Tulip and Daisy are kittens up for adoption in Arlington, Va. When someone holds something above their heads and outside of the camera frame, they seem quite convinced of the philosophical stand taken by DJ Snake and Lil' Jon: "Turn down for what?" If you are unfamiliar with what "turning down" is, Urban Dictionary summarizes beautifully:

rhetorical question used by teenagers. "turn up" is the act of getting drunk and high and being reckless so "turn down" would mean sobering up. turn down for what is really saying i am fucked up and will continue to be all night no matter what. the only appropriate answer to this question would be "nothing"

So, for the record, these kittens will not turn down.

An 89-year-old veteran who went missing from his retirement home in Sussex, England yesterday morning has been located: He showed up today on the beachhead of Normandy, medals pinned to his coat, to take in the anniversary celebration of the D-Day invasion.

The Guardian, which is liveblogging the D-Day 70th anniversary festivities, has the story:

Sussex police were called at 7.15pm on Thursday by staff at the Pines care home, Furze Hill, in Hove, who said an 89-year-old who lived there had gone out at 10.30am and had not been seen since. He had gone out wearing a grey mackintosh and a jacket underneath with his war medals on, police said.

Officers began searching the area, including checking hospitals in case something had happened to him, and spoke to bus and taxi companies, but none of them knew where he was.

Late last night, a younger veteran called the nursing home to let administrators know that he'd met up with the old man on a France-bound bus, and they'd split a hotel room not far from the battlefields of Normandy.

The younger veteran reportedly promised to make sure the codger got safely home, just as soon as they were done celebrating their conquest of the Nazis and the fact that an almost-nonagenarian British pensioner is still such a complete badass.

Update: The Guardian has identified the old man as Bernard Jordan, ex-mayor of Hove, England, and a D-Day vet. His nursing home tweeted out his pic:

[Photo credit: NZGMW/Shutterstock.com]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, the Carl Sagan–inspired show that answers viewers' questions about the physical universe (and raises new ones), is up for a Critics' Choice Award in the same category as Duck Dynasty, a show that pits a family of sentient beards against men's sinful anuses.

Tyson, while honored to be nominated, really, really doesn't want to lose to those beards, especially in the "reality" bracket. As he told Jimmy Fallon Thursday night, Cosmos "defines reality, I think."

"I don't know what that would mean," he worried, "if Cosmos lost to the duck people."

But if there's one thing that both Tyson and a living ecosystem of facial hair growing inside a bandana can agree upon, it's this: Fuck Undercover Boss.

[H/T Mediaite]

Last night, the McDonald's corporation threw a celebrity-studded bash to celebrate the much anticipated World Cup-themed McDonald's fry boxes. Who—besides us—would voluntarily go to such an event? It's a mystery that may never be solved.

The party, attended primarily by impoverished young Brazilians hoping for a way out of the slums, was held in a hillside Rio de Janeiro favela. A little joke there. The party, attended by a bunch of professional celebrity hangers-on and bizarrely out of place club kids, was held in a glass-fronted Manhattan event space on Tenth Avenue. Outside, there was a red carpet (actually green astroturf), down which strode a modest parade of celebrities, the most famous of whom was model Tyson Beckford, who was later seen inside conspicuously carrying around—though not consuming—a box of McDonald's fries. At the media check-in table, the pressure on the harried PR women was high. "We're missing the carpet!" one faux journalist kept repeating, over and over.

Some guy from Dawson's Creek was there.

Parked at the curb was a huge trailer that had been turned into a fully mobile McDonald's restaurant. Its employees were busily cranking out food for the party, which was relayed inside by a team of cater waiters dressed in soccer outfits. The party, as I had feared, was catered with McDonald's food. On each table, next to a plant and a mini soccer ball, stood a card announcing the night's menu: "Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, McDonald's World Famous French Fries, McCafe Strawberry Banana Smoothie." It makes sense, yet it was still a disappointment. To be fair to McDonald's, you just can't win when it comes to these picky and entitled members of the media. If it's catered with McDonald's food, it's "Ew, gross, crappy McDonald's food." If it's not catered with McDonald's food, it's "What, a restaurant isn't even proud enough of its own food to serve it at its own party?" Sometimes it is tough being the world's leading purveyor of styrofoam food.

Just inside the door, a man and a woman stood, each juggling a soccer ball with their feet. Kick, kick, kick, up, down, up. A demonstration of a new circle of hell, I imagine. "Tenth Circle: Gluttony—forever juggling a soccer ball, unable to stop no matter how weary you become, while dressed-up party guests mill about you on all sides consuming french fries." Enormous, six-foot-tall fry boxes were positioned around the room, along with the various paintings that now adorned their sides—paintings by "real" "street artists," commissioned by McDonald's, with a World Cup theme. Truly a dream come true for any street artist. I detected a hint of subversion in their work. Almost every painting appeared to have been done under the influence of acid and ecstasy. One showed creatures with huge exaggerated smiles and grotesquely bending limbs, surrounded by soccer balls and puffs of smoke; another showed an abstractly rendered woman with a murderous look on her face rushing forward with an upraised finger and what appeared to be blood dripping from her canine tooth. Cool french fry boxes for candyflipping, is what McDonald's now offers.

And all around the party, from front to back, were glamorous-looking people. Celebrity-looking dudes with well-groomed stubble and tight suits. Small packs of twentysomething women in heavy makeup and short dresses who looked ready to slip past a velvet rope. And other packs of faux-artsy club kids with dyed hair and gender-reversed outfits and absurd hats, glancing out of the corners of their eyes for any passing photographers who might capture their inherent fabulousness. Also TV celebrity gossip reporters and Tyson Beckford and the boyfriend of one of the lesser Kardashians.

Who were these people?

Why were they there? Why were any of us there?

This was a McDonald's party.

Why?

[Photos by Bucky Turco]

When WWII started aviation experts were convinced no one could mass-produce the big, destructive B-24 Liberator bomber. A month before D-Day, a Ford factory was on the verge of producing one an hour. In this chapter from his new book, A.J. Baime explains why it was pivotal to defeating the Axis powers on this day 70 years ago. - Ed.

On May 4th, 1944, a month before the D-Day invasion, the machines at Ford Motor Company's Willow Run bomber plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, shut down momentarily so that workers could gather outside the east end of the assembly building at 2:15 pm.

It was a beautiful spring day in southern Michigan, thousands of miles from the combat in Europe and the Far East. On a stage, the American Legion Edsel B. Ford Post Band played, the tubas honking out "America the Beautiful." Harry Wismer—one of the first big sportscasters and part owner of the New York Titans of the American Football League—grabbed a microphone, as master of ceremonies. The crowd had gathered for the presentation of the Army-Navy "E" Excellence award for the Willow Run bomber plant.

Willow Run had continued to accelerate all spring long, speeding toward its goal of a bomber an hour, 400 a month. For so long, the aviation experts insisted that the B-24—which was the biggest, fastest, most destructive bomber in the American arsenal at the beginning of the war—was too large to be mass produced. And now? In March 1944, Ford built 324 Liberators. April: 325. May: 350. Soon it would hit its mark of a bomber-an-hour; there was no doubt. The presentation of the Army-Navy Excellence flag signified the approval of Washington—that the experiment at Willow Run had fulfilled its promise, that Edsel Ford (recently deceased from what most believed was stomach cancer) and "Cast Iron" Charlie Sorensen had proven all the naysayers wrong.

On stage, Henry Ford II accepted the "E" flag from the Navy's Captain Robert Velz, lifting it triumphantly so it rippled in a light breeze as the crowds whistled and applauded. The band played the Star Spangled Banner while Navy men raised the E flag and the American flag on either side of the stage. Then Henry II took his place in front of the microphone and prepared to give his first speech as a representative of the Ford family. It was fitting that his first major official duty was to honor Willow Run. Henry II was standing in for his father, in Edsel Ford's most triumphant moment.

Henry II appeared different from a year earlier. His eyes were harder, less forgiving. His face had hardened too. In the months since he had left the Navy, under the careful tutelage of Charlie Sorensen, Henry II had grown into himself, confidant in the idea that he would not end up a footnote in the history of the Motor City. He'd begun to exhibit the fearlessness that would define him in later years, when he would become one of the most powerful businessmen in the world. The 26-year old Ford scion sipped in a breath and began.

"It is certainly with mixed emotions that we meet here today," he said. "Four years ago this spring there was no Willow Run. This land—1800 acres of it, covered today by a gigantic monument to industrial might—was producing agricultural products. But war was upon the world and our country's participation was nearing. Mass production of the B-24 Liberator bomber, the largest, fastest and hardest-hitting of them all, was handed to us as our job."

Henry II spoke of the engineering miracle, of the Truman investigation, of the overwhelming social problems that accompanied this industrial adventure. How everything had gone so wrong, and how, through sheer determination and patriotism, the men and women who ran this factory and worked inside it had turned it around. Now everything was going right.

"It is just another proof that in America we can do the impossible," he said. "And that the impossible always proves the nemesis of those enemies of peace and progress who attempt every so often to upset our relentless struggle upward toward a better world for all men everywhere."

In the White House, the President was studying Top Secret documents in preparation for D-Day. A military force staggering in size and complexity had already begun to amass in Britain, a force that would swell until it reached 175,000 men, 50,000 vehicles of all types, well over 5,000 ships, nearly 11,000 airplanes, plus guns, bullets, medicine, food, and cartons upon cartons of cigarettes from the tobacco fields in the American south. This was the Arsenal of Democracy at its height, built not just by the U.S., but with fantastic contributions from Britain and Canada.

In the Battle of Production, the Nazis were proving an extraordinary foe. Suffering the brutal ravage of the Allied bombers, their production of war munitions continued, the factories filled with slave labor. So ingenious were Hitler's engineers, so nimble and intelligent was his top production man Albert Speer, Germany had managed to move machine tools out of bombed out factories and into underground caves. Airplane engines were being constructed inside mountains. Church bells were melted so that the metal could be used for munitions. One company alone, Krupp, was producing U-Boats, 88 anti-aircraft canons, guns, tanks, and amour of all kinds.

Still, the confidential reports regarding production in America that crossed Roosevelt's desk in the spring of 1944 were nothing short of miraculous—specifically when it came to four-engine bombers. According to a March 1944 top secret report to the President: "Heavy bomber production was again outstanding with 1,508 acceptances of B-17s and B-24s." The month before the D-Day invasion, a confidential War Progress Report stated: "May was a great month for planes…with heavy bombers making a brilliant showing." Simultaneously, the President received secret wires to his map room telling of the Allies' mastery of the skies in Europe. On May 8, 1944: "Operations of our Air Forces during the past four months have definitely resulted in marked depletion of German Air Power."

In the final hours before D-Day, Roosevelt received another confidential production report. A chart showed "The 'Big Ten' of the Invasion," listing the number of aircraft mass produced between 1940-1944. Number one on the list: the B-24 Liberator. Over 10,000 of them had taken flight. Nearly half of those built so far rolled out of Willow Run, and in the coming months, Ford's production would increase until it was making 70% of the nation's Liberators. At the time of the invasion, The Liberator had already become America's most mass-produced airplane of any kind, ever.

By June 5, 24 hours before D-Day, the tension in the White House had grown unbearable. Looking at the President, Eleanor Roosevelt saw that her husband had become elderly. He had given all he had to his country—now in his fourth term in the White House and his third year of the war. According to one Presidential secretary, "every movement of his face and hands reflected the tightly contained state of his nerves." On that very day, Rome fell to the Allies. Roosevelt wrote to Churchill: "We have just heard of the fall of Rome and I am about to drink a mint julep to your very good health." But no one could celebrate in the White House.

Operation Overlord—D-Day—was the largest, most hazardous military enterprise ever to be undertaken. The President had called on his nation to build the Arsenal of Democracy, and his nation had come through for him. All he could do now was sit and wait for news from Europe.

Under the cover of night in the early hours of June 6, 1944, the largest air armada in history banked downward over the beaches of Normandy, flying just 500 feet over the breaking waves. The decibels were immeasurable. "As dawn broke," recalled one Captain standing on the beach, "we could observe one of the most impressive sights of any wartime action. Wave after wave of medium and light bombers could be seen sweeping down the invasion beaches to drop their bombs."

"Rosie the Riveter back home had been very busy," said another American who witnessed this scene.

For CBS radio, Murrow was reporting from London, watching the bombers take off on their D-Day missions. "Early this morning we heard the bombers going out," he announced. "It was the sound of a giant factory in the sky."

The first planes to bomb the beaches were B-26 Marauders, built by the Glenn L Martin company outside Baltimore. They were powered by Pratt & Whitney double wasp engines, a huge number of them built at the Rouge factory in Dearborn, Michigan, under the supervision of Charlie Sorensen and Edsel Ford.

At the same time, 1,200 American heavy bombers swung low over the beaches and over the oil refineries of Ploesti, Romania. Over those oil refineries, 407 B-24s made their attack runs on D-Day, delivering knockout blows.

Flocks of Waco wooden invasion gliders carrying equipment and airborne troops whistled engineless over the Normandy beaches, nearly 1500 aircraft strong. The Wacos had been built by many companies, such as Michigan's Gibson Refrigerator and Arkansas's Ward Furniture Company. But no outfit had built more of those gliders than Ford Motor Company. The pre-dawn landings came in two waves: one named Chicago, the other Detroit.

The Allied forces rolled out their tanks and equipment and guns. Over 1,000 landing craft unloaded men, tanks, jeeps, and trucks. In the first 15 hours, American forces pushed 1,700 vehicles onto Utah Beach alone (there were five landing beaches in all).

By the time Overlord's Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, set foot on the sand, it was littered with broken vehicles, torn apart by enemy gun and canon fire. "There was no sight in the war that so impressed me with the industrial might of America as the wreckage on the landing beaches," he recalled. "To any other nation the disaster would have been almost decisive. But so great was America's productive capacity that the great storm occasioned little more than a ripple in the development of our build-up."

From day one of World War II, the airplane had revolutionized combat. In the war's climactic battle, it remained a key weapon. On the D-Day beaches, Eisenhower was joined by his son John, who had just graduated from West Point. Above them, Allied planes of all kinds flew over at low altitude, the furious exhaust notes of the engines driving through the percussion of gunfire.

"You'd never get away with this if you didn't have air supremacy," John said to his father.

"If I didn't have air supremacy," General Eisenhower answered, "I wouldn't be here."

—

This story originally appeared in The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War. Copyright © 2014 by Albert Baime. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Photo Credits: Getty Images, AP Images, Tom Image By Jim Cooke

Back in April, The Best Man and The Best Man Holiday star Taye Diggs began following new people on Twitter. Many new people. He followed so many people so quickly—thousands and thousands per day—that it started to feel less like a follow and more like a deranged chase. He followed a volunteer fire department. He followed a youth soccer camp. He followed the maker of a wine ice cream.

Today, Taye Diggs follows roughly 45,500 people. That means in your small town of 35,000, there are five people who have Taye Diggs' ear.

No one knew why Taye Diggs followed so many people. His tweets were mostly vines of himself, interspersed with thoughts about basketball. He never engaged with anyone on Twitter. Occasionally, and perhaps accidentally, he replied to himself.

Wow!!!

— Taye Diggs (@TayeDiggs) May 4, 2014

Friday on Today, Dark Prince of Morning Matt Lauer finally made Diggs explain why he had suddenly begun hunting Twitter users like Pokémon.

Taye's answer: A social media expert told him to. (Full video here.)

"Literally—I mean I'm embarrassed. Everyone was telling me I needed to have more of a presence on Twitter. So I met with this dude who deals in social network [sic] and he said 'Instead of focusing on always disseminating information, why don't you focus on using it as a ticker?' So [I] gave him a bunch of people that I was interested in, from athletes to people in politics, just a whole bunch of people. And then he started following people for me.

Bizarrely, despite his admission of embarrassment, Diggs seems determined to convince everyone that he LOVES following 45,500 people on Twitter, and totally did it on purpose.

"Now whenever I want," he told Lauer, "I can just look at my phone and just hear what's going on with all these people."

After pointing out that Diggs follows all the "Today" anchors ("Did you even know that?" asked Matt; "Of course!" said Taye, perhaps playing the odds that, in any given room, there are bound to be at least a few people there followed by Taye Diggs), Lauer asked if he could recall the last tweet he read by Natalie Morales. Diggs ignored the question, and instead informed the room he had once ridden next to Carson Daly on an airplane. Then he opined about the importance of keeping life interesting.

It just, honestly—it keeps it more interesting to me....I'm just trying to keep myself simulated.

He probably meant stimulated.

Follow Taye Diggs on Twitter @TayeDiggs.

[Video via Today]

Today The Fault in Our Stars, based on a bestselling book by John Green, will debut in theatres across America. No cultural phenomenon can go unpunished by the good folks at Slate. So we get a piece with the thesis, "Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children."

Sigh.

The argument Ruth Graham makes is either muddled or obvious. First, the confusion: it's indicated by the fact that in sentence two of the piece she declares that The Fault in Our Stars isn't "bad" but goes on to remark, "If I'm being honest, it also left me saying 'Oh, brother' out loud more than once." She's welcome to the latter opinion (I happen to like the book but reasonable people disagree), but it's not the same as the former one.

Matters are made worse when she seems to position her personal taste as obviously being based in objective standard. Graham says she's only really focused on condemning "realistic" YA fiction like Green's or like Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park. She makes some idiosyncratic and largely unelaborated attempts to critique them. But the point she hits over and over again is the intended audience of the books, which she seems to believe is what makes them bad. All of her analysis of particular books is devoted to making them sound juvenile.

The problem with dismissing things as "juvenile" is that "for the young" is only a stable category when used as a marketing technique. It isn't particularly original to observe that lots of "children's books" clearly have higher aims. They operate on several planes of maturity. The Narnia Chronicles are a good example of that; so are Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books. Those books tend to reach out to other texts like the Bible and Paradise Lost; reading them as adults reveals hidden meaning. And so, as many adults have come to understand, those books are not "just for kids" even though any marketer would position them that way.

Another problem is that what seems to count as "maturity" in Graham's world is an uncertain ending:

YA endings are uniformly satisfying, whether that satisfaction comes through weeping or cheering. These endings are emblematic of the fact that the emotional and moral ambiguity of adult fiction—of the real world—is nowhere in evidence in YA fiction.

I'll leave aside the totally empirical question (and totally uninterrogated assumption by Graham) of any alleged lack of "emotional and moral ambiguity" in YA fiction, other than to say that Graham should have read Sherman Alexie on the subject of "Why The Best Kids Books Are Written In Blood."

But the idea that there should be no emotional or moral resolution in adult fiction is a fairly controversial assertion! Particularly given that later in the essay we read that Graham is an admirer of Dickens, a man renowned for having written many books whose bitterness was nonetheless laced with sentimentality, and well-resolved endings.

The Dickens thing leads somewhere else, too: sentimentalism is not totally unknown in great literature. There's a lot in Wharton that qualifies as melodrama. There's a lot in Jonathan Franzen that does, too. There are very few literary writers who don't anchor their work in some kind of sentiment, and very few readers who don't respond to it.

You can argue, as Graham does, that what appears in these YA books is a debased, too-literal form of that. But I don't think of books as easily sectioned-off as she makes it out. The Fault in Our Stars, for example, is laced with references to David Foster Wallace, and particularly to his Kenyon commencement speech. And Wallace's work often swung back and forth between raw emotion and high literary artifice, neither really surviving without the other, in my own reading of him. There's a continuum there, not a rupture between completely, utterly irreconcilable kinds of books.

And after all, pretty much everyone, in my experience, reads mostly to console themselves. That consolation takes different forms for different people: escapism, challenge, learning, self-indulgence. I don't believe all books are equally "good," or even believe that quality is a totally subjective question. But there are so many other pieces of the quality calculus than "age of intended audience" worth exploring.

Granted, it's a lot easier to skip straight through that complicated stuff to repeat without reasoning, "great books are written for adults." Which is a pity, because all Graham really wants, when you boil it down, is for people to read good books rather than bad ones:

Life is so short, and the list of truly great books for adults is so long.

Snip out "for adults" and you have an inarguable statement. But then it raises the question of why she made this about "books for children" or "YA" at all.

[Image via Shutterstock.]

A newlywed husband and wife died Wednesday morning after their cars collided in a head-on crash in north Texas.

From the Associated Press:

The Wichita Falls Times Record News reports the husband and wife were alone in their vehicles during the wreck near the Marhard Pullet Farm. DPS identified the victims as 31-year-old Nicolas Cruz and 26-year-old Kristina Munoz.

The crash happened late Wednesday morning, on a road about 60 miles from Wichita Falls. Cruz and Munoz collided as they crested a hill near the farm where both work, according to KETK. Neither was wearing a seatbelt.

"This is a very narrow, blacktop county road and there are no markings," a state trooper told KFDX. "There are no shoulder markings and there are no center stripe markings."

Investigators are still looking into what caused the crash, though they believe speed may have been a factor.

[Image via Shutterstock]

Kyle Jones, 31, is not ashamed of the qualities he finds attractive in a mate. In fact, he believes he was "wired" that way: "Everyone's brain is wired differently, some guys prefer blondes, some brunettes, some like other guys—I like old ladies."

One of his girlfriends, 91-year-old great-mother Marjorie McCool, was surprised at first that Jones wanted to court her, but has taken to him: "Sometimes I feel like he's another son...until we hop in bed and I feel different."

Jones, who lives in Pittsburgh, is as the Daily Mail delicately puts it, involved with "numerous pensioners." He's also dating 68-year-old Anna Reimol, whom he met on a dating website. "When he first contacted me I did question his motives because I was twice his age," she said. "He's very attentive to your needs. He just makes you feel good."

But McCool would appear to be his main squeeze: "In the beginning I got jealous of his other women but he keeps coming back to me and tells me I'm the best." She also told the Daily Mail that her family isn't bothered by their relationship—not even her grandsons that are older than Jones.

Jones' mother, Ceceila Jones Clark, 50, is supportive of her sons' relationships. She does not think he is a "cougar chaser."

"I really wasn't sure if that was something that he was going to stay with or if it was just a cougar phase some young men go through," she said. "However, later when I saw the kind of women he was spending time with I knew it wasn't a phase."

And for Jones, he knows your suspicions, and contends it's all for love:

The most common criticism I hear is 'you're after money' or 'you're after inheritance.' Or people think these women must be buying me things. But it's not true at all—I do this because I like it and they like it too. I've dated women from various ends of the financial spectrum, but it's never about what they have.

[H/T BuzzFeed]

Conservative culture warriors may want to skip Saturday's big gay pride parade in Washington, seeing as how Dykes With Bikes will be joined by a Pentagon-approved U.S. military color guard—believed to be a first in the nation's history.

Via the Washington Post:

The Department of Defense has authorized what military gay-rights groups and organizers of the Capital Pride parade say is a first nationwide — a color guard that will present the red, white and blue as well as flags of each branch of the military.

The eight-member team is scheduled to help lead off the 1.5-mile parade, immediately preceding the Capital Pride lead banner and grand marshal Chris Kluwe, the former NFL punter and author of the book "Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies."

Pentagon officials can't say for sure whether it's the first-ever active uniformed color guard at a gay pride event, since many color guards are arranged on local levels at reserve units.

But it's definitely the first handled on a federal level, and most of the LGBT groups who have requested armed forces honor guards since the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell said they were regularly rejected by military handlers for sketchy reasons: "They've said they didn't have a team ready to go, which is a lie because they have a color guard for every Tom, Dick and Henry."

The D.C. organizer, Capital Pride president Bernie Delia, said he had half-expected similar treatment this year. "We knew we might get turned down, but we asked and they said 'yes,' " Delia said. "I think that's very significant."

The best movies are insanely quotable. The classic dialogue sticks with you and becomes your new catch-phrase, even if you sometimes misquote it. But some of the best dialogue wasn't in the script at all. Here are 12 famous lines you probably didn't know were improvised on the set.

1) Blade Runner

The line: "All those... moments... will be lost in time, like [small cough] tears... in... rain. Time... to die..."

The last line of Roy Batty's final monologue was improvised by legend Rutger Hauer. Originally the speech was supposed to be two pages long. He cut it down to both save the audience from having to sit through another long death scene, but also to get out of the rain.

2) They Live!

The line: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum."

When asked, Rowdy Roddy Piper had this to say about his ad lib:

Yeah. I couldn't tell you what it really means either. It was one of those – "Roddy, you've got bullets on you, you've got a shotgun, you've got sunglasses, you go into a bank, you're not gonna rob it, say something … action!" I'm all out of bubblegum. Lunch! That was it. No more than that. I know, it's crazy.

3) Aliens

The line: "That's it, man. Game over, man! Game over!"

Paxton comments:

That was an ad-lib thing, too. [Laughs.] Now, when I say "ad-lib," I'm not clever enough to think of stuff and throw it out off the top of my head. It's usually something I'll come up with beforehand, and then I'll try it out. I find most directors are willing to let you kind of bend the dialogue if you give them something different.

4) Jaws

The line: "You're going to need a bigger boat."

This is possibly one of the most famous lines in cinema history. The way it works with the pacing and soundtrack is absolutely brilliant. Famously ad-libbed by Roy Scheider, it proves that some of greatest movie moments just can't be written ahead of time.

5) The Warriors

The line: "Warriors...come out to plaaaaay!"

David Patrick Kelly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO-KR-...recalled:

I wanted to make Luther evil, so he was influenced by this really bad guy who I knew in downtown New York who would make fun of me and say, "Daaaaave. Daaaaave. Daaaaave." And it was the creepiest thing I ever heard.

6) Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back

The Line: Leia: I love you! Han: "I know"

This line was actually a pretty big point of contention between Ford and George Lucas as Ford tells it:

It was such a contest between George and I about whether that was appropriate or whether the audience would enjoy that line or not, to the point where he made me go to a test screening to sit next to him, to prove it was going to get a bad laugh," Ford recalled with a smile. "And it didn't. It got a good laugh. So it stayed in.

7) A Clockwork Orange

The Line: Alex sings Singing in the Rain during a violent rape scene.

Kubrick had this to say about the controversial scene:

I was also rather pleased with the idea of 'Singin' in the Rain' as a means of Alexander identifying Alex again towards the end of the film.

This was one of the more important ideas which arose during rehearsal. This scene, in fact, was rehearsed longer than any other scene in the film and appeared to be going nowhere. We spent three days trying to work out just what was going to happen and somehow it all seemed a bit inadequate. Then suddenly the idea popped into my head — I don't know where it came from or what triggered it off.

8) Shaun of the Dead

The lines: Ed's description of the other patrons at the Winchester is all improvised.

At a panel in Australia, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTYkU4...discussed this scene:

EW: The vogue at the moment in comedy is to improvise a lot, but usually what that comes down to is people arguing and, in most improv comedies, the improvvie bits are people arguing with each other. It's never usually, like, plot-related because the plot has to move the story along, and improv rarely does. I think the only bit in this film that was really improvised was when you were trying to make Simon laugh.

NF: "Cafe au lait", all that kind of stuff. "Cockocidal maniac", I think was improvised. Because that was your mother-in-law behind, wasn't it?

9) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The line: "She talks in her sleep."

Julian Glover, the man who played Walter Donovon, was on set the day Sean Connery came up with one of the funniest lines from the movie:

My favourite memory is Sean making up that line, "She talks in her sleep." It was on the spot. Harrison said, "How did you know she's a Nazi?" and he said that, and they had to stop filming. Everybody just fell on the floor and Steven said, "Well, that's in."

10) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

The line: "Welcome to prime time, bitch!"

Apparently out of any one liner Freddy has said in the Freddy movies, according to his http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpIySM...Reddit AMA, this is his favorite.

My favorite is my improv from part 3, "Welcome to Prime Time Bitch."

Englund also talks about how he goes about improvising in the interview with MTV News:

Englund says he doesn't have any input on the "Nightmare" movies until he signs on to act in them. Even then, his input is not as major as you would think — though he cites the famous Freddy line "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" as his brainchild. He mostly lets the director and writer handle the duties of the script.

11) Serenity

The line: "Faster! Faster would be better!"

From the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlphfL...Serenity DVD commentary:

Joss Whedon: That last line, by the way, "Faster would be better"… This is one of the reasons I love working with Nathan so much. I went up to him and said, "Say something Mal would say." I just felt we needed a little line there and I was in a hurry and I hadn't written one and so he just improvved "Faster would be better", which was such a good Mal line that I was like, "Why did I slave away at that script for so many months? Why don't you just say stuff?" He's extraordinary that way. He can really become the character.

12) Star Trek 2009

The Line: "All I've got left are my bones."

According to the audio commentary for the movie, J.J. Abrams has commented that the "bones" line was not originally in the script, but improvised by Karl Urban, a long time Star Trek fan.

Bonus: The line by Simon Pegg as Scotty,"Can I get a towel?" Was also an ad lib. Here's a pretty great video of Zachary Quinto describing the scene:

One day an oafish bug set foot upon a fragile leaf. Being clumsy, he fell. The next day, a gluttonous bug set foot upon the same leaf. Being portly, he fell. Turns out there was a bird overhead the whole time who wanted to eat bugs, but couldn't, cause they fell off the leaves. Do you like that story Y/N.

The koan: "The Stingy Artist"

Gessen was an artist monk. Before he would start a drawing or painting he always insisted upon being paid in advance, and his fees were high. He was known as the "Stingy Artist."

A geisha once gave him a commission for a painting. "How much can you pay?" inquired Gessen.

"Whatever you charge," replied the girl, "but I want you to do the work in front of me."

So on a certain day Gessen was called by the geisha. She was holding a feast for her patron.

Gessen with fine brush work did the painting. When it was completed he asked the highest sum of his time.

He received his pay. Then the geisha turned to her patron, saying: "All this artist wants is money. His paintings are fine but his mind is dirty; money has caused it to become muddy. Drawn by such a filthy mind, his work is not fit to exhibit. It is just about good enough for one of my petticoats."

Removing her skirt, she then asked Gessen to do another picture on the back of her petticoat.

"How much will you pay?" asked Gessen.

"Oh, any amount," answered the girl.

Gessen named a fancy price, painted the picture in the manner requested, and went away.

It was learned later that Gessen had these reasons for desiring money:

A ravaging famine often visited his province. The rich would not help the poor, so Gessen had a secret warehouse, unknown to anyone, which he kept filled with grain, prepared for those emergencies.

From his village to the National Shrine the road was in very poor condition and many travellers suffered while traversing it. He desired to build a better road.

His teacher had passed away without realizing his wish to build a temple, and Gessen wished to complete this temple for him.

After Gessen had accomplished his three wishes he threw away his brushes and artist's materials and, retiring to the mountains, never painted again.

The enlightenment: Think u cool... ur not.

This has been "Zen Koans Explained." Inflation pumps.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

Blogger Liesl Testwuide missed her son, who was off at summer camp—his first experience being away from home for longer than a night. She wrote to him every day, and couldn't wait to hear about the wholesome activities he was obviously doing with the new friends he'd surely make. The letter she got back was not the letter she expected.

Instead, it pretty much redefined the classic "letter from camp" genre, as established in the '60s by Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh." Camp Grenada's alligators and malaria have nothing on this kid's tale of tremendous horse dumps, "diyareeya," push-pop binges, and the alphabet as it was meant to be burped: backward.

Here's the entire epic:

P.S. Can't wait for Satterday!

[H/T Guyism]

People either really, really love the Central Intelligence Agency or really, really fear it. It's hard to tell which.

Your school lets students get raped by their fellow classmates. Your school lets those rapists live in the same buildings and go to the same classes as the people they rape. Your school doesn't suspend or expel those rapists. Your school doesn't know what to do because it isn't a part of the criminal justice system. Your school is worried about getting sued.

Your school isn't different. What's different is whether or not you know that yet.

There are more than 4,000 two-and-four year Title IV institutions of higher education in the United States. The students at those schools are eligible for federal financial aid, which means the institutions have to follow specific guidelines regarding Title IX compliance. There are thousands more colleges that do not fall under this category, or offer programs that are less than two years.

At the beginning of May, as a result of the government's growing interest in transparency about sexual assault on college campuses, the Department of Education released a list of 55 schools that are currently being investigated for their handling of sexual assault. The list appears to have overwhelmed ED.gov's website and reportedly set a new traffic record for the site. Almost two dozen of the complaints had been filed within the past four months. The total number of schools on that list has reportedly grown to 60 since.

60 out of 4,000 might sound like a good number, but it's not. That's 60 schools where enough students and faculty members got enough support from their family, friends and peers to get the attention of their school administrations. That's 60 schools where the administration still didn't pay attention but the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights did. That's 60 schools that are being investigated right now, not the total number of schools that have ever been investigated for mishandling sexual assault or the total number that have handled things badly but no one knows that because students aren't properly educated about their rights.

My alma mater is one of those schools.

I would probably not say I "loved" attending the University of Chicago as an undergraduate. It's a difficult school, full of intense, infamously socially awkward people. Chicago is cold in the winter and people at the UofC end up inside studying a lot, so it is definitely not a place to go if you can't tolerate those things at least a little bit. But I did like it, I'm happy I went there and I generally look back on my days there fondly, perhaps more so with each passing year, as the memory of the calculus class I almost failed fades further and further away.

Maybe if I had still been at school when I found out that the college was being investigated by the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights for their allegedly inadequate handling of sexual assault on campus, as mandated by Title IX and the Clery Act, I would have been less surprised. I'm not wholly naïve about the school my family forked up a relatively insane amount of money to attend. Like many other elite institutions, UChicago is predominantly white and middle-class. It also boasts a prominent economics department that gives it a sometimes conservative bent, and, perhaps most notably, is located in a "bubble" of wealth that essentially protects it from the poor neighborhoods that surround it.

But it's easy to forget those things as you get distracted by all the friends you meet there and the dining halls full of food and the (consensual) interactions you have with sexual partners. So the memory of my time there has become awash in a general sense of nostalgia and comfort with my choice. The school, which has moved up in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, from 15, when I matriculated in 2006, to number 5 today, has become a stock that I bought low and sold high.

I remember only knowing of one person who was sexually assaulted at UChicago when I went there. Even when I was in school I knew that this wasn't representative of the actual number of individuals who I was friends with or had class with or passed on the quad who had been sexually assaulted. Sexual assault isn't something most people talk openly about. The one woman I knew was raped by a friend, though she didn't even even tell me that; I heard it through another friend. She never reported being raped. I heard through that same friend that she felt relieved that he was older, allowing her a few years of peace at school after he graduated and left her behind.

But this investigation in UChicago's sexual assault policy is not about me, right? Except that it is. If you haven't been raped and the people around you haven't been (or you don't know that they have been), why would you care about the issue? Why would you push your community to change? Why would any one community think it was doing anything wrong?

Like every other school on the ED's list, UChicago's struggles with sexual assault might appear recent. But the school has a long history with the issue. At the beginning of February, the school paper the Chicago Maroon reported that 4th year Olivia Ortiz had filed a complaint with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights over the college administration's handling of her sexual assault. (The Maroon had published a lengthy investigation into sexual assault at the college, finding that, while the college did not have the glaring legal and systematic problems handling sexual assault that investigations at other schools have revealed, it had significant miscommunication issues around the issue.) OCR announced that they were expanding their investigation of Ortiz's original complaint to look at how the college as a whole was handling the issue.

As early as the mid-90s, students at UChicago tried to reform the school's sexual assault policies. They formed two groups: Action for a Student Assault Policy (ASAP) and the Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV). In 2006, the college updated its sexual assault policy. In 2010, the student body voted to reform the sexual assault policy as prompted by a new group, the Working Group for Sexual Assault Policy (WGSAP). In 2011, the college "modified" their policy to make sure it fit the specific guidelines outlined by the OCR.

Since the announcement of OCR's investigation, alums of the college have been quite vocal about their concerns with how the administration has been handling the issue. They've published an open letter that has been signed by over 600 current and former students and they've formed the group Action for a Student Assault Policy which has encourage people to sign on Facebook. Recently hired Dean of Students Michele A. Rasmussen responded to their letter with one of her own outlining the evolution of the school's policy. In her letter, Rasmussen emphasized that the school had already created the position of Title IX Coordinator for Students, which "goes beyond federal requirements, which require only a Title IX Coordinator for the University."

Shortly before this online petition was published, and seemingly in anticipation of the Maroon article on the investigation, the University also announced that they were "examining new student disciplinary processes for cases of sexual misconduct and unlawful harassment and discrimination."

Why do these details matter? Because before writing this article, I had only a tangential awareness of these facts and an even less present emotional response to them. But when I found out the University of Chicago – my school, the school my younger sister currently attends – might have consistently treated and was possibly still treating students who had been sexually assaulted as badly as other schools I'd read about, I actually felt my stomach drop. My written response was an incredibly articulate:

I wanted to find out what was going on, and I wanted to understand how I could have not known about it.

Before Sexual Assault

I started at the beginning, with the first week of college. Every first year UChicago undergrad goes through a week of orientation, commonly referred to as O-Week. They take an online class called AlcoholEdu which "dedicates a third of its curriculum to bystander intervention and sexual violence." But a major part of O-Week activities are the three "Chicago Life" meetings led by older students in the college, each devoted to a different topic. The first deals with learning about the city, focusing on safety; the second on respecting and understanding the tense relationship the college has with its community; and the third is about sexual assault. Rather, it's a discussion about "the social responsibilities that you will face when addressing alcohol, drugs, sex, and your peers" that occurs after a presentation called Sex Signals.

Sex Signals is a nationwide program that brings improvisers mostly to college campuses and military organizations. As I remember it, the entire freshman class sits in an auditorium while two comedians stand on stage and act out a hookup situation, once from the perspective of the man and another time from the perspective of the woman. Each member of the audience has a STOP sign, which you are supposed to raise at any point when you think the situation is getting bad or inappropriate. Spoiler alert: at the end of the "boy and girl meet at a party and have been drinking" scenario, you find out the girl accuses the boy of raping her. Usually, very few people raise their "STOP" signs during the presentation. It's supposed to teach the lesson that consent is not assumed and that a verbal "Yes" while hooking up with someone is required.

Afterwards, the students break out into smaller groups according to dorm and talk over what they just saw with their peers. As a first year, I attended one of these meetings. And as an O-Leader (Orientation Leader) two years later, I led one. But today, I couldn't tell you any details about what was discussed at either of them. I remember going to one meeting where O-Leaders were trained on how to lead the Chicago Life meeting about sexual assault where we were taught how to talk to students about "what is consent" and what were their options if they if they did get raped. We handed out very loud rape whistles. I perhaps symbolically threw mine away when I graduated, along with all my other now-unnecessary papers.

On the back of every door in every bathroom stall in my dorm was a sign for the school's Resources for Sexual Violence Prevention, or RSVP. It was a long list about what constitutes consent and clearly stated some version of "Yes and only Yes means Yes." When I left housing, I took it to my new apartment and hung it in my bathroom. It was comforting, though I wasn't sure why.

My memory of Sex Signals matches those of other current and former UChicago students. "People definitely didn't take it seriously," said Lisa*, a class of 2016 student who has spoken with OCR about the way the school handled her sexual assault case. It's a brief few hours that quickly fades into the background of an overwhelming first week of college, full of tests, new people and many parties more interesting than a presentation with STOP signs.

Though many of the students I spoke to had been out of college for at least a few years, others were still in college and also had little to say about it. Some described the students in their group as not very empathetic, while others said their sessions were a little over-the-top. The lack of consistency makes sense: These meetings are being led by slightly older students who attended a brief training session but are absolutely not experts in the topic.

And even the lessons that might have been learned don't stick for most people. To find out how people were responding to the UChicago sexual assault investigation (or an OCR investigation at any other school), I put out a call on Facebook. One of the responses was from Katie*, a casual friend who I discovered had been raped when we were in school together.

When I got in touch with Katie, she described her sexual assault as a "very sadly typical situation." During the fall of her 3rd year, Katie met a guy at a party and started flirting. They were drinking. As these things go, they started kissing and it quickly "started escalating in a way that I wasn't comfortable with," she said.

"He was kind of forceful. I thought, 'This isn't what I want.' I was like, 'I want to stop. I want to go home.'" But he didn't stop; Katie described him as "much stronger than I was." When she tried to get up, she couldn't. So she thought, "Well, fuck, this isn't working."

"It was kind of weird and kind of scary because he didn't say a word for the whole time," she said. "I was saying no loudly and he just kept going."

Katie didn't report her assault. She enrolled in a study abroad program. Once there, she began to have trouble sleeping and her grades dropped, eventually prompting her to take a leave of absence. "At the time, I really kind of blocked things out," she said. "I think that that incident had a much bigger effect on my life than I realized. I don't want to play the victim." She and her assailant had many friends in common. When she returned to campus, she tried to avoid him. But inevitably she did see him, and then, "I would just have this physical reaction and I would just want to leave." Katie didn't tell her friends what had happened. Instead, she began hanging out with a new group, although she did stay close to her closest friends.

"It was this mentality of 'I don't want him to win. I don't want to look like this weak person,'" she said, explaining why she didn't do anything. "All I could think about was how it would take over the rest of my college career with this bullshit."

When I asked Katie if she had considered reporting her assault later on, she said she thought about it but brushed it off. "I literally had this magnet on my fridge that was for the sexual assault hotline," she said, referring to the RSVP magnet handed out to students during O-Week. "I had it. I looked at it."

But she couldn't see the point in doing anything with it. "What are these people going to do for me? They weren't there. I could only imagine that he would say, 'Uh, she was drunk.'"

I asked her what she remembered about her O-Week Sex Signals training. She said, "'If you say no, that means no.' I remember them beating that into the ground. And all the guys in my dorm afterward were like, 'We feel horrible.'"

But Katie didn't see viable options when she was being raped and she didn't see them afterwards. "What would a whistle have done?" she asked me. I didn't have an answer for her.

After Sexual Assault

The students protesting the current UChicago administration policies seem to understand that, to a certain degree, there's not much anyone can do to stop someone from raping a fellow classmate. UChicago might feel like a bubble, but it's still the real world and in the world, people rape people they know. What students are protesting is the fact that the school doesn't support students who have been raped after the fact.

Olivia Ortiz, whose case sparked the OCR investigation, is most concerned with the University's response. Her sexual assault was a case of partner rape; Ortiz was in a relationship her second year, during which she says her partner "repeatedly" assaulted her. At the end of the 2012 school year, she called the campus Sexual Assault Dean-on-Call, who referred her to Susan Art, who has been the College's Dean of Students since 2001. During her conversation with Art, Ortiz told me and as she outlined in her complaint to OCR obtained by Jezebel, Dean Art gave her three options: file a report with the police, open a disciplinary hearing for her perpetrator or enter an informal mediation between herself and her partner. Informal mediation is a process that is illegal under Title IX, which prohibits school officials from "encouraging or allowing mediation (rather than a formal hearing)" of a sexual assault complaint. It's also prohibited under University policy.

At the time, Ortiz didn't know informal mediation was illegal; she thought it seemed like a "fast and easy" option. She wanted to take her finals and start her summer. Like Katie, she wanted to move on; she didn't want the rape to define her existence. So the day before her former partner graduated, she sat in a room with her appointed support person, her former partner and Dean Art.

"It wasn't really the tone of an investigation but more of like, let's work this out," Ortiz explains. "[Dean Art] would say things like, 'Look at how sorry you made her, shouldn't you be sorry for this'" to Ortiz's former partner/alleged rapist.

Ortiz left that meeting feeling disheartened and upset. A few weeks later she had a follow-up meeting with Dean Art where Art described Ortiz's assault not as a sexual assault but as "a dispute between two students" which it was Art's job to "mediate." Dean Art later claimed, in an email to Ortiz, that she did not remember the same way, as was reported in the Maroon.

The College encourage Ortiz to see a counselor at the Student Care Center whom Ortiz says acted as though she didn't believe that Ortiz had been assaulted or abused. And from then on, things escalated. Ortiz became a dorm RA, then quickly realized it was more than she could handle while she was dealing with her assault. She spoke with Maroon reporters for their investigation, which prompted Art to reach out to her about the discrepancies in how they each remembered their conversations. Art suggested a meeting, which Ortiz found "retraumatizing," and declined. It was around this point that Ortiz realized she might want to seek legal counsel, and then discovered that the suggestion of informal mediation she'd been given was a violation of the law. "I find it really inappropriate that they expect students in a time of crisis to know these nitty gritty details," she told me.

Part of what likely made Ortiz's complaint complicated for Art was that it concerned intimate partner abuse. When Lisa contacted Jezebel to share her story, she said she'd also been repeatedly assaulted by a partner with whom she had had consensual sex with before. As a first year in 2012, Lisa started hooking up with a guy who had been described to her as "silently violent." Her own Orientation Leaders had warned Lisa and her classmates about him, explaining that he'd gotten in trouble for fighting in the dorms. Lisa said that the first time she and he had sex, it was fine. The next time, she was drunk and tired and he had sex with her even though she said no. Lisa said she gave in; she describes him as much bigger than her, explaining that she thought he wouldn't listen to her and was worried about his reputation for being physically violent.

Lisa continued to hook up with him because he was nice when he was sober, but finally, during winter quarter, she found herself in a situation with him where he held her down and put his arm up to her throat. That's when she thought, "Oh, you could actually physically hurt me."

Lisa's abuser (who was older than her) eventually left campus. Lisa went to talk to Dean Art, who told Lisa that she had "a lot" of sexual assault cases on her plate already (about two or three) and didn't have to time to handle Lisa's. Lisa gave her statement to another Dean, who deferred her case until the following fall – when Lisa was told there wasn't enough evidence to hold a hearing. "It wasn't even clear to me that that's a decision they could make," she said, explaining that she was told that because she "continued to sleep with him afterwards it made it difficult for people to discern his actions."

Lisa's story – like Ortiz's and the stories of many sexual assault victims – is full of complications and failures by the people and the organization that are supposed to be the most familiar with these procedures. When Lisa finally saw her abuser's statement – a 30-page letter that disputed the details of her complaint and made her own two-page letter appear invalid – it read as though the whole thing was just a complicated he-said/she-said. She was told that she and her rapist should have no contact when he returned to campus, but she didn't know what parameters that required or how it would be enforced. When he did return, Lisa's Dean told her they hadn't shared the news with Lisa because they "didn't think that he'd hurt you."

Eventually, Lisa talked to UChicago's Title IX coordinator Belinda Vazquez, a move that appears to have prompted the administration to reopen her case. Her actual hearing became even more complex; Lisa discovered statements that had been submitted by a fellow student about her abuser had been excluded because they were considered repetitive or because they apparently hadn't been received. Harassing texts her abuser had sent a previous partner – a partner who had been brushed off by the administration when she had gone to them about him before Lisa – had been excluded "even though Title IX says you have to take into account previous allegations."

Ultimately, Lisa says the hearing was "mostly fine," though she had to explain to everyone there why she had kept sleeping with him, as if they were unfamiliar with the patterns of abusive relationships. Her abuser was found not guilty.

Lisa says she wasn't that upset about the outcome; it was the process that was frustrating. "The further this process went the more I felt like [my Dean] didn't believe me and [they] became more and more antagonistic."

When Lisa was telling me her story, she seemed calm, if somewhat tired and resigned. My familiarity with the college might have made it easier. But what struck me was that, for lack of a better word, it was luck that I had managed to dodge the experiences she, Katie and Olivia were describing. It was luck that I was sitting there listening to them tell their stories instead of sharing them myself.

What's Special About Your School

Every person I talked to for this story didn't think sexual assault was solely UChicago issue, because it isn't. But every community has qualities that make their handling of these issues different – and often differently bad. "There's a neoliberal affect that I think honestly a lot of [issues at UChicago] came from," my friend Amulya Mandava said when I asked her what she thought about the UChicago's handling of issues like abuse. "First, this disturbing brand of libertarianism where other people's social issues are 'not your business', and second, this ivory tower thing that sends the message that social justice problems happen elsewhere and we're so 'intellectual' that we're above it."

On Jezebel's original post about the investigation at UChicgo, many former students said similar things about the school fostering an environment that makes sexual assault seem unimportant or improbable. Perhaps part of the reason I was so surprised about OCR's investigation was that I thought that these things "just don't happen" at my school. I chose a place where sports and Greek life – both associated with rape culture – weren't a huge part of the dominant social structure. Wasn't this place different? Most of my friends didn't even know about the investigation, and when I told them about it, their brows would furrow.

Current student and Director of the UChicago Clothesline Project Veronica Portillo Heap agrees that the school encourages this sense that being "different" is a good thing, when in actuality it's just bad in a different way. The Clothesline Project collects and shares the stories of those who have been sexually assaulted, printing them on t-shirts that are displayed each spring. Heap says her feeling about campus culture is that there are very few activists among the student body. "Generally, I think at UChicago it's hard because people are so focused on their studies," she told me. "People have been sort of supportive but there aren't a whole lot that seem super committed to [cause of reforming sexual assault policy.]" And indeed, during my time at college, the biggest protest wasn't for Darfur or Kicking Coke off Campus but against the administration for switching from their "Uncommon" application to the Common application.

The Phoenix Survivors Alliance, which Ortiz is a part of, hopes to change that. A group of sexual assault survivors (the Phoenix is UChicago's mascot), they've created a thorough guide that walks students through their options after being sexually assaulted, both within the University structure and outside of it. The incredibly detailed guide attempts to avoid bias against individuals no matter what their relationship with their assailant and no matter the gender or sexual orientation of those involved.

The school's Student Government has also actively been involved in getting this guide distributed to students, although they'd prefer to be doing it with the help of the University. Sofia Flores, the SG's Vice President of Administration, was the most positive of any of the students I've talked to about the University's response to changes in their sexual assault policy.

"I've been really pleased with how collaborative and supportive the administration has been," Flores told me. A college third year, Flores ran for Student Government as part of a slate that she says was more focused on social justice than others have been in the past, and sexual assault on campus was one of their issues. Her big push during her term was to get a line item in the SG budget that would create for a week every school year devoted to sexual assault issues.

Flores believes the University's system for dealing with sexual assault is too decentralized; undergrads deal with the Dean of Students for their cases, grad students answer to their individual departments. In response to student concerns, the administration is proposing to centralize the system under one person, who would report to the Dean of Students, and a single disciplinary committee for undergraduate and graduate students

The work of students like Flores in SG and Ortiz in the Phoenix Survivors Alliance is where the real push for change at the UofC is coming. It's where the change has come at every other college too, because the administrations at these schools aren't pushing for this work on their own accord. "The burden is kind of placed upon the people who have to bring it up," Ortiz told me. "You don't really see colleges being proactive."

Some also believe that the onus rests on students because a Dean of Students can't possibly protect the students while protecting the organization that pays him or her. My old roommate Christina Williams felt that way when she was dealing with Dean Art and the rest of the University after they forced her to take a medical leave of absence over a eating disorder the school nurse misdiagnosed. "They really really cared about covering their asses," she said. "All I ever got was that she was thinking about the University."

"[Dean Art] was so pressured to have the school's needs met," Christina explained, though she's not unsympathetic to that position. "She was just doing her job as written by the UofC."

Other students are more sympathetic to the roles of administrators. "The administration makes it worse but it's not the cause of all this," Lisa told me, a sentiment echoed by Katie, who said she feels the college community exacerbates the feeling that you're part of a safe community when you're actually not. Despite rape whistles, students aren't on the lookout for dangerous scenarios and when it does happen, the social structure and pressures make them unlikely to report. But even when Katie was telling me about her rapist, I found my head spinning a bit. Who was he? Would I have guessed? Would I have done anything if I had known? Would her friends have?

This makes college just like the rest of the country; statistically, most rapes are not committed by strangers but by people who know their victims. But for college students who work hard and make sacrifices to get into and pay for a positive college experience, those statistics are unacceptable. "It's actually kind of heartbreaking for me because this was the place that I always wanted to go," said Ortiz, who is currently taking a leave of absence but plans to graduate from UChicago. "I do like the school, the professors have been great and so has the community. But I think the administration still needs a lot of work."

"It's been very hard for me to, as a result of this, lose my love for my school work," she added, explaining that she doubts she'll get anything more than apology from the University, if that. "I honestly just want it to be a more welcoming and safe place for the community. I'm happy to do my part for that as a member of the community and of the student body and I also want the University to do theirs.

"It's very hard to make these sacrifices for an institution that probably won't thank me in the end."

As those in charge of UChicago and at many other schools are unlikely to apologize, the onus for change rests on a constantly shifting student body which typically attends the college for a far shorter time than the administrators they'll interact with. As UChicago alums, many of whom had been involved in refining its policy in the 90s, wrote in their letter to the college:

Then, as happens, we graduated and left the university. We were not there long enough, or with enough leverage, to see that those improvements were made. We had hoped that the needed progress had been made in the intervening years.

At some schools, alums are doing the most dramatic thing they can do to protest how their school is handling sexual assault: not donating. As I was working on this piece, an annual UChicago fundraiser came up, a night to mingle with friends at a bar and donate a few dollars to your alma mater. Most years I end up making it, but this year I had plans. I was relieved: donating to a place I was feeling particularly distrustful of felt weird.

What's particularly interesting about students fighting back against their school administrations is that they're they're fighting against an organization that chose them to attend in the first place. Schools like UChicago are full of young people who are supposed to be the next leaders of the Free World. They're not fully-formed humans yet, but they're trying to figure it out: Their politics, their beliefs, how to create change in the world. For school administrations, it's difficult to grapple with the fact that one way their students are practicing for adulthood is to question and often oppose their institutions. In many ways, the colleges have welcomed their enemies into the fold, given them tools to make them stronger and allowed them to roam free.

As Kinja user FieryAnecdote wrote on the list of the schools being investigated by OCR:

We need to recognize that the reason these schools are on the the list is not because sexual assault is a greater problem in their student body than at other schools, but because their students and professors are more out spoken advocates.

Sexual assault is an equal or greater problem at schools not on this list.

The fact that so many progressive liberal arts colleges and universities are on that that list speaks to this. The students are trail blazing for students at universities where people feel silenced or have not found the right advocates.

Ortiz is right that the school probably won't apologize because that would require admitting any wrongdoing, which is not great PR for the school's brand. When I contacted Dean Art, Dean Rasmussen and Vicky Sides of RSVP for comment and discussion about this story, all directed me to College's public affairs department. What occurred next was a perfectly civil, but ultimately unfruitful, email correspondence in which I asked to speak with individuals in the administration about dealing with these cases. Did the Deans feel they had adequate training for their jobs? Did they feel it was difficult to simultaneously juggle the needs of the students and the school? Have pushes for changes in the school's sexual assault policy always come from the student body? Did SG's push for a week devoted to sexual assault indicate that the school's training for students on the issue might be lacking? After prompting, this is the response I got from Dean Rasmussen via the News department:

The University of Chicago is deeply committed to addressing sexual assault and all forms of sex-based harassment that impact our students' ability to be successful at our institution. To that end, not only do we do everything possible to support survivors using on- and off-campus resources, we take very seriously our obligations to investigate complaints that come forward and apply appropriate measures through our University disciplinary systems.

We also recognize our responsibility to engage our entire University community around the importance of preventing sexual misconduct and unlawful harassment. We continue to seek ways to educate and empower students, staff and faculty though bystander intervention programs, training and professional development opportunities and awareness campaigns.

I knew I shouldn't have expected anything better. I wanted answers I knew I wouldn't get: These are people charged with protecting an institution, first and foremost.

But I'm a person and what it took for me to care about this was awareness. Awareness that it was happening, coupled with my job writing for a publication that cares about women's rights and talking to people I hadn't even known were dealing with these issues. Katie sounds like she's doing great now, as is Christina. Lisa and Olivia will graduate from school hopefully knowing they did more to make it a better place during their time there than I or most others have. That might not give them the happiness they deserve, but it makes me feel lucky to know that I went to a school that saw something in all of us, even if the people running it don't know how to give us what we want now.

It's unclear if OCR will find anything conclusive about the University's handling of sexual assault, they way they have at schools like Occidental or Yale. They'd have to prove that the administration is actively downplaying the number of sexual assaults on campus and/or has systematically violated the rights of students in dealing with these cases. Some students I spoke with believe both are true. Others are far less certain. According to the Department of Education, in 2012 there were five reported cases of forcible sex offenses on the UChicago campus alone. The numbers for the two years prior are roughly the same.

Earlier this year, the Maroon reported that Dean Art was retiring. She will be replaced by an administrator from Harvard. On May 20, the school announced that they'd begin implementing the suggestions that Flores, Ortiz and others have worked so hard to craft in July. A separate Associate Dean will be appointed for sexual assault cases and students will deal with only one panel of "trained" faculty members on one disciplinary committee. Additionally, SG has allotted $10,000 for sexual assault awareness activities next year. At the end of the school year, the school had their first Sexual Assault Awareness Week, as Flores had hoped it would. According to the Maroon, the University credited the paper's investigative series as a prompt for the changes.

As for me, if I didn't realize how important personal stories were before, I do now. And I've learned my lesson about expecting too much of my alma mater. In their own way, that's the most real thing UChicago and colleges like it are teaching their students: This is what the rest of the world is like. Get used to it. Then tell someone.

* Names have been changed.

Image by Jim Cooke.

A new study finds that the most nutrient-dense vegetable is watercress. Also, the best fruit is blueberry, and the best pie is sweet potato.

Getting your car stolen from your driveway is probably an unsettling experience. It would be completely reasonable to hate the person who stole your car for violating the sacred personal space that is your home. It would also be completely reasonable, if you're Miley Cyrus, to become best friends with the dude who jacked your Maserati.

That dude, according to TMZ, is 19-year-old Tylor Scott (perfect), who was arrested today along with a female accomplice (who will probably have to get out of the way in this scenario, to be honest.) That's his mugshot above, from a December 2013 arrest in Arizona for stealing a Mercedes. Look at that perfectly tussled hair and nose ring. Couldn't you see him smoking extreme amounts of weed in Miley's backyard?

Speaking of!

The docs say he has a drug problem — reinforced by the fact that cops found a pipe in the Mercedes with marijuana residue.

There is a popular HBO crime drama currently casting its second season that should consider hiring Miley Cyrus and Tylor Scott, is what I'm saying.

[image via a mugshot website]

YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are parting ways. The duo worked together for 15 years, starting at PayPal, then got $1.65 billion from Google. But faced a series of missteps at their incubator Avos Systems. Now Hurley is cutting his losses and focusing on just one Avos product, MixBit, and Chen is joining Google Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence.

When TechCrunch senior editor Leena Rao decided to stop covering companies in order to invest in them, she also ended up Google Ventures. MG Siegler, one of the pioneers in the blogging-capitalist movement, is currently a general partner at Google Ventures as well.

TechCrunch says "Avos is pivoting, in a sense" towards a single company: Mixbit, a mobile video platform. But that seems somewhat generous. Avos bought, then gave up on the beloved bookmarking site Delicious. Former employees said the cofounders attitude at Avos was basically: I'm rich, bitch. One of the incubator's ideas was a clone of Vine. A Pinterest-y product was also killed.

Mixbit, apparently the most promising of the lot, is facing legal threats from Kanye West. Chen was vague about his new job description:

Chen wouldn't go into much detail about what he plans on building at Google Ventures, but he did explain that part of the draw of GV was being around the younger, fresher minds in tech. "Chad and I have always been on the inside of one company, so the opportunity to start from higher up across multiple industries and talk to the people at the forefront of the future… that's something that is exciting and alluring to me."

At least he'll have a sympathetic ear! Digg founder Kevin Rose also ended up as an investor at Google Ventures after shutting down the only product from his own startup incubator, Milk.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

[Image via Getty]

Capitalism sucks. Here is a clip of Pharrell, who is extremely rich, singing "Happy" at today's Walmart shareholders meeting. It's definitely uplifting and inspiring and in no way very depressing and dystopian, especially when Pharrell says "put your hands together for Walmart, guys, for making the world a happier place."

The recording comes via the Sam Seder Show (hi, extremely large image of Sam Seder's face.)

Fact check: Walmart does not actually make the world a happier place.

If it makes you feel any better, Robin Thicke was at the shareholders meeting, too, according to Fuse, who reported that earlier today in an article that mysteriously disappeared.

[image of Pharrell in a big ass hat via Getty]