That's crazy. I hope no one I know was there.

Erin, this was my first thought, too. It's so weird to think that I almost went there today.

I'm glad you didn't go. So many time I run into my friends there. That guy ran into target and started shooting -- that's MY Target! I buy tampons and pick up scripts there!

Ugh. I know I'm going to know someone who was there.

I just nipped up the Fat Cat Boogie Mat and added a Fat Cat Scratcher Mat to the mix. I have two wacky felines right now, but at least they are taking turns quite nicely.

We went to the Science Center and saw an IMAX 3D Deep Sea movie and then saw a big Star Wars exhibit. It was all very cool. The movie was narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. Is there anything Depp can't do? He was a fabulous narrator. NSM for Kate. The SW exhibit had all kinds of cool costumes and models and stuff.

erin and quester, I'm glad you've both checked in. I doubt my parents would've been there (they never have their cell phones on, so I haven't called yet) but a dozen or more South Patrol cops are people I went to high school with.

3 of my friends have checked in, and they weren't there. I am waiting for another friend to call me -- she and her husband live about 5 minutes away from WParkway, and the last time I saw them, I ran into them at the PetSmart there.

I hate the waiting to check in minutes...they drag so horribly. Hope your people aren't affected.

I am encased in ice--got a friend to work on my shoulders. As a result I can turn my head more (driving's much better this way), but I need to ice like a mo'fucker.

About ten, fifteen more minutes of this, and then uber-hot shower and stretching and then back to ice.

sarameg, sorry to hear you didn't make it. But yay lampshade!

She was actually quite accomplished at being Dean of Admissions and had raised diversity admissions by 11 percent.

Yes, she was LEGENDARY, administratively speaking. This whole thing is fucked up. It also says a lot about the question of "do you really need a college education to suceed or do you just need people to think you have one?"

It's really sad. I mean, she's ruined. No matter how well this book turns out, I don't see her getting anything from the academic community ever again. She has basically made MIT and academia look like fools.

Her job was about academic credentials. Thing 1, she lied. Thing 2, she was lying about the very core of her job--accreditation.

The lying I think should get her fired alone. The slap in the face is the topic of the lie.

It's like when I worked at a customs brokerage firm. You got caught lying to customs crossing the border, you were out on your ass. I doubt any of my other jobs would care.

Oh, I'm not defending her or think that she shouldn't have been fired. Hell no. I was just musing that she'd done a lot of good, and it's too bad that she fucked it up and it was all a big fat lie and it turned out this way.

The "Making Light" site: [link] has become a must read for me. Part of it is that I enjoy the snarky take Teresa and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden have on stuff. But they are also a source of wonderful links (using wonderful in the original sense of the word - things that arouse wonder):

For example: THE FÚFUMAL (Little Bunny FuFu rendered as a Norse Edda.) [link]

Or biblical arguments that washing dishes is work for men, especially warriors:

[link]

THE FÚFUMAL [link] especially brought me a smile:

Fúfu, small rabbit, fastest of hoppers,
Works in woodland his ways of evil:
Field-mice he finds, then hammers with head-blows,
Vexing the queen of the Vanir folk.

And on topic: yeah lying on your resume is totally a firing offense. But a number of sociologists on a list I subscribe to noted this as an example of how many qualifications for jobs are social signals rather than measures of ability to do the job. Most jobs get many qualified applicants, often with no real way to guess who will perform betters. So the narrow the choices people making hiring decisions turn to measures of whether or not the people applying are "people like us".