Newcomers are advised that the greatest hits have been updated. If you’d like some idea of what goes on here, it’s a good place to start. As is the reheated series. There are nuggets to be had, not least in the comments.

Also, a note of thanks to all who’ve been using the Amazon search widgets to do their shopping. Any purchase made via the widgets, or via this link (for Amazon US) and this link (Amazon UK), results in a small fee your host at no extra cost to you. Readers are of course welcome to make a donation via PayPal. Think of it as a magazine subscription, a way to keep your host banging on month after month. Or just monetised love. 

Taken aback by goings-on. // Magic for dogs. // Apparently it’s a grindcore band. // Michael Jackson minus the music. // The science of dancefloor seduction: “Women rated dancers higher when they showed larger and more variable movements of the head, neck and torso.” // Accelerated sponges. // The making of neon signs. // Bus stop of note. // Our endangered green belt. // Previously on Game of Thrones. // Jonah Goldberg on “social justice.” // Just clouds. // The eyes of 200 people. // Light paintings. // Butterfly wings. // Why this man has a camera on his foot. // The secret life of classroom furniture. // Hair “in accordance with the socialist lifestyle.” // And finally, further to this, it’s 2048 Numberwang. 

Photographed by Elke Vogelsang. Via sk60. 

Peter Risdon slaps Chris Dillow’s testicles. Metaphorically, I mean:   

It’s more appropriate to talk of Marxists being indoctrinated than it is most people, who take less doctrinal, more experience-based and pragmatic approaches to issues. Marxism belongs with traditional religions to a bracket of improbable, dogma-based belief systems that require faith to maintain, in the teeth of what could politely be called conflicting data. As with traditional religions, you get ‘Why I am still a Marxist’ and ‘Why I am no longer a Marxist’ essays and columns – Chris himself wrote one – which are very similar to ‘Why I am still/no longer a Christian’ type pieces.

You don’t get ‘Why I am still a slightly conservative pragmatist’ essays in the same way.

Oh, there’s more. 

Roger Kimball roams the thought-corrected quarter of academia: 

Dr Miller-Young is a typical specimen of homo academicus (or perhaps I should say, mulier academica), circa 2014. The non-stop racial grievance mongering. The anaphrodisiac obsession with gutter sex. The bad prose. The cutesy nods to pop culture. The reflexive left-wing politics. The angry, intellectually nugatory posturing… Dr Miller-Young is as dreary and predictable a representative of the low-wattage, affirmative-action branch of that enterprise as any cultural pathologist could wish for. Would you let her loose on your delicately brought-up daughter? While you ponder that question, let me repeat that there is nothing out of the ordinary about Dr Miller-Young. She is exactly what you can expect when you sign up for a course in the “humanities” these days. 

Worth reading in full. And note Dr Miller-Young’s progressive approach to debate: “I’m stronger so I was able to take [and destroy] the poster.” More on the story at Ed Driscoll’s place. And somewhat related is FIRE’s latest video, in which a Dartmouth College student recounts how a fellow student destroyed his organisation’s pro-life display with a car. A car with a “Coexist” bumper sticker on the back.

KC Johnson probes the latest fashion in campus psychodrama: 

That little, if any, evidence exists to sustain either of these beliefs has not deterred the “rape culture” believers; if anything, the lack of evidence for their claims appears to have emboldened them… “Rape culture” activists generally steer clear of law enforcement, since police might demand evidence to substantiate their claims. 

And Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, wants “social justice” shoehorned into primary school maths teaching. Because who could possibly want their children to learn arithmetic without some nakedly Marxoid indoctrination? 

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