A brief history of title design.

By Ian Albinson. Film listing here. And these may be of interest.

John Rosenberg wonders whether female students really need “stereotype inoculation.”

New research summarised in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Online, People Learn Best from Virtual ‘Helpers’ That Resemble Them,” argues that women and minorities prefer instructors of their own race and gender even if those instructors are not real people but artificial, computer-generated “‘helpers’ or virtual agents that pop up on a screen and guide people through a program.” Most people might think it odd that one of the clearest effects of our mania for “diversity” is that people are increasingly race- and gender-conscious and thus estranged from people who don’t look like themselves, but it’s not odd at all. It’s entirely predictable.

As I noted here, there are some who seem to believe that the way to get past small differences in physiology is to continually fixate on small differences in physiology.

Speaking of which, John Leo spies a willingness to cater to other, less highbrow educational needs.

A course on sex taught by psychology Professor John Michael Bailey recently featured a naked woman being worked on by a man wielding a sex toy… The 600-student course, which for some reason is one of the largest at Northwestern, features all kinds of sexual expression and guests that include swingers and convicted sex offenders. The optional, after-class sex-toy demonstration, Bailey said, “helps us understand sexual diversity” – possibly the first time a state-of-the-art vibrator demonstration was stuffed in under the campus diversity umbrella.

Tom Paine quotes Oscar Wilde on socialism and selfishness.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes them to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type… It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions.

Which reminded me of this from the Devil’s Kitchen: 

A racist is a stupid, ignorant bigot but at least he cannot, and will not, try to force me to believe what he believes and force me to pay for the implementations of his beliefs. Socialists do. So, socialism is worse than racism.

Update:

James Panero on the wrong kind of transgressive art.

For the administrators and students at Pratt, the problem isn’t political art itself, says DeQuattro, but the nature of his politics, which are conservative.

Update 2:

Russell Nieli on Jonathan Haidt and academic fiefdom.

We are a tribal moral community… We have sacred values other than truth; we have taboos that constrain our thinking; we have almost no moral/political diversity; and we have created a hostile climate for graduate students who don’t share those sacred values. 

Feel free to add your own.

Portraits made of screws. 

For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

I’m Other, Subsidise Me.

Omar Kholeif is professionally ethnic and terribly oppressed. Though by what he doesn’t say.

Mr Kholeif doesn’t mention any first-hand experience of vocational or artistic exclusion based on ethnicity, or any similar experience had by anyone known to him, which seems an odd omission as it might have made his argument a little more convincing. In fact, the only discernible obstacles he mentions are the limited market value of his chosen skills and the preferences of his own parents.

It Pays To Be Unobvious.

When clarity is “conservative” and evidence is unhip.

Occasionally, Judith Butler’s politics are aired relatively free of question-begging jargon, thus revealing her radicalism to the lower, uninitiated castes. As, for instance, at a 2006 UC Berkeley “Teach-In Against America’s Wars,” during which the professor claimed that it’s “extremely important” to “understand” Hamas and Hizballah as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left” and so, by implication, deserving of support. Readers may find it odd that students are being encouraged to express solidarity with totalitarian terrorist movements that set booby traps in schools and boast of using children as human shields, and whose stated goals include the Islamic “conquest” of the free world, the “obliteration” of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people. However, such statements achieve a facsimile of sense if one understands that the object is to be both politically radical and morally unobvious.

At Last, Socialist Football.

Some kids play better than others. This simply will not do.

Note that “an opportunity to play” doesn’t seem to entail playing as well as you can. And I’m not quite clear how penalising competence squares with the professed ideals of sportsmanship. However, there is some encouraging news. The handbook helpfully urges talented teams to avoid the risk of forfeiture by “reducing the number of players on the field” and “kicking with the weaker foot.”

Take a big stick to the greatest hits.

Time for another classic sentence, care of Dea Birkett, who tells us, quite emphatically:

This is cultural apartheid.

And,

In another place, when one section of society was condemned to a different, less attractive, unseen entrance it was called apartheid.

What, you ask, has caused Ms Birkett’s lava stream of umbrage?

We used to be able to enter by the same door as every other visitor. But when work on the Tate’s £215m extension began last year, overnight all the disabled parking bays were removed. Instead, disabled visitors and their families can park at the rear and use the staff entrance.

Ah. A temporary inconvenience due to building work at Tate Modern. Which, I think you’ll agree, is just like the townships of 1970s South Africa. A quick call to the gallery reveals what Ms Birkett takes care not to disclose. On completion of the work, Tate Modern will be able to offer its disabled patrons enhanced parking facilities – double those available prior to building work – and swifter, more convenient access to the galleries. During the upgrade, provision is hardly threadbare. However, as regular readers will know, victimhood is a competitive business in the pages of the Guardian and wild overstatement is an art form in itself.

Update, via the comments:

Readers may wonder whether Ms Birkett is being sincere, albeit delusional, or just indulging in theatre and hoping no-one notices. She has, however, managed to avoid addressing any factual corrections from her readers and has instead turned on them, saying: “As so often is the case, it’s shocking to see such hatred against people with disabilities.” Despite being asked, repeatedly, to point to examples of this alleged “hatred” – none of which I could find – Ms Birkett has chosen not to oblige. Such is her righteousness.

I can’t help thinking the article tells us more about the author than any hardship she experiences while perusing art, let alone “cultural apartheid.” For instance, Ms Birkett tells us, “Building work is not an excuse to remove access – and that is what happened.” But as the gallery points out and as many of her readers have noted, that’s simply not true. Wheelchair access is temporarily less convenient, and when the building work is done it will be much more convenient than it previously has been. Shocking as it may sound, the Tate isn’t trying to discourage or belittle its disabled customers, whose needs are catered to rather admirably.

Casually contradicting herself, Ms Birkett adds, “Access isn’t only about getting in a building, it’s about feeling welcome. If you’re sent to the back door, you don’t feel welcome.”

Yes, it’s Bethlehem all over again.