Elsewhere (119)
Further to the Dartmouth “micro-aggression” saga, Victor Davis Hanson notes the comforts and privilege of our campus role-players:
President Hanlon apparently felt the students’ pain of what they had called “micro-aggressions,” or the day-to-day psychodramatic angst that these young elites feel are their own versions of the world of the Wal-Mart checker, the roofer in Delano who nails in 105 degree August heat, or the tractor driver who has disked half-mile long rows day in and day out on the farm. If you have never done such things, and you have $60,000 a year to spend on Dartmouth, then I suppose you could conceivably dream up a micro-aggression of being tortured to read ‘women’ for womyn, or having to use either the boys’ or girls’ bathroom…
They and their faculties enjoy privileges undreamed of by 99.9% of the population. DeVry and Phoenix trade schools cannot afford to offer Dartmouth-like race, class, and gender courses to contextualise their accounting, computer programming and nursing programmes because none of their students have the cash for such psychodramatic indulgences. Our aggrieved .01% can play act that they are embattled, precisely because free market capitalism gave them those dramatic opportunities in a way unknown in Mexico or the Congo.
And as we’ve seen, the longer and more ostentatiously this role-play is indulged, the more bonkers it becomes. Seven years of it can really leave a person beyond the reach of reason.
Larry Sand on children’s education versus teachers’ job security:
In the last ten years, only 91 teachers out of about 300,000 (.003 percent) who have attained ‘permanence’ [tenure] lost their jobs in California. Of those, only 19 (.0007 percent) have been dismissed for poor performance. Is it possible that Golden State teachers are that good? Such an astronomical permanence rate doesn’t square with the performance of California’s fourth- and eighth-graders, whose scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests persistently rank near the bottom.
And Steven Malanga notes some more academic high-mindedness:
Readers can perhaps get a sense of the current state of the anthropology field by considering the most absurd claim against [Napoleon] Chagnon: that he was a McCarthyite. The evidence for this was little more than [an] observation that Chagnon grew up in the 1950s in a rural area of Michigan, where “anti-Communist feeling ran high, and where Senator Joseph McCarthy enjoyed strong support.” Critics also sniped at Chagnon for being… “a free-market advocate.”
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.
“I wonder if Arun Smith is going to rule us all one day.”
I, for one, welcome our neckbearded chubster overlord:
http://cusaonline.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Arun-Smith.jpg
When reality outdoes satire.
Dicentra – impressive, but was it Diet Crazy Kool Aid, or the new Cuckoo Bananas flavour?
Organic Eschaton Immanentazation Suspension, with a dash of Narcissistic Onanism.
The speaker of these statements is one Dr . . . .
. . . given the totally blatant diploma mills, and the multiple sources of wallpaper desperately claiming that one should be considered one of the uber-mega-executive-deluxe-hyper-masters-in-business-administration, I’ve come to the following conclusion;
If one is a doctor, one practices medicine.
If one is elite, one is a demonstrable master of mathematics.
All else is merely decorative wallpaper with massive fees that often involve student debt and zero guarantees of any employment or anyone having any care what you do.
Actual practitioners of anything will just do, and demonstrate in the doing, and never bother waving a title about.
I’m more interested in asking the question why so many men assume that they have a birthright to buy and sell the bodies of women, young men and children.
OK, if we’re talking about actual sex slavery, then by all means, let’s get to work saving those poor souls who’ve been kidnapped and pressed into such awful “service.”
For example, Operation Underground Railroad (ourrescue.org), which consists of those burly he-men who are former Navy SEALS or federal agents and junk. (You know: That Kind). They infiltrate the child sex trade and rescue as many kids as possible from as many countries as possible.
But those prissy little piss-pots in Academia would never sully their precious selves by associating with ::whisper:: conservative men ::whisper:: who also have demonstrated their unworthiness by appearing on Glenn Beck’s program and being supported by same.
Posturing is ever so much better than Getting Involved With Burly Men.
Who might not even have voted for Obama.
Further to the Dartmouth “micro-aggression” saga, Victor Davis Hanson notes . . . .
. . and it took me long enough to look something up, and having done so, I’m inclined to think that the WSJ, et al, doth protest a bit too much . . .
According to The Huffington Post, More than 30 students were part of the protest, with fewer than 10 staying overnight in Hanlon’s office and another dozen outside of it in the administration building. The rest rejoined in the morning, and around 75 participated in a protest in front of the building Wednesday afternoon.
Sooo, giving the protestors a bit of support, let’s say that’s 75 for the total protest, rather than merely the 10 that actually stayed in the office. At the same time, according to Dartmouth, the Fall 2013 student population was 6342, thus ah, demonstrating the protestors to be a campus shakingly massive approximately one percent. Or, from the other side, the issues being stated are of such total and absolute importance that approximately 99 percent of the student body that is allegedly being threatened somehow managed to not show up.
Now if this Dartmouth Hasty Pudding Club could manage to get at least 600 to show up for their performance, then they might have a claim to an audience . . . .
In the meantime, all that is happening is that once again the one percent is being accused of all sorts of horrible, horrendous, and miserable malevolence, when after all, all that this one percent is managing to inflict is—literally—micro aggression.
Hm. Came across a link to this article from the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/11/science-fiction-needs-to-reflect-queer-fluid-gender-identity
A bit silly, especially since he made claims about author Larry Correia and oddly enough never included a link to the article he was making claims about. Never fear, Larry gave his own reply, with links:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/15/larry-f-correia-international-lord-of-hate/
😀
Heh. The Guardian’s Damien Walter says, “The best science fiction literature explores a future of fluid gender identity.” As a measure of what makes a science fiction novel good, indeed “best,” “fluid gender identity” seems a rather narrow and improbable criterion. Somewhat limiting, even.
Is Damien Walters very small and reading a normal-sized book, or normal-sized and reading a very large book?
What does it all mean?
I especially like the part where he presumes a male playing a female character in a game is “exploring female gender roles” when seeing a pretty lady running around kicking butt is more likely.
The Atlantic has the bravery to ask the pressing questions of our day: Does Traditional College Debate Reinforce White Privilege?
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/04/does-traditional-college-debate-reinforce-white-privilege/360746/
The answer, as we’ve all come to expect, is yes it does. Luckily, the noble young minds of tomorrow are shifting paradigms and challenging this privilege, mostly by not actually addressing the central point of the debate and still managing to win the national championships.
From the article:
Other gems include spoken word hip-hop poetry and explicit cursing when asked to yield the floor to their opponents. Remember, these are the championships for national collegiate debate – one can only imagine what the qualifying rounds must’ve been like.