Our new guardians of morality flex their mental muscles: 

University of Iowa (UI) students, faculty, and administrators are speaking out in support of the censorship of a statue created and displayed on campus by visiting professor Serhat Tanyolacar that they say constitutes “hate speech.” Tanyolacar’s piece comprised a seven foot tall sculpture of a Ku Klux Klan member whose robes are crafted from newspaper articles about racial violence. Many members of the UI community, however, ignored the intended anti-racist message of the piece and instead demanded that the university take action against what they perceive as a racist display — and the university is complying. 

The statue, which survived unmolested for a mere four hours, can be seen here. Yes, it’s crummy, but not, I think, a basis for fainting with rage. 

Tanyolacar erected the statue last week on an area of campus called the Pentacrest with hopes to “facilitate a dialogue with a community on a college campus,” responding to the controversy over the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. But students judged the piece to be racist and offensive, and within hours, university police instructed Tanyolacar to take his piece down.

The article, by Susan Kruth, notes the similarity with a bizarre and sorry episode from 2008, in which a janitor and part-time student named Keith John Sampson was found guilty of “extremely poor judgment” and “racial harassment” – and threatened with “serious disciplinary action” – for quietly reading a history book in his own time. The book in question, which is available in the university’s own library, is an account of a notable defeat of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924. If Mr Sampson’s treatment by the university’s Affirmative Action Office doesn’t sound sufficiently Kafkaesque – a reminder that the absurd and the sinister aren’t mutually exclusive – take a few minutes to watch the video. If it makes you a little angry, maybe that’s no bad thing. And remember, these are the mental horizons of our self-imagined betters. A model for us all. 

Update: 

More on the farce at the University of Iowa from Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason: 

David Ryfe, director of UI’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has different ideas, however. “If it was up to me, and me alone,” he told The Daily Iowan, “I would follow the lead of every European nation and ban this type of speech.”

By “speech” Mr Ryfe presumably means Professor Tanyolacar’s unimpressive artwork – and by implication any number of other things that he may find uncongenial. And note, this is the view of the director of the university’s journalism school. 

Update 2:

The psychodrama rumbles on unimpeded by reality or a sense of proportion. Apparently, students and faculty aren’t feeling “respected and safe.” Some are “traumatised.” Because of all the art. The campus is now abuzz with pretentious apologies, meetings, demands for more committees, more meetings, a “detailed plan of action” and enhanced sensitivity training. Counselling is of course being offered to “anyone negatively affected by the incident.”

Dining drama from Saskatoon:  

Two male customers ordered their sandwiches with diced onions, but when the sandwiches were presented the onions were not diced. The argument escalated until one of the men reached into the pocket of his friend’s jacket “pulled out a snake and threw it behind the counter.”

Via Althouse. 

Theodore Dalrymple on the ruminations of superstar philosopher Slavoj Žižek: 

So what is true freedom, unlike the false variety that I enjoy, or rather mistakenly thought that I enjoyed? Professor Žižek tells us, in a rather roundabout way, that our freedom is circumscribed by our circumstances. I can’t say that this came as a great surprise to me, since I cannot imagine what it would be like to have no circumstances at all, or to exist free of any situation whatever.

George Leef on the myths of “diversity”: 

When Americans hear that research has shown that diverse groups are superior at solving problems, they probably assume that detailed studies were carried out to confirm that. They will be surprised to read [mathematics professor, Abigail] Thompson’s rebuttal that [Scott] Page’s work, including a co-authored paper with economics professor Lu Hong, “does not contain information that can be applied to any real-world situation involving actual people.”

Brendan O’Neill on campus-style “justice,” in which mere proof is transcended: 

A male student told me my insistence that individuals suspected of a crime must be fairly tried and found convincingly guilty before we ruin their lives — and being expelled from a prestigious university for rape would undoubtedly be life-ruining — was evidence that I had fallen for the “liberal paradigm” of justice, which tends to benefit white, well-off men. Apparently there is another “paradigm,” a better one, in which women who accuse men of rape are instantly believed and the men in question swiftly and severely punished.

And Victor Davis Hanson on post-Ferguson policing: 

[Officer Darren] Wilson’s second apparent error was in winning the fight over Brown for his gun. Had he allowed Brown to beat him, then Wilson might well have had a chance of surviving the wounds, and thus he might now still be a policeman with a career, rather than ostracised, in danger, and unemployed. Neither the community nor the media would have found newsworthy the shooting or beating of a white policeman by an African-American youth — in the manner that the murder of two California sheriffs by a twice-deported illegal alien was one-day news… Will some law enforcement officials now surmise that it is wiser to ignore some crimes in the inner city on the practicable logic that the denouement for the officer will likely be negative — either by stopping the assailant through force or not stopping the assault and thus being assaulted? If the suspect is unarmed but attacks, the post-Ferguson choice will either be to suffer physical harm or to respond in ways that may equate with the end of a career.

As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

Proof, if more were needed, that not everyone is suited to a life behind the wheel.

Via Kate. 

Cool jazz hedgehog. Sound essential. // Zombie food. // Cat fort. // Grassy knoll found indoors. // Flip books of note. // Frost formation of note. // The ice-skating waiters of Switzerland. // Leonardo’s to-do list, 1490. // A tree of languages. // Type-related matters in the film Alien. // Making Aliens. // Kubrick’s 2001 revisited. // The chemistry advent calendar. // Candles of note. // Do not stare directly, in full HD, at the Sun. // Snow drawings. // Christmas ghost. // Jeff Wayne remembers the future. // Physicists develop giant pasta. // An effects pedal tumblr. (h/t, Things) // Smart earplugs. // Components of a city, made of paper. (h/t, Coudal) // “This is my product.” // Sculpted caves. // Two ladies cook shrimp, quite quickly, with a cannon. (h/t, Simen) // “The information content of a 90-second conversation would take a day or more to transmit mentally.” // And finally, the boldly illogical fighting style of one James Tiberius Kirk. 

Kevin Williamson on the ‘progressive’ racial narrative and its dishonesties: 

When former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani takes seriously the operative slogan of the Ferguson protests — “Black Lives Matter!” — and asks the obvious question — “Don’t they matter in the 93 percent of cases when the lives of black murder victims are taken violently by black criminals?” — the Left’s reflexive response is to denounce him as a racist. The Washington Post’s hilariously Orwellian fact-check column labelled Giuliani a liar even as it confirmed that his observation is, as a matter of fact, entirely true. […]

The reality is this: Black men, especially young black men, die violent deaths at appalling rates in these United States. But they do not die very often at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, thugs reminiscent of characters from American History X, police officers of any race or motivation, lynch mobs, the Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Walmart, the Tea Party, Goldman Sachs, carbon dioxide, or any other bogeyman currently in vogue among so-called progressives. As Giuliani noted, blacks die violent deaths almost exclusively at the hands of black criminals. But attempting to accommodate that reality in any serious way does not pay any political dividends for the Left. It does not put any money in Jesse Jackson’s pockets or create any full-time jobs for graduates of grievance-studies programs.

See also the second item here. And of course this. 

Mr Williamson also wades into the deep waters of Russell Brand’s mind, where all things are possible:  

Mr Brand is fond of having himself depicted as Che Guevara, a figure for whom he shares the daft enthusiasm of many members of his generation. He frets that Guevara was “a bit of a homophobe,” but insists that “we need only glance at Che to know that that is what a leader should look like,” i.e., a bit like Russell Brand. Guevara was a mass murderer who shot people for amusement. The cause in which he fought was the cause of gulags and murder. There are today, at this moment, thousands of political prisoners being tortured in prisons that Guevara helped to establish, and millions foundering in the totalitarian police state he helped to found off the coast of Florida. But… sure, great hair.

And Charles Cooke on when students are left stunned and distraught by the workings of democracy: 

Some participants were so upset that the faculty had to bring in a counsellor to tell them that it was all going to be alright.

As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

Here’s an essential purchase for the coming festivities. 

We may live in a materialistic world, but Aussie educator Andrea Thompson has created a fun way to help the next generation understand the importance of social responsibility in a new family board game. Fair Go is a unique board game where the winner is determined by who has the best reputation for philanthropy and social justice. 

From what I can make out – and it’s not always easy to follow – it’s a kind of “social justice” Monopoly, in which rolling a double six doesn’t get you an extra turn and you don’t get any money when you pass ‘Go’. The game is advertised, proudly, with the following endorsement by an unspecified grandma: “Great holiday fun – nobody finishes before the others.” And yes, there’s a thrilling video of Fair Go being played, albeit in a somewhat unexcited manner, by two right-thinking persons who, I’m sure, are feeling good about themselves. 

Andrea observed how hard it was to find a family game which could be adapted for different ability levels and where winning depended on making good choices, so she decided to create her own. She hopes that players learn how to win in a fun way “without hurting their friends.” 

As Tim Blair says, “Because so many board games end in terrible violence.” 

Via 4d2b: A female student is catcalled. The University of East Anglia’s postgrad education officer immediately spots the problem. 

How to cut string. // Carnivorous plants and their prey. // Canadian prairie towns of yore. (h/t, Kate) // Calculating machines. // 10,000 antique cameras. // “The effect of cymatic frequencies on matter.” // Forget socks, these mutant flesh sculptures are ideal Christmas gifts. // Goldfish teabags. // Bee. // Plankton. // Giant squid. // The gentlemanly world of bespoke British tailoring. // A tiny axe for squeezing the dregs out of toothpaste tubes. // Strange lands to the north. // Chocolate Lego. // 112 years of alien invasions. // Neighbourliness. // Distract small children with some 3D hand drawing. // Batman versus Darth Vader. // Tornado versus rainbow. // The rave preservation project. Re-live the largeness. // The forgotten songs of Spotify. // There are foxes in our garden. And also in Russia. // Frost flowers. // Hong Kong of the 50s. // And finally, a map of odd and saucy British place names, from Sally’s Bottom to Tickle Cock Bridge. 

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