The Year Reheated
In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.
The year began with searing insights from the world of academia. Specifically, London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, where black student activists denounced objectivity as an “alienating” concept, and issued numerous demands, allegedly to challenge stereotypes of student laziness and inadequacy. It turns out that the way to avoid any appearance of such things is to complain about the “stress and anxiety” of being corrected, or disagreed with, especially by people who are insufficiently brown and deferential. Elsewhere, the psychological reverberations of Donald Trump’s election victory continued to be felt, as when a charmingly progressive lady sensed a fellow plane passenger’s failure to vote as she did and promptly threatened to vomit on him. Other pious lefties signalled their moral superiority by planning to sabotage transport infrastructure, stranding and distressing countless random people, and thereby reminding us that “social justice” posturing is often difficult to distinguish from petty malice or outright sociopathy. Meanwhile, Laurie Penny preferred to advocate “spite” as a guiding progressive principal, as if this were a new and novel development.
February provided further illustrations of this fashionable malice, as when educators at the University of Cincinnati bemoaned the fact that their attempts to inculcate unrealism, dishonesty and pretentious racial guilt were still being met with pockets of resistance. Objecting to slander and brow-beating by bigoted mediocrities is, we learned, merely “white fragility” and therefore, somehow, damning proof of racism. Racial fixations were also in play at the Writing Centre at the University of Washington, Tacoma, the stated goal of which is to “help writers succeed in a racist society,” a goal to be achieved by denouncing grammar as “an unjust language structure,” and the correction of punctuation as “an oppressive practice.” Because those ungrammatical job applications, the ones enlivened with incomprehensible sentences and lots of inventive spelling, will do just fine. We also learned of the steep price to be paid for small acts of courtesy – namely, holding open a door for a Guardian contributor with weight issues and a gift for hysterical screaming.
Accessorising was an unexpected topic of discussion in March, when the crushingly put-upon students at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, informed the world that “winged eyeliner and big hoop earrings” are “an everyday act of resistance,” and should therefore be the exclusive ornamentation of the slightly brown and radical. Elsewhere, at Middlebury College, Dr Charles Murray attempted to give a lecture on, among other things, the dangers of tribalism and social fragmentation, only to be met with tribal hysteria and an actual riot, complete with slanderous chants, hospitalised staff and students wearing ski masks.
In April, the immense, frustrated love machine Caleb Luna wondered why his Grindr profile attracts so little interest. Carefully sidestepping the possibility of weight loss, Mr Luna decided that the rest of us must “interrogate” our “phobias,” which is to say our preferences, and consequently start lusting after “alternative bodies.” Specifically, bodies like Mr Luna’s. Avoiding the obvious was also a theme in the world of performance art, where Shannon Cochrane and Márcio Carvalho unwittingly entertained us with their deep thoughts, shifting paradigms and heads wrapped in meat. Another highlight of the month came via Everyday Feminism’s Emily Zak, who wanted us to know that the allure of fresh air is, like everything else, terribly oppressive, due to the “painfully heteronormative” nature of wildland firefighting, and a shortage of adverts featuring gay people kayaking in a suitably gay-affirming manner.
Artistic innovations were at the forefront of May, when performance artist Sarah Hill shook our tiny mental worlds with a “temporal historical rupture” that is “cathartically dialogical,” and achieved by falling over repeatedly while dressed as Wonder Woman. No less impressive were the attempts to “transform” middle-school children by making maths lessons “intersectional,” thereby furthering the cause of “social justice.” A process that entailed reducing the time available for humdrum things like trigonometry and using it instead to teach children to “subvert power,” while scorning maths itself as a “dehumanising tool.”
June brought us a “guerrilla performance” by “artist, healer and dancer” Shizu Homma, who “interrogates the human condition” with her creative tremendousness. The month also brought us not one, but two illustrations of what happens when leftwing student psychodrama is allowed to run its course. And not entirely unrelated, we also pondered news that expired pet owners are sometimes eaten by their own dogs, cats and hamsters.
In July, we once again witnessed the educational benefits of “an academic background in gender studies,” and self-declared activist and single mother Jody Allard impressed us with her exemplary feminist parenting, and a determination to humiliate her own teenage sons, publicly and in print, for the sins of being white and male, and therefore, obviously, potential rapists.
Google software developer James Damore rose to notoriety in August by politely questioning the gospel of identity politics, promptly getting fired for it, and triggering a truly boggling display of near-total media dishonesty. Elsewhere, at the University of Florida, identity politics devotees complained about the “violence” of not being taken seriously, while demanding the construction of two entirely separate buildings to house the university’s black and Latino student groups, because sharing a building, or at least an entrance lobby, would “erase and marginalise their black and brown bodies.” August also provided several vivid insights into the psychology of “social justice,” as when a mob of severely educated student Mao-lings demanded “empathy” while laughing at accounts of random beatings and then assaulting people themselves, in the name of tolerance. In the pages of The Atlantic, educator Alice Ristroph watched a total eclipse and somehow saw nothing but racism; while fellow educator Dr A.W. Strouse, whose works include Literary Theories of the Foreskin and deep ruminations on the preputial connotations of aluminium cans, signalled his radicalism by advising students to say “fuck you” to potential employers during job interviews.
Our sexual horizons were broadened in September when we learned of the phenomenon of “ecosexuality” and the orgasmic delights of rock rubbing, tree licking and frottage al fresco. Meanwhile, academia’s Clown Quarter continued to bewilder. Dr Michael Isaacson, an adjunct professor specialising in “anti-capitalist economic theories” at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, repeatedly tweeted his enthusiasm for the murder of random police officers, and of future officers, including his own students. And Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the looting of trainers while the law-abiding were distracted by an oncoming hurricane.
October brought us more unhinged educators, among them, University of Pennsylvania teaching assistant Stephanie McKellopp, whose areas of expertise include “self-marriage” and “racial blame,” and who signalled her wokeness by announcing her classroom policy of ignoring white male students. We were also told, by Charles Davis, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, that any hint of consequences for acts of thuggery on campus is “racist” and “unfair,” as it creates “an unsafe and threatening environment” for students who like to indulge in coercive and threatening behaviour.
At the University of California, Irvine, the identity-politics contingent displayed its mental brilliance again in November, and also at Ballou High School, Washington, DC, where, thanks to “social justice,” students who are barely literate and rarely seen in class all somehow graduated and were promptly waved through the gates of a college or university. And at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, the sadistic, fever-dream world of leftist educators was caught on tape quite shockingly, when teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd found herself being accused of “targeted violence” and of being “threatening,” for remaining politically neutral and politely presenting both sides of an argument.
As the year drew to a close, we witnessed the mental disarray wrought by competitive virtue signalling, wherein racial wokeness veered towards Gorillas in the Mist territory. And we learned that standards of diligence and proficiency are racist and oppressive, according to Purdue University’s Dr Donna Riley, who congratulates herself for her own “alternative ways of thinking,” and who scorns expectations of rigour and competence as “exclusionary,” mere tools of “privilege,” and therefore unfair to women and minorities, for whom rigour and competence are presumably impossible.
So. Quite a year.
OK, it’s midnight. Happy New Year, though I’m staying under cover. Too much “Happy Fire.” The spouse gifted me a champagne saber.
#knucklesareoverrated.
Cheers.
Here on the left coast – deep blue CA, I still have 34 minutes until midnight…
At home cuddling with hubby, champagne flute and a box of See’s (best chocolate in the world)
Happy 2018 to you all!
Morning, all. Happy new year.
I take it we’re all feeling spritely and refreshed, and not at all hungover?
Down with the British! Not sure PM Turnbull is on planet Earth, wanting his legacy as an affirmative vote for same sex marriage seems to have given him licence to pursue another postal vote.
http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/malcolm-turnbull-says-postal-survey-could-decide-future-of-australian-republic/ar-BBHF5p9?li=AAavLaF&ocid=ientp
Worst for me was treatment of James Damore, proof that intolerance and ignorance has taken over progressive elites – it’s not as though I am a conservative or on the right, I’ve stood for Labour in local elections and am a card carrying member of the Labour Party – a close run thing was the treatment of Lindsay Shepherd. The latter is classic 30’s Stalinism (fortunately, without the power of despatch to the GULAG or execution-yet) or Maoism and I fear that for some progressives these are to be emulated not feared.
Tip jar finally hit, but I think I’ll pass on the, I think you misleadingly refer to them as, “pickled eggs”.
May your ironing never leave you with duplicate creases in your trousers or shirts.
May your ironing never leave you with duplicate creases in your trousers or shirts.
May your neighbours never copulate with such enthusiasm that they can be heard while you’re trying to complete a customer satisfaction survey.
May your neighbours never copulate with such enthusiasm that they can be heard while you’re…
Ah, another thing I do not miss about apartment living (if they weren’t copulating loudly, and to the cheers and jeers of their neighbors, they were having loud, shouty arguments).
On a related note: Is this even real???
Gives a whole new meaning to “lay back and think of England”. (o_O)
When the computer says “On a scale of 1 to 5 where one is not at all satisfied, and 5 is extremely satisfied, how satisfied are you? just hold the phone towards the neighbors.
just hold the phone towards the neighbors.
Happily, my neighbour at the time soon got pregnant, at which point the sex seemed to stop. Or at least took place inaudibly.
The sex will certainly stop for a few months after the baby’s born, if not after he’s conceived. Women who’ve had 2 hours’ sleep in 3 days are rarely in the mood.
The first small appliance report of the year—I believe I am the only person in America who does NOT own an instant pot, though I’ll probably buy one at a yard sale this spring, out of curiosity.
Nifty winter weather pictures:
http://listverse.com/2018/01/01/10-weird-and-whimsical-wintery-phenomena/
Here in the midwestern U. S., thundersnow is fairly common; incites comment but not of the excited “Hey, run out and look at this!” kind .
The first small appliance report of the year
As of the holidays, our kitchen accoutrements now include a cook’s blow torch. Presumably for when you want to burn food intentionally. I’m not entirely sure what The Other Half is planning to do with it and I’ve been trying to think of dishes that are, as it were, blowtorchable. Apparently, it can be handy in the preparation of roasts and such. It’s that or we’ll be eating an awful lot of crème brûlée, which isn’t a happy thought. Still, it makes for an intriguing ornament.
I’m not entirely sure what The Other Half is planning to do with it,
Perhaps it is his way of saying that you have developed excessive ear hair?
A manly alternative to waxing?
Who knows what ideas might come to you after a bottle of whiskey?
*Jeremy Clarkson wonders if he could get an entire programme out of this idea*
One of these years, I’m going to get invited on a Tim Blair/Dave Burge road trip adventure.
I’ve met him twice in person, the most recent time I got lashed on vodka in his house. He’s an absolutely cracking bloke.
If you’ve got a sous-vide apparatus, you can use the torch to put a nice crust on meats before serving. Whether that’s more efficient than slapping on a got grill for a couple of minutes per side is an open question.
I wondered what on earth a cook’s blow torch might be for, other than perhaps flaming deserts.
It’s supposed to get down to 10 below 0 (F) tonight at the Pogonippery and areas nearby. Which means that tomorrow someone must check the garden shed to remove any mousesicles that may have found their way in. There have been no volunteers, although we have been casting pointed glances at each other all evening. And Son of Pogonip has refused to flip me for it.
I knew he was on to me when he found my two-headed quarter.
Surely to remove mousesicles you use a catsicle?
firing blast guns and missing every single thing they aim at
I know I’m being pointlessly pedantic on this, but by God I wish this meme would die. I can’t fathom how it got started in the first place. Imperial stormtroopers are incredibly competent.
And Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the looting of trainers while the law-abiding were distracted by an oncoming hurricane.
F*cking hell. How do these morons get hired?
How do these morons get hired?
I’d imagine they’re hired by dogmatic halfwits much like themselves. Creatures like Dr Fleming aren’t one-off aberrations; they’re part of a wider decay, and are often hired precisely because they make the approved, dishonest and deeply stupid noises. That Dr Fleming’s reasoning is so incoherent and removed from reality, and buckles under the merest scrutiny, tells us something about how advanced and ubiquitous the rot is. Apparently, her peers and employers are either unable or unwilling to apply even the most basic standards of intellectual honesty.
One of the ironies, of course, is that, while Dr Fleming invokes dark skin as some default and grievous disability and in and of itself proof of oppression, her own dark skin may well have been a distinct advantage in being hired, despite her obvious shortcomings, and will almost certainly exempt her proclamations from any serious challenge within her own academic circle. Despite being an obnoxious racist and a moral imbecile, she’s clearly accustomed to deference, or at least a polite reluctance to raise obvious objections.
I can’t fathom how it got started in the first place.
Every one of the damn movies where a reinforced platoon of the idiots firing automatic weapons down a narrow corridor and cannot hit three people less than 25 yards in front of them would be a start – sci-fi version of Taliban pray-and-spray.
Meanwhile, virtue signaling brighter than a supernova.
Meanwhile, virtue signaling brighter than a supernova.
Or, how to learn morony.
“part of a wider decay… often hired precisely because they make the approved, dishonest and deeply stupid noises”
I can just hear the self-serving justifications now, after these people get routed out:
“Well, things tend to get worse before they get better, so in a way I was virtuously speeding up the decline so society could finally realize what was happening and make corrections, hero that I am.”
As Instapundit says,
Any of the more obvious explanations would offend their vanity.
Meanwhile, virtue signaling brighter than a supernova.
Not that I entirely buy that this guy was previously a conservative as he claims, but this is precisely the kind of thing that has bothered me about true-blue (blue…the irony) conservatives, the younger and more vocal ones especially. They don’t understand the why or what of what they believe. It’s what they were told to believe and thus, there you go. When their eyes are opened to other ways of viewing things, they often fall 100% into that newer ideology. One where the further it is from the conservatism they were raised with, the more they believe in it. Not that I’ve looked it up but from what I’ve read here, such describes Penny The Red somewhat. At their base, they’re really not that much different than the leftists even back when they were still holding conservative beliefs. I sense some of this in the older #NeverTrump crowd as well. There’s also an underlying need to control, to rule, to preen over others. There also seems to be a favoring of memorization over reason. Something that I feel is a deeply flawed aspect beyond conservatism to our educational systems relative to modern technology and the ease of information access.
Tweet of note.
Tweet of note.
“Guardian writer.”
Oh. Well, say no more.
Oh. Well, say no more.
Owen is also a visionary, a prophet.
It’s practically a superpower.
It’s also a strange benefit of being a lead columnist for the Guardian or Independent. No matter how reliably wrong they are, and no matter how jaw-droppingly perverse, they still keep their jobs. They seem impervious to embarrassment, or indeed shame.
It’s practically a superpower.
I’ve often wondered how people like him can be so consistently wrong and yet never stop to reflect on why that might be. It can’t just be idiocy and vanity, there must be an actual structural malformation in the brain that prevents any sort of introspection.
I’ve often wondered how people like him can be so consistently wrong and yet continue to be employed.
I’ve often wondered how people like him can be so consistently wrong and yet continue to be employed.
Not entirely unrelated.
There’s a guy on Fox News in the U.S., Bill Kristal, who has made a career of being wrong for something like 25 years. My mom had Fox Geezer Syndrome so it was always on when I visited, and I would make sure to watch Kristal in presidential election years so I’d know who would be president; it would be whoever he predicted to lose.
Paul Krugman, of “ Hot, Flat, and Crowded” (in)fame(y), hasn’t been as consistently wrong as Kristal but is working hard to catch up.
Heh…Pogonip, I was actually thinking of Bill Kristal in both of my last two comments. Not only is he consistently wrong, as you note, but he seems more and more (or more and more so than usual lately) drawn to espousing leftist arguments.
…he seems more and more drawn to espousing leftist arguments….
That’s because the arguments are easy and require no analysis beyond whatever stimulus they provide to the pleasure centers of the brain. If the arguments weren’t so simple and emotionally rewarding, Leftism would have gone extinct ages ago.
Crafting a proper policy argument is hard work; doubly so when it’s in service to a cause you no longer believe in.
You’ve been informing and entertaining me for years. It’s time I rootled around in my pocket for the price of an egg or two.
Ding!
Ding!
May your window cleaner never startle you while coffee is being poured.
… he seems more and more (or more and more so than usual lately) drawn to espousing leftist arguments.
Kristol, and the rest of the neocon gang for that matter, was never a conservative; he’s always been an eager promoter of mass non-white immigration into the West, of leftist social mores at home and non-stop American wars in the middle-east. He is fundamentally, like all of his ilk, an anti-western activist. All it took for them to publicly turn against America was losing an election.
See also: Max Boot, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, John Podhoretz etc etc….
WTP has nailed it . . .
And rather particularly . . . .
Bingo.
Yes, there is that underlying fact that the merely right wing lot that chant “never Trump” and other assorted pieties are not and basically have never been conservative.
When someone can’t get anywhere as mere right wing, and doesn’t have the ethics or spine to be centered, balanced, conservative, and thus bookended between the mere right and mere left wings, the response is to jump to the other extreme.
Enough of this frivolity! On to more important matters—
Has anything been blowtorched yet? An egg, maybe? And don’t forget—he should do his blowtorching, and kayaking, in a suitably gay-affirming manner, whatever that may be.
Every one of the damn movies where a reinforced platoon of the idiots firing automatic weapons down a narrow corridor and cannot hit three people less than 25 yards in front of them would be a start – sci-fi version of Taliban pray-and-spray.
Automatic weapons that fire in absolutely straight lines at that!
I’ve always noticed that these advanced civilizations never discovered (or managed to forget) how to attack something that cannot be seen by the person firing the weapon. Artillery? What’s that?
*chortle*. My dad noticed that a lot too. He was artillery.
Last night we hit a record low of -13 F. Today there’s an article in the paper about how the reason it’s so cold is global warming; it said the reason it’s so cold here is it’s warm at the poles so the cold air can’t get to the poles and thus has to go elsewhere.
I think I’m going to have to read more Roy Price because that doesn’t quite make sense to me.
Artillery? What’s that?
Artillery, sure, but it is equally amazing they never discovered (or managed to forget) small things that go boom – if the stormtroopers had a single 11B straight out of AIT with an M203, Han, Leia, Luke, and the Wookie would have been dead a half dozen times in the first film alone.
I’ve just been listening to, among other things, Mark Knopfler’s Done With Bonaparte.
Consider Ridley Scott’s The Duelists, with Harvey Keitel as Gabriel Feraud and Keith Carradine as Armand d’Hubert.
Gabriel Féraud is a rather typically rabid, frantic, impulsive, dogmatic, right wing liberal . . . unless he’s gone and done one of those switches over to being a left wing liberal, or he might be a right wing liberal . . . or. . .
Armand D’Hubert is a hard core, practicing, reasoned, conservative:
a lead columnist for the Guardian or Independent
He looks young enough to still be in school.
“Automatic weapons that fire in absolutely straight lines at that!”
And have no recoil to throw off one’s aim.
I also laughed derisively at how the Jedi could, by whirling their light sabers, deflect a Metalstorm level fusillade of blaster bolts. Whether one is talking plot, characterization, religion, politics, or science and technology, George Lucas merely made very expensive comic books.
if the stormtroopers had a single 11B straight out of AIT with an M203, Han, Leia, Luke, and the Wookie would have been dead a half dozen times in the first film alone.
. . . . . No and yes, mostly no.
After looking up 11B and AIT, and thinking about the first film, combat stormtroopers would indeed have the targeting experience and accuracy and the grenade launchers, and yes, would probably have used them.
—The stormtroopers that attacked the jawas would have been Vader’s variety of stormtroopers.
For the bits in Star Wars with the ongoing dodging of random stormtroopers, those aren’t combat stormtroopers, those are very random assorted patrols. Think about it. Who’s going to be stationed in Mos Eisley? In turn, the Death Star is a 100 mile diameter planetoid, and with that much space to cover, is going to have staffing quality to match.
Therefore, those random patrols would have been the stormtrooper version of Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs.
Except that we are told elsewhere that Imperial Stormtroopers are elite soldiers, so there shouldn’t be any actual incompetents, merely some who are less excellent–consider the minimum standards for the SAS or Navy SEALs.
…but I do like the idea of Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs in space.
…random stormtroopers, those aren’t combat stormtroopers…
I see. So in all the movies all the stormtroopers chasing Han and that ilk are 42A and other REMF stormtroopers. What are the “combat” stormtroopers doing while Vader is sending the clerks and jerks after the hight threat, high value targets ? Is he just an incompetent boob ?
Except that we are told elsewhere that Imperial Stormtroopers are elite soldiers. . .
Life in the fleet.
Y’know, the stuff that occurs a bit after What the recruiter never told you.
…but I do like the idea of Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs in space.
Bill, The Galactic Hero.
K…see, now this is usually the place where I like to remind everyone that explosions don’t go boom in a vacuum. And also a reminder, apropos of nothing…ok, a bad experience on Christmas vacation…but I digress…that we all hate the French.
Except that we are told elsewhere that Imperial Stormtroopers are elite soldiers. . .
Life in the fleet
Except that we are told this by persons who are supposed to be extremely reliable sources of information, not by random poorly informed people.
And in the first Star Wars movie, the stormtroopers that board Princess Leia’s ship are not very good shots. (Nor are they very good at tactics. Why enter through an airlock when you can blow a hole anywhere in the hull?) Nor are the ones that open fire as Han flies his ship out of the Mos Eisley space port: Elite troops pursuing high value fugitives should have been able to hit at least one person.
I thought all storm troopers were clones of the bounty hunter Jango Fett? If so, how come so many of them can’t shoot straight?
Asking for a friend.
I thought all storm troopers were clones of the bounty hunter Jango Fett? If so, how come so many of them can’t shoot straight?
Pleasure Model.
What are the “combat” stormtroopers doing while Vader is sending the clerks and jerks after the hight threat, high value targets ?
As commented, —The stormtroopers that attacked the jawas would have been Vader’s variety of stormtroopers.
They’re the ones stationed on the star destroyer who were sent down to Tatooine to find out where that pod went to, and then follow any leads from there.
As opposed to . . . . very random assorted patrols. Think about it. Who’s going to be stationed in Mos Eisley?
And then . . . In turn, the Death Star is a 100 mile diameter planetoid, and with that much space to cover, is going to have staffing quality to match.
Elite troops pursuing high value fugitives should have been able to hit at least one person.
All part of Vader’s cunning plan, nobody would suspect the Imperial Stormtrooper Shower and Laundry Platoon…
As commented, —The stormtroopers that attacked the jawas would have been Vader’s variety of stormtroopers.
I see, so the good “combat” stormtroopers are the ones that got beaten by midgets with scrap weapons. I am not sure that argument is advancing your cause.
K…see, now this is usually the place where I like to remind everyone that explosions don’t go boom in a vacuum.
Rather particularly, when a ship in a vacuum starts to detonate, it doesn’t burst into flames in that vacuum. And when that ship—a “bomber”, btw–has been shown to burst into flames, the no longer functioning ship is not going to change course to then start to plummet towards a planet that is several hundred miles away . . .
Why enter through an airlock when you can blow a hole anywhere in the hull?)
. . . . ??????!?!?!?!??????
Take a standard nuclear powered submarine, particularly one of the ballistic missile submarines. Also by comparison, go ahead and also consider a standard container cargo ship, albeit you need one that is submersible and thus just as tightly sealed as a military submarine—or space craft.
So you want to crack your way in there . . . Let us say you actually do start to slice your way through the handiest bit of hull, possibly having to slice through varieties of armour, mebbe, certainly slicing through whatever random pipes and conduits are in the way, thus releasing whatever is in those pipes, dealing with whatever random voltages in all that wiring you’re slicing through . . .
Oh, and by the way, of this great advance in tactics that you’re demanding, just how long is this going to take you?—Yes, you are going to also factor in damage done to your side while you are doing it this way, and the time needed for replacement equipment and staff.
Or, instead, mebbe you could just go to the place that is already very obviously noted as This Way In, and then rip your way in from there.
Or, instead, mebbe you could just go to the place that is already very obviously noted as This Way In, and then rip your way in from there.
Oui, zis is why we must reinforce ze Franco-Belgian border, because ze Germans, zey vill nevar invade through the Ardennes.
I thought all storm troopers were clones of the bounty hunter Jango Fett? If so, how come so many of them can’t shoot straight?
Damfino, but that is covered in Wookiepedia.
—Oh, I have no idea where you will have to look in there, just that it’ll be in there.(1)—Although you might start cross referencing by stormtroopers history of, or something like that . . .
(1)So there I am at the campus Hillel, attending a planning meeting. The director of the Hillel is also sitting in for a bit, to listen in, management by wandering around, Etc. Some possible issue comes up in the planning discussion. If the issue is indeed an issue, the event plan will have to note that in the Hillel there is indeed the spectrum running all the way from My parents are Jewish all the way through knowing and planning for the halachic disposal of the old texts. Yes, the Hillel had two kitchens.
The director needed to get to his next meeting at that point, so he headed out, but as he did so he casually noted that regarding the potential issue, there is a rabbinical ruling on that one. The meeting leader was absolutely delighted to hear the news of the ruling and asked what it was. The director paused just long enough to announce Oh, I have no idea what the ruling is, I just know there’s going to be one.
I see, so the good “combat” stormtroopers are the ones that got beaten by midgets with scrap weapons.
Ah, Return Of The Jedi.
Where the empire has set up an improvised shipyard in the middle of nowhere, to which your unit gets transferred in, but judging from the first scenes with Vader on the DS2, you don’t ever transfer out—even horizontally, that’ll be what the blast furnaces or a very high orbit are for.
And where twenty years on, the empire hasn’t set up an improvised shipyard over, say, some big flat place with an environment that is extremely malevolent, but not necessarily corrosive. Instead, the empire sets up shop over an extremely concealing and rather dense forest.
So you note that the local furballs are very short and have no electricity, and then from there you set up what are very quickly standard patrols of the force field generator perimeter. Very standard patrols. Because they’re just furballs and you Are The Empire. Very routine standard patrols.
—And because elite combat troops are not going to get parked at a shipyard. And because even with Palpatine and Vader overhead, luring the rebels to attack the DS2 is a navy planning issue, not a ground troops issue. And especially because Palpatine is not Havelock Vetinari and bloody well is not Sam Vimes. And being Sith, Palpatine is not going let Vader become either, although Vader is supposed to sort out how to evolve into both because he is the rule of two variety junior Sith.
The point of the Sith was to destroy the Jedi and take over the galaxy . . . and after twenty something years of sitting on his empire, Palpatine is Ronnie Rust.
And down on that moon with that lot of quite concealing forest are very pissed off furballs.
Oui, zis is why we must reinforce ze Franco-Belgian border, because ze Germans, zey vill nevar invade through the Ardennes.
Exactly. With a mobile tin can that’s wrapped in electrical wiring, and nasty chemicals and who knows what’s been customized, the best and fastest way in is through the front door.
Now, if the empire has gone and built something that is on the ground, and big and solid, and it just sits there, and they first thought it up about twenty years ago, so they aren’t thinking about it recently, well, in that case, that can be stared and and thought about by the other side . . .
Oh, yes, and . . .
Except that we are told elsewhere that Imperial Stormtroopers are elite soldiers. . .
Life in the fleet
Except that we are told this by persons who are supposed to be extremely reliable sources of information, not by random poorly informed people.
. . . and for one of the bits of being extremely reliable sources of information, I and others here do have the advantage of having seen the movies.
That is how we’re noticing that The Latest Junkheap is such a fiasco, and where we’ve seen . . . Every one of the damn movies where a reinforced platoon of the idiots firing automatic weapons down a narrow corridor and cannot hit three people less than 25 yards in front of them . . . After all, when it comes to demands that Imperial stormtroopers are incredibly competent, well, things don’t always go exactly as the publicity hacks claim they do.
If everything went “as it should”, we would all be conservative and would all just focus on what best to do, there would be no right wing liberals or or left wing liberals demanding ideology over reality, and David would only post pretty pictures and stuff—Yes, that last is the first ever Friday Ephemera, from March 2007.
As an exercise in The Years Reheated, one can start there and read forward.
Yes, I know.
Someone’s going to take that as a challenge to start reading from the beginning and try and finish ’em all before the next one posts in a few days or so . . .
Hal: I’ve just been listening to, among other things, Mark Knopfler’s Done With Bonaparte.
Oh yes. Any excuse to hear Knopfler making love through playing guitar is a good one. Best guitar player. Ever.
…the best and fastest way in is through the front door.
Murphy’s Laws of Combat – The easy way is always mined.
Best guitar player. Ever.
No, adequate. Best is a cage match between Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green.
Meanwhile in the Clown Quarter, the “I want white genocide” prof who quit his phony job at Drexel U gets hired by NYU, because of his sterling academic reputation, no doubt.
He’ll be “working” at the University’s Hemispheric Institute – “the intersection of scholarship, artistic expression, and politics, the organization explores embodied practice—performance—as a vehicle for the creation of new meaning and the transmission of cultural values, memory, and identity.”
IOW, SBSDD.
Quick, David, grab the blowtorch! The bar has been invaded by nerds and the virus is spreading! All the TVs are tuned to Star Trek and Star Wars, the henchlesbians are at a corner table playing Magic The Card Game, the whole scruffy lot is plotting PickledeggCon I, and there’s now a happy hour for SJWs. HELP!!!!
…the best and fastest way in is through the front door.
Murphy’s Laws of Combat – The easy way is always mined.
Absolutely. Of course the “complication” that the stormtroopers have when boarding Leia’s ship isn’t that there are people shooting towards them—the defenders might miss, and the stormtroopers can also shoot.
The complication is that Vader is right behind them, and he won’t miss.
Quick, David, . . .
. . . . As I Recall, there is the club under the bar . . . and there should be sets of Go boards and stones in the cabinet in the center—For the SJWs, explain Go as being infinitely superior to that mere white boy’s fencing match that is chess, which is perfectly true. You can also explain to them that Go is an exercise in controlling all the intersections, which also actually is quite correct.
Best guitar player. Ever.
If you want to see some pickin’ and pluckin’ and strummin’ and bowin’ of stringed instruments, try this.
Also by comparison, go ahead and also consider a standard container cargo ship, albeit you need one that is submersible and thus just as tightly sealed as a military submarine—or space craft.
Note, however, that when the stormtroopers boarded Princess Leia’s ship, her ship had already been taken onboard Vader’s Star Destroyer. It was no longer in vacuum. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that there would be many places on the hull that would be suitable for breaching–and many thoughtful SF writers, some with extensive STEM and military background, have done so in their stories.
This, of course, raises another question: whether it is wise to take an enemy ship on board, something that we see more than once in the Star Wars movies. The captain of the captured ship might decide that he’s going to died anyway so why not set off a nuke and kill his enemies too?
The bar has been invaded by nerds
I’m afraid your cry will fall on deaf ears. Our gracious host used to comment on comic books in this very forum, so warning of an Invasion of The Nerds is probably counter-productive.
I and others here do have the advantage of having seen the movies.
As have I, but I refuse to see the latest installment of this increasingly silly series.
After all, when it comes to demands that Imperial stormtroopers are incredibly competent, well, things don’t always go exactly as the publicity hacks claim they do.
Except that this is a case of George Lucas (and such characters as Obi Wan) making assertions of fact that are not borne out by his silly screenplays. I don’t think this is a case of reality not going as promised, but of George Lucas being a careless storyteller.
Someone’s going to take that as a challenge to start reading from the beginning and try and finish ’em all before the next one posts in a few days or so . . .
I don’t think there are enough hours in the day.
I find it amusing that the bait got taken, but apparently by no one who has actually watched he films.
And in the first Star Wars movie, the stormtroopers that board Princess Leia’s ship are not very good shots. (Nor are they very good at tactics. Why enter through an airlock when you can blow a hole anywhere in the hull?) Nor are the ones that open fire as Han flies his ship out of the Mos Eisley space port: Elite troops pursuing high value fugitives should have been able to hit at least one person.
The stormtroopers perform a breach and clear of the Tantive IV through a single wide hatch in the face of overwhelming fire. They wipe out the ship’s defenders. They lose two troopers in the process.
The stormtroopers that attacked the rebel base on Hoth did a pretty smooth job of invading the base, wiping out the shield generator, and capturing the facilities in the face of entrenched defensive emplacements.
In just about every other scene where you see the stormtroopers failing to hit the things they’re shooting at, it’s because they’ve been ordered not to. Watch the movies again.
While I’m not going to try and defend RotJ – even Lucas’ co-producers were giving him grief on that movie while they were filming it – most of the problems people have with the final battle is that the Ewoks are cute. Make them Wookiees, as was apparently mooted early on in the script, and their success is less risible.
Our gracious host used to comment on comic books in this very forum
I remember the original drawing that used to adorn the top of the page: “Foolish humans, soon you all will be dust beneath our paws.”
For old time’s sake.
I and others here do have the advantage of having seen the movies.
As have I, but I refuse to see the latest installment of this increasingly silly series.
But . . . but . . . but . . . but The Latest Junkheap has gorgeous cinematography!!!!!!!
I don’t think this is a case of reality not going as promised, but of George Lucas being a careless storyteller.
Ask Harrison Ford . . . .
Ask Harrison Ford
I’d forgotten that quote. Heh™
They lose two troopers in the process.
Was it only two? It’s been many years since I last saw the movie. Of course, they were wearing armor while the defenders were not.
F*cking hell. How do these morons get hired?
There is only one plausible conclusion: The Vast Sane Reasonable Majority™ of professors are in reality allies of the openly totalitarian.
Our gracious host used to comment on comic books in this very forum
I remember the original drawing that used to adorn the top of the page:
Modern current recycled comic strip.
Modern current recycled comic strip.
Thanks for that blast from the past.
It’s sad to think that we’ve been dealing with that sh*t for so many decades. (The comic strip is dated 1993, and I have been encountering femi-stalinists since the 1970’s.)
Meanhile, all the stormtroopers evidently came from Oregon where the possibility of having to pump one’s own gas is causing equal levels of incompetence and angst.
“I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62…It is safer for people, if a station attendant does the service.”
Ten year old starts drag queen club.
. . . come to think of it, as I recall the British term for this is amateur theatricals. See also, the Hasty Pudding Club, and pantos.
“I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62…”
I’ve known people like that:
“There are too many brands of soup at the grocery store. It’s confusing.”
“Well, they’re mostly different so choose whichever you like best.”
“There are too many coffee shops in my neighborhood. It’s wasteful.”
“They all have plenty of customers, so why should you complain?”
And so on, and so forth, until the conversation ends with “Well, I don’t like it and capitalism is bad.”
Farnsworth,
I traveled through Oregon this past summer on the way home from Mt. Ranier. I later had an argument with a young leftist of my acquaintance about Oregon subsidizing one specific job description, i.e. gas pump dudes, thereby increasing the cost of gas for everyone at the expense of job creation elsewhere. Her response was a stuttering, “it’s better” because . . . “well, it just is, and people like it.” I informed her that I was old enough to remember when people had a choice between full and self-serve and full-serve quickly went the way of the dodo because people would rather save money.
Oh yeah. She mentioned “safety” concerns, as if tens of thousands of unqualified people die every year from pumping their own gas.
BTW, my mother just turned 87 and still drives. She learned how to pump gas when my dad died thirty years ago. To date, she’s not immolated herself.
If Gomer Pyle’s brother Goober could pump gas, then anyone can…except maybe leftist.
For good picking, may I suggest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6cJR9copFw
I miss Bloom County.
I’m thinking the guys at Oregon’s freeway off-ramps (you know, the ones with the “God Bless” scraps of cardboard) could offer to pump people’s gas for a dollar or two. Town drunk gets his booze money, bleeding heart gets her car filled without getting her hands dirty and gets to feel good about helping* the poor, town drunk finds that gasoline leaves his hands cleaner than they started, station owner doesn’t have to put up with paperwork and labor regulations and no-show employees, grumpy farts like me can pump our own damn gas…it’s an all-around win!
* In this case, “helping” = rescuing from the dire nightmarish world of sobriety.
Oh, and I think it was explained, that originally the Imperial Stormtroopers were clones of Jango Fett, they were no longer so in the later episodes; just recruited elite troops.Quoted from wookiepedia:
“Throughout the early years of Palpatine’s reign, the Empire continued to utilize the Jango Fett template, but later commissioned the creation of new troopers from different genetic sources. Cloning remained essential to the Imperial Military, although the introduction of birth-born recruits into the ranks of the Stormtrooper Corps gradually reduced clone soldiers to a minority status.”
…as if tens of thousands of unqualified people die every year from pumping their own gas.
According to the CDC it is second only to deaths from playing electric keyboards in a kiddie pool during a thunderstorm.
“I almost died !”
“The handles are disease ridden !”
People this stupid just need to ride busses, or be put in a home.
“The handles are disease ridden !”
Don’t petrol stations now provide disposable gloves?
200? There goes the neighbourhood.