Animal House to be suspended?

April 14, 2015April 13, 2015 ~ susie

I mean, Jesus Christ. Branding people? Boot them now:

Dartmouth College is taking steps to boot the Alpha Delta fraternity from campus after brothers violated the hazing policy by burning the skin of 11 new members.

A Dartmouth judicial affairs committee determined last week that Alpha Delta members branded the new members over two nights in November. The school moved to impose a harsher than usual sanction because the fraternity was under suspension at the time for hosting an unregistered party in October — while it was already on probation for an earlier violation. The college dean “is considering whether it is in the best interest of the Dartmouth College community to withdraw recognition of Alpha Delta, regardless of the outcome of any appeal,” a college spokesperson told The Huffington Post.

Dartmouth’s move to de-recognize a high-profile fraternity — college President Philip J. Hanlon belonged as an undergraduate and the book and movie “Animal House” is largely based on Alpha Delta — comes as the Hanover, New Hampshire, school vows to crack down on unruly behavior among Greek organizations. Loss of recognition means the fraternity would no longer be considered a “college approved” residential facility. The fraternity owns its house, but zoning laws limit how many people could legally reside there.

An attorney for Alpha Delta has defended the branding as a form of “self-expression” similar to tattoos or body piercings. The frat said the branding was “not organizational” and neither caused harm nor violated the terms of the previous suspension. The college said it did not find the frat’s arguments compelling.

Climate change denier picks a drowning city to announce for president

April 14, 2015April 13, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

https://youtu.be/3AUZ5w7NKoA

I blame the consultants for telling someone like Mark Rubio he could credibly run for president. His announcement speech consisted of making allusions to Hillary Clinton’s age — said the young man who wants to take us back to the Gilded Age:

On Monday, junior Republican Senator Marco Rubio will announce that he’s running for president. The city he’s chosen for his formal announcement? His hometown of Miami, which is a city that faces drowning due to the changing climate. Rubio rode a Tea Party wave to his first term in the Senate in 2010, and he couldn’t havepicked a better spot to remind people that he doesn’t accept the vast field of science that shows how climate change threatens southern Florida. Rubio’s head is buried somewhere in Miami Beach’s sand, while the city faces encroaching tides because of rising sea levels.

His first public comments as a climate change denier came in 2009, when Rubio told the Miami Herald, “I’m not a scientist,” to explain the “significant scientific dispute about” whether climate change is real. (Again, among scientists, there is no dispute.) In his 2013 response to the State of the Union, Rubio said, “The government can’t change the weather.” Last year, in an interview with ABC’s This Week, Rubio again rejected science. “I don’t know of any era in world history where the climate has been stable,” he said. “Climate is always evolving, and natural disasters have always existed… I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”

For the record, Rubio once saw the benefit of acting on climate change. In a2007 video unearthed by BuzzFeed, he argued that “global warming, dependence on foreign sources of fuel, and capitalism have come together to create opportunities for us that were unimaginable just a few short years ago.” Today, though, Rubio says that if we do something about climate change “it will destroy our economy.” But climate inaction is going to destroy Miami soon enough, damaging Florida’s economy in the process.

A map from the New York Times shows what 5 feet of sea level rise would do to Miami, something that could happen in a century: It would permanently submerge 20 percent of Miami’s “dry, habitable land,” and 94 percent of Miami Beach.

Oh, he also says if God wants the climate to change, we have to let it.

Bye bye, MSG

April 14, 2015 ~ susie

I haven’t had Chinese food in four months, and cautiously tried it again last night. Bingo! Within minutes, my finger joints were swollen and painful. When I finally made the connection, I slammed my system with a bunch of anti-inflammatory stuff like Vitamin B3 and curcumin, and was back to normal (or at least pain-free) in about an hour. Damn.