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Academia Media Politics Science

The Thrill Of Word-Policing

January 8, 2024 134 Comments

Come, dear reader. Let us visit the publication now laughingly referred to as Scientific American. In particular, an “analysis” piece by Juan P Madrid, in which we’re told,

The language of astronomy is needlessly violent and inaccurate.

Dr Madrid, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, begins his attempt to persuade with a tale of poetic drama:

This summer, a team of students and I were enjoying breathtaking views of the night sky while we collected data using telescopes at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. One night, when we were outside on a telescope catwalk… one of my students amazed me with her interpretation of the fate of Andromeda, the galaxy closest to our Milky Way. In describing how these two galaxies will merge a few billion years from now, she said they will experience “a giant galactic hug.” 

I know. The very stuff of amazement. Brings a tear to the eye.

The kindness, but also the accuracy, of the language my student used was in sharp contrast to the standard description we use in astronomy to explain the final destiny of Andromeda and the Milky Way: “a collision.” 

Apparently, the word collision is, for Dr Madrid, much too brutal and masculine when referring to the unstoppable convergence of two galaxies, and the ultimate merging of the supermassive black holes at their centres – an event that will entail the sling-shotting of countless stars and their orbiting planets, and which may release energy equivalent to around 100 million supernova explosions, and subsequently be detectable halfway across the universe.

A mere hug, you see. All that kindness.

A galactic hug is scientifically truthful, and it’s led me to believe that astronomers should reconsider the language we use.

Here, Dr Madrid’s own use of language – specifically, the word reconsider – is somewhat misleading and just a little coy. The reconsidering he has in mind would of course be enforced by those suitably enlightened, much like the author himself – as hinted at with enthusiasm later in the piece:

Referees, editors, and editorial boards can step up to… stop the use of violent, misogynistic language that is now pervasive. 

So, not so much a reconsidering, then, as a coerced neuroticism. A mandatory affectation, on which career progress may very much depend. But hey, where’s the fun in being a pretentious and neurotic scold if you don’t have the power to make others jump through hoops?

And so, when not detecting neutron stars and gravitational waves, astronomers will be expected to submit their findings to someone of “a different gender or ethnicity” to sift out any language that may conceivably cause distress to those determined to seek it out. “This type of conscious engagement,” we’re assured, “can only be beneficial.” And not, say, a farcical waste of time that’s better spent elsewhere.

Terms deemed “needlessly vicious,” and which render Dr Madrid indignant and reaching for tissues, include cannibalism, harassment, starvation, strangulation, stripping and suffocation:

There is a rather long list of foul analogies that have entered, and are now entrenched, in the lexicon of professional astronomy. We have grown accustomed to this violent language and as a community, we seldom question or reflect on its use. 

It’s all terribly oppressive – for the implausibly faint of heart, I mean. And should a colleague carelessly refer to a planet being stripped of its ozone layer by a catastrophic gamma-ray burst, this is obviously “misogynistic language” and a basis for the sternest of hands-on-hips chiding.

As astronomers, we must strive to create a more inclusive and diverse community that reflects the composition of our society. 

Given the unequal distribution of interest, aptitude, and cognitive wherewithal, one might wonder why. Alas, as so often, the mystery persists.

Valuable efforts to provide opportunities for women and minorities to succeed in astronomy have been created. However, by many metrics, the progress made towards gender equality and true diversity has been painfully slow.

The implication being that hearing an occasional use of the word cannibalism or stripping in reference to astronomical phenomena will somehow, in ways never quite specified, deflect an otherwise promising astronomer from their calling, despite an uncommon focus and years of study. Because female astronomers, and brown astronomers, and especially female brown astronomers, are so immensely delicate and likely to be traumatised by such descriptive terms.

At which point, readers may wish to ponder whether the best people to be doing astronomy, or teaching astronomy, or to be making workplace rules for astronomers, are the kinds of people who mouth dogmatic assertions without any trace of supporting logic, and who are distracted, even distressed, by hearing the word collision being used to describe a collision.

The strange trajectory of Scientific American has been mentioned here before.

Update:

Before anyone quibbles, the phrase “halfway across the universe” is merely a figure of speech. The actual estimate for how far away the gravitational waves could be detected by beings with technology comparable to our own is 3.25 million light years. So, for a hug, plenty of oomph.

Via Darleen, in the comments. Which you’re reading, of course.

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Written by: David
Academia Problematic Competence The Thrill of Medicine

The Very Best Of Hands

December 11, 2023 81 Comments

Are you Canadian and feeling unwell? Fear not, I bring thrilling news. From Canada’s Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons:

Medical training should centre around “values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice, rather than medical expertise,” according to the report, shared in late November by a member of the working group.

This report here.

The interim report recommends “de-centring medical expertise” and instead focusing medical school education on the values of “anti-racism,” “anti-oppression,” “social justice and equity,” “inclusive compassion,” and “decolonisation.” 

Apparently, it’s a “cultural shift which is necessary for the profession.” Because, we’re told, all medical workers – yes, all of them, across the entire country – “participate daily in the perpetuation of structural violence upon those most marginalised amongst us, particularly those who are racialised, and live at the intersections of marginalisation.”

How this “violence,” this all-pervasive downtroddenness, is perpetuated by the receptionist at the local medical centre is, alas, not explained. No examples are offered. Indeed, evidence and logical argument are entirely absent. Given the sweeping nature of the demands, the absence of any kind of realistic and meaningful argument, with actual points of fact that one might address, is a tad curious.

Instead, we get a list of seemingly arbitrary words, among which, “colonisation, slavery, and white supremacy.” Oh, and “settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia…” Needless to say, the list is quite extensive, though not particularly illuminating. Less an explanation as an incantation. Magical words. With which to conjure contrived, pretentious guilt. A kind of modish neuroticism.

We are, however, told that the priorities of physicians, nurses, and medical administrators should be less about “professionalised knowledge,” those drug dosages and such, and more about “lenses of social justice.” These allegedly corrective lenses will “allow physicians to more effectively engage in… social change.” Suitably re-educated, their mentalities rewired, medical workers will have “bidirectional relationships with… the land.”

Which is obviously what you want when that itchy rash won’t go away.

At which point, it’s perhaps worth noting that the Royal College oversees Canada’s medical school education programmes. The institution is tasked with “setting national standards for medical education.”

So, nothing to worry about, then.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding this,

The interim report recommends “de-centring medical expertise” and instead focusing medical school education on the values of “anti-racism,” “anti-oppression,” “social justice and equity,” “inclusive compassion,” and “decolonisation.” 

Svh adds,

None of those things have value.

Well, “anti-racism,” for instance, seems to consist largely of peddling black racial narcissism and anti-white sentiment, along with policies that actually sabotage the life-chances of minority students. Say, by actively championing a failure to learn rudimentary spelling and grammar:

The students are encouraged to be hyper-critical, indeed delusional, regarding the motives of all white people, even to the point of dismissing the correction of spelling and grammar as some egregious, racially motivated act of oppression. And yet the motives of their educators, the ones who tell them these things, and whose status and careers depend on cultivating tribalism and paranoid resentment, and a kind of pernicious flattery, are spared any similar questioning – or, so far as I can see, any questioning at all.

So much for “critical thinking.”

And so, students who leave university saddled with debt and a worthless Angry Studies pseudo-qualification, and who subsequently repel employers with their chippy attitude, inept spelling, and grammatical incompetence, will presumably rationalise any rejection, any hardship, as proof of the evils of “whiteness” and the “racist society” that their lecturers banged on about. Because the more obvious explanation – that they were dupes, taken for a ride by race-hustling parasites – would be much too bruising to their egos.

In light of which, any value seems overwhelmingly negative. Except, of course, for the race-grifting mediocrities who get paid to propagate such things.

The contradictions of “equity” and competence have been noted here before, at some length, with striking illustrations. And while proponents of “equity” are often oddly reluctant to define this rather loaded term, it seems to mean something like equality of outcome regardless of inputs. And as values go, that isn’t entirely endearing. Or a basis for a civilisation.

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Written by: David
Academia Anthropology Politics

Vacancy Announced

November 26, 2023 43 Comments

Attention, dear readers. I bring you a chance to participate in a cosmic drama, to facilitate utopia. A godless heaven here on Earth. Specifically, do you know of any “artists and visionaries,” or people “good at spreadsheets”? Because there may be a job going, come the revolution:

This comrade who is studying to become a teacher says that a revolution is ready to happen in America. She provides a lengthy to-do list for the revolution. On that list is daycare and historians, “who can help us understand what has happened and what's going to happen.” pic.twitter.com/2uRDlq75we

— Inside The Classroom (@EITC_Official) November 26, 2023

I’m guessing the revolutionary catering is already taken care of.

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Written by: David
Academia Policing Politics Problematic Competence

Elsewhere (320)

October 30, 2023 62 Comments

Emil Kirkegaard on schooling and intelligence, and their limited relationship:

These results should certainly not be interpreted as showing that one can easily boost learning by merely adding more schooling. In fact, there is no easy way to boost learning. Everything has been tried. There are more resources on the internet to learn from than ever before in human history, yet general knowledge hasn’t increased, and children and adults aren’t any better at arithmetic. Clearly, opportunity to learn isn’t an important variable in explaining differences between people. And dare I say, it never was?

From a cost-benefit perspective, more forced school for children means more teacher salaries to be paid. Since the effects of this on children’s actual learning seem to be somewhere between non-existent and minor, I suggest that this isn’t worth the price. 

And speaking of education:

Students At University of Augsburg Call For “Gloryholes” To Be Installed In Lecture Halls, Cite Benefit To Queer Community.

A group of students at the University of Augsburg in Germany have called for “gloryholes” to be installed in lecture halls in order to contribute to the “diversification” of the campus. Gloryholes are holes in walls or partitions created with the intention of allowing people to engage in anonymous sex acts in public. 

The specifications for said installation are quite detailed, including soundproofing, wall handles, and knee pads. For safety and comfort, one assumes.

Heather Mac Donald on progressive evasions and the consequent cultivation of anti-white sentiment:

We are tearing down the fundamental standards and values of western civilisation based on a lie. And that lie is that any racial disparity today is by definition and necessarily the product of racism and discrimination.

So any standard that has what’s known as a “disparate impact” on blacks, whether it is a teacher licensing exam, a medical doctor licensing exam, enforcing the law – if any of those standards have a disparate impact, resulting in either the underrepresentation of blacks in meritocratic institutions, or overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, the only public explanation that is allowable is that the standards resulting in that disparate impact are racist, and the next step is that they must come down.

I argue that that assumption of racism as the explanation for disparity is wrong, that the far more plausible explanations for any disparities in representation are the vast academic skills gaps, on the one hand, when it comes to meritocratic institutions, and vast gaps in rates of criminal offending, when it comes to the criminal justice system.

But as long as racism remains the only allowable explanation, we are going to continue tearing down ideas of excellence, of merit, and moving towards, at best, a state of mediocrity, and at worst, one of risk to people’s lives, stunted scientific and medical progress, a mediocre judicial system, and the inability to push young people to reach their highest achievements.

We see gifted and talented programmes being torn down across the country – not because they’ve been shown to be unsuccessful in cultivating our best young math talent, but simply because they don’t have 13 per cent black students in them. 

We’ve been here before, of course. More than once.

Helen Joyce on the perversity of wokeness:

For me, the revelation has been that when an institution enshrines a lie at its heart, that destroys its integrity and subverts its mission… Organisations that should have child safeguarding at their heart, such as the NSPCC and Girlguiding, now allow men who identify as women to oversee girls’ private spaces and intimate care. Gay rights campaigners press for children confused about their gender to be put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that turn them into sterile facsimiles of the opposite sex. Since these children are statistically more likely than others to grow up gay, this is a form of gay conversion therapy. 

And finally, a thread on what happens when, in the name fostering progress and sensitivity, the police start hiring the sexually dysmorphic.

Apparently, these be-wigged individuals are bringing tolerance and understanding by harassing people manically, and repeatedly lying, and stalking women and sending them headless birds, and strangling people, and attacking a woman with a hammer. Oh, and hoarding explosives, obviously.

If that isn’t sufficiently bizarre, I do have more.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

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Written by: David
Academia Feminist Fun Times Problematic Pasta

Terrifying Objects

October 17, 2023 71 Comments

And in lofty academic news:

A feminist historian and a DEI vice president at a public university in Big Rapids, Michigan, [have] expanded a museum focused on racism to one centred on “sexist objects.”

Because victimhood is currency and status, and therefore terribly competitive.

The Museum of Sexist Objects at Ferris State University “began when David Pilgrim, the Ferris Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion [and] founder of the Jim Crow Museum, started collecting sexist objects in the 1990s, which made sense due to the interconnected nature of sexism and racism,” museum lead faculty and Ferris State history professor Tracy Busch told The College Fix in an email last Tuesday. 

The particulars of that “interconnected nature” are, sadly, not disclosed. Instead, the word “intersectionality” is deployed as some self-explanatory justification, both for the expansion of the museum and, one assumes, the additional funding.

The Museum of Sexist Objects is, it seems, a triumph in every possible way, according to those paid to curate its wonders, and to generally look busy while nobody cares. With Ferris State history professor Tracy Busch adding that the museum “has accomplished its vision by increasing awareness of the damage that sexism causes to not only women and girls, but also to men and the LGBTQ+ community.” Though, again, specifics on these points are not articulated.

Other priorities, however, are made clear:

I want people to know that we are the only museum of our kind in the United States,” Busch said. “We are also looking to expand to a larger space, if we can find enough funding. 

Objects deemed sexist and reprehensible – sorry, “artefacts of intolerance” – include a child’s ironing playset, a set of false eyelashes, a joke sign about beer being better than women, a glamour calendar featuring pneumatic ladies in minimal lingerie, a “Hillary Sucks” poster, and, bizarrely, a signed publicity photograph of Dr Condoleezza Rice.

Other morally corrupting artefacts include a Condoleezza Rice promotional bobble-head doll – “Condi 2008” – which is somehow sexist and oppressive, unlike the near-identical promotional bobble-head dolls of male politicians.

Oh, and a 1997 novelty foodstuff by the name of Pasta Boobs.

Needless to say, the corresponding novelty pasta for ladies’ hen parties – shaped as you’d imagine – was not deemed worthy of inclusion.

Readers who feel an urge to tut about such things, and to generally disapprove, can do so, thanks to the museum’s website, which can be found here.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.