CNN uses the concept of "Vegas" to try to titillate us about the debate.

I found this inappropriately sexual:



Received, just now, in my email.

Now, I'll check my instincts by Googling "what does what happens in vegas stays in vegas mean," because I know the internet is quick with answers to questions like that. For example, earlier today, I found the answer to a question I had: What is happening to the weasel in "Pop Goes the Weasel" when the weasel pops? That question has a very interesting answer:

[T]here have been many suggestions for what... "Pop! goes the weasel" [means], including: that it is a tailor's flat iron, a dead weasel, a hatter's tool, a clock reel used for measuring in spinning, a piece of silver plate, or that 'weasel and stoat' is Cockney rhyming slang for "throat", as in "Get that down yer Weasel" meaning to eat or drink something. An alternative meaning involves pawning one's coat in order to buy food and drink, "weasel" is rhyming slang for "coat" "pop" is a slang word for "pawn.'

A clock reel is commonly called a spinner's weasel, and consists of a wheel which is revolved by the spinner in order to measure off thread or yarn after it has been produced on the spinning wheel. The weasel is usually built so that the circumference is six feet, so that 40 revolutions produces 80 yards of yarn, which is a skein. It has wooden gears inside and a cam, designed to cause a popping sound after the 40th revolution, telling the spinner that she has completed the skein.

As for "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," it was originally a tourism marketing slogan — "What Happens Here, Stays Here" — that was designed connect Las Vegas to something other than just gambling. The idea was:

The emotional bond between Las Vegas and its customers was freedom. Freedom on two levels. Freedom to do things, see things, eat things, wear things, feel things. In short, the freedom to be someone we couldn't be at home. And freedom from whatever we wanted to leave behind in our daily lives. Just thinking about Vegas made the bad stuff go away. At that point the strategy became clear. Speak to that need. Make an indelible connection between Las Vegas and the freedom we all crave....

"Professors guess millennial slang: UC Berkeley edition."

I found that because I was already at The Daily Californian as a result of Instapundit's link to "Berkeley Law’s ‘critical mass’ policy results in racial divisions." I was thinking I should write about that, and maybe I still should, but I've got to say that I impulsively clicked on the "Professors guess millennial slang: UC Berkeley edition" link in the sidebar. I guess I needed some refreshment.

The truth is I don't think what the law school is doing is so bad, within the context of the affirmative action law we have from the Supreme Court, which approved of the "critical mass" theory in Grutter. The law school doesn't have enough black students to get the critical-mass effect in all of its small sections, so it concentrates black students in some of the sections and leaves one section with no black students at all.

The idea of "critical mass," which justified taking race into account in admissions, is — according to Grutter — to have enough students of a particular minority in the classroom so that the minority student in the classroom isn't looked upon as expressing some sort of typical minority viewpoint. The idea is to overcome stereotypes and let all the students see each other as individuals.