Elsewhere (253)
Toby Young on things you mustn’t acknowledge, even politely, at least among educators:
Unfortunately, [education charity] Teach First decided my blog was unacceptable. In spite of the fact that it was billed as part of a ‘debate’, and appeared alongside another piece expressing an alternative point of view, the organisation decided to remove it from its website and issue an apology. That’s right, it apologised for publishing my piece. “It was against what we believe is true and against our values and vision,” Teach First explained… The most disappointing thing about the whole affair is that… I was attempting to show how teachers could remain evangelical about raising standards without denying the mainstream scientific understanding about the heritability of IQ and the impact of IQ on educational outcomes. Teach First’s reaction and its description of my piece as “against what we believe is true” suggests it doesn’t share my view that its values are compatible with mainstream science.
Toni Airaksinen on the Clown Quarter’s high standards:
An academic journal on “white privilege” has apparently stopped publishing articles following a Campus Reform investigation in September. The journal, Whiteness and Education, published by Routledge, claimed to publish peer-reviewed research on issues including “critical discussions of White racism, White identity, privilege, power, and intersectionality.” However, a closer inspection revealed that the majority of published articles were “accepted” for publication within two days of being “received” — a very short time frame that could not allow for proper peer-review, according to professors consulted by Campus Reform.
And further to rumblings in the comments, Michael Jones notes an inspired exercise in trolling and what it reveals:
Signs declaring “It’s okay to be white” have been spotted on college campuses across America and even in Canada over the last week, prompting outrage… Others have questioned why saying “it’s okay to be white” is automatically racist… Even though the campaign has been widely identified as a troll attempt, many took the bait. “I am deeply disgusted that this organised online campaign to divide university communities across the country has come to our campus. It is shameful that anyone would use these posters to promote a racist agenda,” University of Kansas’ student body president, Mady Womack, told the Kansan. The flyers were denounced as “racist” and the school’s Multicultural Student Government convened an “emergency meeting” over it, according to the report.
Given the endless courses and faculty proclamations denouncing “whiteness” as both “oppressive” and a “problem,” something that pale-skinned students should atone for ostentatiously, while promising not to produce children as pale and sinful as themselves, the accusations of racism and divisiveness – because of a small notice suggesting that, actually, “It’s okay to be white” – may ring a little hollow and seem absurdly dishonest. And it’s hard not to admire the economy of the trolling, whereby a modest and unobjectionable statement, one that if applied to any other, comparable group would be utterly innocuous, is denounced, and denounced immediately, as if it were scandalous. Which suggests that there’s no position a pale person could take, short of continual deference and self-abasement, that would keep such people free of doctrinaire convulsion. And which in turns suggests a kind of madness.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
The flyers were denounced as “racist” and the school’s Multicultural Student Government convened an “emergency meeting”
LOL
Nikita Vladimirov on the yearnings of the woke:
Possibly related.
Incidentally, Toby Young’s heretical article, the one that left several educators in need of steadying, can be found here.
So it’s *not* okay to be white.
Good to know.
So it’s *not* okay to be white. Good to know.
That does seem to be the message that the Clown Quarter is happy to send, and indeed is determined to send.
Which makes me wonder what it must be like to be a white student – say, one from a modest background – who arrives at university and is promptly told, repeatedly and with institutional authority, that he is egregiously “privileged,” and that a secondary and uninteresting aspect of his being is in fact the determining factor in his life, and that other characteristics – whether he’s honest, or kind, or works hard – are much less important than how pale he is – a paleness that, in and of itself, somehow oppresses people. And so, as a result, he should feel hesitant and ashamed, and “take ownership for the harm” that his skin colour has allegedly “caused.”
I’d be willing to bet he’d quickly develop a rather jaundiced eye, and eventually start trolling them. They are truly their own worst enemy.
44 percent of millennials responded that they would rather live in a socialist country
Why don’t they then? I mean, there are socialist countries. Perhaps they are applying for visas as we speak.
Or perhaps not.
Toby Young’s friend and fellow free school advocate Katharine Birbalsingh speaking here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b099ypr1
“…as a black person, you should know better because you owe us.”
Toby Young’s friend and fellow free school advocate Katharine Birbalsingh speaking here
“This speech cost her her job.”
For newcomers, Ms Birbalsingh has been mentioned here before.
And it’s perhaps worth remembering that for daring to challenge leftist conceits, Ms Birbalsingh was denounced by Guardian readers as “racist,” “misogynist” and someone who “just doesn’t like poor people.” Which is grimly ironic. For many Guardianistas, it was simply inconceivable that someone might want the best for her pupils and yet dare to deviate from leftist assumptions.
However, a closer inspection revealed that the majority of published articles were “accepted” for publication within two days of being “received” — a very short time frame that could not allow for proper peer-review
*shocked face*
…the majority of published articles were “accepted” for publication within two days of being “received” — a very short time frame that could not allow for proper peer-review…
Having been on the review board for a rather obscure and niche journal and knowing how actual peer review works, the difficulty with with all these Journals of Clown Studies is that there is not peer review, there is Pal Review. The “peer” review boards are made up of barking seals, and as long as the conclusion matches the preconceived notion the flash to bang for publication will be short, and the only things rejected would be articles that do not support Teh Narrative™.
Re: Muldoon and “peer review”.
Yes, that’s something I try to get across to my library instruction classes. I don’t know whether they remember it, but I like to think that some of them might become just a bit more skeptical of the sources of information they use in their research.
Showing them this and this hopefully helps as well. I’ll also occasionally mention the Sokal Hoax, if time permits.
Make way for the revolutionaries:
The fact that Captain Vanguard here doesn’t seem able to anticipate how much space he’ll need on a sign doesn’t bode terribly well.
re: Captain Vanguard
Granted that double letters often give me conniptions, at least I *do* know how to spell “tomorrow”.
Plus it behooves one to insert spaces between words unless one is writing in German.
The fact that Captain Vanguard here doesn’t seem able to anticipate how much space he’ll need on a sign doesn’t bode terribly well.
The most surprising thing is that his thumb is on the *outside* of his fist.
In spite of the fact that it was billed as part of a ‘debate’, and appeared alongside another piece expressing an alternative point of view, the organisation decided to remove it from its website and issue an apology.
You can’t have a debate with two sides!
#WrongThought
Captain Vanguard also does not seem able to anticipate how much space he’ll need in the train to the gulag that he so cheerfully anticipates.
I am tempted to sign up for university classes, merely for the opportunity to wear that “It’s okay to be White.” t-shirt. Imagine the hilarity.
The most surprising thing is that his thumb is on the *outside* of his fist.
I do like the inadvertent symbolism of it. We, the filthy bourgeoisie, are to defer to the deep wisdom of someone who hasn’t mastered the rudimentary foresight required to make a sign, and who, it seems, can barely dress himself successfully.
It’s the flushed, chubby cheeks that amuse me. It’s like a revolution of Gerber babies.
The most surprising thing is that his thumb is on the *outside* of his fist.
I suspect it spends a lot of time in his mouth.
^That.
Also, Captain Vanguard’s (maybe the thumb should be in the mouth) kerning leaves something to be desired.
It’s a typographical shambles, frankly.
[D’oh, I should have read all the way down to Trevor’s comment before removing foot]
Make way for the revolutionaries
Antifa’s 4th of November National Insurrection may have fizzled, but they did get their “Mount Suribachi” moment…
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Has this appeared here before?
I thought Trevor meant his fist spends a lot of time in his mouth. It seemed believable.
Re: Captain Vanguard.
I notice that he managed to squeeze in a little anarchist symbol there. What’s the betting, though, that by anarchy he actually means “more state intervention in order to take money from other people and give it to me”?
Or perhaps I’ve got him all wrong.
I notice that he managed to squeeze in a little anarchist symbol there.
I suspect that, like the tirelessly self-flattering Laurie Penny, he leans towards anarcho-communism, the philosophy of which seems terribly convenient, if not entirely persuasive.
Or perhaps I’ve got him all wrong.
I suspect Little Fist the Flannel Boy is merely socially inept and desperately trying to get in with the cool kidz.
…the philosophy of which seems terribly convenient
Much like their Prophet, their Messiah, Karl Marx himself.
The Guardian:
“What are the Paradise Papers, and what do they tell us?”.
Lemme see; how about “‘Rich people use perfectly legal investment schemes as can be deduced from copies of the properly audited accounts’, according to a newspaper owned by a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands which avoided paying corporation tax when it sold its 50 per cent holding in Auto Trader to Apax Partners in 2008 and which has since managed to prop up said ailing newspaper financially by investing hundreds of millions of pounds in offshore hedge funds”?
Perhaps peer review was accomplished so efficiently because the authors and the review panelists were the same people. Samizdat peer review.
according to a newspaper owned by a tax-exempt shell company in the Cayman Islands which avoided paying corporation tax when it sold its 50 per cent holding in Auto Trader to Apax Partners in 2008
It occurs to me I could just go on holiday and leave you heathens to it.
It occurs to me I could just go on holiday and leave you heathens to it.
Haven’t you done that before, and we soon thereafter cleared out the liquor cabinet, including the stash with the good stuff, spilled italics everywhere, and generally left a appalling mess like the aftermath of a college frat party? (o_O)
But we would miss your natural charm and the alluring odor of pickled eggs which always wafts faintly about you.
and the alluring odor of pickled eggs which always wafts faintly about you.
And this is why you were seated by the gents’ toilets.
I thought it was to allow me to inspect all the possibilities.
And this is why you were seated by the gents’ toilets.
I identify as a nonbinary panda. May I enquire where the nonbinary panda’s toilets are?
Given the mantra in tenure-track academe is “publish or perish,” there has been an explosion of “peer reviewed” journals over the years, to the point where it’s a complete joke. Ditto law reviews. We’ve seen numerous examples of the lunacy on these pages. It’s part of the illusion that higher education–at least in the liberal arts and social “sciences” is actually producing something worthwhile.
Meanwhile in the Clown Quarter of New Mexico, American Indian faculty member appalls SJWs by wearing American Indian Halloween costume.
Why, you may ask at this point, is an authentic costume worn by a genuine Indian a problem ?
Allrighty then, now we apparently have micro-racism and micro-cultural appropriation. It will be fun when it gets down to family member level.
Nope Captain Vanguard, you’ll still be getting no dates, and Rosie Palms is starting to look at you sideways too.
Captain Vanguard is no La Pasionaria.
The estimable People’s Cube has found some of Captain Vanguard’s comrades.
More at the link…
A ha!
Someone has photographed the Henchlesbians.
I was hoping for more black leather and whips.
Someone has photographed the Henchlesbians.
Yeah, no, David, pickled eggs aside, has far better taste than that.
Yet another example of the fragility of US SJW college students…
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/11/06/professor-william-jacobson-smeared-anti-free-speech-mob-vassar-college/
@Farnsworth
The estimable People’s Cube has found some of Captain Vanguard’s comrades.
The one on the far left, with the bulging purple leggings, looks like she could do some damage……..if she sat on you…
. . . some of Captain Vanguard’s comrades
More at the link…
To be fair, the elder Navajos dress like urban cowboys. The old women get their hair permed and blued. Kinda like the bowling alleys, back in the day.
The youngsters try the urban guetto look. And the music.
Back home where they still race horses is still showing off headware. Mostly mint julips and women with fancy hats. Old country. Those Kentucky blueboods really can put on a show, with all the feathers and such.
Hi Whoops,
The panda potty is in the vegetable garden. Fertilize at will.
Somewhere there is a SJW mightily outraged because Halloween fell on a TUESDAY and the chief of the Wahoo tribe only wore the fancy headgear on WEDNESDAYs.
It occurs to me I could just go on holiday and leave you heathens to it.
OK- so, drive it down to the docks. Wear gloves. Spray the inside with bleach, and leave the keys on the rear side near tyre. We’ll be in touch. Take it easy.
“Are whites ready to be a minority?”
“So in other words, even though white people don’t exist, it’s a good thing that they’re dying out, and you’re a racist if you don’t understand that.”
What is an oik?
What is an oik?
A yob.
Well, that makes things much clearer.
Clear as the pickled-“egg” juice.
What is an oik?
A yob.
It’s like a chav or preppy, only spelled differently.
Meanwhile, in the Clown Quarter:
Ms McFarland is apparently oblivious to how her own actions prove Prager’s point.
As so often, there’s a marked asymmetry. Prager offers to engage with questions and disagreement, but his opponents intend to prevent any discussion from happening. No-one must be permitted to hear Prager speak at all, even if they want to challenge his views. Which is to say, Ms McFarland and her associates prefer to impose themselves on others, selfishly, having appointed themselves the arbiters of what may be thought.
What is an oik?
The word oik has class connotations. It generally denotes someone who’s coarse and obnoxious, dim and uncouth, has hideous taste, and is almost certainly working class. See also chav and scrote.
Gee , except for the class part, it’s a synonym for SJW! How ironic.
It’s like a chav or preppy, only spelled differently.
In America, preppy means someone who attends (or attended) a prep school (college prepatory; private school), in other words, an upper class kid, well dressed, conservative, etc.
What is its meaning and origin in the UK?
What is an oik?
Not to be confused with oikophobia (from oikos) hatred of one’s own nation and culture.
What is its meaning and origin in the UK?
The same, as far as I know.
I am flattered.
Signed versions are available, for a small fee.
I am flattered.
I generally imagine my regulars as beings of rare elegance and breeding, wafting along on clouds of sophistication.
Not you, obviously. But the others.
Amazing how well you describe me when we’ve never met.
The worry du jour: TV shows!
https://everydayfeminism.com/2017/10/tv-teaches-us-toxic-monogamy/
Alternative title: Writer Puzzles Over Comedic Depiction Of Earth People’s Mating Customs
The worry du jour: TV shows!
Okay then.
[ Added: ]
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something unhappy about the proximity of the words “mother” (of small children, apparently) and the phrase, or rather boast, “explorer of the BDSM and poly lifestyle.” When I think of successful parenting and children who aren’t psychologically damaged, polyamory isn’t the first thing that leaps to mind.
Pager “is an anti-academic, rape advocate who spews hate speech against Muslims, Black people, Latinas, and many other groups who deserve to be protected at the University of Wyoming.”
Which anyone with even a passing acquaintance with Prager, his radio show, books or videos on PragerU, knows this isn’t just ignorance, but malice.
They actually know they cannot engage with his ideas, so they go straight to Bulverism fallacy.
They actually know they cannot engage with his ideas,
Ms McFarland and her comrades do seem keen to avoid them, or any remotely realistic approximation of them. And it scarcely needs pointing out that it’s much easier to chant slogans and shout bizarre personal abuse at someone, while preventing them from speaking, than it is to let them speak and then disprove what they say.
But I’m sure that’s entirely coincidental.
The same, as far as I know.
Then I am confused at its juxtaposition with “chav” and “oik”.
Not you, obviously.
I know my place.
Then I am confused at its juxtaposition with “chav” and “oik”.
So it probably won’t help if I tell you that I own a pair of Bass Weejuns.
Bass Weejuns are friendly, but bark too much. If you live in town, get Hush Puppies.
I suspect Madison’s blog is entirely fictional, and I sure hope the kids are.
Then I am confused at its juxtaposition with “chav” and “oik”.
See, this is where “jagoff” is much more efficient. And by efficient, I mean simpler.
I should know better than to follow links to Quotidian Hysteria. The only aspect of that article that could remotely be called ‘clever’ was the author’s use of three long and boring plot summaries as a means of separating the introductory paragraphs (this show is a superficial and fantastical confection) from the conclusion (this show is poisonous to personal relationships and society).
Skip over the thousand words of padding, and read just the introduction and conclusion, and you can’t help but realize that this is a profoundly unserious “analysis” fit only for profoundly unserious readers*. Here’s a hint, darling: buffoonish characters are buffoons, and are better understood as cautionary tales rather than role models. That she feels moved to warn her readers that dysfunctional sitcom relationships between dysfunctional sitcom characters might be dysfunctional says a great deal about her intellectual capabilities; that she feels her readers might find this advice valuable says much about her audience.
For her next trick, I suggest she watch a hundred hours of Three Stooges and opine about its effects on healthy relationships among men.
*The sort who might download poly/BDSM fanfic, for instance.
Oik OS may also be a computer operating system.
Here’s a hint, darling: buffoonish characters are buffoons, and are better understood as cautionary tales rather than role models… For her next trick, I suggest she watch a hundred hours of Three Stooges and opine about its effects on healthy relationships among men.
As I was saying, I could bugger off for a week and leave you heathens to it.
As I was saying, I could bugger off for a week and leave you heathens to it.
Who would fix the cascading italics?
So it probably won’t help if I tell you that I own a pair of Bass Weejuns.
It is OK as long as you don’t have a US penny (or a 5p coin) in the slot in the tongue unless you are the reincarnation of, or the actual, Edward VIII, which, from the photo, is not that far fetched.
I own a pair of Bass Weejuns.
I assumed it was a breed of dog.
It is OK as long as you don’t have a US penny (or a 5p coin) in the slot in the tongue ….
We used to call them “penny loafers.” The rich kids put dimes in there.
So it probably won’t help if I tell you that I own a pair of Bass Weejuns.
Oh no! People are mixing the subcultures!
We used to call them “penny loafers.”
I’d forgotten about that. Thanks.
Listened to Dennis Prager today — he had invited the organizer of the shutuppery at Wyoming, Hunter MacFarland, who slandered him, to come on his show. Hunter refused. But another organizer, Austin Morgan, agreed.
It is a fascinating hour because regardless of how Prager easily disproves every single MacFarland libel (“Prager is a rape advocate, who spews hate at Latinos, Blacks & Muslims”), Morgan waffles, dances, at first agrees with Prager and then backs away from his agreements.
There is much question begging, rewriting of Prager’s statements offered in evidence, and shock from Austin that Dennis dare dissent from what Austin says is the objective reality that America is the worst western nation in the world with structural institutions dedicated to oppressing everyone BUT cisgender, heteronormative, christian, white, males. THAT, according to Austin, makes Dennis morally reprehensible.
And Austin is studying to be a defense attorney. Heh.
Here’s the audio.
Listened to Dennis Prager today — he had invited the organizer of the shutuppery at Wyoming, Hunter MacFarland, who slandered him, to come on his show. Hunter refused. But another organizer, Austin Morgan, agreed.
Thanks for the link, Darleen. I was listening to Mr Morgan’s evasions and general narrowness of mind, and I briefly felt sorry for him, which I didn’t expect. Basic, everyday distinctions seem to escape him, repeatedly, and it seems that, for him, certain conclusions simply must be arrived at – generally centred on categories and victimhood and then enacting double standards – apparently regardless of how one gets there. There are vast areas of possibility, and areas of knowledge, that mustn’t be entertained.
I realise he’s young, but still. These are subjects that he’s supposedly given much thought, such that he feels indignation and physical protest – “shutting down” Prager’s talk – are justified and imperative. And such that he agrees to appear on national radio. Yet he struggles to find the damning evidence on which such indignation is supposed to stand, and instead resorts to construing disagreement with his assumptions – assumptions that are regurgitated wholesale, as if from lecture notes – as itself a form of hatred. And when asked about truth and whether it matters, he hesitates, then changes the subject.
And these are the tracks being laid down for the future as a supposedly righteous and woke intellectual, thanks to educators supposedly skilled in “critical thinking.” And I wondered if Mr Morgan will ever consider the possibility that his cripplingly expensive education, on which so much of his identity and sense of righteousness is based, ain’t worth shit.
And these are the tracks being laid down for the future as a supposedly righteous and woke intellectual, thanks to educators supposedly skilled in “critical thinking.”
But that is what the phrase “critical thinking” has come to mean. An opposition to, criticism of, ideas espoused by the likes of Prager. This sort of thing is what has been taught as critical thinking at our universities for decades. For about ten years now I have been engaged in discussions with a college professor who teaches “critical thinking”, who has written books on “logical fallacie”, and this is the sort of stuff he teaches. Wyoming, Berkeley, A& M universities, it’s been spread quite wide. The meanings of these words have shifted.
Damn. 6:00 AM and I missed the preview button. Sorry for spilling the italics
Just climb in The Box Of Shame. I’ll tape it up. Thirty minutes should do it.
But that is what the phrase “critical thinking” has come to mean. An opposition to, criticism of, ideas espoused by the likes of Prager.
Bingo. You might assume, naïvely, that critical thinking would involve some testing of one’s own assumptions and preferences, and maybe a suspicion of anything too obviously self-flattering. But no. God, no. And so for Mr Morgan and his peers, the villains and victims are already predetermined, their roles already cast, which leaves any attempt at debate, at realistic debate, rather hamstrung. Instead, Mr Morgan coughs up lots of question-begging about “constructs” and “structures,” as if arch buzzwords, piled seemingly at random, were enough to constitute a sound argument – and by extension a basis for mob coercion.
Again, this is the standard that is being taught. And then dutifully regurgitated.
And when asked about truth and whether it matters, he hesitates, then changes the subject.
That.
I briefly felt sorry for him,
I wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
It was only briefly.
Oik OS may also be a computer operating system.
I think I may have encountered it. 🙂
Antifa’s 4th of November National Insurrection may have fizzled, but they did get their “Mount Suribachi” moment…
sl.postimg.org
Posted by: Spiny Norman | November 06, 2017 at 15:50
Ah, the battle of Emo Jima.
For about ten years now I have been engaged in discussions with a college professor who teaches “critical thinking”, who has written books on “logical fallacie”, and this is the sort of stuff he teaches. Wyoming, Berkeley, A& M universities, it’s been spread quite wide. The meanings of these words have shifted.
======
Rather, the words have been stolen and more “useful” meanings attached to them.
I no longer regard these persons a being wrong, they are simply liars and theives.
How does one post a picture here?
Just climb in The Box Of Shame. I’ll tape it up. Thirty minutes should do it.
Noted. Couldn’t physically reach it so I tossed a tenner in the old BoS. Hope that helps.
Just a thought…perhaps a giant “Preview” button would help drive the concept into certain thick skulls. Especially before they’ve had their morning coffee.