Yeah, I dunno. His version of the story sounds pretty self-serving, although it appears McQueary is now saying that he didn't go into as much detail with Paterno as he did later with the administrators.
Also, it prompted me to sign in to read the last page, and there's no way I was going to do that, so I didn't read the whole thing.
I never heard of, of, rape and a man.
Bull. Shit.
Yeah, the man who spent over half a century in locker rooms never heard a "don't drop the soap" or other prison rape jokes. He also has been very confused for years over the whole Catholic priest abuse scandals seeing as the very idea of a grown man molesting boys is beyond his imagination.
3, 4: Yeah, that part seems like he's just straight-up lying, and even though the rest of the story is just barely plausible it makes it look most likely that he's just covering his ass.
transparent bullshit. what gswift said. also, I second 7.
Former Penn State running back Franco Harris, the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer, checks in regularly and is leading a furious campaign to depose the Board of Trustees for their handling of the scandal and Paterno's dismissal.
The seeming need for Penn State alumni to publicly flog this particular element of the situation is something I continue to boggle at. I'll take Extending and Cementing the Institutional Damage for $1000, Alex. That is not to say that there should not be wholesale turnover of the Board of Trustees who 1) helped create and promulgate the deification of Paterno/football which enabled the situation in the first place, and 2) have certainly not covered themselves in glory with most of their subsequent actions (maybe Louis Freeh will sort it all out, ha!). But, "Boo hoo hoo, they were mean to Joe"? Come the fuck on. I guess there's an alternate universe where Paterno isn't so arrogant as to force their hand by slipping, At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status, into his retirement announcement, but it's not this universe.
Institutionally speaking, though, it was all a success. Through football Paterno, Sandusky, et al made Penn State a major research university, which it hadn't been before. What Paterno did was kicked it over to a fall guy. The fall guy has fallen, but there was still some energy left, so Paterno fell. Mow maybe the trustees will fall. But Penn State will not be hurt much. It will just shed individuals and carry on.
It's a bit superstitious to attribute agency to institutions, but all the roles are designed so that that happens, and institutional people sign on to those roles (and enforce them on one another) whether they know it or not. The agency of the institution is embodied in role expectations which are clearly enforced. Often people are astonished to find that they are dispensable, but usually by the time they're dumped they've already been on the other side , dumping some other inconvenient person lower in rank.
So corporate entities take away individual freedom and agency and only return it when necessary for scapegoating purposes, at the moment of dismissal. Paterno did it. Sandusky did it. Two now-forgotten administrators did it. But not Penn State. But probably none of them except Sandusky would have done it (covered up rape) except for their committment to Penn State.
And so you get the double cop out, "Rogue individuals" protecting the institution, and "Doing my job" protecting the individuals.
20: That's a really striking point.
I meant 10, but I'm sure it's true for whoever writes 20.
I repeat: Horsewhipped, small room, hatchet-wielding Andrew Vachss. Maybe a pit bull or two as well.
To continue: while Penn State did not motivate Sandusky, or approve what he did, it enabled him and tolerated him.
A quick way of summarizing #10 is the phrase "team player". Everyone but Sandusky was being a team player, literally of course in the case of the football people, but metaphorically in the case of Penn State. Sandusky was parasitizing the team in a way, but felt confident that his positive contributions would earn him a blind eye.
And many quite nice people give the best hours of their day and the best years of their lives to institutions. The feebleness of The Left faced with these machines is not surprising, given that the left is funded with spare change and staffed during people's odd hours.
Ironically, the end of leftist critique often appears to be the institutionalization of everything and everybody and the discouragement of everything that cannot be constrained.
10, 14: This isn't completely thought out, and may not be a very powerful force, but that kind of institutional loyalty can be partially counterbalanced by a kind of dumb-ass, largely hypocritical idealism. If there's social pressure for that kind of institution to present itself as valuing behaving honorably and doing the right thing, you do get at least some people who both buy into the generally toxic institutional loyalty, and believe the idealistic hype, so they actually think the institution wants them to behave well, and in the moment they do.
There were a lot of military lawyers doing defense work for prisoners in Guantanamo who did genuinely excellent work, largely motivated, as far as I can tell, by a belief that that doing their best for the detainees was what was required by the principles of the US military. Believing that the US military is predominately a noble force for good in the world is, to put it kindly, not well supported by the evidence. But having the people who are acting for it believe it is may make them behave better in the moment.
(On the other hand, if there's an organization where I'd believe this dynamic should have worked, it'd be Penn State football. I would have guessed that an underling thinking "What would Joe Pa want me to do?" would have bought the hype, and do whatever the most morally upright possible thing was in the situation. I wonder if it broke down because McQueary was actually close to Joe Pa, and so not unrealistic about the nobility of the whole football endeavor.)
I suspect that most military lawyers are not military lifers and have a primary commitment to the law, not the miltary, and are for that reason not completely trusted.
17
... I would have guessed that an underling thinking "What would Joe Pa want me to do?" would have bought the hype, and do whatever the most morally upright possible thing was in the situation. ...
Going to Paterno seems like a plausible answer to what would Joe Pa want.
And many quite nice people give the best hours of their day and the best years of their lives to institutions.
Amen to that, brother. Never, ever fall in love with a corporation. Or with Penn State, or Penn State football. If institutions were people they would be awful people because of how they are put together.
"And to be frank with you I don't know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man.
This, of course, is utterly implausible, but it's obvious that Paterno has a huge, inaccountable blind spot on this issue. After all, how could he possibly believe that this remark would be taken seriously if he didn't have some fundamental confusion about the way these issues work in the real world?
I suspect his audience for this particular lie is Paterno himself. It ties back to heebie's confabulation thread. Paterno knows that he's an honorable man. Look at all his good works! Plus, everybody tells him what a great guy he is!
How could he let this occur? Well, he's led a sheltered, virtuous life and he's not very sophisticated about teh gay and all of its evil manifestations. Given his decades-long history of unquestioned virtue, can you think of a more plausible answer?
On the one hand, I hear the part about how a man who has spent his life in lockerrooms must have heard dropped-soap jokes. On the other hand, you guys might not realize what a set of pervs and sickos you are. I talk to people who don't linger in unsavory parts of the internet all day, and they are shockingly naive. Sophisticated adults who have access and never thought to go looking through anything but the most vanilla porn. People like us who have never even read Savage Love or heard of Dan Savage, who would rock their world. If I wanted to give someone the benefit of the doubt (and I don't), I can imagine a man of an older generation, who was single-focused all his life on football, who has missionary sex with his wife weekly and goes to church and truly has never heard or thought about male rape.
It's somewhere in between 21 and 22. "Never heard of rape and a man" means "I willfully choose never to think about this kind of atrocity happening anywhere near me."
22: The thing is, though, he's a Catholic who's really involved in the church. He's heard about scandals with priests abusing boys -- maybe not in a way that he imagined would ever be an issue that he'd have to deal with personally, but he's heard of it.
Another way to put it is that there's something to 22, but 'never heard of' has to be a lie. The truth has to be something closer to 'it's such a gross thought that I considered myself entitled to stick my fingers in my ears and say 'lalalalala I can't hear you' about it.' I do feel bad for him -- he behaved terribly, but I can sympathize with his wanting to stick his head in the sand and not deal.
It had never occurred to me to think of the Catholic Church as Dan Savage for the older generation.
22: On the other hand, you guys might not realize what a set of pervs and sickos you are.
It's not about that. Even correcting for the Internet: saying you've never heard "of, of rape and a man" is claiming never to have heard the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's claiming you didn't grow up in an environment where the conflation of pedophiles and homosexuals was a major motivator for homophobia, and where small boys were told not to go into public bathrooms alone because a "fag" might attack them. That had got to be a bullshit claim coming from Paterno. Never having thought, or wanted to think, about the gory details: I can see it, and even empathize. Never having heard of it? No. Not possible at all. Bald-faced lie.
I would really like someone, in addition to Sandusky, to go to jail over this. Paterno is a good candidate.
Also, why hasn't a wave of civil suits driven the university bankrupt yet?
Also, also: any twit who calls on Penn State should appoligize to Paterno should be used as exhibit number 1 in a public trial establishing the moral depravity of the Penn State alumni.
Even leaving aside that Paterno is Paterno, you don't see many 85 year old cancer patients going to jail.
Paterno is a good candidate.
Come on, that's ridiculous. He should be ashamed of himself because he knew there was an issue and he didn't do anything effective. But he did report what he knew to the college administration, and he's got no legal obligation to do anything else. No one goes to jail for not reporting a crime unless there's some specific obligation to report, and Paterno didn't have an obligation to do anything but go to his superiors.
29: It ain't just Penn State alums making crazed demands for apologies to Paterno. (In fact a very good friend of ours was banging on about it, bizarrely.)
It's funny, I can both think Paterno acted contemptibly and think that Penn State had a lot of chutzpah firing him. "You negligent bastard -- all you did about this terrible problem was report it in a manner that got to the highest levels of the PSU administration! You have shamed PSU by failing to report the crime to some entity that was going to do something about it -- any idiot would have known that PSU was going to cover it up, and to go to the police instead." That's basically true as a description of what he did wrong, but PSU is in a very poor position to criticize Paterno on that basis.
You guys are right: he must have heard references to abuse and pedophilia. But I can believe those were rare and sanitized, and he didn't choose to think about them. I'd believe "it never crossed my mind" rather than, I've literally never heard of it.
I find the notion of bankrupting a public university to be more ridiculous. Leaving aside just how much money Penn State has (because I don't want to look it up), it has nearly 100,000 students. You can't even damage it seriously without making a huge hit on higher education in Pennsylvania. Most of the people you would be punishing don't have a real option that isn't massively inferior.
That still doesn't work, though. He couldn't have understood what McQueary was upset about at all unless he understood that it had something to do with sexual abuse. Unless the possibility of sexual abuse was in his mind, McQueary would have been babbling nonsense.
What I just cannot believe is that there haven't been any more. I mean, obvious this one horrific case is an outlier. But in an institution as big as Penn State, the idea that there haven't been any other offenders is just crazy. And these last few months would have been the perfect time for someone to get something off their chest and report it, or report it more stridently than in the past.
The fact that there hasn't been any such story -- that, more than the alumni queuing up in suburban Philadelphia to castigate the university for its nerve in firing Paterno, is what tells me there hasn't been anything resembling policy change.
Reporters are like sharks. If there was a hint of blood in the water about anyone else, they'd have covered it. Probably stupidly, implying that Penn State was more subject to hosting pedophiles than any other big institution, but certainly covered it.
Not a peep. Business as usual.
37: Man, I don't get that at all.
"Sue the school out of existence" may have been a bit of an overstatement.
It sure as hell looks, though, like a bunch of people got together and decided to cover up a horrible crime because it would make the university look bad. Actually, colleges do this with sexual assault all the time. I would just like for once, for once, for someone not to get away with this kind of craven behavior.
There's a real general problem with how to punish a bad institution. Firing the decisionmakers, certainly, but breaking up a bad institutional culture is hard.
Maybe he has well-developed skills of letting something skim his attention and not lodge in his mind. Especially useful in the college sports world, with all the association policing. And to be clear, that would still leave him morally, if not legally, culpable.
There's a real general problem with how to punish a bad institution. Firing the decisionmakers, certainly, but breaking up a bad institutional culture is hard.
Allow them free speech and secret campaign donations.
40: Yeah, something needs to be done about this. I don't know what, though, as larger consequences like dissolution (get this dangerous institution off our streets!) get invariably painted as punishing people not responsible. And it's even worse with universities which do have more inherent value. Maybe some kind of intermediate step where the entire management, both top and middle, is fired?
40: There's a real general problem with how to punish a bad institution.
Every Limited Liability Corporation must have a life span written into its charter, and after that life span it is destroyed. That's how they started - they were incorporated for a specific reason, like building a bridge, and a relatively short amount of time. Why should they be exempt from the same limitations real human citizens have?
Our problem is what to do with the existing ones? I say look back on when they were incorporated and give them, say, 110 years. Yeah. The only problem with that is that they do not want to die, and they have so much power we can't kill them. But seriously, what do you do with a monster you won't kill? You call it Daddy, that's what.
Not a peep. Business as usual.
There was the Syracuse basketball case.
44: I put that in a Lexicon game once. Trouble is, how do you keep the assets from being transferred in a new corporation? And even if you figure that out, how do you justify putting all that productive capacity in turmoil on the basis of an analogy?
Can you imagine if nation-states had fixed lifespans? That would put an end to a lot of nationalist bullshit.
Imagine if penguins had fixed lifespans and when they sensed the end was near they were filled with an irrestiable desire to die as close as possible to Arlington, VA.
47: That reminds me of Richard Nixon's table talk about the lifespan of the state of Israel.* Which reminds me of Israel's nuclear weapons. And now I'm depressed.
* If memory serves, he compared it expressly to the Crusader kingdoms.
The fact that there hasn't been any such story -- that, more than the alumni queuing up in suburban Philadelphia to castigate the university for its nerve in firing Paterno, is what tells me there hasn't been anything resembling policy change.
Reporters are like sharks. If there was a hint of blood in the water about anyone else, they'd have covered it. Probably stupidly, implying that Penn State was more subject to hosting pedophiles than any other big institution, but certainly covered it.
I don't get what you're saying here.
A) Reporters are frantically looking for other pedophiles connected to Sandusky, and victims now know there are plenty of places to tell their story
B) These reporters haven't found anything
C) Penn State is no more likely to have other pedophiles than other big institutions
D) Therefore there is still a big story here at Penn State being covered up.
Meanwhile, however badly you've fucked up, you haven't fucked up as badly as this guy.
Yeah that was really something, about the ship captain.
Can you imagine if nation-states had fixed lifespans?
I recently ordered Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe on the strength of the review in the LRB (sadly not online). I haven't started it yet, however, and am unlikely to have time to do in the next couple of months.
But it sounds fascinating, and is supposed to be about what it looks like when nation-states come to the end of their lifespan.
I think the FBI crime reporting desk only recently became aware of the issue.
Trouble is, how do you keep the assets from being transferred in a new corporation?
With laws.
54 Which 'nation-states' would these be? I can think of a bunch of states with strong collective nobility-dynastic or other pre-modern identities (e.g. Burgundy or Venice), but not anything that resembled a nation state.
54 Which 'nation-states' would these be? I can think of a bunch of states with strong collective nobility-dynastic or other pre-modern identities (e.g. Burgundy or Venice), but not anything that resembled a nation state.
"Nation-state" was probably an overstatement, written to tie into the comment to which I was responding.
It looks like Burgundy is one of the states that he discusses. Here is a useful review.
Yeah that was really something, about the ship captain.
The story's been all over the news in Alaska, where the cruise ship industry is a big deal. Apparently it was even worse than that Guardian story implied, in that after he told the Coast Guard commander "I'm going" he did not in fact go back to the ship but stayed on land, where the cops eventually arrested him.
I'd bet the cops found it easier to arrest him that way. No messing with small boats.
I didn't know I had such strong notions about the role of ship captains, but it turns out I do.
Mind you, the deputy mayor who went aboard the sinking ship was pretty impressive. That's so Italian - one level of power gets utter cynicism and bungling idiocy while another gets awe-inspiring, holding-civilisation-together commitment to public service, one gets captain "abandon ship? I haven't abandoned ship!", one gets the HH-53 pilot who was keeping the 6 or 7 different agencies' helos from running into each other or the sea or the island at low level in the dark.
I can't stand sky caps who drop luggage for similar reasons.
I'd bet the cops found it easier to arrest him that way. No messing with small boats.
It sounds like by that point everyone was so pissed at him that they would have gone to great lengths to arrest him by any means necessary.
I kind of love the sea captain. "Oh shit whoops this sucks I'm outta here!"
"Maybe if I just keep walking away from the ship no one will ever notice."
He never heard of a rock and a boat.
68: Nice.
Amusing: the part where he tells the coast guard he's abandoned ship, but of course not like, abandoned abandoned or anything, because after all he's hanging out and chilling sort of nearby. I guess that's like the difference between loving someone and being in love with them.
"Baby, I'm with you but I'm not going down with you."
60: If only I could do justice to the quote about "messing about in boats" but it's bedtime and there's three-way whining (Lee got to go out for the evening because I decided she should go to the garden club meeting since I'd committed not to leave her with all three when they're awake since she lost her temper back in December) and they're not old enough for Kenneth Graeme, or at least I don't have the patience to enforce chapter books.
It seems like the best-case scenario for a cruise is a lousy trip where you don't really visit anywhere for more than a glancing moment. Why anyone goes on cruises boggles the mind.
C'mon, Stanley, how could you not want to go on the R. Kelly theme cruise? It sets sail in October.
Most people who go to Mexico seem to do the same thing that people do on cruise ships, lounge around, drink, flirt, engage in very, very light entertainment like beanbag and shuffleboard. Being in nice weather in winter is a big feature. As I understand, the vacation-provider strives to offer a relaxing, comfortable, unchallenging, and undemanding experience.
Cruises can be a pretty affordable way to visit some places that are otherwise hard to get to.
73: Yeah, you pay for your ticket (ticket),
And you pack up your luggage (luggage),
And you get on the cruise ship (cruise ship),
Put your clothes in the closet (closet, closet, closet).
Here is the scariest part (so far) of the R. Kelly cruise:
Should you not have a guest or friend joining you, Concerts Cruise reserve the right to match you with a cabin mate of the same sex, from Concerts Cruise other guests on the cruise.
Don't do it, 14 year olds!
The Kid Rock theme cruise sets sail in April. Unfoggedcon?? It seems like our crowd
Actually, the Lynyrd Skynyrd theme cruise might be the worst idea. Want to get away from the confederate flags? Oh shit you can't YOU'RE ON A BOAT. I will personally pay for any Unfogged commenter to go on that, unless it seems like you might actually have fun.
I like being on boats, but being on a cruise ship doesn't attract me much. But this Caribbean cruise that has four concerts by Richard Thompson tempted me. Luckily it was sold out when I found out about it.
Halford, send bob and Emerson on a National Review cruise. Prediction: bob will be won over and Jonah will have taken out a restraining order on Emerson.
A Supposedly Fun Unfoggedcon We'll Never Do Again?
81 is funny. I always squint at those Nation cruises -- and I guess National Review has them too. Do people really want to do that? A rubbing elbows kind of thing, I thought, for which people in enough money will pay. It's like a fundraiser for the magazine, basically.
There are knitting cruises that feature stops at fancy yarn shops and whatnot. I can kind of appreciate the appeal of lying on a lounge chair purling my heart out or heading into a soulless conference room for classes on some new technique.
It's pretty hard to top the horror of the National Review cruise, true. I think I personally would have a worse time on the "Baltimore to Bahamas" scrapbooking cruise, though. At least on the NRO cruise you could get drunk and get into fights, but Baltimore to Bahamas is a fucking long way to scrapbook.
And what of the singles cruises? Erotic or depressing? Both? I can't decide.
50: OK, sorry, finally getting back to this thread. What I was trying very awkwardly to say is: Penn State is full of claims that this is appalling and horrifying etcetera etcetera. I have no doubt that the people who are saying those things honestly believe them. But the true test of something like this is whether there has been any change in how the institution operates -- that is, whether a similar case would be handled any differently today.
If we are to believe the higher-ups who say they are shocked and appalled, then we have to think yes. But the fact that zero other cases have been publicized leads me to believe that in fact not much has changed. It's too gigantic an institution for there to actually be zero other cases of sexual assault or even misconduct.
I realize this sounds harsh. I do know that change is hard, especially when it requires overcoming powerful institutional inertia. I dealt firsthand with a $3 billion institution dealing with a somewhat smaller disaster, and as far as I can tell several years later there has been no lasting change.
Maybe I am wrong about Penn State and people who now see or suspect things are bringing them to the authorities and action is being taken. I would like very much to be wrong.
Witt, what would you think about going on a cruise with 3,000 drunk Lynyrd Skynyrd fans? And liveblogging it?
86: Being in a "singles" space is kind of weird. I think the 2d comment I ever left on unfogged was about the time I unknowingly went grocery shopping during their "singles hour." I was getting cruised/checked out/how-you-doin'd constantly and was like, wow, I am just. that. hott. No.
I think I would get sick of Sweet Home Alabama very quickly.
89 -- were you in the 1970s?
What if you go on the singles cruise and don't hook up?
90: Yea. About once or twice a quarter is enough.
Let me see
INFP, with an 89 on the 'I' scale
No cruises for me, I am not about to start drinking again, and I wouldn't know what else to do in those crowds of chirpers but drink myself insensate or jump overboard.
If you got the money, a 20' sloop or schooner or whatever, I know nothing, but wouldn't mind sailing around the Caribbean for a couple weeks. Townes instead of Ronnie.
With or without Emerson or anyone else who knows jib from starboard. Not Goldberg.
90: My guess is that you'd probably get tired of getting hit on by old drunk good old boys a lot sooner.
"Good old boy" is folk psychology, but it sure as hell is useful in drug-alcohol counseling. Probably much more useful than whatever term she uses for them in her reports.
87 is right. I'm currently part of a committee investigating a recent episode at my university. This episode was, in some ways, nowhere near as bad as what happened at PSU. But in some ways it was worse, as it involved the campus police acting in a way that they were, it seems, trained to act. Regardless, it's already clear that nothing of substance is going to change. The scapegoats have been identified and fired. The upper administrators, who probably should bear ultimate responsibility for what happened, will not be disciplined in any way. Several regulations will change, I'm sure, but not in such a way as to prevent the very same thing happening again. And our committee has been, in ways both small and large, completely co-opted by people who, in the name of protecting the institution, will shield the real evil-doers. It is to puke.
Is there anyone here who's not "I"?
81 is awesome. You'd have to pay me a fair bit to go on a NR cruise.
What about a world of Warcraft cruise? The ship forms a new pack or whatever they're called and everyone is in it. Start at zeros, and whoever gets the most XP or golds or whatever gets comped.
81 is awesome. You'd have to pay me a fair bit to go on a NR cruise.
What about a world of Warcraft cruise? The ship forms a new pack or whatever they're called and everyone is in it. Start at zeros, and whoever gets the most XP or golds or whatever gets comped.
This South American knitting cruise actually looks pretty great. Around the Horn from Valparaiso to Buenos Aires with a stop in the Falklands.
Hey, JP! I was just hoping you were around. What are the Aleutians like? Have you been? Are they worth visiting?
101 -- better knit fast, shit is getting cold.
I'm glad 102 didn't show up in the divorce thread.
96: I was on the E/I boarder when I took it years ago. Unless I wasn't and forgot. Anyway, I'm not really good at not talking for long periods of time.
102: Never been. I'm sure they're definitely worth visiting, though (if you're me). Cool, foggy, wet and windy, however--generally 50s in summer, all time high of 78°. If you like birds, mammals of the sea, volcanoes, rocks and remoteness they'd be great. I'm sure teo has some workmates who can be much more specific. They stretch a looonggg way.
Guys who can hand-stretch a long ways are in huge demand on the Aleutian Islands.
Although one thing about the length of the archipelago is that the different parts of it are pretty different. Dutch Harbor is one thing, whereas Kiska is quite another.
||
In light of the impending darkness tomorrow, I just want to ask: will this place will be open? My compulsively refreshing personality needs the drug.
|>
Teo, as far as Aleutians go, we're mostly lumpers around here. We just want a few words telling us what the Aleutians are like. We're not so much into the unique little snowflakes.
We just want a few words telling us what the Aleutians are like.
Cold, stormy, really fucking far away from everything else in the world.
No. But I wasn't before either, so it's not your fault.
In light of the impending darkness tomorrow
I can understand how taking down Wikipedia for a day can serve as a sort of message, but I have to admit I'm a little puzzled at some of the more obscure webpages I visit occasionally following suit. Inconvenience your readers without attracting any attention whatsoever from Big Censorship! Doesn't seem like a very compelling idea.
The differences mostly have to do with the presence or absence of people, unexploded ordnance from WWII, erupting volcanoes, etc.
Throwing unexploded ordinance into volcanoes sounds like a hobby with growth potential.
110: Dutch Harbor is one thing, whereas Kiska is quite another.
Pro-tip: The weather description in 106 applies to both. Or on preview, what teo said under duress.
Anyway, if I had the opportunity to visit the Aleutians I would totally go.
Throwing unexploded ordinance into volcanoes sounds like a hobby with growth potential.
If you ever want to try it you now know where to go.
121: I think I probably will. The issue is time, as it's not easy to get there, particularly given that I really don't want to fly on little planes.
I really don't want to fly on little planes.
This could be a problem.
On the other hand, there's no way in hell you're getting there without going through Anchorage, so: meetup!
I really don't want to fly on little planes
Have you considered the Lynyrd Skynyrd party cruise?
96: Is there anyone here who's not "I"?
Sometimes it's like I might as well not even exist at this school on this blog.
(Not that I'd really expect you to notice other than that being the comment which immediately followed the one where you introduced MB test in the other thread.)
Emerson doesn't even see extroverts.
This, this is surely the nadir of all cruises:
Come Lords & Ladies to the...Renaissance Festival Cruise 2012. Rub - a - Dub - Dub... A ton of wenches on a tub!
"Also, Dr. Monica Ganz will be joining the Renaissance Festival Cruise! Dr. Ganz is one of the countries leading speakers on healthy living and weight management. She will be speaking several times throughout the cruise and you are invited!"
Also, Dr. Monica Ganz will be joining the Renaissance Festival Cruise! Dr. Ganz is one of the countries leading speakers on healthy living and weight management. She will be speaking several times throughout the cruise and you are invited!
The photo album is pretty hilarious too.
teo is so helpful with the formatting.
I mean by the third day someone would surely end up being bludgeoned to death by turkey drumsticks. Like Dr. Monica Ganz.
Shouldn't the Ren Faire people be on a period-appropriate sea vessel? I call shenanigans.
I wonder if they have karaoke. "Don't Stop Believing" sung by someone dressed as Torquemada would be good.
I wonder if they have karaoke.
Oh, they do. Look at the pictures.
The costumes in the album are mostly kind of lame, though.
Shouldn't the Ren Faire people be on a period-appropriate sea vessel?
Caravel cruise!
Also, I bet not even a single person dies of scurvy. POSEURS.
79: You know, I came very close to being run out of town at my first college for publicly opposing the display of Confederate battle flags. And if you sent me on the cruise I would promise to wear a muscle shirt that would show off my J0hn Br0wn and H4rr/et Tubm4n tatt00s. I would also wear a Union-blue forage cap if you threw in the flight and a per diem.
I am utterly charmed to discover that there are such things as knitting cruises and Renaissance cruises. Human beings are just the greatest.
That is some weird-ass google-proofing, Nat. Either fly that flag high, or don't fly it at all, I say.
I think Harriet Tubman might have died sometime in the past couple of years or so.
He's not google-proofing; that's what the tattoo actually says.
Well, whatever, I mean, I'm probably pretty identifiable on here anyway, certainly those writing-comparison programs could probably figure it out in 8.1 nanoseconds.
139: Well I did see a Rick Springfield cruise.
149: How visible are your tats?
Also, sorry for 147. I wasn't thinking of it as people might be googling your tattoo.
I also meant to say to you the other day, Nat, when you seemed really down about your activism, that I hope you feel better about things soon. Odds are that you've made the world a better place, that you've provided a model for young radicals who otherwise might have moved on and taken a brokerage job or something. Anyway, solidarity and shit.
I am seriously now fantasizing about that South American knitting cruise. Goes places I'd love to see, and it's November 7-20. Where better to avoid post-election navel-gazing than on a ship with knitters in another hemisphere.
Oh, it's not that big a deal. You can't even see them with a normal t-shirt, so I'm basically just g-proofing from friends and family and the NSA.
Shorter 153: The tenurati have your back.
I've been to the Pribilofs. Never been to the Chain. Maybe next time.
Note how Von Wafer has been studiously avoiding the topic of his Aleutian trip ever since I brought up the prospect of a meetup.
I can picture a rom com of a two recently rebuffed lovers meeting on the knitting cruise and falling madly in love after a series of initial awkward encounters. Title: No Strings Attached.
159: I'll tell you what. Make sure Josh is there, and I'll show.
Also, wait just a second! Nice job making me feel guilty, Jew. How many times did I offer you a spot in our graduate program? How many? We could have met up every day!
teo, on the other hand, springs for a solo venture on the Aleutian cruise, meets an attractive and eloquent mate, and the two pair up. Title: Going Dutch Harbor.
http://www.travelalaska.com/Destinations/Communities/Pribilof%20Islands.aspx
Really, it's quite wild. A mad scene.
VW, you should just go directly to offering him a spot on your faculty. Take his Chaco blog to be his dissertation.
153: I appreciate that. I have been feeling really conflicted, as regular readers know, about continuing with stuff, especially over the last 4 months or so. We did start organizing again for the main activist project I'm involved with, and that was ambiguous. On the one hand, I've got lots of ideas, and some enthusiasm, on the other hand I'm not sure how much I can do this year (esp. with the election) and not completely burn out.
It's hard to get away from this feeling that "we few" just keep getting fewer. But the other people in the scene that I complain about that to, are also joining this project this year, so that's nice. I was going to write a FB note tonight about some activist thoughts, but then got distracted and now have lost steam. Perhaps I can do it later this week.
I am still ambivalent about being an election judge again. If I do, I'm contemplating registering as a Republican, for a variety of reasons (the main one being that I can pretty much always count on a placement, and very likely on going wherever I want. We'll see.) I'm pretty sure the voter ID stuff is dead in the water here in MN, but if it did somehow pass with a veto-proof majority (vanishingly unlikely, I think), I was considering being a judge and then doing some kind of protest while in my role. That isn't really my style, but the whole reason I became an election judge was to try to make sure that, at least in my precinct, everyone who could vote would get to vote.
I gotta take better care of myself though. Not going to do anyone any good in the sepulchre.
163: Alternate title: Unalaska No Questions, I'll Tell You No Lies.
Heh, just innocently tried looking something up on Wikipedia.
166: Sometimes you've got to pick stuff to do based on what you find fun, enjoyable, or fulfilling at the moment, rather than what you think might be most needed. Give yourself a break. You'll be better at something you enjoy than at something that feels like drudgery, and you can recharge and get back to heavier lifting later.
Alternately, the film could feature Teo going on one of those pop-science cruises, to Peru, where noted botanists and agro-historians would discourse on the origins and functions of various root vegetables. But then the ship would be attacked by pirates, and Teo would have to organize a small band of scientists and wealthy dilettantes to fight back, making improvised weapons from the the ship's stores of various tubers. You could call it Neep Rising.
168: I'm glad I got to learn about the Skeleton Army before it shut down.
How many times did I offer you a spot in our graduate program? How many?
Too many, judging by your recent thoughts on the prospects of your graduates. Although if you decide to take up neb's suggestion I'm all ears.
Also on the activist front, one of my friends asked me, out of the blue, for extensive advice about another organization which is having financial difficulties. So that was very gratifying.
And my editor is really enthusiastic for me to write him a couple of pieces in the near future.
So, you know, the bread doesn't always land butter-side down.
It does if you butter both sides.
Maybe the crust should get some butter also. Just in case.
Wait, is wikipedia down already? I still see it.
Title: No Strings Attached
I don't think that would make for a good yarn.
Searching for "neep" took me to the Scots wikipedia, which I did not know existed.
It's like the internet version of that Twilight Zone episode with the guy who just wants to read.
Damn it. Where can I find someone to fix my glasses?
So, anyway, I thought I was IN-Thinking-Feeling but then I looked it up and Thinking and Feeling are opposites so I couldn't be both, so I guess I don't remember.
I am certainly not going to leave 7 more comments in quick succession just to fill up the sidebar.
176: Can they be trying to deduce your time zone via your IP information? Teo, look something up on Wikipedia.
Never mind: Readers who come to English Wikipedia from the United States will see a message from Wikipedia about SOPA and PIPA that encourages them to contact their representatives or senators, and readers everywhere will be encouraged to share their views via social media. This protest will last 24 hours - from midnight to midnight EST. [Emphasis added.]
Get off our ARPAnet, you foreigner.
So, anyway, I thought I was IN-Thinking-Feeling but then I looked it up and Thinking and Feeling are opposites so I couldn't be both, so I guess I don't remember.
The options for the fourth one are Judging and Perceiving.
Teo, look something up on Wikipedia.
Yeah, it's down for me too. The part where they ask for your zipcode is interesting; I'm sure Don Young will be all ears.
You can still test whether Alaska is part of the United States, teo.
You were fast and I didn't preview. 193 written in innocence of the results in 192.
Party Down stars Ken Marino? That is a problem. You people should warn me.
And in addition to Ken Marino, most of the cast of Veronica Mars is in this show.
196: He gets abused endlessly, if that helps.
Well, it looks like a whole bunch of webcomics are doing SOPA protests, to varying degrees.
190 is false. English Wikipedia is blocked world-wide.
Yeah, I eventually started getting blocked from here.
And now that I've posted that comment, I see that I still have access. There's a message saying that edits are locked, but the articles are readable.
Oh. If you have noscript installed and you don't allow wikimedia to run scripts, you don't get sent to the blackout page. Someone alert the hordes of desperate college students! (This means the block is actually hilariously easy to circumvent; maybe they're trying to make a point.)
Shorter 153: The tenurati have your back.
160, 177: There is in fact a series (two book so far, as far as I know) of knitting romances and yes, of course they're "yarns." The woman who writes them was a well-known knitting blogger back before ravelry took over. She's gay, but the main romance stuff is straight.
I have a friend who did a South American cruise where when you got off the ship, you'd be assigned a horse and go riding and camping for several days at a time. That made more sense to me than most cruises do.
The combination of horse-riding and the sea would be my wife's dream holiday, assuming the sea was warm enough to swim in where the boat was anchored. We went on a boat trip in Turkey a few years ago where you could dive/swim from the boat, and even though the boat was crowded it was still a pretty idyllic day out. The more traditional massive floating Butlins type cruise, I wouldn't fancy.
202: 190 is false. English Wikipedia is blocked world-wide.
Hmm, that was directly from the "SOPA and PIPA - Learn more" Wikipedia page at the time. I see that it now reads differently, Wikipedia is protesting against SOPA and PIPA by blacking out the English Wikipedia for 24 hours, beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time.
I have a friend who did a South American cruise where when you got off the ship, you'd be assigned a horse and go riding and camping for several days at a time. That made more sense to me than most cruises do.
That pretty much sounds like the Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin spent weeks ashore doing things like lassoing cattle, chewing coca leaves, getting involved in revolutions, avoiding earthquakes and discovering new species. WHY HAS THIS NOT BEEN FILMED YET.
Modern actors aren't capable of producing the necessary facial hair.
I'm sure the BBC has filmed it. Googling, they have.
Darwin didn't have much of a beard in his globe trotting days, either.
213: His relationship with the Beagle's captain could have used one.
Since 205 already posted a way around it, I guess I can too? Should I? I'm tots in solidarity with them. I guess not, but anyone with a smart phone should already know.
"it" being the wikipedia blackout.
All you cruise-haters probably hate Disney World, too.
219: Winning! ... wait, wrong confused Brat Packer.
215: A dumb joke. Some biographers try to make a great deal of narrative (!) hay out of Darwin's failed friendship with the very religious Capt. What's-his-name, as though the voyage weren't interesting enough.
Nothing is more interesting than a guy drawing 800 pictures of birds and putting beetles in a box. Nothing.
221: Ah, I didn't know. Of course it stands to reason that Darwin would have come under the eye of the "Victorians? All Secretly Gay You Know" school of historiography. Seems unlikely from his letters, which get quite enthusiastic about the local female population of pretty much every harbour the Beagle visited.
...The captain was Fitzroy, btw. Later went potty and became an active creationist.
Satyriasis is a form of homosexuality. Everyone knows that. Prime example: Norman Mailer. Living a lie. he could run, but he couldn't hide. Also, Warren Beatty.
Nothing is more interesting than a guy drawing 800 pictures of birds
Ken Russell presents:Audubon!
222: IF BEING INORDINATELY FOND OF BEETLES IS WRONG, I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT.
222: ACTUALLY, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT HE WAS PUTTING IN THOSE BOXES.
Later went potty and became an active creationist.
But an important figure in the history of scientific meteorology. Not just an anti-science nutter.
I recall that going potty was something of a family tradition for the Fitzroys. I can't look it up because Wikipedia is broken.
Faraday, a Sandemanian, was a religious nutter who is primarily known as a scientist.
His faith gave him the courage to turn down a government request that he develop poison gases for use in the Crimean War. .
229. Yeah, he was a nephew of Lord Castlereagh, a British Foreign Secretary who topped himself while the balance of his mind was, as they say, disturbed.
Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.
(Byron)
I recall that going potty was something of a family tradition for the Fitzroys.
Yes it was. That's why he wanted Darwin along; he reckoned that five years of solitude in the Beagle's stern cabin would probably tip him over the edge and he wanted someone along he could talk to.
Speaking of over the edge, the coffee pot is broken.
The coffee pot is broken and it is below freezing outside. I'll have to walk three blocks to get another.
Castlereagh was one of the most hated British politicians ever and was often lumped with Metternich, both by enemies and by admirers like Kissinger. Byron gloated about his suicide.
The piece I linked is about as positive is it could get.
You should be all in favour of him, John. It was his idea that the British didn't really put the boot in at the Treaty of Ghent.
Not just an anti-science nutter.
Evolution was just a bridge to far for a number of "important" scientists. Louis Agassiz is an interesting case, really led the fight to gain recognition for the Ice Ages (and knock back those who attributed all of that evidence to The Flood) but was an ardent creationist, and his important geologist/Harvard cred is trumpeted by creationists to this day ("Louis Agassiz: Anti-Darwinist Harvard Paleontology Professor" by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.) . Wikipedia may be inaccessible, but Creation Wiki is not, so I can quote this delicious bit:
Agassiz tried to recreate Darwin's trip to the Galapagos Islands so he could experience Darwin's discovery. When making it to the Galapagos, his beliefs were shaken because of the strong evidence of evolution. However even with that fact he still held strong to the idea of a designer. Agassiz tried to recreate Darwin's trip to the Galapagos Islands so he could experience Darwin's discovery. When making it to the Galapagos, his beliefs were shaken because of the strong evidence of evolution. However even with that fact he still held strong to the idea of a designer.
From the link:
"In his wonderful new Life of Castlereagh, John Bew quotes stinging ripostes from our own Hazlitts, A. A. Gill, John Lloyd and David Aaronovitch."
I've got to say that I rather warm to someone who is detested by Byron, AA Gill and David Aaronovitch. Appointing Wellington and helping end the slave trade are bonuses.
238: I quote everything twice!
I was briefly confused by this family tradition of going potty. (Shut up, I was reading a baby book.)
239. Hazlitt must be revolving in his grave at being mentioned in the same sentence as Aaronovitch.
The coffee pot is broken and it is below freezing outside. I'll have to walk three blocks to get another.
- fragment of an early draft of "Swipple Blues"
WHY HAS THIS NOT BEEN FILMED YET.
One of my bandmates played Darwin in a brief scene for some documentary (maybe The History Channel?). I don't know if it ever aired, admittedly.
If he'd played a Nazi, you'd be sure it would air.
MJH's 'Coffee Blues' would suggest that the Moby should be posting about his coffee troubles in the gossip thread.
Yeah, and he killed a lot of Irishmen too. He should be a saint for contrarians who think of themselves as the only adults in the room, like Cheney, and in fact was/is a saint for Kissinger.
We have a second coffee pot. Hooray.
Castlereagh would be nobody's saint. He, like the rest of the administrations he was part of, was given to brutal repression of internal dissent, both in Ireland (he was Irish) and in Britain. On the other hand, he was an very capable foreign minister, and generally favourable to causes that remain fashionable today. Guess what, he was a complex character.
The only reason he continues to be more reviled than Pitt, Canning, Portland, Liverpool, etc. is that people like to be able to quote Byron and Shelly.
245: History Channel WWII TV series reviewed.
I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called "World War II"
.Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.
"Very capable foreign minister" is not "on the other hand". Someone can be that and be a villain too. So we're down to the anti-slavery.
So we're down to the anti-slavery.
The anti-slavery, the Catholic emancipation, and the beating Napoleon.
And the moderation of terms at Vienna and Ghent, which you need to be a bit of a wonk to appreciate, but you could argue that he was responsible for the development of good relations between the US and Britain.
All right, but apart from being anti-slavery, the Catholic emancipation, and the beating Napoleon what has Castlereagh ever done for us?
207: Maggie Sefton's knitting mysteries (Skein of the Crime, Dropped Dead Stitch, etc) are pretty horrible, but I read them all anyway.
Now I pretty much have to read Skein of the Crime. I don't know how I could know an actual book of that title exists and not read it.
257: The only puns are in the titles, sad to say. The books are set in a thinly fictionalized version of Ft. Collins, if that interests anyone, but I really have to emphasize that the plotting is mediocre and the writing is awful.
Thank. If it only has one pun, I don't want to read it.
