Cathy Young on academic standards and “masculinity studies”: 

When Michael Kimmel talks about men and boys – at least ones unreconstructed by feminism – it is often in a tone that ranges from ironic condescension to scolding rebuke and outright antipathy… He waxes enthusiastic about “rape awareness” measures that treat all men as potential rapists – such as “splash guards” on a college’s public urinals with the slogan, “You hold the power to stop rape in your hand.” Tackiness aside, such a stunt directed at any other group would be readily seen as “hate.” Imagine proposing that “You are looking at someone who can stop terrorism” be inscribed on bathroom mirrors at a campus Islamic centre.

Heather Mac Donald on the Ferguson riots and the ‘racism’ media narrative: 

The only reason that blacks are subject to fines and warrants [for traffic violations], according to the media, is that they are being hounded by a racist police force. “A mostly white police force has targeted blacks for a disproportionate number of stops and searches,” declared Time on September 1. What is the evidence for such “targeting”? Time provides none. Might blacks be getting traffic fines for the same reason that whites get traffic fines — because they broke the law? The possibility is never contemplated. The most frequently summonsed traffic offence is driving without insurance, according to the New York Times’s “exposé” of Ferguson’s traffic-fine system. Perhaps the Times’s editors would be blasé about being hit by an uninsured driver, but most drivers would be grateful that the insurance requirement is being enforced. Might poor blacks have a higher rate of driving without insurance than other drivers? Not relevant to know, apparently.

And again, here: 

The only way to avoid what the protesters label as “racial profiling” is to stop proactive policing entirely… But if the police back off from proactive policing, law-abiding residents of minority neighbourhoods are going to be hurt the most.

And don’t forget there are those who insist we must have racial quotas in school discipline to avoid any impression of racism, regardless of who’s actually misbehaving or how often and violently they’re doing it.

And Theodore Dalrymple on bizarre dictators and related paraphernalia: 

I learned that there was a company in Paris that specialised in strip-cartoon propaganda on behalf of dictators. It was called ABC Groupe Média International, and it had published such propaganda on behalf of Siaka Stevens — the first dictator of Sierra Leone, from whose rule the country has never since recovered — and El Hadj Omar (formerly Albert-Bernard) Bongo of Gabon, father of the present president, and ruler and looter for 41 years. When I was in Paris one day, I visited the company’s headquarters, which, if I remember correctly, were in the rue du Cherche-Midi. Suffice it to say that they were not pleased to see me there, and said that since the publication of these immortal works the company had changed its business model.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets. It’s what these posts are for.

Yes, I know, we’re all missing this blog’s unofficial mascot, Ms Laurie Penny. What with her recent elevation to loftier moral planes in the bosom of academia, where she will soon be anointed a “leader in journalism.” Luckily, over the weekend, commenter svh spotted a review of Ms Penny’s latest book – this one – in the hallowed pages of the New York Times. Given the radical chest-puffing, there’s much to ponder. For instance,

But beyond the politics of the (white) body, Penny is an elegant writer, and she deconstructs the issues of the day with an eye to how neoliberalism has filtered into our intimate relationships (“Under late capitalism, love has become like everything else: a prize to be won, an object to be attained, a commodity to be hoarded until it loses value or can be traded up for a better bargain”).

Apparently, an unsupported, question-begging claim is what now passes for elegant deconstruction. But such is Laurie’s world. She asserts so much and substantiates so little. A talent evidently shared by the reviewer, Latoya Peterson, a self-described “hip-hop feminist” and Guardian contributor, whose opening paragraph offers a shred of comfort to those missing Ms Penny’s signature hyperbole and disregard for reality:

The feminist scholar Donna Haraway defined cyborg writing as “the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other.” That term describes so much digital scrawl on the Internet today — voices screaming from the margins, searching for connection. The British journalist Laurie Penny’s words seem to have secured her just that; she has found a devoted audience for her blog and three previous books.

By all means take a moment to realign your mind with the notion of Ms Penny as a “cyborg” writer and in some way marginalised – “marked as other” – and struggling against the pressures of not being heard. Except of course when she’s on TV, or Five Live, or Radio 4, or when airing her various and bewildering concerns in the pages of the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Independent.

Yes, this privately educated middle-class leftist, lectured at Wadham by other middle-class leftists and steeped in all of the “privilege” she so readily denounces in others, is “screaming from the margins, searching for connection.” A woman who was all but waved through the doors of Channel 4 and the BBC, our nation’s state broadcaster, by people who find her mouthings either titillating or congenial.

A woman who is currently boosting her social status with a year at Harvard, studying journalism free of charge (thanks largely to petitioning by those same middle-class leftists in the establishment media), and is now sitting through lectures on “economic justice” given by middle-class leftists, while surrounded in large part by middle-class leftists. Oh yes, she’s such an outsider.

As commenter Nikw211 points out, Ms Penny is so marginalised, so suppressed by The Hegemon, a massively enlarged projection of her face currently graces the walls of the Victoria & Albert Museum, barking revolutionary instructions to the little people below.

So, no establishment penetration there.

How to gird your loins. Because you need to know these things. // Beer-glazed bacon. // Beautiful chemistry. // Yes, but how many crisps are in that bag? (h/t, Coudal) // That old book smell. // Hello, bunny. // How deodorant works. // Always wash your dachshund. // No singing in the rain. // Fun with stains. // Making fake Japanese food. // It absorbs oxygen. // Coffee car. // They have the technology. // Polyphonic overtones, sung by Anna-Maria Hefele. // Pringles can plus laser diodes equals sexy party. // Why toothpaste makes orange juice taste awful. // Ashtray of note. // “Teach women not to rape.” // There are penises in the lab. // There may be some heat issues as you approach Mach 7. // And finally, it isn’t clear what kicked off this suburban kangaroo street fight.

Menfolk, avert your eyes.

The 23-year-old ended up in hospital where his penis had to be drained of two pints of blood – after suffering from an erection lasting 17 hours.

Blimey. 

Jason first woke up with the condition last Friday morning and initially didn’t worry about it. However by lunchtime he was beginning to get concerned and tried to address the situation by… 

No, don’t. Bad dog.

taking an ice bath and then going for a jog.

When these measures failed, 

He went to the hospital where his condition was diagnosed and doctors drew off two pints of blood to try and reduce the pressure. They also had to inject medication 24 times to restrict the blood flow. 

Mercifully, this tale has a happy ending.

All is now well with Jason, who described the pain of his treatment as “ten out of ten.” “It is completely normal now,” he added, “apart from the fact that it looks like it’s been through a war. It’s all a bit black and blue.”

Via Chris Snowdon. 

And so, again, we visit the pages of the Guardian, where Felicity Lawrence looks forward to the downfall of big supermarkets. You know, those dark, forbidding entities that have “marched across our food and shopping landscape,” casting shadows so vast and terrifying that “it seemed there was no part of our consuming lives they did not want to capture.”

Tightening her moral corset, she says,

People are in revolt against Big Retail… The fall of this empire looks as though it will be fast… It is hard to mourn.

It seems I’d missed these dramatic events, this fall of empire and popular revolt. Perhaps, like many others, I was busy buying groceries at a reasonable price in a pleasant, airy supermarket with polite and helpful staff. But apparently the “supermarket model” is not only accompanied by “social destruction,” it’s also a “colossal market failure.” And so we – that’s thee and me – will somehow find both the time and enthusiasm for “smaller baskets” and “more frequent provisioning,” several times a week from righteous local suppliers – where they exist, that is, and regardless of the weather and any scheduling commitments. Their prices may be higher and their supplies less varied and reliable, but at least their moral aura will meet Guardianista standards. And so never again will dark forces “make us buy things we never intended to buy.” Never again will we be seduced by discounted biscuits and that sinful Pot Noodle.

As is the custom at Kings Place, Ms Lawrence then goes on to tell us what it is “we” think:

We don’t want the illusion of “choice” that 30-40,000 lines offer, especially when so many of them are just variations on the same theme of highly processed fats, sugars, and salt disguised by additives.

That’s all supermarkets sell, obviously. Damn their glowing eyes. And even if it wasn’t, we mortals have no ability to make decisions regarding how we spend our money. We, it seems, just drift down those supermarket aisles, no shopping list in hand, scooping things at random into our baskets. Yes, dear reader, we all shop by poundage and volume. Didn’t you know?

If Ms Lawrence’s pieties sound familiar, you may be thinking of Friday’s column by Deborah Orr, who told the nation – or the tiny part of it that reads the Guardian unironically – that the big supermarkets are “in trouble” because they’re,

viewed as having helped to impoverish town centres and are now looking horribly antisocial.

You see, the entire nation – not just a subset of well-heeled Guardianistas – is raging against the convenience of the local supermarket, where cheap food is plentiful and easy to find. Instead, says Ms Orr, we’re all spending our weekends in joyful protest at the nearest out-of-town farmers’ market, where securing a week’s food shopping is a more ambitious task and generally more expensive. And we’re doing this because – yes, because – “people don’t have as much money to spend.” This is what we’re all doing, apparently. Just like her.

Update, via the comments: