At this hour it seems there's about a 72% chance that the Rolling Stone UVa rape story is going to fall apart Nifong-style.

For fun sideshow action on UVa, see this and its preceding blog post.

I’m not a big one on harrumphing about kids today and all that, and I’m all for young journalists stirring the pot, but still—how kind of Merlan to identify for me what a “professional journalistic correction looks like”—in an addendum that is exactly not what a professional correction looks like. I’m guessing that using a correction to take a shot at the person you’re making a correction about is not what they taught at CSJ. It certainly isn’t what I taught at CSJ, where I was a tutor in the master’s program for two years. (Merlan and I just missed overlapping.)

I haven't read the RS article: But the way the rape's described reminds me of this old blog exchange with Tressider about a rape case:

It's not "human" for a judge to decide that if a woman has a sloppy cunt, she deserves to be treated like one.

Descriptions of the RS article have that feel about them: They verbalize a horror that's largely imaginary, much like a troubled teen exaggerates the minor transgressions of loved ones… As if to help him- or herself stay angry with then.

We crossed into 18 on Monday.

So I read the WaPo article that Crid linked to... and in it the RS reporter is quoted as essentially repeating a very old and threadbare relic of third-wave feminism: "The nature of the evidence doesn't matter. What matters is the seriousness of the charge!" It's clear that the reason she isn't naming names is because she'd be setting herself and RS up for a libel action if she did. I'm sure the reason that the "excellent fact-checkers and laywers" at RS approved the story is because it was intentionally light on verifiable details. Even the WaPo clearly isn't buying it, when they point out that normal journalist standards for this sort of thing is to contact the accused in order to present a balanced story, "as well as to confirm that the individuals exist".

A pull quote from this article that Crid linked to in an earlier link thread:

"And that is what George Bernard Shaw was talking about when he defined a barbarian as one who mistakes the customs of his tribe for the laws of nature."

But what if Delta House loots the Food King during the big parade?

It's raining in Los Angeles... I guess this is it.

No regrets, really... The apocalypse itself was probably released by the trans-karmic resonance of my sins with Christine that one Vegas weekend in early Y2K, but I'm not sorry for them. And honestly, once you strip away her shattered girlish pride and all the legal paperwork, I don't think she's as resentful about them as she sometimes pretends to be.

For those of you with young children who will never taste adult pleasure, and for those of you who happen to be on approach to particular life achievements, condolences are in order. I feel particular sympathy for those who —through strong religious conviction or secular insight unavailable to me personally— had been convinced that life on Earth was in motion towards improved decency and genuine meaning… But now this is the end, and these things are neither here nor there. 'Lost, like tears in rain.'

Let's be glad Ebola didn't get us first.

OK, see you on the other side!

Because he's always got something interesting to say if nothing else -- Charles Barkley on Ferguson decision

Anti-poo hazmat suits deployed?

Check!

Rhino-skin anti-defamation underwear on?

Check!

160 lawyers on board and ready for a fight?

Check!

Okay, let's start this shindig!

Here you go.

Because, if drugs should be legal, then these deaths are perfectly OK.

(not, of course, my position)

Gog- Have you ever had any experiences with 'Tologists?

Hey Crid - only in passing.

Usually some hot girl with a big smile and a stack of pamphlets wants to do something to me involving electrodes and some sort of metering device.

Tempting, but no.