Speaking, as we were, of dramas that must never end…

Note that Laurie, who likes to remind us she’s a Journalism Fellow at Harvard, apparently thinks newspapers have an odd number of pages.

Keili Bartlett reports from the cutting edge of Canadian academia: 

Women should be heard first in the classroom, a forum on misogyny at Dalhousie University heard on Thursday. “Men should not be allowed to monopolise these forums,” management professor Judy Haiven said.

Readers are invited to see if they can spot any male persons on the non-monopolistic panel in question.

Her idea that women should always speak first in classroom discussions and at public events was brought up several times during the forum. Haiven said she already tries to apply this idea in her own classroom… “In the management department, women get to speak first.”

How chivalrous. Though of course the professor means male students aren’t allowed to speak first. Because gender condescension is the path to utopia. 

Haiven’s idea was met by a round of applause,

Of course it was.

but not everyone agreed with her suggestion.

Oh, calamity. Do I hear a rumble of dissent?  

“I think that women of colour should speak first in class,” [gender and sexual resource centre outreach co-ordinator, Jude] Ashburn said.

Whew. That was close.

Sadly, however, Total Ideological Correction™ remains just out of reach. Perhaps more panel discussions are needed. Panels in which stern and pious ladies confuse gender with temperament and depict women as timid, delicate creatures who struggle to raise their hands and can’t quite master speech. In a cosseting environment where women are a majority. 

Update, via the comments: 

At last, “We send glitter to the people you hate.” // Ice huts. (h/t, Coudal) // Under ice. // Cuba before communism. // Christopher Hitchens on the awful cosmic joke that is Muhammadanism. // A montage of Hitchcock motifs. // Knots and how to tie them. // 47, 973. // Playing with fire. // How to slyly steal pizza. // Perhaps a bit long in the tooth for this sort of thing. // Eiffel Tower coffee maker. // “Rules for men in feminist movements.” (h/t, McCain) // Ladies, I bring you fashion. // The thrill of bri-nylon. // Balloons. // Luggage. // Bugs of Singapore. // Sub-optimal driving conditions. (h/t, Randall) // A billion degrees of separation. // Building without nails. // How to build a snow shark. // And finally, loftily, the science of monkeys and mirrors. Or, “Hey, that’s my arse!”

Another contender for our series of classic Guardian sentences, in this case a subheading: 

Until social media manners catch up with the real world, some of us will have to delete the [Twitter] app just to feel safe.

Just to feel safe. From Twitter. Which, we’re told, is “only happening on your phone” and “where no one is actually touching you and you are not in a corporeal sense under threat,” but where being laughed at or called names is “an incredibly visceral experience” for grown men and women.

By way of damning illustration, we’re steered to the sorrows of the actress and writer Lena Dunham, 28, who has “gone dark” on Twitter and is currently “trying to create a safer space” for herself, “emotionally.” Oddly, no mention is made of Ms Dunham’s own attention-seeking pronouncements and outright fabrications, including a false claim of rape involving an identifiable man, and which attracted much of the attention she now finds so unflattering. Guardian readers are thereby left to suppose that the consequent mockery and vitriol, and threats of legal action, were some inexplicable ex nihilo phenomenon.

The author of said piece is Ms Brigid Delaney, a novelist and Guardian features editor whose estimation of her own brilliance and entitlement to taxpayer subsidy entertained us not too long ago. 

Men and women disagree on girth and staying power.

A comment left at Althouse on the subject of smartphones and what’s expected of them. 

Christopher Snowdon on nicotine and the prohibitionist’s dilemma: 

In scenario number two, you are a journeyman public health advocate picking up a nice, steady wage from the government every month. You hold lots of meetings and you go to lots of conferences. You and your colleagues developed a plan of incremental prohibition in the early 1980s and you have it all mapped out… And then something comes along that you didn’t expect. A new product that gives smokers a way to enjoy nicotine without the health risks of smoking cigarettes. You didn’t come up with the idea. The government didn’t come up with the idea. It came from the private sector, and private businesses are making money out of it. Worse still, after a few years of monitoring the market, the tobacco industry buys up a few companies and now they’re making money out of it. Sure, lots of people are giving up smoking as a result, but not in a way that was part of The Plan. Where does this leave you?

Brendan O’Neill on a popular conceit: 

The idea that there is a… culture of hot-headed, violent-minded hatred for Muslims that could be awoken and unleashed by the next terror attack is an invention… The thing that keeps the Islamophobia panic alive is not actual violence against Muslims but the right-on politicos’ ill-founded yet deeply held view of ordinary Europeans, especially those of a working-class variety, as racist and stupid. This is the terrible irony of the Islamophobia panic: The fearers of anti-Muslim violence claim to be challenging prejudice but actually they reveal their own prejudices, their distrust of and disdain for those who come from the other side of the tracks, read different newspapers, hold different beliefs, live different lives.

Thomas Sowell on milking pretentious guilt: 

Our schools and colleges are laying a guilt trip on those young people whose parents are productive, and who are raising them to become productive. What is amazing is how easily this has been done, largely just by replacing the word “achievement” with the word “privilege.”

And again, on the equality racket. 

And Daniel Hannan chats with some unhappy, scowling socialists:  

Don’t make the mistake of judging socialism as a textbook theory but judging capitalism by its necessarily imperfect outcomes. Judge like with like. In the real world, you find me a functioning socialist country that has delivered more than a free-market alternative.

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