Via Mick Hartley comes news from the University of California:

“After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento. Summers gained notoriety for saying that innate differences between men and women could be a reason for under-representation of women in science, math and engineering.

UCD professor Maureen Stanton, one of the petition organisers, was delighted by news of the change, saying it’s ‘a move in the right direction’. ‘UC has an enormous historical commitment to diversity within its faculty ranks, but still has a long way to go before our faculty adequately represent the diversity of our constituency, the people of California,’ said Stanton.

When Stanton heard about the initial invitation to Summers, she was ‘stunned’. ‘I was appalled that someone articulating that point of view would be invited,’ she said. ‘This is a symbolic invitation and a symbolic measure that I believe sends the wrong message about the University of California and its cultural principles.’ ‘None of us go looking for a fight,’ Stanton said. ‘We were just deeply offended.’”

Yes, diversity in all things. Except, of course, in thought. Presumably, Professor Stanton is also “stunned”, “appalled” and “deeply offended” by the over-representation of, say, gay people in the spheres of arts and drama, or of women in the caring professions, or of Indian employees in Indian restaurants. Perhaps some recalibration of those industries is also in order, to ensure suitable diversity.

Meanwhile, in Ohio:

“The Office of University Housing at Ohio State, a public university, maintains a Diversity Statement that severely restricts what students in Ohio State’s residence halls can and cannot say. Students are instructed: ‘Do not joke about differences related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, ability, socioeconomic background, etc. When in doubt about the impact of your words and actions, simply ask.’”

It’s interesting to note that the University’s Diversity Statement aims to foster learning “from a wide array of human similarities and differences in an increasingly diverse world” and plans to achieve this blossoming of awareness by inhibiting any careless reference to those same differences. 

Related. (H/T. Stephen Hicks.)

Little soap hands. 

“Actual soap, shaped like little hands.” In a bag. $12.00 

Or, slightly larger soap hands. $10.00

Busy today, but feel free to browse some short films or peruse the greatest hits, or just rummage around in the archives.

KC Johnson has begun to wind down his outstanding Durham in Wonderland blog, which details the infamous Duke “rape” case, along with the PC prejudice and general bad faith of various “activist” faculty members. Those with an interest in tenured ideologues and hokum merchants will find plenty to entertain, and it’s worth casting an eye over this table, which prompts the following comment from a DIW reader:

“Looking at the departmental affiliations of the good guys it’s hard not to conclude that the widest gulf on campus is not the one separating black and white or the one separating men and women, but the one separating the quantitative, fact-based disciplines from what the humanities have deteriorated into. Whether universities survive as useful institutions will depend on whether the anti-rationalists can be exorcised.”

I’m not exactly sure how the culprits (and the cultural environment in which they flourish) might be “exorcised”, so I guess large swathes of academia will continue to decline, in terms of both substance and reputation. Or perhaps there will come a point at which drastic measures have to be taken in order to save the institution from the accumulation of parasites on its back. Maybe parents will no longer be willing to pay $40,000 a year for their children to be misled and stupefied at the hands of, say, Wahneema Lubiano, who labels herself a “post-structuralist teacher-critic leftist” and who sees no reason to distinguish between her role in the classroom and her bizarre political “activism”.

Related. And. (H/T. The Thin Man.)

Via Atom Films, here’s Jamin Winans’ short film, Spin.

More. And. Also.

Bloxorz. One block, one hole, 33 levels. // Via Infosthetics, the science of boomerangs. // The secret of invisibility. “Walk unseen among people or crowds.” $19.95 // 1” cube wooden speakers. 1.5 Watts. // Mirin Dajo, human pincushion. (1947) More. // Di-positronium and the gamma ray annihilation laser. More. // Make your own Moon surface. Some explosives required. (H/T, Coudal.) // Washing hair in zero gravity. // Guess who. (H/T, Artblog.) // Via Denis Dutton, astronomy and empire. A mutual history. (mp3) // Jeff Goldstein on “negotiating” with al-Qaeda. Live and let live meets live as we say. // Ehsan Jami and the Committee of Ex-Muslims. “We no longer tolerate the intolerance of Islam.” Jami says Muslims should be free to leave Islam without being killed. Death threats ensue. More. // Abrogation in Islam. Mecca versus Medina; how the monstrous is made legitimate. // The power of prayer. // The power of Hubble. (H/T, Stephen Hicks.) // TV’s best (and most improbable) science fiction makeover. Much better than this old tosh. // On pregnancy payouts. // 1939 New York World’s Fair. Adverts, postcards, visions of tomorrow. // The Castle House Tower. Eco-building chic. More. // Tokyo skyline time-lapse. 35 years in 20 seconds. (H/T, AntiCitizenOne.) // Case Study: LSD Woman talks to protesting hotdog. Things turn ugly. (1969) // Via The Thin Man, Doris takes a different kind of trip.

Here’s footage of British troops unwittingly testing LSD, circa 1953/54. The experiments were supposedly to determine the drug’s value as a “non-lethal incapacitating weapon.” Hilarity ensues. One soldier attempts to feed the birds by climbing a tree. “The efficiency of the rocket launcher team was also very impaired.”

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Related. And.

Via DSTPFW, here’s Christopher Hitchens on Tariq Ramadan and the mainstreaming of Islamic imperialism.

“French author Caroline Fourest has made an intensive study of Ramadan’s discrepant appearances in Europe and in the Muslim world, and has concluded that he speaks with a forked tongue and deliberately gives different impressions to different audiences. Having listened to him, I would say that the problem is not quite that. He possesses a command of postmodern and sociological jargon (of the sort that you may easily recognize by its repetitive use of the terms space and discourse to delineate the arena of thinkable debate), and he has a smooth way with euphemism.

Thus, he tells Egyptian television that the destruction of the Israeli state is for the moment ‘impossible’ and in Mantua described the idea of stoning adulterous women as ‘unimplementable’. This is something less than a full condemnation, but he is quick to say that simple condemnation of such things would reduce his own ‘credibility’ in the eyes of a Muslim audience that, or so he claims, he wants to modernize by stealth.”

More on Mr Ramadan’s “discrepant” pronouncements, and those who squint at him optimistically, here.

The ever-vigilant Zombie documents the convergence of Saturday’s Power to the Peaceful Festival and 9/11 Truth March in San Francisco. Behold an unsightly collision of Maoists, vegans, conspiracy theorists and the Cannabis Action Network. Together at last. There are photos and clips galore, but for some reason these tickled me. Oh, and take care to avert your eyes from the ill-fitting tights of Spider-Man.

More. Related.

Today seems as good a day as any to read Daphne Patai’s article on academia and denial, Letter to a Friend: On Islamic Fundamentalism, written September 11, 2006.

“It’s true I share your distaste for all types of religious fundamentalism. But that doesn’t prevent me from noting the different demands and agendas of each type, as well as their numbers and influence in the real world today… Nor, if one tracks their actions, which is far more important than their rhetoric, does it appear that each type of fundamentalism is equally harmful, equally destructive in its influence around the world… If you are still tempted to worry as much, as you wrote, about Christian fundamentalists as about Muslim ones, just ask yourself about the agenda of each group, their numbers, their geographical presence, their past and present violent actions, the political responses to them, and the sort of press they each get in the West.”

More. Related. And.

Heh. This looks fun. I’m sure the Daily Kos will love it to bits. Related.