HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: UC-Berkeley’s ‘Critical Mass’ Policy Results In Racial Divisions At Law School. “Diversity” programs always create racial divisions. And that’s not a bug, but a feature, since it gives diversity officers more things to do.

SO NOW PEOPLE REALLY WILL JUST READ IT MOSTLY FOR THE ARTICLES? Nudes Are Old News at Playboy:

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

Its executives admit that Playboy has been overtaken by the changes it pioneered. “That battle has been fought and won,” said Scott Flanders, the company’s chief executive. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”

For a generation of American men, reading Playboy was a cultural rite, an illicit thrill consumed by flashlight. Now every teenage boy has an Internet-connected phone instead. Pornographic magazines, even those as storied as Playboy, have lost their shock value, their commercial value and their cultural relevance.

Perhaps the goal here is to temporarily remove nudity from Playboy to then allow the magazine to send out a press release in another year or two saying they’re back to (pardon the pun) goose sales. But if porno mags in general have indeed lost their shock value, I wonder what comes next in the ongoing Weimar-ification of American culture?

Related: “When Penthouse was in its heyday, few would have guessed that it would be outlived by, of all things, Mad magazine. Yet while Guccione’s dynasty is now an Ozymandian rubble of tits and ass, Alfred E. Neuman can still be seen leering out from magazine racks around the nation, a kind of silent rebuke to all the supposedly smart sophisticates he’s seen come and go.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Ex-head of Chicago Public Schools expected to plead guilty. “The former head of Chicago Public Schools is expected to plead guilty in what prosecutors say was a scheme to steer more than $23 million in no-bid contracts to education firms for $2.3 million in bribes and kickbacks.”

DRIP: Associated Press: Hillary’s Server Even Less Secure Than Previously Thought.

ASHE SCHOW: 4 questions men should ask when searching for a college.

In recent years, as academics have taken a back seat to social justice, the most pressing questions facing college students have to do less with whether a degree will get you a job, and more to do with whether your feelings will be properly validated.

Enter White House Adviser Valerie Jarrett, who has a bylined article up at Yahoo! Parenting listing questions women should ask when searching for a college to attend. She repeats early on in the article the myth that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted while in college (she, of course, doesn’t point out that it’s a myth), and offers advice to parents of daughters searching for colleges to attend.

Jarrett offers four questions: What sexual assault prevention programs does the college have? What are the Title IX coordinator’s responsibilities? How easy is the reporting process for sexual assualt accusers? And what support services are available to those accusers? These are all fine questions for a cautious student who has been bombarded with media reports claiming that there’s a “crisis” of sexual assault on college campuses.

But I’m proposing my own short list for men who are preparing to attend college. This would go well with my warning to college men that the universities don’t care about them once they’re accused of sexual assault. There are many more questions that could and should be asked, but I’m limiting my list to four to pair with Jarrett’s.

They’re good questions.

BEN CARSON’S PROGRESSIVE CRITICS ARE TERRIFIED OF ANSWERING THIS QUESTION:

Wow, great arguments, guys. You sure showed that pediatric neurosurgeon what was what. On one hand, Carson–a world-renowned pediatric surgeon–made a completely uncontroversial remark about the nature of the Nazi gun control regime: its entire purpose was to make it easier for Nazis to kill Jews. On the other hand, you used the F-word repeatedly. I don’t know who I can trust!

The progressive response to Carson is illustrative: deep down they know that Nazi gun confiscation during the Holocaust poses something of a problem for those who wish to institute gun confiscation regimes today. Defending forced gun confiscations in theory (“fewer guns means less violence!”) is a lot easier than defending forced gun confiscations in practice. So instead of being faced with either defending Hitler’s gun confiscation regime or acknowledging that Carson’s underlying point was correct, they chose to gaslight him.

They should not get off that easy, though. If they’re going to attack Carson for accurately describing the intent behind Nazi disarmament of Jews, then they need to answer a few questions about that disarmament regime. Question one: was Hitler wrong to disarm the Jews? Why or what not? (Or if you’re a Godwin’s law adherent: was the South wrong to forcibly disarm blacks?) And question two, should they deign to answer the first one: why did Hitler disarm the Jews?

Related: Carson’s Response to PC Outrage Is Smarter than Trump’s:

Carson’s response to the howls of the PC left is the right one: We’ll call it “apathetic conviction.” He’s not outraged by the outrage; he simply doesn’t care. The outrage bores him. And no response is better calculated to rob critics of their power than boredom. You’re offended by my comments? I’m trending on Twitter? Wake me when the shame-storm is over, and then let’s debate my arguments on their substance.

A response that just drives the leftwing outrage mobs and their spokesmen in the MSM all the more crazy in the process, particularly when compared to the soft-spoken Carson.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Hope fades on Obama’s vow to bring troops home before presidency ends. But he brought enough home, fast enough, that we lost the war and destabilized a region. So we’ve got that going for us, anyway. This is what happens when you wage war half-assed, by committee, and on the cheap.

AND YET, HE’S OLD: Jerry Brown: Suicide good, extending life not.

Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed “Right to Try” legislation passed by large bipartisan majorities of both houses of the California legislature. In my recent Washington Examiner column on “Right to Try,” I noted that 24 states have adopted such measures, championed by the Goldwater Institute, which would allow terminal patients access to medicines certified as safe but not approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. Brown justified his veto on the grounds that the FDA already has a compassionate use policy that allows some patients some access to these drugs. But as the Goldwater Institute points out, that process is incredibly cumbersome and only a small percentage of those in need are able to jump through all its hoops.

Less than a week before Brown signed a bill legalizing assisted suicide, on the grounds that it would help patients avoid suffering. But now he has vetoed right to try, which would help terminal patients avoid suffering and extend their lives. He will need all of his Jesuit training, and more, to reconcile those two decisions.

He won’t even try.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Meth isn’t an argument for drug prohibition. It demonstrates prohibition’s failure.

BUT NOT AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST. MORE LIKE A NATIONAL KIND OF ONE. Sanders: I’m no capitalist, I’m a Democratic Socialist!

ROLL CALL: Next Speaker Unlikely to Continue Long String of Leadership Insiders.

There may be plenty of good reasons why Republicans are now seeking a “fresh face” as House speaker. But picking from outside the existing chain of command could also create some big challenges.

It also would be highly unusual. Only once in the last century has someone been chosen to preside over the House without ever occupying a lower rung in the leadership. The past 16 speakers, in other words, have won with serious insider credentials — even when political common sense has pointed to the selection of a certified outsider.

It’s very possible that precedent will be skirted this fall. Most of the members now in the roiling mix for speaker have made their reputations as policy experts, ideological warriors or marketing experts for the GOP — but have never been called on to practice those talents using the special tool kit of political power, staff resources and outside influence that comes along with a seat at the top table.

Sounds terrible.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Good to know! Birther jokes are totally cool when @TheDemocrats make them.

Hopefully now the same Democrats making Canadian jokes about Ted Cruz will lighten up around those people who’ve long been pointing out that Obama is a closeted Keynesian.

MINNESOTA DENTIST WON’T GET CHARGED FOR CECIL THE LION HUNT: “Golly — you mean the lynch mob was wrong? Go figure. Palmer, an experienced hunter, had his papers in order all along.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Top Clinton aide worked on Abu Dhabi project while at State.

Hilary Clinton’s former chief of staff spent some of her time at the State Department working part time to build a campus for New York University (NYU) in Abu Dhabi.

Cheryl Mills disclosed the details of the special arrangement — which are likely to raise additional questions about top government officials who split their time between official and private work — in an interview with The Washington Post published on Monday.

Mills worked “very hard” to stick to State Department rules preventing conflict of interest, she said in the interview.

“I try to understand the rules and follow them. And I try to make sure that I’m disclosing my obligations,” Mills said. “I don’t know if I’m ever perfect. But I was obviously trying very hard to make sure I was following those rules and guidelines.”

Mills served as Clinton’s chief of staff during the Democratic presidential candidate’s time as secretary of State.

There is no try. There is only do, or not do.

WHY MEN FIGHT: ’16 West Point Cadets Will Wear Class Rings Containing WTC Steel.

COMBATING SCIENCE FICTION’S GROUNDHOG DAY SYNDROME: Appendix N Survey Complete.

• Ideological diversity in science fiction and fantasy was a given in the seventies. We are hopelessly homogenistic in comparison to them.

• The program of political correctness of the past several decades has made even writers like Ray Bradbury and C. L. Moore all but unreadable to an entire generation. The conditioning is so strong, some people have almost physical reactions to the older stories now. — Read the whole thing.

WAIT, REALLY WHAT: Who Stands in the Way of a Feminist Utopia? Women. Oh, you mean that (Marxist) Utopia?  Yep.  Guilty as charged.  You may thank me later.

OR MAYBE CANINES ARE LESS SCARY: How to Weaponize your Cat to Hack Neighbours’ Wi-Fi Passwords

CHECKING CANINE PRIVILEGE:How New York favors dogs over cats.

SO THAT’S WHY THEY SEE IT EVERYWHERE: The Unbearable Racism of Social Justice Warrior Jerks.

WAIT, WHAT: City thinks your kid needs a ‘recess coach’ to play nice.

IN A DESPERATE BID FOR RELEVANCE: NYCC 2015: Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong Ponder the ‘Star Trek’ Economy.

HOW COULD IT NOT BE WHEN MOST OF THE GOVERNMENTS REPRESENTED ARE CORRUPT: The long, sordid tale of corrupt UN leadership.

THE KABUKI THEATER OF THE INDOCTRINATED: Why Do Texas Students Plan To Carry Sex Toys To Protest Against New Campus Carry Law?

NAH, HE’S JUST FIDDLING: Obama Has Given Up.