Erin - you repeated (paraphrased) those words without any attribution. YOUR article reads: "Other attendees of the party knew what was happening but did nothing" not: "The sheriff claims that other attendees of the party knew what was happening but did nothing." They are your words now. I understand that you're a…

To be fair, you and I also sat and did nothing while that girl was getting gang raped. We just weren't at the party.

Also, making fun of the kid for getting an attorney and releasing a statement that he wasn't involved. There may have been rumors in his town that he was involved that he's trying to clear up. We don't know what he knows about what happened so I think people should hold back on the snark.

The court's ruling doesn't say that he needs to be found guilty in a criminal court in order to be lawfully expelled. It just says that the university is enjoined from expelling him until the conclusion of the student's civil suit against the university. In that suit, the court will decide whether or not the…

The student filed a civil lawsuit against Duke for (from what I can tell) not following their own rules when they expelled him. His claim was likely that he had a contractual right to not be expelled unless the university followed its own procedures to do so.

The ruling is basically that the hearing may have been a kangaroo court meant to resolve the embarrassment rather than assess the claim. In other words, a party in a contractual relationship has to follow an agreed-upon mechanism before declaring the other party violated terms.

I don't know much about youngsters these days but I wouldn't thank that many 12 year old had seen Dark City. Mostly I wanted to give a shout out to an excellent little (late 90's?) movie.

I included that detail because I think it speaks to how the public reaction to this is going to play out. People are gonna flip.

I really don't think it's fair to blame this on "the Internet," though. Slender Man is basically just a story told around a digital campfire [wheeze at my own cliches]. As people are pointing out elsewhere in the comments, it's like Bloody Mary or the Boogieman, but disseminated online. Like I said, maybe they were…

The Slender Man sounds like one of The Strangers from Dark City.

Does nobody remember the creepy weird urban legend horror stories from before us? Bloody Mary? Candyman? Etc.

There is nothing subtle about that dress, therefore there is nothing subtle about the reaction to the dress.

it's a shame her escort ruined it by making sure everyone knew he was staring right at her ass. COME ON DUDE.

I put debasing in quotation marks because of that very reason, lol. I know the Romans weren't horrible KKK-style racists but they did see anyone who was non-Roman as being beneath them, regardless of their color (and also I couldn't think of another, better term to use than debasing). I mean, they used to poke fun at…

Because citing history is SUPER RACIST!

I think also, the Roman reaction to her changed depending on the needs of politics and propaganda. Sometimes the needed her to be a wicked witch, sometimes the scion of an ancient line and sometimes a vile temptress. This, to me, is the interesting part (as opposed to her skin color) - that a woman ruler was not, like…

There are a few primary sources that comment on her beauty. Mostly Romans and they generally hated her so when they say she was ugly and wasnt beautiful people take it with a grain of salt. But there seems to be some agreement that she wasnt stunning, but was very charming.

Cleopatra's family was the Ptolemys. Who were as far back as Alexander the Great and from northern Greece, and based on that most likely fair skinned with blonde hair and light eyes.

Wouldn't Cleopatra be pretty white though? As one of Alexander's generals, I imagine that he was from Macedonia (or did he get picked up somewhere along the way?) and Macedonians are pretty pale (see: my mom's side of my family).