Eric S Raymond on crime, reporting and “black privilege”: 

No conspiracy theory is required to explain the silence here. Reporters and editors are nervous about being thought racist, or (worse) having “anti-racist” pressure groups demonstrating on their doorsteps. The easy route to avoiding this is a bit of suppressio veri – not lying, exactly, but not uttering facts that might be thought racially inflammatory. The pattern of suppression is neatly explained by the following premises: Any association of black people with criminality is inflammatory. Any suggestion that black criminals are motivated by racism to prey on white victims is super-inflammatory. And above all, we must not inflame. Better to be silent. I believe this silence is a dangerous mistake with long-term consequences that are bad for everyone, and perhaps worst of all for black people.

KC Johnson reflects on the Duke lacrosse scandal and those left unscathed by it: 

Higher education is perhaps the only product in which Americans spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars without having any clear sense of what they are purchasing. Few parents, alumni, legislators, or prospective students spend much (if any) time exploring the scholarship or syllabi offered by professors at the school of their choice; they devote even less effort to understanding hiring patterns or pedagogical changes that have driven the contemporary academy to an ideological extreme on issues of race, class, and gender. At most, there seems to be a general —incorrect— impression that while colleges have the occasional “tenured radical” who lacks real influence on campus, most professors fall well within the ideological mainstream… The lacrosse case provided a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the mindset of an elite university — and the look was a troubling one.

More glimpses here, here and here. 

And Theodore Dalrymple on policing speech: 

In [philosopher François De Smet’s] view, some opinions have been responsible for so much mass murder that it is quite permissible, perhaps even essential, to ban them. But as with all such proposals, the question is where the limits should lie. For example, it is a moot point whether racism or economic egalitarianism was responsible for more deaths in the last century… It occurred to me that, on the above author’s principles, there would be every reason to ban egalitarian discourse, which has the effect and often the intention of promoting hatred and resentment of the rich, who in the not distant past have been massacred horribly, especially when rich means above averagely endowed with worldly goods, however gotten. Monsieur Hollande, for example, President of the French Republic, should be taken into preventive detention (and heavily fined) for having said that he did not like the rich, a statement clearly intended to bring the latter into hatred and contempt. The same applies to Mr Miliband, the silencing of whom would at the very least add to the gaiety of the nation.

In fairness to Mr Hollande, he doesn’t seem to like the poor much either. 

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

This just in: 

A zoo in Japan has been forced to admit that it tried to mate two male hyenas for four years, after mistakenly thinking that one of them was female… After the two animals struggled to reproduce, the zoo conducted a gender test under anaesthesia.

I’m tempted to ask just how valiantly they struggled. No laughing at the back. 

Unnecessary explosions are totally unnecessary. // Undulating clouds. // No likes yet. The unloved of Instagram. // At last, your very own wearable drone. // People on a mountain, arranged artfully. // Cross the Alps by tightrope, in a hammock. // Volcanic shockwave. Watch the clouds. // Very loud indeed. // An archive of earthquake data and a map of quakes across the world. // AutoCompleteMe. // Mongolia’s golden eagle hunters. // Rock band stage configurations. // Big and curvy rides. // Big cats divided on the charms of Marmite. // “Human Be-In,” San Francisco, 1967. // Earthworm-eating leech of note. // Japan in colour, 1886. // “I think computers was far enough. We didn’t need to go beyond that.” // How Big Bird works. // And finally, I think these cats are broken. 

The eyes of Hitchcock. 

By Kogonada. Related: Rear Window reconstructed. 

Tim Blair marvels at the diffidence of leftist opinionator, Guardian contributor and soon-to-be Doctor of Creative Practice, Margo Kingston: 

This [need for research and subsequent expertise] shouldn’t be too difficult. The topic that Margo will deeply research for her taxpayer-funded PhD is… herself: “The [thesis] will be a professional memoir which seeks to explain my journey from mainstream political journalist to Sydney Morning Herald political blogger and editor with Webdiary, website owner when I went independent in 2005, and my new project after a seven-year break, No Fibs.”

She won’t just be Doctor Margo – she’ll be a doctor of Margo. This might be the most indulgent exercise in academic history. Let’s hope Margo’s expert in-depth Margo analysis covers the time she blew more than $40,000 in three months running a blog, her attempt to establish a Margolian legal system, her discovery that Jews controlled Australia, and her whole decade-plus of paranoid gibberish, right up to the moment she somehow gained taxpayer funding for a demented Twitter site. 

There are plenty of links in Tim’s piece and a sample of Ms Kingston’s pronouncements can be found here. Among them, a call for fellow socialists to rise up and “overthrow this illegitimate government,” her enthusiasm for “civil war,” her statement that the United States used nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and her belief that Australia is “at war with Norway.”