Showing posts with label University of Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label University of Texas. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Ryan O’Neal, fighting for an Andy Warhol painting that Farrah Fawcett left to the University of Texas...

... submits to a deposition and has to admit that Farrah caught him in bed with another woman in the bedroom the couple shared, which explains her motivation to give the painting to Texas. But, he says, she did not take the painting when she left — because wouldn't grab ya painting worth millions if you were running out in a rage — as you might rip your treasured Farrah Fawcett poster of the wall — if it was yours? Answer: No. Moving an expensive painting is a big deal.

And in fact, a year later, the painting was moved to Fawcett's place. How does O'Neal explain that? He says it was sent away "for safe keeping because his new girlfriend did not like having the image of Farrah on the wall 'staring down at her' all the time."

If you're already out of sympathy with O'Neal, check out the photo at the link of him leaning toward a torso mannequin wearing what appears to be Farrah's iconic orange bathing suit, while, in the background the dead actress smiles in her eternally popular poster. The less-famous image of Farrah is this:



That's the Warhol that was hanging over the couple's bed. Imagine cheating on her under that. Imagine having sex with the man who got off having sex with you under that picture of her.

The picture, which Farrah left to her old school, had been missing but was found because O'Neal did a reality show in 2011, in which it could be seen hanging on the wall. At the time O'Neal murmured about how Farrah "permeated my mind and my being" and "still does" and "The things that are nice in my house are the things that she got me."

Monday, May 13, 2013

"We predicted a moment like this. If the information were attacked it would immediately spread."

"The unintended consequence is it’s become incredibly demanded information — it’s everywhere."
NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, “It’s something that obviously is a concern.”

To Wilson, they merely prove his point: The “great thinkers in nanny state-ism” will do anything to maintain power.

He also bristles when gun victims — like the families of the Sandy Hook school victims — lobby government.

“I’m unhappy they were able to leverage their victimhood for the reduction of liberties of their fellow citizens,” Wilson said.

“They’re playing small ball,” added Wilson. “We’re playing a much bigger game.”

He’s such a passionate believer in his plastic gun that he laughs at the notion of someone killing him with it.

“That would be so ironic,” he said. “Even in death, it would be hilarious.”
Laughing at death, laughing at the government, it's 3D-printed-gun designer Cody Wilson — who's also a law student (at the University of Texas).

Wilson has not merely designed a 3D-printable gun, he's 3D-printed himself as a character on the national scene. Nice creative work, Wilson!

Now, will he become a lawyer?

Another law student in the news is John Cochran, who just won $1 million on "Survivor." He too designed himself as a fabulous character:
The first time, I went into [the game] so anxious that people are going to perceive me as a nerd, a socially awkward freak. And I'm formally still the same socially awkward, freaky, nerd guy. But the difference is that instead of those eccentricities and quirks being a source of embarrassment or anxiety for me, I've just accepted it as a reality of my existence... And that's immensely liberating because I got to focus on the game this time instead of how I'm perceived, which ruined my game the first time. Being able to focus on the game I've loved for half my life was a dream come true.
Nice creative work, Cochran! Cochran was asked — by Jeff Probst — whether he was going to go on to be a lawyer, and he said he didn't think so. He said he'd like to be a writer. He said he wrote a paper on the "Survivor" jury system when he was at Harvard, so I expect some cool books analyzing "Survivor."

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The Fisher v. University of Texas affirmative action case is now the only undecided case argued in October.

SCOTUSblog tells us, after live-blogging the announcement of Moncrieffe v. Holder this morning. Moncrieffe, a case about the meaning of "aggravated felony" under the immigration law, was written by Justice Sotomayor, and that makes it extremely likely that Justice Kennedy is writing the hotly anticipated Fisher case:
[T]he Court tries very hard to distribute the authorship of majority opinions evenly not just over the course of the Term, but also within a sitting (the two-week periods from October through April when the Court hears oral argument). So going into today, Justices Kennedy and Sotomayor were the only Justices without majority opinions in October.... Now he's the only one without an October opinion, which leads to the assumption that he is writing Fisher
Does this help predict the outcome of the case? Here's my effort, from last October, to read Justice Kennedy at the oral argument. Remember, Texas has a very odd kind of affirmative action, adding an individualized approach, with race as a plus factor, after a facially neutral program that admits the top 10% of students from every Texas high school. At oral argument, Kennedy focused on the detail that the additional race-based selection was done to bring in more privileged black and Hispanic students, because the 10% program tended to admit underprivileged blacks and Hispanics (which reinforced a stereotype about black and Hispanic people). I said at the time (referring to the Court's most recent affirmative action case, Grutter):

So, it seems, the additional affirmative action is needed to get a more varied group of minority students, in which case, the point is to bring in privileged minority students, because these are the students who — in Grutter terms — might provide the classroom benefit of teaching all the students that minority students don't have "some characteristic minority viewpoint." ...

I'm not taking a position on whether UT's admissions policy is good or whether it's constitutional.... All I am saying is that if Grutter is to be applied (and not limited or overruled), an affirmative action program that's all about boosting the most privileged minority students actually makes sense.
Kennedy seemed to have trouble seeing the sense of that at oral argument. He said "So what you're saying is that what counts is race above all," which is missing the point. I'm sure he ultimately understood the point, but I think we saw — in real time — that the point isn't intuitively appealing to him.

That said, Fisher could narrowly reject the odd UT program and leave the more typical Grutter-style affirmative action alone. But Fisher presents an opportunity to overturn Grutter, and Kennedy dissented in Grutter, which was a 5-4 decision with Justice O'Connor casting the deciding vote. O'Connor's successor, Justice Alito was instrumental at oral argument — as I said at the time — in extracting that point about privileged minority applicants receiving the advantage.

So I'll make a rash prediction: a narrow decision, determined by Kennedy and Alito (and maybe Roberts), striking down only the Texas program. Scalia and Thomas concur, complaining that Grutter should have been overruled. Everyone else dissents.