Appetisers. // Best try this first with your parents’ car. (h/t, DRB) // Copy cat. (h/t, Jeff Jacques) // Dog butt science. // The Einstein papers. // On rendering buttocks. // Beard baubles. // Concrete Christmas decorations. // Gemstones. // Marble phone amplifier. // Yule logs. // Crosswind landings. // Gas drama at FurFest. (h/t, Poot) // Throw fire at things. // Walking on (frozen) water. // Branding of note. // Cybercrime visualised. // Perhaps not ideal for vegetarians. // Dog licks food. // As seen by satellite. // 707 episodes of Doctor Who played simultaneously. // Doesn’t everyone have a secret underwater ballroom? // Submarine sandwich. // The Hindenburg was big. // Spot the competitive neighbourhood. // And finally, tearfully, “But this isn’t the toy I wanted, Mommy.” 

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.