Shakedown, Down Under
SJW Nonsense reports from Australia’s Clown Quarter, where jokes about absurdity will be punished absurdly:
On the 28th May 2013, an incident took place in a computer lab on the campus at the Queensland University of Technology. A student, Alex Wood, and two friends walked into the computer lab, hoping to use a computer. A university staff member, Cindy Prior, approached the group and asked them whether or not they were indigenous, informing them that they had entered an “indigenous space” for aboriginal students, and that they needed to find another computer room on campus. The students left the lab at her request. Later, Alex posted a comment in a student Facebook group, saying, “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT: stopping segregation with segregation?” Among many comments was one by another student, Jackson Powell, saying, “I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is?”
In August 2015, over two years after the incident occurred, Alex and Jackson discovered that legal action was being taken against them for their Facebook comments. Who was so grievously harmed to be pursuing this legally, years later? None other than Cindy Prior, the woman who had initially asked Alex and his friends to leave the computer lab due to their race. Ms Prior claimed that the comments caused her to suffer “offence, embarrassment, humiliation and psychiatric injury.” Ms Prior was not mentioned by name anywhere in the comments, but she was so psychologically damaged by the posts that she had been unable to return to work due to the “trauma,” and was now seeking some $250,000 in lost wages, general damages and future economic loss.
The chronically hyperbolical Ms Prior claimed to have suffered from “sweating,” as a result of students even questioning the need for a racially segregated computer lab, and to have felt “at risk of imminent but unpredictable physical or verbal assault.” Happily, this opportunist scam ultimately failed, but only after other targets of Ms Prior’s grasping psychodrama had settled out of court.
Ms Prior claimed that the comments caused her to suffer “offence, embarrassment, humiliation and psychiatric injury.”
Sounds like her psychiatric problems started the whole thing.
How is a computer lab on a college campus an indigenous space??
Sounds like her psychiatric problems started the whole thing.
When not crippled by sweating, Ms Prior claims she felt “unsafe leaving her home.” She also objected to being “found ridiculous” for fearing “a KKK presence in the university.” Indeed, she was so crushed by the comments questioning the need for racial segregation on campus, she was, she says, “unable to continue working face-to-face with white people.”
So, yes. I suppose you do have to wonder what kind of person decides to sue three students, two staff members and the university itself, for an eye-watering sum, simply because of Facebook comments questioning the need for a racially segregated computer lab.
And during the trial,
Ah, that kind of person.
Fekking disgrace. Freedom of speech becoming a defence rather than a right.
Indeed, she was so crushed by the comments questioning the need for racial segregation on campus, she was, she says, “unable to continue working face-to-face with white people.”
Another ‘anti-racist’ racist.
Another ‘anti-racist’ racist.
Ah, but academia has progressed to a point of such moral sophistication that we’re now expected to be surprised when a staff member whose job entails enforcing racial segregation turns out to be a bit of a racist. And more generally, an obnoxious basket case.
How is a computer lab on a college campus an indigenous space??
The electronic didgeridoo was rival to the electronic abacus doncha know?
In a word Nutcake
Is the “indigenous-only” computer lab university sanctioned, or was Ms. Prior freelancing her social justice?
If Australian Indigenous people use a computer doesn’t that count as cultural appropriation? can`t White people kick up a stink about all of our inventions from the English language to blue jeans being used willy-nilly by non white people without even asking us if its OK?
Time to start playing these SJW types at their own game.
Is the “indigenous-only” computer lab university sanctioned, or was Ms. Prior freelancing her social justice?
The computer lab in question is used by the university’s Oodgeroo Unit, which offers “cultural and educational support” for students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, so I’m assuming the racial segregation was done with the university’s knowledge and at least tacit approval. There’s no mention of the lab being busy at the time, or even in use at all, so it seems that a white presence – even three students – would have somehow contaminated the area. Which, incidentally, was not signposted as off-limits to non-aboriginal students. And although the students left as asked, immediately and without protest, Ms Prior’s own behaviour during the incident was described as “aggressive and unpleasant.”
So, prior to the incident, she was able to face white people as long as they were segregated and she didn’t have to face them, but afterwards when they weren’t, she was too traumatized by facing them to face them.
Makes sense.
Is the “indigenous-only” computer lab university sanctioned, or was Ms. Prior freelancing her social justice?
Further to my previous, according to this report,
Apparently, Dr Hayes’ comments – about making use of unoccupied computers – left Ms Prior feeling “sick, furious and distraught” And also, it seems, rather hysterical. She even requested a “daily security guard patrol” to protect her from any potential lynching.
[ Edited. ]
YOU can do your part to stop future Italican invasions –
Although I concede that it’s a little long. Clearly we should whine feebly to the people in charge of the internet, whoever they may be, and hope they produce a <bq> tag for us to put on text we’re quoting.
—
For those wondering how I made those angle brackets without them getting parsed as tags themselves, the comment box takes HTML codes: < is < and > is >, which stand for “less than” and “greater than”. Fancy technical wizardry, innit?
For those wondering how I made those angle brackets without them getting parsed as tags themselves,
A witch walks among us. Fetch kindling.
Ah, that kind of person.
The Disordered. Coming soon to the theater of the absurd near you.
Fekking disgrace. Freedom of speech becoming a defence rather than a right.
Given that clinical malady is the disorder of their day, it bears repeating that to engage them on their terms is codependency. However engaging on their terms continually runs the gamut, from the macroscopic – a century of normals losing first the plot and then western civilization to cultural Marxism – to the microscopic – endless rightists patiently engaging these bananas in daily arguments and dissembling all over themselves trying to be reasonable.
That’s not reasonable. That’s not normal. Shame the clown quarter, but as history is your guide, do not engage.
Happily, this opportunist scam ultimately failed…
More, please.
One of the comments to the article in The Australian:
“Life as a mistletoe pays well so why work?”
Not sure if mistletoe in this context is common Aussie parlance? However, it deserves widespread adoption!
Technically, those are ‘HTML entities’, and they are legion: https://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/charref
though it depends on browser support. </pedantry>
Time to start playing these SJW types at their own game.
Playing them at their own game would have been for the three students to have said “Why, but we are indigenous!” If you have a look at the “Aboriginal” representatives that agitate for indigenous rights and get wheeled out to comment on indigenous issues in Australia, most of them are pasty white. They’re about as indigenous as Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee.
So, the university establishes a segregated space, employs someone to police it and then throws said employee under the bus for policing it. Got it.
This whole social justice thing is very confusing.
Also, are the names “Cindy” and “Prior” common among the Australian aborigines?
Reason prevailed.
http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/03/03/cindy-prior-denied-leave-appeal-18c-racism-case
Ping.
My answer to the question: Are you indigenous? Yes, I was born on this planet!
Who among us isn’t “indigenous” to someplace? Oh don’t tell me, I know: Not Whites apparently.
Time to start playing these SJW types at their own game.
– No, because
THEY
have rights, and
WE
don’t. It’s as simple as that.
This explains why I am conservative:
I used the church’s welfare system for a few months; the food was good enough to keep me alive (without gagging), but I also didn’t want to eat it for the rest of my natural life. Knowing that volunteers in my own community put in the labor to get that food on my table made it harder to feel that I was entitled to it. And when I was back on my feet, I could donate directly to the effort, knowing that the money went straight to the poor, not to a few six-figure salaries.
Good luck making the same system work elsewhere without the strong religious ethos behind it. If you don’t feel connected to your community through vows and shared values, it’s bally hard to make sacrifices for it.
As a result of this personality style, she is likely to blame and begrudge others when she perceives she has been mistreated,
Paranoid Personality Disorder
I knew one: the slightest slight was occasion for all manner of absurdly exaggerated “self defense,” which to the sane looked like extremely maladaptive behavior that could only make things worse.
She had been raised in a home where her parents fought like stray cats, using the kids as pawns in their sick little games, getting so bad the kids called the cops on them. As a result, she was hypervigilant about any danger to her self and felt that she was perfectly justified using Any Means Necessary to protect herself (usually through retaliation).
She was also bipolar. And a lawyer.
Yeah.
Ms Prior’s problem is that she has yet to find the sympathetic working environment she so richly deserves. She should apply here: http://bit.ly/2jw2bgd Fit right in, she will…
Time to start playing these SJW types at their own game.
Ah, no. Decidedly, emphatically, consciously no. I think what you mean to say is, time to start beating these SJW types at the game they can’t play at all.
Living with an abusive alcoholic is codependency, and social codependency is how cultural Marxism was allowed to root.
If you’re going to play, play with conscious awareness to win. If you’re going to win, disregard their entire playbook, such as it is. Do not be codependent because that would be, as the man said, reasoning with the inherently unreasonable.
The last century’s wreckage occurred precisely because the nature of the problem was undiagnosed, because the culprit was enabled, and because Normals waited way too damn long.
Shame is one thing, and since they play to the disorderments of dishonesty and appearances, are especially effective. But never, ever play the same game.
The chronically hyperbolical Ms Prior claimed to have suffered from “sweating,”. . .
This is Australia, dear girl, sweating is what we do.
Let me add that I can’t know specifically who “SJW types” are, having nothing to do with them personally. It’s the resemblance to strong unreasonableness and the appearances/dishonesty aspect of general missfittery that’s curious.
Ah, but academia has progressed to a point of such moral sophistication that we’re now expected to be surprised when a staff member whose job entails enforcing racial segregation turns out to be a bit of a racist. And more generally, an obnoxious basket case.
John Safran vs God has a look at aboriginal support signalling.
aboriginal support signalling.
Heh. “I don’t know what to do.”
As a result of this personality style, she is likely to blame and begrudge others… She may be blindly uncritical of her own behaviour and insensitive to negative consequences associated with her behaviour
Perfect for a social justice warrior.
Standard, even.
Confess!
Off Topic, but related …
… probably the craziest thing I’ve seen in a long, long while …
Confess!
Ffffuuuuuuuuucccckkkkkk!
‘Scuse my French, but … Ffffuuuuuuuuucccckkkkkk!
“We have all reinforced hypermasculinity one way or another regardless of our gender! …”
Really interesting use of the word ‘all’ there …
Really interesting use of the word ‘all’ there …
But if you peeled away all of the presumptuousness, there wouldn’t be enough left to hold up the roof. And I’m still not sure what hypermasculinity is. It conjures images of a 1970s Frank Frazetta painting.
probably the craziest thing I’ve seen in a long, long while
When lefties go LARPing.
Actually, to a quite significant extent, leftism is LARPing.
probably the craziest thing I’ve seen in a long, long while
Love their posturing. At least they have enough sense to do elementary trigger discipline, but why do some feel the need to carry at (approximately) Tactical Carry? (See USMC pdf linked below) Are they really anticipating a split-second need to make a firing decision? In Phoenix? In the (I think) newspaper parking lot?
I see pics of IDF carrying in Tel Aviv, usually slung muzzle down over the back, and it makes me feel reassured, somehow.
I see these blokes, and it makes me feel nervous. Although I suppose that’s the point.
http://www.trngcmd.marines.mil/Portals/207/Docs/wtbn/MPMS/0300-M16-1004_Demonstrate_Weapons_Carries_Media.pdf?ver=2015-06-15-115218-747
Now, now, surely you wouldn’t want smoldering <i> tags all across the place? I’ve accumulated quite the reserve of spares since I switched to blockquoting.
I did not know the KKK had a big presence down under.
Another job that Americans won’t do!
Amazingly enough, not a product of the National Health Service:
I think it says something when the kids gluing pointy ears to the sides of their heads and throwing coloured bean bags at each other in the woods come across as the well-adjusted, level-headed ones.
And I’m still not sure what hypermasculinity is. It conjures images of a 1970s Frank Frazetta painting.
Um. You’re thinking of stacked brunette females in very skimpy improvised bikinis, if any of ’em are wearing even that much???
Why David!! We never guessed.
Perhaps, instead, what you have more in mind is Tom of Finland . . . .
You think
Because
What sort of crappy system autocloses some tags but not others?
What sort of crappy system autocloses some tags but not others?
HTML.
Um. You’re thinking of stacked brunette females in very skimpy improvised bikinis,
The chaps were quite stacked as well, as I recall, and had skimpy improvised bikinis. Oh dear, now I’m picturing a Frank Frazetta / Tom of Finland mash-up in which Conan the barbarian crash-lands on a planet of burly leather queens.
Justice Dowsett made thinly veiled criticism of the Human Rights Commission and QUT for not having notified the students of the complaint levelled against them under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
The human rights body’s president, Professor Gillian Triggs, has rejected criticism of the commission’s failure to notify the students for 14 months that they were named in a formal written complaint.
In Canada we call them “kangaroo courts”. I suppose in Australia they call them “beaver courts”?
“Anti-fascist” intellectuals.
It has occurred to me that Disney owning Marvel means they presumably have some sort of rights to the character through their Savage Sword of Conan titles. Imagine the crossovers.
EDIT: Wait, the rights to Conan appear to be mired in rights hell after Marvel’s financially turbulent 00’s. Sigh.
a Frank Frazetta / Tom of Finland mash-up in which Conan the barbarian crash-lands on a planet of burly leather queens.
Laughing on train. Getting strange looks.
Getting strange looks.
Well, it would pretty much write itself. Savage sword, indeed.
Well that’s a bit of a shaggy dog story.
The short answer is probably: Some enigmatic combination of HTML, Typepad, David, the designers of your web browser, and your configured web browser settings.
This responsibility-diffusing combination is responsible for a lot of divergence in how to handle tags in general. (For example, over at Samizdata blockquotes are both italicized and indented to my view.) The official HTML spec is kind of a loose suggestion at best for how to render web pages. The early Web was full of malformed pages and crappy browsers and “catch as catch can” parsing, which set a precedent for web browsers trying as best they could to guess how pages should look when someone didn’t close their tags or otherwise screwed up. To some, forgetting to close an <i> tag is an error – pages are required to close tags! But users didn’t take kindly to the Mrs Grundy approach of displaying an error message every time there was a mistake in the tags, and the standards people didn’t exactly win all their battles of official instructions against de facto usage.
For example, the <i> tag is supposedly reserved for foreignisms like de facto, ship names, character thoughts, and a few other things that are italic-by-nature. Whereas when you want to emphasize a word, as I did just now, you’re theoretically expected to use the <em> or <strong> tags rather than italic or bold. In practice these usually work out to the same and so people use the shorter one, but then comes the complication that text-to-speech devices for the hearing impaired are sometimes built to treat them differently…
And meandering back to your question, <i> is treated as something of a “format text until I say otherwise” element in some renderings, which is why it can spill over, while <blockquote> is more of a “format this element here” thing.
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
But blockquote dies with its ‘element’ (such as a comment) while italic can continue as long as there’s text.
Hm. Practically an ephemeron, this.
text-to-speech devices for the hearing impaired
Cruel, cruel world.
Sorry, my OCD. Though I’m still smarting myself over my reference weeks ago to “Hammer and cycle” that no one called me out on.
my reference weeks ago to “Hammer and cycle” that no one called me out on.
Oh, we noticed, all of us. We were just too polite to draw your attention to it. But we won’t forget.
Um, what? If you mean the lack of hyphen in “hearing impaired”, I think it’s acceptable when the phrase is used in a manner that’s noun-y rather than adjective-y. Dunno what the technical terms are, but compare:
Bob, who is out of work, turns fifty.
Out-of-work Bob turns fifty.
“Anti-fascist” intellectuals.
I realize its sometimes difficult to determine on Twitter whether someone is serious or not, but I did raise an eyebrow at this tweet. The Holodomor was an aberrant, one-off event regrettably outside of human agency–sort of like a really big tornado or asteroid strike. Query, how fucked in the head does one have to be to become an apologist for 30 million political murders?
Query, how fucked in the head does one have to be to become an apologist for 30 million political murders?
On the upside, Twitter is making it possible for a large audience to see the psychology of the people attracted to such things. I’ve often thought that a good way to develop a sane aversion to Marxoid ideology is simply to spend half an hour in a room full of communists sharing their coercive fantasies. The sight of, and sounds of, so many vain and needy poseurs is quite educational and tells you much of what you need to know. I mean, to borrow from your question, what kind of people find it either necessary or entertaining to photograph themselves giving the finger to that particular monument, a reminder of the boneyards to which certain vanities lead?
Put another way, you could spend weeks poking dutifully through Marx’s Capital and the Communist Manifesto, and the deranged and sadistic correspondence of Marx and Engels, or Paul Johnson’s excellent account of Marx’s personal vanities and dishonesties, and you’ll find plenty of warning signs that these were not good people intent on spreading joy. But you’ll find much the same narcissism and delinquent spite, which have informed the ideology from Marx onwards, summed up rather neatly in the tweeted photo.
[ Edited. ]
Not sure which is correct but I feel for Bob. It’s a tough world out there for an out-of-work fifty year-old.
This is essentially a scene in Hail Caesar! wherein George Clooney’s dimwitted character, not much of a stretch to be sure, is taken in by a roomful of commies. The audience on the other side of the fourth wall can see what a bunch of losers they really are which adds to the humor of Clooney’s characater falling for their spiel hook, line, and sinker.
The Holomodor was not an aberrant one-off event regrettably outside of human agency. I could – barely – accept that it was an aberrant one-off event if I didn’t know of the 50 millions who died in the Great Leap Forward, or the million killed by the Khmer Rouge. How many dies in the Holomodor? Well, 2.5 million died, 1.5m were not born (the expected births in the period were 1.5 million more than those who were actually born. And over half a million deported. From the Max Planck Institute. And this was NOT an act outside human agency. The borders of Ukraine were sealed to stop Ukrainians fleeing in search of food. The Soviet authorities knew they were taking grain that was needed for food and seed grain, but they took it anyway. There was nothing, repeat nothing like this in Britain of Belgium or France or Germany in the transition to industrialisation. My copy of Black Book of Communism – hint, I loathe Communism and regard modern Communists as equivalent to modern Nazis – has 100 millions murdered by Communism. What kind of person must you be to be a modern Communist knowing that?
This is essentially a scene in Hail Caesar!
I started watching that a few weeks ago, but the pacing was dire and after about 20 minutes I lost the will to carry on.
The audience on the other side of the fourth wall can see what a bunch of losers they really are
Somewhat related, this gathering of esteemed and not-at-all-narcissistic communist thinkers who bang on, at great length, about how “serious” and “radical” and “dangerous” they are, and how they’re “an insurgent movement” that will “break the government” and initiate a “revolutionary transformation of society.” Note that the word “humility” is used, albeit unconvincingly, at least six or seven times. And note that at its conclusion the event is hailed as “a very good discussion,” albeit one made up entirely of lengthy, unchallenged, somewhat rambling assertions, and in which no-one actually discusses anything.
The Holomodor was not an aberrant one-off event regrettably outside of human agency.
I fear you may believe that I was asserting same, as opposed to pointing out how ludicrous the linked tweet was. (Memo to self: Use < sarc > tags where applicable.)
It’s for the best. Disney would probably make him gay with severe daddy issues being the reason he treats women the way he does. I mean he is so unabashedly straight and white that even Rudyard Kipling would tsk a bit.
Frank Frazetta / Tom of Finland mash-up in which Conan the barbarian crash-lands on a planet of burly leather queens.
Better than the last Conan film.
Paul Johnson’s excellent account
Apparently, not all of his readers appreciated his poking holes in inflated legacies:
i presume that johnson does no[sic] associate himself with dreadful people like intellectuals,so what gives him any authority to write about them.
tolkien,
What kind of person must you be to be a modern Communist knowing that?
One who would exclaim, “Look at the tremendous progress these countries made! They never achieved, and never would have achieved, such things under capitalist exploitation!
In other words, “100 million eggs made one hell of an omelet. Look at the size of it, would ya!”
David,
Can I commend this to your blog readers, “Comedian Bridget Christie gives a very personal take on the state of modern feminism”,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04xrwhh
in short no I can’t, unless you’re a sadist.
It has occurred to me that Disney owning Marvel means . . . . Imagine the crossovers.
Um, what? If you mean …
Well, I was thinking that converting text to speech really wouldn’t help people who can’t hear sound. But then after posting it, I thought that that was stupid itself because the deaf could have been the ones typing the text for the benefit of those who can hear…but that would benefit the dumb not the deaf per se but as most deaf are also rather dumb, but not dumb like not smart but dumb like Helen Keller but not blind like Helen Keller, but either way would not be cruel to the deaf because they would not know what they were not hearing anyway, but then kinda cruel to whoever developed text-to-speech but not really because it has a purpose just not for the deaf…unless they are also dumb.
In my defense, I didn’t have my coffee yet, the sun was in my eyes, I had a better post but the dog ate it, and I had to go because my mother was calling.
Oh, we noticed, all of us. We were just too polite to draw your attention to it. But we won’t forget.
You are ever so kind…wait a minute…
The scholarly 20th Century Democide. Bookmarkable.
a Frank Frazetta / Tom of Finland mash-up in which Conan the barbarian crash-lands on a planet of burly leather queens.
Be careful what you wish for. I’ve seen pictures of the Folsom Street Fair.
I’ve often thought that a good way to develop a sane aversion to Marxoid ideology is simply to spend half an hour in a room full of communists sharing their coercive fantasies.
It assumes that the person involved is a person who values individuals over the mass. This does not hold true for lots of people, lots of the time.
Many Russians genuinely believe that if it took millions of deaths to make Russia powerful, then that is acceptable. For some of them the reflected glory of the power of Russia is important. They still let Putin behave despicably to them and others because they think that having a powerful Russia is more important than individuals living safe and well.
It doesn’t help that many still believe that the Marxists advanced Russia from serfdom to great power. They aren’t aware that 1914 Russia was not particularly backward (in many ways it was one of the more advanced countries) and that under Communism it consistently lost ground on the West.
New Zealand managed to industrialise and electrify the country without any massacres at all, at the far end of the earth, and with precious few natural resources. Yet the electrification of Russia under Stalin is taken as some amazing achievement.
How did she ever find their FB posts In the first place?
Cindy is the worse actor in all of this. The Australian human rights commission investigated the incident for 2 years without questioning the defendants at any time, so it was a total ambush. Then it became a financial shakedown with a number of defendants paying cindy hush money for it to go away in the 5 figure range. I believe they didn’t finish their studies as a result as well.
Other defendants fought the case with 6 figure legal cost which is apparently the norm in the west these days. They eventually won but we all lost when her complaint wasn’t rejected immediately on complete hypocritical and bullshit groz NSA that any sane person would see.
The same HRC actively sourced complaints about a cartoonist after some controversial racial cartoons. He died suddenly this year and I have no doubt that the stress caused by the legal action taking was at least partly contributing. These people are monsters and fooling themselves as being heroes.
These people are monsters and fooling themselves as being heroes.
Themselves and others. That’s been the theme of almost every post here on the campus “social justice” phenomenon – the mismatch between the protestations of piety and the actual behaviour, which ranges from merely spiteful to outright sociopathic. What’s strange, to me, are the contortions some people will perform to avoid acknowledging this dissonance.
What’s strange, to me, are the contortions some people will perform to avoid acknowledging this dissonance.
When your six-figure faculty or administration salary is contingent on fueling the dissonance, such contortions become second nature.
Look what happened to that husband-wife team at Yale who gently urged students to not let Halloween costumes bother them so much. Ridden out of town on a rail.
When your six-figure faculty or administration salary is contingent on fueling the dissonance, such contortions become second nature.
Quite so. It’s not that they fail to realize the contradictions, but that they use same for personal gain. Their business is disingenuity.
Which begs the question of why those who don’t profit cannot see the contradictions. The fact is, some people are intellectually incapable of recognizing mutually exclusive philosophical positions. They’re like that one person who, during congregational singing in church, fails to recognize that none of their notes bears any resemblance to what’s in the hymnal. They’re the shit-contestants on talent shows who nonetheless think they’re the next teen idol being used to get ratings for the producers.
hold on. ….back up a bit!
wouldn’t that be cultural appropriation by the indigenous?
OT: There’s an excellent (but lengthy) article up at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/29/reflections-on-mark-steyns-a-disgrace-to-the-profession-about-dr-michael-mann/ by Rick Wallace.
“The apparent consequence of all this is that when there are enough people like these who have worked their way into a particular field of science, then you have a quorum that can effectively further “the cause”.
Ok, the reason for my March 28, 2017 at 17:01 post was to show that it’s possible for government to be diminished in the area of poverty assistance and for a private institution (this time a church) to pick up the slack, and possible for that private program to actually lift people out of poverty instead of trapping them for multiple generations.
Later it occurred to me that it might have looked like a random bit of proselytism.
Wasn’t. I got the link to The Atlantic article from Insty, and my Twitter feed had just been masticating the whole TRUMP WANTS TO ELIMINATE MEALS ON WHEELS which always includes WHY ARE YOU CONSERVATIVES SO MEAN TO THE POOR EVEN THOUGH JESUS SAID!
Political point; not religious.
Sorry for any confusion.
Sorry for any confusion.
Well, I for one was not confused. It’s no secret that private efforts surpass government intervention in both timeliness and efficacy. See, e.g. Hurricane Katrina and Joplin, MO tornado. Private parties were rolling before the government could get its head out of its ass, and, in the case of the former, politicians felt compelled to intervene to require licenses, permits and such for private parties to help–all while the MSM is broadcasting false reports of cannibalism, rapine and pillage. See also, the number of citations issued to people trying to feed the homeless ostensibly because of “food safety” concerns.
All within the state and nothing outside the state, baby!
A major factor here is ego-defense,
As it turns out, scientific disciplines are plagued regularly by “mean girls” behavior when one researcher comes up with a Beautiful Theory about something, that theory gains followers and acolytes, and woe betide the scientist who discovers evidence to the contrary — s/he can expect a firehose of resistance to the evidence, as the Beautiful Theory is defended tooth and nail, to the point of denying grant money, denying publication, and denying conference presentations.
It often requires that the acolytes of the Beautiful Theory retire or die off before the new evidence gains a foothold.
I just finished reading 1491, the book about the Americas before Columbus. (A fascinating read, BTW.)
Amid the amazing history of the American civilizations, you also read about fights about which is the oldest discovered settlement, or what were the migratory patterns from the Bering Strait, or whether this population was related to that — all had Beautiful Theories be established that were Doubled Down On when new evidence came to light, and nasty little shenanigans ensued to discredit the researchers whose evidence put the Beautiful Theory in doubt.
The Trouble with Physics addresses this phenomenon in the field of String Theory, when String Theory was so big and so HOT and so sexy that any physicist who WASN’T doing String Theory was a pariah: no hiring, no papers published, no invites to the conferences, no grant money. It wasn’t even a particularly malicious phenomenon as much as Everyone Chasing The Shiny Thing and what’s the matter with YOU, ya square?
Spoiler Alert: String theory is no longer a thing. Too many variables make it impossible to test.
The difference between these squabbles and the AGW thing is that they didn’t have policy implications, so the public never heard about them, and so the phenomenon of Bad Science gaining hegemony in a field—suppressing all reasonable opposition—is unfamiliar to most people.
And so nobody can imagine that Top People In A Discipline would be pushing a dubious theory at best and an outright lie at worst.
Trouble is, the perps of the AGW scam will never suffer for their bad behavior. The issue will be eclipsed by the Next Doomsday Scenario and the current OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE will disappear down the memory hole.
@dicentra
Though I must say, Utah’s liquor laws are fairly Byzantine in their complexity. I love the state, mind you. Beautiful place. The national park “Grand Circle” is is killer, and Moab is in on the retirement relocation short list, but Mormon beer sucks in spades.
The difference between these squabbles and the AGW thing is that they didn’t have policy implications, so the public never heard about them, and so the phenomenon of Bad Science gaining hegemony in a field—suppressing all reasonable opposition—is unfamiliar to most people.
But increasingly unfamiliar.
Popular confidence in any “discovery” in the field of nutrition is now at a point where no-one really believes anything you see reported. It’s clear to everyone that there is far more bad science than good.
Economics has never left that zone, but not everyone considers Economics a science.
Increasingly familiar, sorry.
One of the first critiques of Kuhn’s “paradigm shift” model of scientific revolutions was that paradigm shifts didn’t actually happen – what happened was the proponents of the old theory just died out or retired and were replaced by a younger cohort of scientists who had always been proponents of the new paradigm.
Economics has never left that zone, but not everyone considers Economics a science.
They change the exam questions every year, but not the answers.
Hate to disagree about string theory Dicentra, it may no longer be the be-all end-all denying others their time in the sun (was it ever ? not that I recall but never mind); but the field remains the only extant mathematically reasonable place to seek a TOE. Tying Gravity in with the three other forces does require a framework, and despite numerous claims for progress only the string theorists still have (for now, by no means do I imply that it is the only way, just the best yet found) a possible way forward.
All of this was enabled by a stupid law here in Australia referred to in the short hand as “18C”.
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http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/rda1975202/s18c.html
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION ACT 1975 – SECT 18C
Offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin
(1) It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:
(a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to OFFEND, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and…
—
You read it right, it is currently officially unlawful to even offend someone when talking about race in Australia.
Plenty of stuff about this online, just google “australia 18c”
only the string theorists still have … a possible way forward.
Maybe when they build an abacus large enough to calculate the 1^500 variable combinations they will finally figure out what the hell gravity even IS.
1^500 or 1! Either way, we’re gonna need a bigger computer 🙂
On social pressures entrenching theories, all y’all may be interested in Paul Romer’s paper on the trouble with macroeconomics.
Like many I’ve been soberingly ‘numbed’ in recent years to the sort of peerlessly deplorable, satire-proof ‘fuckwittery’ propagated by the looniest elements of the loony Left, yet just occasionally an incident of such exceptional mind-warping audacity still has the power to elicit unbridled rage.
And this one of those occasions.
I genuinely struggled to fully read the linked article as I found myself getting increasingly angrier and of which proved profoundly detrimental to of my general mood as a consequence. I masochistically persevered however and am considerably angrier for it.
To hell with the supposed moral high ground, I’ll cast aside my customary abhorrence to both violence and the advocation of violence inflicted upon others when I happily declare that Cindy Prior is in terminal need a thorough kicking. Nothing more nothing less.