And yet the first thing I noticed was the lack of shoes. (h/t Obo) // Remember, feminists are the ones we’re supposed to take seriously. // Her favourite thing. // The final resting places of seven famous dogs. // Forgotten guest-stars of Murder, She Wrote. // His model tornado is better than yours. // A bit gusty. // A good hard poke should do it. // The underbellies of horses. // 1980s New York. // Non-stop Chuck Norris. // Assorted Sixties nuclear tests. // Jordan Peterson on “privilege” and its precedents. // This seems to work and it’s cheaper than divorce. // This is exactly how I would have done it. // This should be a thing. (h/t, Damian) // And this should not. // Lakeside property. // Rock music. // Flashback. // And finally, live radio transmissions from the airports of the world.

Amber Athey notes another data point in the decline of academia: 

A University of Arizona classroom dialogue guide encourages professors to use the “Oops/ouch method,” where students who are offended in class say “ouch” and the offender responds with “oops.”

Apparently, the way to “maximise free speech in the classroom” is to “create a safe space” in which pantomime ensues, and by advising faculty that “microaggressions,” even those on unrelated matters in personal conversations, should be “interrupted” – and interrupted “immediately” – as being “harmful to the classroom environment.” When not eavesdropping on private conversations and offering unsolicited correction, faculty are advised by the guide to be on the look-out for a range of classroom “challenges” and “cultural misunderstandings,” including:    

A heterosexual student claiming that LGBTQIA+ individuals do not have the right to exist.

Because, obviously, that must happen all but daily on a politically correct campus. And,

A white student threatening an African American student over views on affirmative action.

Other forbidden behaviours include acknowledging in class that illegal immigrants have in fact broken the law, or using gendered metaphors in descriptions of atoms, or “questioning the credibility and validity” of (certain) students’ accounts of an event, even if one has contradictory information. “Feelings,” at least those of some students, must not be “nullified.”

Curiously, all of the examples given, and they are numerous, assume that only members of Designated Victim Groups will ever be on the receiving end of “problematic behaviour.” There is no guideline for how to deal with, say, opportunist and vindictive accusations of racism or “privilege,” or attempts to denigrate straight, white male students as inherently ignorant and oppressive, which are hardly inconceivable in an environment where “microaggressions” are regarded as a pressing issue, and where students with brown skin are deemed, automatically and by default, victims of “institutional discrimination” and therefore in need of collective “validation.”

The College Fix reports on a daring breakthrough in educational standards: 

The New York State Board of Regents will consider tomorrow whether to go with a task force’s recommendation to scrap a teacher literacy exam known as the Academic Literacy Skills Test. “Part of the reason,” NBC New York reports, is because “an outsized percentage of black and Hispanic candidates were failing it.” It is expected the Board will abandon the assessment.

Because expecting educators to be even nominally competent is so Twentieth Century.

Victor Davis Hanson on politics and incompetence: 

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg used to offer all sorts of cosmic advice on the evils of smoking and the dangers of fatty foods and sugary soft drinks. Bloomberg also frequently pontificated on abortion and global warming, earning him a progressive audience that transcended the boroughs of New York. But in the near-record December 2010 blizzard, Bloomberg proved utterly incompetent in the elemental tasks for which he was elected: ensuring that New Yorkers were not trapped in their homes by snowdrifts in their streets that went unploughed for days. The Bloomberg syndrome is a characteristic of contemporary government officials. When they are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions — crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation — they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control.

John Ellis on why the National Endowment for the Arts is a bad thing: 

From the organisation’s website, “The NEA is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.” That mission statement prompts a few questions… How does creating a false market for art promote and strengthen creative capacity? The NEA model artificially props up mostly unwanted markets by using tax dollars that get funnelled through inefficient and wasteful bureaucracies… Artificially propping up an unwanted market does not benefit the arts. It does benefit the people who work in the NEA office and the many local organisations that help funnel taxpayers’ money to arts organisations, though. What it does to the arts is create a marketplace that supports bad art.

See also this. 

And Anthony Gockowski spies a terribly radical approach to being terribly radical: 

Let’s say I assess your ‘unconscious bias’ and give you a diagnosis. Well, there’s no evidence that it predicts your behaviour. So what good is it? Well, it’s good if you want people to send you to ‘retraining’ exercises so that you can have your perceptions adjusted in the direction that your organisation thinks is proper. And that’s happening. It’s becoming mandatory… But there’s no evidence whatsoever that ‘unconscious bias’ retraining programmes have the effect they’re supposed to have, and there’s some evidence that they actually have the reverse effect. And maybe that’s because people don’t really like being marched off to re-education by their employers after they’ve been ‘diagnosed’ as racist, even if there’s no evidence that they in fact are. It’s an absolute misuse of psychology. It’s an assault on freedom.

Dr Jordan Peterson, filmed at Ryerson University, chats about the ideological corruption of social psychology. 

Note that Dr Peterson’s talks are being denounced in advance - as “dangerous,” “hateful” and “white male arrogance” – by left-leaning umbrage-takers, most of whom claim, piously and repeatedly, to value “diversity” and “alternative views,” while trying to get Peterson’s talks cancelled or forcibly disrupted.

Chap rotates his own feet 157 degrees. // More tongue than is decent. // “Mr Estala appeared to be intoxicated.” // Libation station. // Oil-absorbent material of note. // Organ relocation during pregnancy. // Globe-making of yore. // Smart glasses with liquid lenses. // Starfleet spacecraft comparison. His looks bigger than yours. // At last, an assault trombone. // Robot pianist. I said pianist. // 3D-printed housing. (h/t, Dr W) // Corked honey. // Headline of note. // “Antarctica’s best cuisine, with fine wines and seven-course lunches on Sundays.” // Frankly, I’ve been to worse gigs. // Phones from antiquity. // If you get pulled over, this will be the new sobriety test. // Doctor Strange reversed. In which time takes one for the team. // And finally, reassuringly, a bedtime tale.