Given recent posts on the University of Delaware’s bizarre indoctrination programme and my comments on corrupting students’ probity, it may be worth revisiting an extract from an interview with Theodore Dalrymple, presented here in longer form. The second paragraph below was brought to mind by Dr Shakti Butler’s claim that “all white people” are racists. I was trying to imagine how a student might react to this assertion and, given the context, how disinclined they might be to respond realistically – and what that unrealism might entail.

My father was a communist though he was also a businessman. Our house was full of communist literature from the 1930s and 40s… It was always clear that my father’s concern for humanity was not always matched by his concern for men, to put it mildly, for whom (as individuals) he often expressed contempt. He found it difficult to enter an equal relationship with anyone, and preferred to play Stalin to their Molotov… I think the great disjunction between my father’s expressed ideas (and ideals) and his everyday conduct affected me, and made me suspicious of people with grand schemes of universal improvement…

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect, and is intended to.

Examples of how the obvious can be ignored with great determination can be found here, here, here and here.

Thanks to ‘flu, I’m preoccupied with the question of exactly how much mucous the average human head can produce. (More than I’d have thought possible, it seems.) Until normal service is resumed, please feel free to browse the archives, or watch some short films, or peruse the greatest hits. The ephemera archive contains somewhere in the region of 700 or so items, so there ought to be something in there to help you pass the time.

Back shortly. Cough.

A victory for FIRE: 

“The University of Delaware has dropped an ideological re-education program that was referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The program’s stated goal was for the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on politics, race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy and environmentalism… Universities often cannot defend in public what they try to do in private, and the situation at Delaware was no exception… While we are pleased that this program is over, it is stunning that it ever existed at a public university in the United States.”

Meanwhile, at the University of Maine, at Tufts, at Duke, and in Seattle’s public schools…

Loving the neighbours. // Vilayanur Ramachandran on phantom limb pain. // Levitating lamp. Not a pretty thing. More. (h/t, Microscopics.) // Images, maps and films of Saturn and its moons. // The Giant Impact Hypothesis. How the Moon came to be, probably. // Soviets in space matchboxes. (h/t, Monoscope.) // Google Sky. // Flash Earth. // A layman’s critique of catastrophic man-made global warming theory. More. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // Impressive bridges.  (h/t, Stephen Hicks.) // The Millau Viaduct. A personal favourite. // How to move an obelisk. // On the evils of lipstick and infidel fashions: “Our prayers become unfocused and our sleep is often disturbed.” // “In only a minority of institutions – approximately 25 per cent – was radical material found.” // Robert Spencer on “Islamophobia”. // The not-so-secret sins of faded revolutionaries. // “The true social parasites are those who demand collectivism for other people while being themselves relatively protected from its consequences.” // What is typography? // Via Coudal, making spiders from scissors. // Make your own Bumble Bee Transformer. // Chinese toy factory workers. // A range of Tokyo vending machines. // One particular vending machine, photographed repeatedly by Ryuuichi Ikeda. Every day, for two years. More. (h/t, 1+1=3.) // South Park: Imaginationland, part 3. Will Butters save the day? // Aroma advertising. (h/t, Metrolander.) // Aromatherapy pens. // Hitler’s flatulence. // Beef made easy. Loin, sirloin, shank and brisket. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s pork chops and gravy.

Further to this, and via Ace, here’s the revenge of bizarro Star Wars.

Avert your eyes, children. Don’t look directly at it.