Jonah Goldberg on “cultural appropriation” and pretentious outrage: 

Nearly every meal you’ve ever eaten is the by-product of centuries of cultural appropriation, to one extent or another. This column is written in English, a language that contains hundreds of thousands of words appropriated from other tongues. Just under two-thirds of our language derives from Latin or French. About a quarter is Germanic in origin. And about a sixth comes from Greek, Arabic and other languages… We are living through the greatest period of poverty alleviation in all of human history right now because countries in Asia and Africa have appropriated many economic policies and practices — free markets, property rights, etc. — that began as quirky artefacts of English and Dutch culture.

Douglas Murray on race and casting: 

In an era that is witnessing the politicisation and polarisation of absolutely everything, the realm of fiction and art – one of the great barrier-breakers we have – is also becoming a battle-ground for racial exclusivity and racial exclusion… Perhaps those who are attempting to push such agendas will at some point wake up to the fact that they are heading towards an almighty logical crash. For the same logic that saw Sierra Boggess [hounded] off West Side Story [for not being Puerto Rican] can just as easily be used to insist that all future Prince Hals or Isoldes should be white. Casting can either be colour blind or colour-obsessed. It cannot be both.

Kristian Niemietz on the media’s tongue-bathing of Marxism: 

If your ideas require impossible standards of purity in implementation in order to work, then maybe your ideas are not as great as you think they are. A good idea will still work out okay even in a distorted and poorly implemented version. That, arguably, is a big part of what makes a good idea good… Political and economic theories are never implemented in pure form, and their adherents are rarely impressed by politicians who claim to be inspired by them. That’s just par for the course. Marxists, however, are pretty much the only thinkers who accept no responsibility whatsoever for real-world approximations of their ideas. 

And the late Leszek Kolakowski on Marx’s knack for being wrong: 

What in the twentieth century perhaps comes closest to the working class revolution [predicted by Marx] were the events in Poland of 1980-81: the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope. 

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

Myron Magnet on ‘progressive’ policy versus the skills of city living: 

Civility — the art of living in a city — is not innate. We have to learn to stand in line and take our turn, not to blast music from our apartment or car, not to block the sidewalk or market aisle, not to yell on our cell phones, not to litter, not to monopolise public spaces with our “expressive” behaviour, not to bother or offend others unnecessarily. We no longer teach civility in schools: instead of the “citizenship” that my generation learned, we impart “social justice,” which teaches grievance and resentment of others; and city officials, with an Obama edict’s backing, have hamstrung school discipline, fostering misbehaviour. In college, we don’t teach free and civil discussion, tolerance of intellectual differences, or respect for learning, but only a kid’s right to resent microaggressions and silence politically incorrect speech as “violence.” The result will not be urbanity.

And further to this item here, Professor Charles H F Davis returns to the public eye: 

A University of Southern California professor says he stands behind his tweets that… call for whiteness to be “destroyed,” and the promotion of violence against the “white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.”

“White supremacist heterosexist patriarchy needs to get the violence it imparts,” says the professor, who invokes “black rage” as a self-validating phenomenon, a kind of moral mic-drop, as if anger were synonymous with righteousness. “Whiteness and white supremacy,” he adds, “must be, by any and all means, destroyed.” This bold, if adolescent, proclamation is followed, belatedly, by a denial of cultivating racial acrimony, and an assurance that “whiteness,” which the professor despises and wishes to see “eradicated,” is “neither synonymous with nor exclusive to white people.” Which I’m sure is a great comfort to any melanin-deficient students in the professor’s proximity, and whose concerns regarding such language are dismissed as “white fragility.” Readers may wish to ponder how such assurances can be squared with the professor’s chosen Twitter banner, or his endorsement via Twitter of sentiments such as these.

Added: Somewhat relevant.

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

The deal we seem to have come to in Europe is that, on the minus side, we’ve got a bit more gang rape and beheading than we used to have, but on the plus side, there’s a much wider range of cuisine. So it’s all swings and roundabouts.

Mark Steyn talks with Douglas Murray about demographic transformation. 

Somewhat related, the Simon Schama Tendency. 

You wouldn’t want to miss the annual International Buffalo Bodypainting Festival in Jiangcheng County, China. 

Oh, don’t tut. You’ve been culturally enriched.  

Victor Luckerson, Time magazine:

Text messaging is on the decline, according to a new study by mobile industry analyst Chetan Sharma… During the third quarter of 2012, the average American sent 678 texts per month. That’s a big number, but it’s actually the first time America’s texting habit has declined, down from a peak of 696 texts per month over the summer. Experts say the decrease is likely a sign of a permanent shift away from SMS messaging carried over the same network we use to make phone calls. “With social networking and other platforms, they really take the messaging feature away from that usual channel,” says Wayne Lam, a wireless communication analyst at IHS Technology. “Consumers are messaging, but text messaging as a whole is competing with other forms of messaging.” 

And remember, phone years are like dog years. If you haven’t upgraded yours in the last 18 months, there’s a good chance you’ll be looked on as some kind of contrarian throwback to the Dark Ages. A couple of months ago I ventured into a popular high street phone shop to get a new SIM. A greasy young man in bad trousers looked at my old BlackBerry as if it had been unearthed in the ruins of Xunantunich. “Wow,” said he with just a hint of amused contempt. “Old school. I haven’t seen one of these in years.” Greasy Teen then struggled in vain to open the casing, as if eager to behold its clockwork innards. The device was indeed four years old, before human history began, so obviously the locking mechanism was inscrutable to him, involving as it did the pushing of one button. Then came the inevitable, shame-inducing question. “Have you thought about upgrading?” 

And since you ask, yes, I did.