Elsewhere (117)

Chris Bing on that elite education you could be paying for: 

Skidmore College, ranked as one of the nation’s most expensive private colleges in the country, is now officially offering a course on Miley Cyrus: “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus: Race, Class, Gender, and Media.” The 2014 summer course will be taught by assistant visiting professor of sociology Carolyn Chernoff. “I am interested in cities, arts, and social change, particularly on the level of social interaction and the production of ‘community,’” Chernoff’s professional bio reads on the school’s website. “I investigate the role of culture in reproducing and transforming social inequality, and research conflict around diversity and difference.”

No, don’t. You mustn’t laugh at a woman in hipster glasses.  

Tim Blair goes undercover, unsuccessfully, at a Green activist training day: 

Next we were called upon to mingle with each other. “Try to find the person in the room who looks as though they hold completely different views to yours,” [anti-capitalist activist Bruce] Knobloch urged, which was an optimistic call, given that everyone at the event was of like mind. A laughing Asian woman turned to me and said: “Everyone should just line up to meet you.”

Do read Tim’s adventure in full. You’ll learn about “non-linear change strategies” and the looming “fascism” of people who aren’t anti-capitalist activists.

Jim Goad checks his “white privilege”:

According to conference founder Eddie Moore, Jr., “White supremacy, white privilege, racism and other forms of oppression are designed for your destruction – designed to kill you.” If that’s the case, privileged whites are doing a piss-poor job, seeing as how the 400,000 or so Africans who were transported to the New World in slave ships have – through the noxious evils of white privilege, white technology, and living amid a predominantly white culture – blossomed into around 40 million modern black Americans. That’s an increase of 100-1 and truly the most inept genocide in world history.

And Tom Paine bids us goodbye and good luck: 

To me, [Britain] now seems a strange, immoral place. For example, I read articles in the Guardian and the Times this week about the abolition of inherited wealth. The Economist also recently wrote about it. It did not even occur to any of these columnists that they were talking about the property of others. They did not create it. They did not inherit it. They have no just claim to it. Yet they have no moral concerns about proposing its seizure.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.