Elsewhere (279)
Michael Jones on the Clown Quarter’s approximation of scholarship:
In her paper, How to Write as Felt: Touching Transmaterialities and More-Than-Human Intimacies, University of Toronto scholar Stephanie Springgay suggests that felt, a “dense material of permanently interlocking fibres,” can be linked to racism and capitalism.
It’s those “cis-heteronormative White supremacist settler colonial logics,” you see. And the “queer self-touching,” obviously.
Charles Cooke on the latest young titan of US socialism:
Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defence spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park.
Charlotte Allen on “healthy masculinity,” as defined by campus woke-lings:
In May, the University of Texas-Austin hastily pulled back a programme on “healthy masculinity” that its counselling staff had devised – amid a flood of ridicule over such aspects of the programme as posters depicting young men wearing pencilled-in dresses (complete with bust-lines) and encouraging UT’s male students to try nail polish and makeup. The programme, titled “MasculinUT” and devised in 2015, had been originally marketed as a means of reducing campus sexual assault and domestic violence. Instead, as even UT administrators ultimately conceded, it mainly consisted of promoting “gender fluidity” and the treatment of traditional masculine roles and goals — such as focusing on career “success,” becoming the family “breadwinner,” and being told to “act like a man” — as inherently pathological.
And Jonah Goldberg on Sarah Jeong and racism as a credential at the New York Times:
You can run similar thought experiments about virtually any group. If all you need to know about Oscar Wilde is that he was a gay dude, just like Richard Simmons or Milo what’s-his-name, you’re a bigot. If Meyer Lansky and Albert Einstein are merely two Jews to you, you’re an anti-Semite. If Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, and Lizzie Borden are just three chicks, you’re a sexist. But for some bizarre reason, for many people, this idea evaporates like water off a hot skillet when you replace any of these categories with “white” or, very often, “male.”
Suddenly fancy words and phrases fly like sawdust from a wood chipper: “structures of oppression!” “decontextualized!” “ahistoricized!” etc. It’s all so clever and complicated. The same people who take to the streets at the slightest suggestion that Muslims can be judged by the evil deeds of other Muslims will lecture and harangue you for hours, mob you on Twitter, or condescendingly dismiss you for not understanding that all white people have it coming.
If the cleverness and complication mentioned above seems incoherent – and if the selectivity with which the New Rules Of Victimhood are applied suggests bad faith on the part of those mouthing them – it may help to bear in mind the kinds of evasion, projection and preening spite that intersectional voodoo makes possible. And hence the kinds of personalities most strongly drawn to it. For instance, the aforementioned cleverness has enabled Ms Rani Molla, a graduate of Oberlin and Columbia, to know which members of the lower classes she can sneer at with impunity while expecting applause and in-group kudos. Because, thanks to intersectional calculus, they, not she, “have every advantage.” Which is why they’re working in a chicken rendering plant and being sneered at as “privileged,” and therefore inherently contemptible, by an Ivy League graduate who writes for the Wall Street Journal.
Such is wokeness.
For some background on Ms Jeong and her history of dementedly racist outpourings, see this thread here.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
“Math(s) is hard” – Barbie
I think I may have identified the fundamental problem this headmistress has has.
The ban has been in place during Maths lessons at the £14,00-a-year girls’ school for the past three years, and applies to all age groups except for those in the sixth form.
I dunno. Which is harder, math(s) or proofreading? And not to kick this whole math/maths thing up again (ok, I lie) but if it’s maths why is it “Maths is about confidence” and not “Maths are about confidence”? Or was that covered in the last donnybrook and my recollection is selectively poor and thus I’m just being a dick? Prolly the latter…but now to be a real d(evil’s advocate)ick…In defense of the headmistress (heh) she does say (not that I’m totally buying it) that the girls are still learning the math(s) through participation. They just find the books themselves intimidating. Again, not that I’m buying that entirely but I could see where more dynamic involvement/participation and thus repetition training might actually work better. And not just for girls but for the more fidgety/active type boys as well. I would guess though that such an approach would require a much more highly skilled teacher along with a low teacher/student ratio. Which is something that I would expect if I was laying out over £14,00(0) a year to educate my kid. On a mass education scale, to acquire so many such skilled teachers would drive the price way up as the elasticity of that supply curve is likely rather steep.
. . . I could see where more dynamic involvement/participation and thus repetition training might actually work better. And not just for girls but for the more fidgety/active type boys as well.
Mental abacus.