In the twenty-first century, this is very disturbing.

For those who don’t get the reference, here’s a clue.

[Wednesday update]

A commenter asks who Cory Maye is. Here’s the story at Wikipedia.

The UCLA Alumni Association is fed up with nutty professors. Alumni associations actually have a lot of power in the war to take back academia from the radical left, but they have to care, and exercise it.

[Update on Monday evening]

As Jane Bernstein points out in comments, if you read the fine print, it’s not the UCLA Alumni Association–it’s another group (probably less official) called the Bruin Alumni Association. Kudos to them anyway.

Glenn thinks that a lot of the current concern about polygamy is an offshoot of the gay marriage debate. I think that’s right, but we need to clarify terms here:

There’s a pretty good argument that polygamy is usually bad for the societies it appears in, producing a large surplus of sullen, unmarriageable young men.

Polygamy per se (a marriage of more than two individuals) doesn’t result in frustrated young men–that would be polygyny (the specific case in which it is one man married to multiple women). It could be balanced out with polyandry (in which one woman has several husbands). Judging by the fact that males are…ummmmm…orgasm challenged relative to healthy females, and the prevalence of porn fantasies (and perhaps real incidents, though I have no personal experience) about one woman satisfying a number of men, and all enjoying it, at least at the time, could in fact be popular if it weren’t for that pesky male imperative to know whether or not your kids are really yours.

But I’m not aware of many societies that have general polygamy–it seems to be one or the other, with polygyny dominating for fairly obvious evolutionary-psychological reasons.

Just when you thought that twisted f**k Fred Phelps, and his “congregation” couldn’t get any sicker, guess what they’re protesting now?

A hate group based in Topeka, Kan. released a press release on Wednesday entitled

A very disturbing (at least to me) article on the state of higher education:

To be sure, the current crop of students is the most educated and affluent ever. Their enrollment rates in college surpass those of their baby-boomer parents and Generation X, and their purchasing power is so strong that it dominates the retail and entertainment sectors. Credit-card debt for 18-to-24-year-olds doubled from $1,500 in 1992 to $3,000 in 2001, much of it due to the new array of tools, such as BlackBerries, that keep them up to date with contemporaries and youth culture. Students have grown up in a society of increasing prosperity and education levels, and technology outfits them with instant access to news, music, sports, fashion, and one another. Their parents’ experience

From Ann Althouse, who makes an interesting point about the real victims of the insistence of society that men be heterosexual:

I’ve made fun of the Oscar ads for the movie, because of the way they emphasize the relationship between the men and their wives. This ad campaign is laughable for intentionally hiding the nature of the central love story. Nevertheless, the story of the wives interests me greatly. And the political argument inherent in this part of the story is, I think, especially strong. Those who would try to prevent or inhibit men from forming lifetime bonds with each other ought to give more thought to what happens to the women they marry. Those who think a man should struggle against his sexual orientation and find a way to form the classic marriage relationship with a woman ought to think about what they are advocating for the woman: a lifetime relationship with a man who has only feigned sexual attraction to her.

Lots of good discussion as well.

I heard on the radio that when the plane went down off Miami Beach this afternoon, a flotilla of private boats were on it almost immediately to try to find survivors. It’s similar to what happened in 911, when a large number of people spontaneously evacuated lower Manhattan across the rivers to New Jersey and Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, this time, even as rapid as the response was, it looks like the people were beyond saving.

[Update at 7:30 PM EST]

Here’s a link from a local blogger.

A recent survey indicated that most people graduating from college are not proficient in English.

Of course, as usual, they break it down by race. But what would interest me much more is how it breaks down by major. How do engineers compare to science majors compare to English majors? How about “Womens” or “Ethnic Studies”?

Especially sad, I suspect, might be the results for schools of education, and journalism. But they don’t show them.

A recent survey indicated that most people graduating from college are not proficient in English.

Of course, as usual, they break it down by race. But what would interest me much more is how it breaks down by major. How do engineers compare to science majors compare to English majors? How about “Womens” or “Ethnic Studies”?

Especially sad, I suspect, might be the results for schools of education, and journalism. But they don’t show them.

A recent survey indicated that most people graduating from college are not proficient in English.

Of course, as usual, they break it down by race. But what would interest me much more is how it breaks down by major. How do engineers compare to science majors compare to English majors? How about “Womens” or “Ethnic Studies”?

Especially sad, I suspect, might be the results for schools of education, and journalism. But they don’t show them.