions about how a law should be interpreted and enforced, without the oversight or input of Congress or the public.
In bureaucrat-speak, these decisions are often referred to as “guidance documents†or “advisory opinions†and represent an agency’s way of “interpreting†regulations and statutes.
But unlike formal regulations, guidance documents simply arise from an agency’s whim. There is no transparent process with statutory requirements for ample legal justifications, cost benefit analysis and a process for public comment and assessment.
Rather, agency bureaucrats simply decide that a policy will exist, and then will it to life. They are then free to enforce it on unsuspecting Americans, who often have little clue that such a document or policy even exists.
The subjective, secretive nature of the process has led one critic to deem it “regulatory dark matter.â€
This “government by memo†is how the Obama administration effectively mandated that colleges lower the burden of proof in sexual assault tribunals on their campuses in 2011.
Two years later, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a bulletin informing that auto lenders would be liable for racial discrimination based on the makeup of their lending portfolios.
In 2015, the Department of Labor upended the entire labor market with a blog post announcing it was now classifying some independent contractors as full-time employees.
This type of murky, unclear, bureaucrat-driven style of regulating is exactly what Americans fear from the administrative state. It is, essentially, bullying by the government. Indeed, in the Sackett case, the EPA claimed the couple did not even have the right to challenge the agency’s finding in court. (The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the agency in 2012.)
The Trump administration is taking welcome steps to stop the bureaucratic bullying. With the signing of two executive orders last week, the administration is requiring that these guidance documents be subject to transparent formulation and notice before enforcement. Critically, these orders also make sure ordinary Americans have the ability to challenge the government’s determination against them.
Crime Reads interviews Lee Child on sequels and ghost writer successors.
I knew it was serious when he offered to pour me a mug of black coffee. We wandered into the kitchen and he refilled the coffee machine.
‘For the first time, I’m actually worried.’
‘About?’
‘Sales, obviously. We’ve got the new Stieg and the new Franzen coming out at the same time. It’s going to be tough.’
Lee had written a very fair and balanced review of The Girl in the Spider’s Web (by David Lagercrantz)—the Stieg Larsson sequel—for the New York Times (and kindly sent me a preview). Thoughtful. Shrewd. Pros and cons. ‘I thought your review was very fair and balanced,’ I said.
‘What I really wanted to do was to kill it. Stomp on it. Like a cockroach. It’s competition. I had to grit my teeth not to trash it totally.’
I sort of wondered what he thought of Jonathan Franzen. His name came up from time to time but I realized I didn’t know what he thought of his writing as opposed to the myth and the hype. And I wasn’t about to find out either.
I suspect Lee Child does not read Jonathan Franzen.
Blue Moon, the next Reacher novel comes out October 29th.
I read the Reacher books. They’re obviously not great art. I’d say they are not even really great thrillers. The plotting is often creaky. The conspiracies are not terribly plausible. And Reacher’s “I-want-to-wander-the-land-owning-nothing” shtick is absurd. But the fights are good, Reacher is a satisfying action hero, and they mostly satisfactorily entertain. I’m the kind of person who will read just about everything, and I find Lee Child’s books worth picking up.
Better Lee Child than that pretentious ass Franzen.
BBC: A Hellbender salamander holds a northern water snake in its jaws in this photo taken in Tennessee’s Tellico River. David Herasimtschuk says the snake eventually managed to escape after wrestling with North America’s largest aquatic salamander.
Any well-equiped caste ought to have among its conveniences an oubliette.
An oubliette (etymology: French, from oublier, “to forget”) is a small bottle-shaped dungeon, usually concealed under a trap-door. The traditional oubliette has a round bottom and is too small for a prisoner either to stand or lie down with comfort. With the trap-door closed, the oubliette is also sound-proof.
One merely arranges for one’s unwanted guests to walk over the unlocked and ready trap-door, and voilà ! the inconvenience may be forgotten.
The oubliette is the sort of colorful medieval artifact that strikes the modern reader as a good story, but probably just a story.
However, it turns out that at least one oubliette was only too real, the one in Ireland’s Leap Castle, home of the wicked O’Carrolls.
During renovation of the castle in the 1900’s, workers found an oubliette behind a wall in the chapel. At the bottom of the shaft were many human skeletons amassed on wooden spikes. When cleaned out, it took three cartloads to remove the bones. Today, the dungeon is now covered over in order to keep people away from it. It is believed that the O’Carrolls would drop guests through the trap door to be impaled on the spikes 8 feet below. A pocket watch found at the same time, dating from the mid 1800’s, shows how recently the oubliette may have been used.
