I’ve written about the Varsity Blues scandal many times, but I never followed up to find out if the slimy, greedy criminal Rick Singer got thrown into prison. Well, I’m pleased to report that he did, although I wish it was 35 years instead of 3.5……..
I grew up in the upper-middle class my entire life. I never knew any rich people for most of my years. Indeed, in the many times I’ve addressed the subject of wealth distribution, I have recalled that during my upbringing, the “rich” man I met was a general manager at a Ford dealership, and probably made $45,000 a year to my Dad’s $35,000. So that, to me, was rich.
I wish it was still so. I never thought I’d type this, but I truly do yearn for the days of my childhood when, yes, there were fables about millionaires, but on the whole, people were more or less in the same boat. This is a thing of the past now, although I strongly suspect in about twenty to thirty years, it’ll be very much with us again. Life moves in cycles, of course.
This came to me because I finally got around to watch the Netflix documentary about Operation Varsity Blues. I love documentaries, and as such, it is excellent. For those of you who subscribe to Netflix, I certainly recommend it. They’ve done a beautiful job weaving the tale, splicing in real-life images of high school kids (the honest ones, not the rich ones) in the throes of getting either accepted or rejected from their hoped-for schools. Although the “script” was simply copied from the real-life FBI wiretap recordings, the dramatization is led by the actor Matthew Modine (of Full Metal Jacket fame) who plays the detestable Rick Singer.
(more…)Preface to all parts: It’s that time of year again. I have written over 30,000 posts during the long history of Slope, and at the end of each year, I gather up what I consider the best of the prior year’s offerings. At the end of every year, I assume I’m utterly out of material, and yet at the same time, I look back with amazement at all the terrific posts from the year that has just completed. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up, but my concerns of content exhaustion have been proved wrong since March 2005. For your reading pleasure, I offer the following Best of 2021 Posts:
Miracle of Miracles
A kind-hearted Sloper in a moment of need
Twenty Years Ahead of My Time
Probably best not even to say what this one’s about!
Varsity Impressions
I just can’t stop writing about the Varsity Blues scandal!
Sixteen Years
A video I made commemorating Slope’s long history
Recipe for Disaster
Thoughts about new, massively-wasteful government “investments”
Life Crushed Flat
A long essay is my attempt at a love letter to my wife
Waxing Poetic
The year wouldn’t be complete without a post about my honeybees
As I mentioned about a week ago, I took it upon myself to read the book The Gulag Archipelago by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The actual Archipelago series is three volumes, and about 1200 pages. I read the approximately 500 page trimmed-down version of it, making copious highlights along the way.
The book certainly had an impact on me, and I wanted to offer you a smattering of snippets, with remarks along with each one, and perhaps by the time I get to the end, I’ll have some personal insights to offer
I originally was going to break this into multiple parts, due to its length, as well as to satisfy my neurotic need for a large quantity of posts every day. But this post is very long for a reason, and some people will want to consume it all in one sitting. So this will be the only post for twenty-four hours. It took a tremendous amount of work, and it deserves the time.
These snippets are not meant in any way to substitute for the reading of a 500 page book (which itself is less than half the content of the original work), but to instead serve as small jumping-off point for various thoughts and impressions I had. We begin with a description of the ubiquitous and omnipresent risk of being arrested anytime and anywhere during the era of the gulag
(more…)Oh, this is going to be good. I’ll be watching this one tonight. Of course, I’ve written about Varsity Blues before, such as here. One huge irony for me is that my beloved son was welcome with open arms to Stanford legitimately, and he’s already completely transcended it. Maybe one day I’ll write about it, but not now. I’m proud of my boy, though, and no bribes were involved. (Only because the crude photoshop of me as a bodybuilder yielded nothing but disastrous results with the admissions committees of our once-great republic).
