I don’t really have a tag for this.

Professor Fired After Accidentally Showing Class Amputee Porn.

Hey, it could happen to anyone. 

Theodore Dalrymple on demographic quotas: 

Quotas are intrinsically divisive and discriminatory (in the worst possible sense) because the number of categories into which humanity can be divided is infinite: only some categories, therefore, can be favoured, leaving others resentful and liable to seek political redress as their supposed salvation. Quotas therefore not only politicise life but embitter political life itself. They formalise favouritism, thus reinforcing the very problem they are meant to solve. They necessarily inflate the role of government, for someone has to enforce them. Before long, the demand for equality (of a kind) undermines freedom because private associations are no longer able to make the rules they wish, a necessary condition for a truly liberal society in which government is not overweening or preponderant. The imposition of quotas is founded on the belief that everyone is a bigot unless forced by administrative fiat to be otherwise.

On a similar theme, Thomas Sowell on “fairness” and cultivated idiocy: 

The front page of a local newspaper in northern California featured the headline The Promise Denied, lamenting the under-representation of women in computer engineering. The continuation of this long article on an inside page had the headline Who is to Blame for This? In other words, the fact that reality does not match the preconceptions of the intelligentsia shows that there is something wrong with reality, for which somebody must be blamed. Apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong.

For some reason, this item from the archive sprang to mind. 

And Daniel Hannan on unflattering facts:  

One of my constituents once complained to the Beeb about a report on the repression of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, in which the government was labelled right-wing. The governing party, he pointed out, was a member of the Socialist International and, again, the give-away was in its name: Institutional Revolutionary Party. The BBC’s response was priceless. Yes, it accepted that the party was socialist, “but what our correspondent was trying to get across was that it is authoritarian.”

Hannan’s piece prompted this by Tim Stanley, which in turn prompted this by Jonah Goldberg. It’s a topic we’ve touched on here before. 

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. 

From the Oscars coverage of a certain newspaper: 

Via Maddy Potts. 

Play with a giant eyeball. You know you want to. // In search of a human penis. // “Smells and tastes like the real thing.” // Interactive aquarium. // $1000 marbles. Go on, treat yourself. // Attention hipsters: $7000 beard transplants. // Snowflakes. // Few other national newspapers have this problem. // Loop the loop on foot. // The museum of uncut funk. (h/t, Coudal) // 3D printed selfies? There’s an app for that. // Abandoned panopticon prison, Cuba. // Crime and jazz. // Just the one noodle, I think. // Bryan Cranston versus Gojira. // For Julia, the cat privilege checklist. // And via Kurt, Takeshi Terauchi’s “Japanese surf versions of classical themes.” From groovy surf Beethoven to groovy surf Brahms. Dig it, people. 

A troubled student writes:

As a proud male feminist,

Oh, go on. Guess where. 

As a proud male feminist, I believe it’s important for men to rally around the feminist movement to provide support and to act as an example for other men to follow. So it confuses me that at university a shockingly large number of male students I speak to refuse to apply the term to themselves, instead being evasive and avoiding such an empowering title.

Yes, dear readers, it’s both shocking and confusing that in the twenty-first century, in one of the most cosseting and politically corrected environments in all of the developed world, some male students feel no need to describe themselves as feminists. And calling oneself a feminist, announcing it proudly to the world – or at least to other, likeminded, equally proud students – is apparently the duty of all righteous beings, especially those with testicles. It’s empowering, you see. And never a sign of narcissism, credulity and pretentious moral grandstanding. 

The scandalised and bewildered author of this piece is Mr Lewis Merryweather, a first year student of comparative literature at the University of Warwick. “He is a proud feminist,” reads his Guardian profile, “and writes poetry.” And the sorrows of his life are there for all to see:

I often encounter negative reactions when declaring myself a male feminist at university.

Missionary work is hard. Bring handkerchiefs, quickly, a dozen at least. And possibly towels and a mop.

I find this attitude among male students worrying… Perhaps it stems from male panic, that, foolishly, male students worry they may lose power and opportunity in a world of feminism. Perhaps guy students are embarrassed to align themselves with a word that lexically alludes to female-centrism.

Yes, that must be it. Those lexical allusions are a real bugger.

Maybe they’re worried about feeling emasculated.

Says our fretful poet. A man agonised by the existence of peers who don’t think exactly as he does and won’t wear his badge. And to make matters worse, there’s the ever-present shadow of hegemonic oppression:

In the words of Colm Dempsy, a male feminist who spoke at the forum I attended: “I am a proud male feminist. I am willing to fight with you. If you let me.” This is a statement every man, inside university and outside, should be able to shout without fear of being silenced by society.

Silenced by society. In a national newspaper. 

For readers who missed last week’s fundraising post, this blog is now an Amazon affiliate. Which means that, should you do any shopping via this link in the UK, or this link in the US, or using the Amazon search widgets at the top left and right of this page, your host receives a small fee at no extra cost to you. If that’s not an incentive to shop, and shop deliriously, I don’t know what is. 

Among the items already bought this way are several books found on my own shelves, including Fabian Tassano’s excellent Mediocracy, a sort of devil’s dictionary of modern inversions and dishonesties; David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin’s One-Party Classroom, an eye-widening overview of dogma and question-begging masquerading as education; and Thomas Sowell’s no less marvellous Intellectuals and Society, which was discussed here and here. An extract:

If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values, etc., then you are just someone who believes in free markets, judicial restraint and traditional values. There is no personal exaltation resulting from those beliefs. But to be for “social justice” and “saving the environment” or to be “anti-war” is more than just a set of beliefs about empirical facts. This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, someone who is for peace in the world, a defender of the downtrodden…

In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not. These visions are not symmetrical. Because the vision of the anointed is a vision of themselves as well as a vision of the world, when they are defending that vision they are not simply defending a set of hypotheses about external events, they are in a sense defending their very souls – and the zeal and even ruthlessness with which they defend their vision are not surprising under these circumstances.

Should anyone feel compelled to make a direct contribution to the upkeep of this blog, and thereby boost my self-esteem, there’s a PayPal button top left. And by all means use the comments to suggest other items of possible interest. And thanks to Pierce. 

Jeff Goldstein and Mark Bucher on California’s unsustainable public sector: 

Instead of relying on the assertions of union officials about how underpaid government employees might be, citizens can see what these employees are actually making. In thousands of cases, the information is shocking. Consider Redwood City, where three fire captains and one firefighter made between $434,274 and $452,733 in total compensation in 2012. One police officer made $463,690 in total compensation. In all, nine employees made over $400,000 in total compensation with a total of 33, mostly police and fire department employees, making over $300,000 in total compensation in 2012. Those are staggering sums anywhere, but in a city with a population of just 79,009, they’re a recipe for fiscal disaster.

And Peter Wood on Sandra Korn and the inversion of meaning: 

On Monday, February 17, Ms Korn, a Harvard senior, published an essay in the Harvard Crimson, titled The Doctrine of Academic Freedom, with the explosive sub-head, “Let’s give up on academic freedom in favour of justice.” Korn’s argument is simply summarised: The freedom of faculty members to pursue research and to teach has some value, but these activities always and everywhere reflect political considerations. A university community rightly has its own political values and when a faculty member violates them, he should be silenced. “Academic justice” is more important than academic freedom.[…]

Academic freedom, as the idea developed historically, recognised the need to insulate scholars from the politically-minded outsiders who saw scholarship as threatening. Today, members of the professoriate are often politically-minded and the doctrine of “academic freedom” is often inverted in an attempt to insulate them from genuine scholarly standards… To put it concisely: academic freedom once meant protection from politics; now it means protection for politics.

The kind of politics being protected scarcely needs pointing out. Ms Korn, the student who objects to academic freedom (for others, that is), lists her interests as “socialism, being angry about gender” and “occupying things.” She also tells us that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Though again, that’s her dissent, not yours. And so she asks the question, “Why should we put up with research that counters our goals?” You see, finding things out must be entirely subordinate to certain, rather fashionable political assumptions. Which is to say, her assumptions. It’s exactly the quality one hopes for in a modern intellectual.

Update:

Eye of the Tiger, the dot matrix printer remix. // Eye of the pigeon. // How to entertain goats. (h/t, Kate) // The glamour of figure skating. // The frequency of things, from flushing politicians to shoe sales in Phoenix. // The utterly stylish Fujitsu finger glove. // And then it just fell off. // Miliband: man of destiny. (h/t, TDK) // Made with sand. // Birds Eye Mashtags. // Amps. // Socks. // Saturn V cutaway. // “The hippo’s testes are totally invisible from the outside.” And removing them is tricky. // Vertical cinema is a thing, apparently. // 500,000 sugar cubes. // A boy and his dog. // And the wafty, tendentious bollocks of leftwing cultural ‘theorists’. You see, Close Encounters is in fact “a fascist film, capitalist propaganda.”

Some pressing issues of the day, expressed via the medium of Guardian reader polls. 

Is Barbie’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover empowering or demeaning? 

“Is the doll still an icon worth looking up to, or another bad example of unrealistic body image?” 30% said it’s demeaning and that something must be done. Reader comment of note: “I think Barbie should be updated for the 21st century to reflect modern reality. So what about Homeless Barbie, Single Mother Barbie, Brain Surgeon Barbie, Autistic Barbie, Astronaut Barbie, Binge Drinker Barbie, Minimum Wage Barbie, etc.?”

Should Facebook remove all gender options or create more?

“Facebook recently added over 50 custom gender options for users in addition to ‘male’ and ‘female’. While the site’s move has largely been hailed as progressive, users are divided on the next step.” There’s a next step? This one was a close-run thing, with a narrow majority (54%) in favour of abolishing gender options altogether. Reader comment of note: “Fifty seems enough to cover all possible bases.”

Should restaurants ban people from taking photos of their food?

How should society deal with the menace of the me-and-my-food selfie? Only 30% said yes to a ban. Reader comments of note: “It’s time to ban mobile phones AND restaurants.” And, “The people who take photo’s [sic] of their food are lacking in confidence [and] are really trying to show others that they are able to eat out at the current ‘in’ place[,] a sort of pathetic status symbol. I would fully support the restaurants in refusing people who are eating there to take photo’s [sic] of their food.”

Should Disney create a plus-size princess? 

“What do you think?” Surprisingly, a majority (82%) didn’t see much need for a hefty ballgowned heroine. Reader comment of note (and I like this one): “Should Metallica do more Celine Dion covers?”

Patrons are reminded that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If this place has entertained you during the last few months – say, with things like these – then by all means feel free to monetise your love. Think of it as a magazine subscription. Or an act of nobility in a cruel, cruel world. 

I’ll just leave this here, should you feel the urge. 

Update: 

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that Amazon search widgets have appeared at the top left and right of this page, for the US and UK respectively. Any items bought via the widgets will result in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Now you can indulge your consumerist lust with the loftiest possible motive.