For newcomers and the nostalgic, some items from the archives:
Those Aboriginal Telescopes.
On tongue-bathing the primitive.
It’s hard to miss the pretension around this “ancient wisdom,” the patronising dishonesty, and the implication that the rest of us are expected to pretend too. But the definition of astronomy – a branch of science that uses mathematics, physics and chemistry to study and explain celestial objects – is being stretched in order to flatter primitive mythology with zero scientific content beyond a very rudimentary calendar.
And I’m not sure what’s achieved by gushing over the fact that what we now know as the constellation of Orion was referred to as a canoe by an arrested Stone Age foraging culture. A culture that, despite tens of thousands of years of purported “astronomy,” had bugger all to show for it. While Galileo Galilei was calculating the heights of lunar mountains and discovering the moons of Jupiter, our aboriginal “astronomers” had little to say on the subject.
A Stupefying Vanity.
On “social justice” and other pernicious academic fuzzwords.
In much the same way, “diversity” seems to be the belief that the less we have in common, and feel we have in common, the happier we will be. An unobvious proposition, to say the least. And then there’s “equity” – another word favoured by both educators and campus activists – and which is defined, if at all, only in the woolliest and most evasive of terms. And which, when used by those same educators and activists, seems to mean something like “equality of outcome regardless of inputs.” Inputs including diligence and punctuality.
Shamelessly, He Quotes Himself.
On Portland’s mentally uniform radicals, and their malevolence.
In the video linked above, note the planning, the efforts to maximise the imposition and its somewhat menacing implications. Someone sat down and thought, “How can we really aggravate hundreds of random people, ordinary families, about whom we know nothing, and make them feel unsafe in their own homes?” And then, other, like-minded people agreed, presumably with enthusiasm. This isn’t politics. This is recreational sociopathy.
The Mao-lings who obstruct and intimidate random motorists, or who harass random restaurant customers, scaring their children, or who, as seen above, scream amplified profanities at random people trying to sleep, while shining lights into their bedrooms – they don’t do these things because they care about civil rights, or policing, or whatever this week’s Issue Of Great Concern happens to be. They do it because menacing other people – and spoiling someone’s day, or night, arbitrarily – is gratifying. If, that is, you’re a certain kind of person. They are, as it were, pleasuring themselves.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Only the baseball hat that Oddjob wore.
Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals is an excellent book on that point and a few other parallels such as those between the Jews, Chinese, and Lebanese as those three groups persist, not necessarily welcome, in foreign cultures.
On the subject of hats, I’m afraid my OCD compels me. Give me some credit. I’ve been holding this in since David’s double troll of “Can’t do hats. Haven’t got the knack.” I just couldn’t take it any longer.
There are even more parallels between contemporary US urban black culture and UK white slum culture.
I don’t doubt it, but it seems likely that those aren’t independent. Global media reach means that poor young white people everywhere are adopting the ghetto thug culture because it’s broadcast to them 24/7 as laudable.
[Cosby] certainly enraged a lot of blacks, so many of whom are addicted to the cult of victimhood
While that’s true, I don’t think they had the ability to dredge up an unreliable, mentally unstable woman to make farcical accusations of a twenty year old crime she couldn’t remember, collect dozens of similar hearsay stories, and get them admitted as evidence in a jurisdiction where such accusations would be entertained by the DA, the judge and the jury.
In retrospect if you look at Andrea Costand, Christine Blasey-Ford and E. Jean Caroll it’s pretty clear the left’s dirty tricks brigade has a template they’re making good use of. AFAIK only Jian Ghomeshi has been able to slip that noose.
And while all that is true, the real driving factor in all of this is the money and attention these suits bring to the “victims” and more importantly the victims’ attorneys. For some it’s a loss leader that even if they don’t win it gets their name out there and at worst case they get experience in the big arena of politics and power. Remember, if enough people believe that there is no such thing as bad publicity, there is no such thing as bad publicity. If they fight against the bad, bad conservatives…”conservatives”, put up what they can sell as having been the good, the noble fight, then even losing can be spun into a Dunkirk.