Robert.mccowen

"Obviously rape is awful…" says Delegate Brian Kurcaba, R-Monongalia. "What is beautiful is the child is that could come from this."

— David Gutman (@davidlgutman) February 6, 2015

Sadly, these stories are going to become more common coming out of WV with the teahadist wave of wingnuts that were elected in the fall of 2014:

A Republican state lawmaker said Thursday that women who become pregnant from sexual assault should not be exempt from an anti-abortion measure, because childbirth resulting from rape is “beautiful.”

“Obviously rape is awful,” West Virginia Del. Brian Kurcaba (R) said during a committee hearing on a new abortion restriction, according to David Gutman, a Charleston Gazette reporter. “What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”

Kurcaba, a financial adviser, was elected to the House of Delegates in November.

He represents Morgantown and thus WVU.

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I write to record a position on a subject already treated in more specialist fora.

I refer, of course, to a matter routinely, if implicitly, raised by the auditors of curricula, every time they ask for samples of a syllabus: if they request more than one, what do they say they want? Syllabi? Or syllabuses?¹

Doubtless this issue vexes few of the hoi polloi, nor troubles many alumni of great universities. Indeed, academics – from the Hebrides to the Antipodes – seem often to use “syllabi.”

A highly scientific anti-prescriptivist study has it that the answer is “syllabi.” I prefer “syllabuses,” though.

If your etymological antennae are twitching, you can find a detailed account of the story of “syllabus” at the specialist links in the first sentence of the post. But the short version is, it’s a made-up word, erroneously thought to be adopted into Latin from the Greek, which it wasn’t. I.e., there isn’t a true proper correct answer, horribile dictu.

On Monday morning, the Today show broadcast an interview with President Barack Obama in which he urged parents to get their children vaccinated. “The science is, you know, pretty indisputable,” the president said. “There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not.”

The president didn’t say anything new or controversial. Nor did he say anything partisan. But for those who view him as inherently partisan and illegitimate, anything Obama says has to be immediately contradicted. And so — as with health insurance mandates, immigration reform, net neutrality and a host of other prior examples — Republicans responded by coming out swinging. If Obama is for vaccination, then they would have to be against it.

This has made for a really weird couple of days, with a growing split among Republicans between those who apparently feel bound to automatically gainsay whatever Obama says and those who are willing to maintain their prior support for motherhood, apple pie and the blueness of the sky even after Obama has also spoken in favor of such things.

So for the past two days, we’ve seen a steady parade of ambitious Republican officials denouncing the evils of vaccination and attacking the germ theory of disease, followed by another group of Republican officials trying to control the damage by arguing that #NotALLRepublicans think that preventing disease is a Bad Thing.

• New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie expressed sympathy for those who believe in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, supporting giving parents more “choice” in deciding whether or not to vaccinate their children and calling for “balance.”

History’s Greatest Monster. (Photo of Dr. Jonas Salk by Yousuf Karsh, 1956)

• Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky allowed that vaccinating children might be “a good idea,” but he opposes requiring vaccination, saying “for the most part it ought to be voluntary.” (Paul has been anti-vaccination for a long time, arguing back in 2009 that parents should do their own biomedical research on each new vaccine as it arises in order to decide for themselves.)

• “We should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do,” said Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy, speaking up for Americans’ freedom to contract small pox.

• Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama argued that the real problem isn’t vaccination, but immigration. Brooks is worried about “diseases brought into America by illegal aliens who are not properly health care screened.” (No, Brooks doesn’t want better health screening for immigrants. He just wants fewer immigrants.)

• Medical doctor turned right-wing pundit Ben Carson initially responded like a medical doctor, affirming the importance of vaccination for “public health and public safety.” But then, realizing that he was allowing a bit of daylight to his (far) right, shifted to adopt Brooks’ blame-the-immigrants theory.

• Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tried to cram the “debate” over medical science into the “religious liberty” category that he seems to hope will be a one-size-fits all slogan for every issue. But he also said “we’ve vaccinated both our girls and would encourage people to do the same.” (By which he meant everybody should vaccinate their own children, not that everybody should vaccinate his daughters. They’re good, thanks.)

• “I do believe all children ought to be vaccinated,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner, sounding like he’s getting tired of the political atmosphere he helped to create.

• “As a victim of polio myself, I’m a big fan of vaccinations,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who likewise seemed a bit uncomfortable to be reminded that his position as majority leader depends on the support of a bunch of fellow Republicans who seem to think of Jonas Salk as a jackbooted Big Government thug.

• Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal urged all parents to get their kids vaccinated and defended his state’s vaccine requirements for public schools, adding “that he personally would not send his children to a school that did not require vaccinations.”

• Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has previously avoided acknowledging the scientific consensus by pointing out that “I’m not a scientist, man,” but today he endorsed vaccination without qualification and dismissed the anti-science conspiracy theories of anti-vaxxers. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (both of whom also seem to be running for president) also urged families to vaccinate their kids.

• Among prominent Republicans who (probably) aren’t running for office: Donald Trump affirmed both vaccination and the conspiracy theories of anti-vaxxers; Pat Robertson opposes vaccination (and water fluoridation); Glenn Beck defended anti-vaxxes, comparing them to Galileo; and long-time anti-vaxxer Phyllis Schlafly is basking in the glow of so many others coming around to her point of view.

Finally, in a somewhat related story, Sen. Tom Tillis of North Carolina raised another angle for this new battle over the politics of the germ theory of disease. Tillis suggested that businesses are over-regulated and should be allowed to “opt-out” of onerous laws like the one requiring employees to wash their hands before serving food.

Tillis framed this as a joke — and it’s kind of funny, even if it doesn’t quite make sense: “I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,’” Tillis said. “The market will take care of that.”

It’s not clear to me why the requirement to post such a customer-repelling sign would be a less onerous form of regulation than the existing health codes requiring hand-washing. But if you’re worried that government overreach is restricting your freedom to be exposed to E. coli, then I guess Tillis deserves your support.

This is huge: In Net Neutrality Push, F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating the Internet as a Utility http://t.co/7iXxq22YrF

— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) February 2, 2015

From the NYTimes:

… The change, the analysts and others say, which has been pushed by President Obama, would give the commission strong legal authority to ensure that no content is blocked and no so-called pay-to-play fast lanes exist — prohibitions that are hallmarks of the net neutrality concept.

But Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, will advocate a light-touch approach to Title II, they say, shunning the more intrusive aspects of utility-style regulation, like meddling in pricing decisions. He may also suggest putting wireless data services under Title II and adding regulations for companies that manage the backbone of the Internet…

I mean, yeah, I’m all in favor of net neutrality, but I’m not savvy enough to judge the technological merits, even before we get to the political issues…

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Well, they’re being honest, you have to give them that:

Senate Republicans revealed this week that they have eliminated the phrase “civil rights and human rights” from the title of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee charged with overseeing those issues.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) became chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee this month and announced the members of the six subcommittees this week. With Grassley’s announcement, the subcommittee formerly known as the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights suddenly became the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now.

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A man grapples with that question in this terrific read.

What would you say?

What comics would you recommend for young girls?

Breaking news via the NYT:

Supreme Court to Decide Whether Gays Nationwide Can Marry

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether all 50 states must allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. The court’s announcement made it likely that it would resolve one of the great civil rights questions of the age before its current term ends in June.

Predictions? Thoughts?

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First, let’s be clear — this is a single study from a single location with a tiny sample size. I mention this not as a criticism of the study, but because it’s something I’ve been repeating over and over to try to reassure myself that maybe the world isn’t as horrible as this study seems to suggest.

So keep in mind that these are, at most, initial findings. Before we can draw any solid conclusions, the awful results here will need to be repeated and confirmed with larger studies conducted at multiple locations. That, at least, is what I keep telling myself after reading Tara Culp-Ressler’s dismaying — and potentially disturbing and triggering — write-up of the study for ThinkProgress, “1 in 3 University of North Dakota Men Surveyed Would Rape a Woman If They Could Get Away With It.”

That’s a frightening headline. The details are, if anything, even worse:

Nearly one in three college men admit they might rape a woman if they knew no one would find out and they wouldn’t face any consequences, according to a new study ["Denying Rape But Endorsing Forceful Intercourse: Exploring Differences Among Responders"] conducted by researchers at the University of North Dakota.

But, when the researchers actually used the word “rape” in their question, those numbers dropped much lower — suggesting that many college men don’t associate the act of forcing a woman to have sex with them with the crime of committing rape.

According to the survey, which analyzed responses from 73 men attending the same college, 31.7 percent of participants said they would act on “intentions to force a woman to sexual intercourse” if they were confident they could get away with it. When asked whether they would act on “intentions to rape a woman” with the same assurances they wouldn’t face consequences, just 13.6 percent of participants agreed. …

“The No. 1 point is there are people that will say they would force a woman to have sex but would deny they would rape a woman,” Sarah R. Edwards, an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the University of North Dakota and the lead researcher for the study, told Newsweek.

So take your pick there as to which part of that is most disturbing. Is it that 13.6 percent of male college students in the study willingly volunteered to identify themselves as rapists? Or is it that an additional 18.1 percent of male college students freely volunteered that they would rape women, but don’t even recognize that this makes them rapists?

Put together, that total of 31.7 percent — nearly one in three — is a staggering finding of pervasive predatory criminality. Here we have one in three UND male students freely admitting that the only reason they refrain from “forcing a woman into sexual intercourse” is that they might be caught and punished.

That suggests one necessary first step in response, which involves blunt, forceful law enforcement. In the short term, and at the crudest level, it tells us that the threat of getting caught must be immediate, tangible and certain, and the punishment must be consequential and severe. If one in three male college students says that they only refrain from attacking women due to fear of a criminal/legal deterrent, then that criminal/leal deterrent needs to be made more forceful and obvious as an urgent matter of basic public safety. We need VAWA on steroids.

But the vast scope of the problem here also suggests that it’s beyond the capability of law enforcement to handle on its own. We can ask the police and the justice system to maintain law and order and public safety when the criminal element in society is a small percentage of the population, but when that element makes up a third of the male population, then a law enforcement response, on its own, will be neither adequate nor sustainable. Law enforcement can’t be asked or expected to work in a context in which legal enforcement is the only deterrent to crime — in which 31.7 percent of the male population freely admits that they’ll prey on others if they’re not stopped by police. Police aren’t equipped to handle such a context — for that we would need prison guards.

What we see here, in other words, is evidence of a complete breakdown at multiple levels of society. These are college students, remember. These are educated young men whose applications included their involvement in all sorts of extracurricular civic activities, and who were able to provide glowing letters of recommendation from mentors and civic leaders, teachers, coaches and pastors. These are young men who have excelled in and been commended by multiple spheres of civil society, with all of those spheres failing to recognize or to respond to the fact that these young men are also fundamentally warped, damaged and misshapen. This is part of what we mean when we talk about rape culture.

Changing that context therefore means fixing what has gone wrong with schools, sports, churches, and every other organization that was involved in the character formation of these character-deformed men.

Culp-Ressler offers a brief, but helpful, discussion of those implications from this study:

The push to address sexual assault on campus has sparked a widespread discussion about “rape culture,” a term once relegated to the feminist blogosphere that has recently become more mainstream. Rape culture refers to the larger societal norms that allow rape to thrive — the lack of consequences for people who commit rape, the assumption that this type of sexual behavior is a normal aspect of gender relations, and the obscuring of rape as a serious crime. Participants’ responses to the University of North Dakota study fit neatly into this worldview.

Previous studies have revealed similar attitudes among both men and women. Asweeping international survey of men conducted by United Nations researchers found that most men who had perpetrated rape simply believed they had the right to take control of women’s bodies. A survey of U.S. teens found that many young men are manipulating their partners into sex and getting away with it. And a study that focused specifically on teenage girls in the United States found that most of them assume sexual coercion and violence is normal, because they think men simply can’t control their sex drives.

In order to reach the population of men who don’t currently associate forcible sex with rape, the lead authors of the new study suggest education programs that focus on defining sexual consent and encouraging healthy relationships. Simply pushing an anti-rape message won’t necessarily reach those men, they point out, because they don’t think of themselves as rapists.

Similarly, the schools, teams, clubs, churches, businesses, etc., that have trained these young men to be sexual predators “don’t think of themselves” as training academies for rapists. But that is evidently what many of them are.

If you’re resorting to throwing about reptiles like live grenades in order to win your argument, I’m not sure your argument is worth winning.

A live snake was tossed over the counter at a Tim Hortons in Saskatoon this morning during an argument over onions.

Two 20-year-old men engaged in a heated debate this morning with a worker at the restaurant over sandwich toppings. They wanted diced onions, and the restaurant does not dice its onions.

As the argument escalated at the restaurant in the 600 block of 22nd Street West, one of the men reached into the pocket of his friend’s coat, pulled out a live snake and threw it behind the counter. Staff members fled the store in fear.

“Obviously, [the workers] were very frightened,” said police spokeswoman Alyson Edwards. “There was quite a lot of screaming going on.”

Now, the cops busted these two guys shortly thereafter (and yes the snake is okay, it was a non-poisonous garter snake) and I do have to wonder why you would keep a live snake in your coat in Saskatoon in December.

But I have to admit, any readers like myself who have ever done any tabletop RPGs (or some of the daffier computer point-and-click adventure games) will immediately go “Emergency Distraction Snake(tm)? That’s not only completely valid but a brilliant idea. I’m going to use this.”

Open Thread otherwise.

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Previously, from the same author.

When my employer called me into his office and granted me paternity leave on the birth of my first child, I had no idea what I was in for. Most of my male coworkers had already left the office at this point, having impregnated willing strangers in order to take twelve weeks' paid time off in exchange for eighteen years of financial and personal responsibility.

"It's twelve weeks' time off," Daniel shouted when he learned he'd successfully created a child with the head of the mechanics department. "I'm going to finally finish my heli-skiing novel!"

I simply wasn't prepared for what all of this free time would do to me. I had planned, of course, to participate actively as a member of the household and as my wife's partner -- grease the dryer, dust the teakettle, rearrange the cat, and so on -- but then, shortly after I walked in the door, I was tragically trapped under something heavy and have been unable to move from this spot in the living room. No one can move this burden from me, save the pure-hearted seventh son of a seventh son, and I do not believe that such a person exists.

Read more I’d Love To Help My Wife Do The Dishes, But I’m Trapped Under Something Heavy at The Toast.

It's a simple one, and it's just saucy enough that people feel a little excited over having been included, but not so saucy that you risk offending someone (your mileage may vary depending on your peer group, results not guaranteed). It requires just enough participation and interaction that people perk up and start talking to each other, but not so much that anyone has to get up or anything. If the conversation was flagging before, odds are that it'll get a little more personal and a little more genuine afterwards.

It could also fail. I don't know. I don't go to very many parties. Give it a try anyhow.

The question is this: How would you give a handjob if you had no wrists?

Read more The One Question I Always Ask At Parties at The Toast.

Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire, on “An Elaborate Plot To Make Darrell Issa Crazy“:

Over at Bloomberg Politics, Margaret Talev has lit the fuse by which dozens of heads may go supernova all at once. I mean it, this woman is calling for the mother of all cable-news tantrums. She may also be calling for the immediate spontaneous combustion of Darrell Issa and anyone standing within a 15-foot radius of him. Amid other suggestions as to how the president can continue to do the job he was elected (twice) to do, and fck with the minds of the opposition at the same time, both laudable goals, she drops the big one. I like her style, I must say…

Talev’s piece is titled “Five Ways Obama Can Mess with Republicans in 2015,” including campaign finance reform: “So-called dark-money nonprofits, such as those affiliated with the Koch brothers, could find it much harder to muck around in elections. Under current practices, up to half of these groups’ money can be spent on politics. Changes to the Internal Revenue Service regulations governing 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations could shrink the percentage they can devote to election activities such as advertising… “ (Her other suggestions are excellent, also.)

I’d bookmarked a couple of articles about Issa’s latest pre-Xmas wet fart doc-drop acknowledging, as the NYTimes primly put it, his “Inquiry into IRS Lapses Shows No Ties to White House.” Or, as Michael Hiltzik explained “Issa’s Big Dud” in the LA Times:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) wasted enormous congressional resources over the last 18 months trying to inflate the IRS “scandal” into a mountain. The release Tuesday of his final, petulant report on the affair marks what may be its final decline into a mouse.

The bottom line: Contrary to his assertions in countless appearances on Fox News, there’s no evidence that the Obama White House directed — or indeed was involved in any way — in the supposed targeting of conservative nonprofit groups for special scrutiny by the IRS. There’s no evidence that “tea party” groups were exclusively targeted, as opposed to tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations from across the political spectrum….

Much of the report underscores how flagrantly partisan and majestically useless Issa has been as a government watchdog. (He’s giving up the committee chairmanship in 2015 because of term limits, ceding the gavel to Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah.) It treats political activities as somehow a legal right of c-4 organizations, though that’s not what the law says — not if they want to retain their tax exemptions and donor confidentiality privileges…

One point that the Issa report fails to make is that the investigation undoubtedly succeeded in its ulterior purpose, which was to hamstring the IRS in pursuing its statutory duties and undermined its already flagging reputation. Aggressive enforcement of the 501(c)4 standards is off the table. In the year-end spending bill passed this month, the agency’s budget was gutted — cut by $356 million from last year, $1.5 billion below the administration’s request.

For Issa, who is Congress’ richest member, and plutocrats from shore to shore, an intimidated and underfunded IRS is heaven. And that’s what we’ve got.

Insofar as President Obama can counter this Oligarchs’ Revolt via executive order, I’m in favor!
***********
Apart from hoping for a better 2015, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

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Nashville police chief Steve Anderson, with an epic response to right-wing citizen of the city who wanted the cops to crack the heads of anti-police violence protestors.

It’s a little-known fact that various literary heavyweights (and Ayn Rand) once tried their esteemed writerly hands at penning pulp romance novels. Certain great works of fiction and the occasional piece of non-fiction actually had their first incarnations as Mills and Boon-style sagas replete with winsome heroines (well, aside from Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Coitus, which proved to be a commercial flop due to its awkward lack of any heroines at all) whose bosoms heaved in various states of lust, uncertainty, and—when pickings were slim—boredom.

Here, for the first time, we reveal the raunchy reading list of the carnal canon:

His Shaft Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Can the lovely Lady Brett Ashley help Jake become the lover she needs him to be? Will the couple’s romantic Spanish getaway make Jake feel like a real man again?

The Age of Losing her Innocence by Edith Wharton

Ellen could have any man she wanted—so why has she fallen for Newman Archer, the handsome lawyer engaged to marry another, conspicuously less attractive and interesting woman? Will Newman choose true love over duty?

Of Mice and Members by John Steinbeck

The lissom but lonely wife of a California landowner has her life turned upside down by the presence of a rugged but sweet ranch worker named Lennie. Does she dare to follow her heart? And can Lennie really give her what she craves?

We Have Always Loved in His Castle by Shirley Jackson

Merricat has always felt like an ugly duckling. Things finally seem set to change with the arrival of her charming cousin, Charles—but will Charles’s heart be won by Merricat’s beautiful sister, Constance? Only time—and possibly sorcery—can tell.

Read more Pulping the Classics: Bad Romance by Great Writers at The Toast.

If North Korea hacking Sony e-mails actually leads to Idris Elba playing James Bond, it will be that country’s greatest gift to humanity.

Bob McCulloch is the master.

This post originally appeared on November 11, 2013.

Well, the holidays are at last upon us, as “upon us” is a holiday’s favorite place to sprawl, and that means one thing: making sure that you get enough to eat at holiday parties. There’s nothing worse than waking up in January and realizing you’ve practiced careful moderation in the face of temptation, also watching that waistline, and cravings, and jeans that fit: food is everywhere. Here are a few tips to make sure you get your fair share of empty calories between Thanksgivukkah and New Boxing Day.

Don’t fill up on water. Water is full of empty fluids. If you’re trying to keep yourself from over-imbibing on cocktails, try matching every alcoholic beverage you drink with a glass of nog. Any variety of nog will do, as long as it leaves a film on your glass. Remember: if the glass ain’t fogged, your drink’s not nog, as the elves sing right before they get you. 

Avoid the crudités. They’re a pointless vehicle for dip. Think of all the other foods you could be smearing that dip on: french onion smeared over a pimiento olive; pâté on sausage rolls. Celery is for suckers.

Read more How To Make Sure You Get Enough To Eat At Holiday Parties at The Toast.

“Majority of Americans Believe the Story of Jesus’ Birth Is Historically Accurate,” Time magazine reports:

According to a new Pew Survey of over 1,500 U.S. adults, 73 percent say they believe Jesus was born to a virgin, and 74 percent say they believe Jesus’s birth was announced to the shepherds by an angel (among Protestant respondents, that rate is 91 percent and 90 percent, respectively). 78 percent of women say they believe in the virgin birth, 65 percent of the respondents said they believe all elements of the Christmas story are factually true.

This makes sense. The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke tell us that Jesus was born of a virgin. It’s right there in the Bible.

Good, Christian American people believe the Bible. If the Bible says it, that settles it. Period.

“Majority of Americans Believe Torture Can Prevent Terrorism,” Time magazine reports:

More than half of Americans (57 percent) believe that interrogation tactics such as waterboarding — techniques widely considered to be torture — are successful in preventing terrorist attacks at least some of the time.

That survey found that white evangelicals were more likely than non-Christians to approve of torture, with 69 percent of white evangelicals approving of the CIA’s torture program.

The Bible — the same authoritative, infallible, inerrant Bible that includes the Christmas story  – commands Christians to love their enemies. The same Gospels that include the accounts of the Virgin Birth categorically rule out the possibility of torture as anathema to anything Jesus stands for.

But this still makes sense, because while these Christians say it’s very important to affirm the authority of the Bible when it comes to stuff like the Virgin Birth and not doing the sex, they don’t really give a withered fig what the Gospels have to say about stuff like torture and loving your enemies and all the rest of that liberal crap.

Hi everyone! This is the debut of WORLD OF WONDER, a column designed to bring a little bit of wonder and awe for the natural world into your day. A bon-bon of delight and amazement to chew over while you ride the subway or wait in line to get your latte, or when you just feel like you can’t stand looking at the walls of your office for another majestically long minute more. Ahem.

Q: Um, what is “wonder?”

Q: Um, why “wonder?”

A: In PORTALS, A Journal of Comparitive Lit, Lony Haley-Nelson notes: “Wonder is a valuable passion because it leads us to learn and remember…the aesthetic experience is as valuable as the wonder that propelled Einstein to examine the properties of light or Darwin to consider the possibility of natural selection.”

Now, I’m not promising that just reading about the rare and unusual plants and animals I’ll be featuring in this column will make you the next Marie Curie, but I hope there is a little bit of dazzle in what you find here.

Read more World of Wonder: Comb Jelly at The Toast.

Previously: The Comment Section For Every Article Ever Written About Intimate Grooming and Tipping and Recipes.

1. I'm 36 weeks and ready to EXPLODE, I need self-induction tips. I've tried rough sex, pineapple, bumpy roads, walking, evening primrose oil, castor oil, eggplant, nipple stimulation, the Coffee Potty, reflexology and I spend four hours a day on my exercise ball. Ladies, help!

2. Who else is getting their boy circumcised? NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS PLS.

3. Does this mean anything??? PIC INCLUDED

4. Very TMI: Pooping during delivery (different question than all the posts ive seen)

5. I went through my husband's phone and he calls this one number whenever I'm out of the house, I'm going to call it. UPDATE ON PAGE SIX: throwing his shit onto the lawn

6. I'm GBS+, but I hear that putting a peeled garlic clove up there with some yogurt will protect my baby and is better than antibiotics, does it have to be plain yogurt? I only have strawberry-banana.

Read more All the Posts on Every Third Trimester Message Board at The Toast.

Today in Republican minority crossover appeals:

Walker told Gimbel his office would be happy to display a menorah celebrating “The Eight Days of Chanukah” at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, and asked Gimbel to have a representative from Lubavitch of Wisconsin contact Walker’s secretary, Dorothy Moore, to set it up.

The letter is signed, “Thank you again and Molotov.”

Previously: Dirtbag Aphrodite.

AEGEUS: ah my son
tales of your bravery have reached me long before you arrived
you have slain Procrustes -- Sinis -- Sciron -- the Pallantides -- and cleared this land of robbers and evildoers
tell me, how did you --
THESEUS: its pretty simple
i just kill everyone i meet til i get where i'm going
AEGEUS: ah
THESEUS: its simpler that way
i dont have to keep track

AEGEUS: Brave Theseus
you must help us defeat the Minotaur
promise me only that upon your return you will replace the black sails of death with the white sails of triumph
that I know you are alive and I am not bereft in my old age
for if you do not return -- if i see the black sails again -- i shall throw myself into the sea and end my sorrows
THESEUS: black sails, death, got it

Read more Dirtbag Theseus at The Toast.

No one who gets a postgraduate degree in Hobbit Studies ever imagines they’ll be sued by the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. I certainly didn’t expect to wind up in court against Christopher Tolkien and his lawyers, like Frodo Baggins facing down the Nazgûl on Weathertop. Little did I know I was heading into a legal and scholarly Midgewater when I wrote and published The Lord of the Rings: A New English Translation.

As anyone who’s read the appendices to The Lord of the Rings knows, both it and The Hobbit are Tolkien’s translations from the so-called “Red Book of Westmarch,” an ancient manuscript written in Late Vulgar Adûni. How Tolkien came to possess the Red Book is a mystery, and the Tolkien Estate has never allowed other scholars access to it.

Tolkien’s original translation is justly famous and beloved. He treeherds an unwieldy ancient text into lyrical modern English and captures the vast scope and romance of the epic.

It is also deeply flawed.

Tolkien refers to Quendi people as “elves,” a common term in his time, but considered highly offensive today. And while Tolkien was a great scholar of the Quenya and Sindarin languages, his command of Late Vulgar Adûni was rudimentary at best, and his translation of the Red Book suffers for it.

In the most infamous instance, Tolkien botched The Hobbit’s “Riddles in the Dark” chapter in the first edition. He was so confused by the text’s use of pronomial prefixes in the subjunctive that he has Gollum leading Bilbo to safety in the goblin caves, rather than pursuing him with murderous malice. Tolkien corrected this blunder in later editions, but the damage was done. Similarly, he describes there being nine Nazgûl, when in fact there were only three.

Because Tolkien’s Estate didn’t let anyone else so much as peek at the Red Book, his The Lord of the Rings remained the only available version for half a century. Nobody even attempted a new translation until me.

When I entered the Hobbit Studies program at the University of Chicago in 2003, I wasn’t planning to write my own translation. Like most of my peers, I was content to lead a quiet scholarly life, writing my dissertation on Adûni phonology and having friendly debates over second brunch about whether or not Balrogs have wings (they don't). The best I really hoped for professionally were a few publication credits and a full-time lecturer job at a small Franciscan college.

Read more How I Defeated the Tolkien Estate at The Toast.

Fuck you right into eternity if you try to pretend even for a second that you are not consumed with jealousy for this man, that you would not be in exactly his position if you possessed the merest suggestion of a spine.

Read more Don’t You Dare Try To Tell Me You’ve Never Thought About Punching A Priceless Work Of Art at The Toast.

As I discussed awhile ago, the teaching assistants at my alma mater, the University of Oregon, were discussing going on strike over the university’s refusal to provide them paid sick leave. In response, the university threw academic integrity out the window and threatened to allow students to have their current grade be the grade for the course and encouraged professors to give scantron finals. Well, the TAs did go on strike and the university has moved forward with its plans. For one, the university is threatening TAs (or GTFFs as they are called in Eugene) on foreign visas with deportation if they strike. That’s a pretty low blow.

The faculty union has come out in support of their TAs. Here is its statement:

Today, the University of Oregon administration escalated its tactics against the striking graduate employees that will have profoundly negative implications for undergraduates.

The College of Arts and Sciences decreed unilaterally that final examinations and end-of-term assignments will be optional in graduate-assisted courses taught in the Departments of Linguistics, Philosophy, and Ethnic Studies.

If the GTFF strike continues after Dec. 12, the Associate Dean for Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences will assign all grades in the affected courses, based on only a portion of the graded assignments and tests listed in course syllabi. In the Department of Philosophy, the department head and all graduate instructors have been removed as instructors of record. More departments may suffer a similar fate.

This course of action threatens to damage the mentorship between teachers and students, relations of trust among colleagues, and between the university community and the administration. It also interferes with the ability of teachers to do what they do best: to educate students. This harms students who hoped to improve their grades with end-of-term writing assignments and final examinations.

The apparent goal of this attack is to break the GTFF and not, as the administration insists, to maintain “academic continuity.”

Every effort by faculty members and the university senate to deal with the problem of assigning grades during the strike in a manner that upholds the professional integrity of teachers and the expectations set out in course syllabi has been rejected.

Furthermore, because the administration has declared final examinations to be optional, grades will not have the same value for all students.

Such callous disregard for academic freedom and the welfare of students forces faculty and students between a rock and a hard place. Rather than work with faculty to create meaningful options for grades to be delayed, the administration has chosen to compromise the integrity of undergraduate education at the University of Oregon.

I have a bit more information. I was forwarded an e-mail from the Associate Dean of Humanities, Judith Baskin. At the request of the person who sent it, I have redacted the course name this e-mail applies to. It reads as follows:

Dear Students,

I am responsible for ensuring that you receive a timely grade for
the work you have done in [COURSE NAME].

On the Academic Affairs website
(affairs.uoregon.edu/academic-continuity [1]) the Provost has advised
that students in courses taught or supported by GTFs may be given the
option to forgo the final assignment/exam and take their current grade
in the course.

Please be advised that should the GTFF strike continue to Dec. 12, I
will enter the grade you achieved in [COURSE NAME] up to December 1 as
your approximate grade for Fall term. This grade will be based on the
grading information given to me by your Instructor. If you wish you
may accept this grade as your final grade. In that case, you need
not complete any further work for this course and the grade I entered
will not be altered.

* If this is your preference please send me an email to that effect
(jbaskin@uoregon.edu) by date XXXX. Be sure to include your name,
student number, and the course number and name; you may include your
understanding of what the final grade would be. I regret that,
given the large number of courses with which I am working, I cannot
give you the grade I will be entering at this time but I assure you
that it will be based on the information your Instructor supplied for
work competed as of Dec. 1.

*

* OR

*

* You have the option to complete the final exam / assignment as
described on your course syllabus and/or by your Instructor. You may
submit that work either to the Department of [BLANK] or electronically (if this was your Instructor’s
preference) by the date and time assigned by your Instructor. At such
time as your work is graded, the approximate grade will be replaced by
a grade based on all your course work, including the final
assignment/exam. If you have any questions, please feel to email me
(jbaskin@uoregon.edu) or contact me via Blackboard.

Judith R. Baskin, Philip H. Knight Professor of Humanities

Associate Dean for Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences

So there you have it. “You may include your understanding of what the final grade may be.” Great! Tell me you are getting an A and then I don’t have to bother looking it up. And why even bother taking a final? Just go celebrate the Ducks’ victory at Rennie’s! (a local bar) Now this is some academic integritude!

I toyed with the idea of titling this entry “GamerGate Stew,” but considering how much grossness I’ve subjected you all to lately, I thought I’d be pushing my luck. Let’s forget about the Internet’s Shittiest People ™ for a moment and talk about something lovely–a curried beef stew.

I used to make this stew awhile back, using a recipe I’d found in a slow cooker recipe book. It was nice. It was basically a classic beef stew with some mango chutney and curry powder stirred in to add some heat and sweetness. Last night I wanted to do a variation on this recipe, only I didn’t have any chutney on hand. I also wanted to make a slightly more sophisticated version of the stew–with a little more depth of flavor. I happened to have some dried apricots on hand so I used them as a jumping off point. I made a paste using a few pantry staples, hoping to evoke the heat and sweetness of mango chutney/curry combo.

The finished stew turned out far better than I ever could have imagined.

(Ingredient amounts are vague because I do not cook with precision. I throw things together and hope the finished product will turn out well. They almost always do.)

Curried Beef Stew

• 1-2 lbs. stew beef, dredged in plenty of flour, salt and pepper
• 4-5 carrots, cut into bite-size chunks
• 1 large onions, cut into bite-size chunks
• 2 tomatoes, cut into bite- size chunks
• 2-3 potatoes, cut into bite-size chunks
• 1/3 heaping cup of dried apricots
• 1-2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed
• 3-4 cups beef broth
• 1 tbsp. curry powder

1 cup frozen peas

1. In a slow cooker with browning feature, brown the dredged and seasoned beef in oil.
2. Meanwhile, make the apricot curry paste. In a food processor, pulse the apricots, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, curry powder and just enough beef broth to moisten the mixture until it becomes pasty.
3. Add the chopped veggies to the slow cooker and season with salt and pepper. Stir everything together.
4. Stir in the apricot paste, then add the beef broth.
5. Cook on low for about 8 hours or 4 on high.

Add peas a few minutes before stew is done.

I imagine this would be great garnished with a dab of raita or some chopped cilantro, but honestly the stew is so delicious and satisfying, you’ll just be gilding the lily.