Jonathan Haidt and Lee Jussim on the fundamental defects of “diversity” ideology: 

As practised in most of the top American universities, affirmative action involves using different admissions standards for applicants of different races, which automatically creates differences in academic readiness and achievement… These differences are large, and they matter… As a result of these disparate admissions standards, many students spend four years in a social environment where race conveys useful information about the academic capacity of their peers. People notice useful social cues, and one of the strongest causes of stereotypes is exposure to real group differences. If a school commits to doubling the number of black students, it will have to reach deeper into its pool of black applicants, admitting those with weaker qualifications, particularly if most other schools are doing the same thing. This is likely to make racial gaps larger, which would strengthen the negative stereotypes that students of colour find when they arrive on campus.

Do read the whole thing. See also this by Heather Mac Donald.

Gad Saad chats with Janice Fiamengo about the dishonesties and conspiracy theories of campus feminists: 

[Among campus feminists,] men are expected to constantly apologise for their maleness… I’ve seen that at the talks I’ve given, where men will stand up and before they even speak they have to “check their privilege” and talk about how they’re white and they’re male, and how that means that therefore they can’t really understand the experience of victimisation, and they have to apologise for that, and erase themselves in some way, and acknowledge how terrible they are, and then they might be allowed to speak… as long as it’s in favour of feminism.

See, for instance, these pious confessions of default male wrongness. 

And Theodore Dalrymple ponders the strange, changing fortunes of the Pacific island of Nauru: 

The diet that the Nauruans favoured was not refined from the gastronomic point of view. They ate huge mounds of rice and drank vast quantities of Fanta. For those who preferred something stronger, there was Château d’Yquem in the island’s one supermarket. At the time, Nauru must have had the highest per-capita consumption of Château d’Yquem in the world.

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

Via Neatorama.

Further to this, Juan Carlos Hidalgo on the vanity and horror of Venezuelan socialism: 

A couple of years ago, the then minister of education admitted that the aim of the regime’s policies was “not to take the people out of poverty so they become middle class and then turn into escuálidos” (a derogatory term to denote opposition members). In other words, the government wanted grateful, dependent voters, not prosperous Venezuelans.

As noted many times, the left’s self-imagined radicals have little to gain from successful, independent people. Because success and independence – independence of them – makes you the enemy.  

And Thomas Sowell on socialist thinking as sleight-of-hand: 

Free college of course has an appeal to the young, especially those who have never studied economics. But college cannot possibly be free. It would not be free even if there was no such thing as money… Those young people who understand this, whether clearly or vaguely, are not likely to be deterred from wanting socialism. Because what they really want is for somebody else to pay for their decision to go to college.

British readers may recall the student rioting of 2010, during which students took thuggish umbrage at the thought of being expected to pay for their own choices, like adults, albeit with generous credit, and while depicting themselves as “slaves.” A bold choice of words for people so engorged with entitlement that they assume an unassailable right to other people’s earnings. Stripped of its threats and theatrical pretensions, the students’ message was: “I don’t think the degree course I’ve chosen is worth paying for and yet I refuse to do without, therefore someone else should be forced to pay for it instead.”

And by happy coincidence, these little clownlings are currently ‘occupying’ a lecture hall at Sheffield University and demanding a “free, non-hierarchical” university education. Because choosing to take a degree course that they don’t want to pay for, and don’t think is worth paying for, is apparently “a radical act,” and because, being so fabulous, so incredibly radical, they have a “right” to the money that other people had to earn by doing something of value. According to the occupiers and their supporters, learning useful skills and thereby becoming employable “is exactly what education shouldn’t be [about].” Which suggests they probably aren’t the engineers and biochemists of tomorrow.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

In the land of happy-clappy twenty-first century socialism: 

Venezuela’s opposition legislature has declared a “nutritional emergency,” proclaiming that the country simply does not have enough food to feed its population. The move comes after years of socialist rationing and shortages that forced millions to wait on lines lasting as long as six hours for a pint of milk, a bag of flour, or carton of cooking oil.

However, a plan has been devised by the nation’s intellectuals:

Last month, President Maduro insisted that those struggling to find basic foods should develop urban farming skills, claiming that all the eggs eaten in his household come from chickens he and First Lady Cilia Flores own.

Citizens living in urban apartment buildings are reminded that, 

Anyone can have their productive orchard and you can produce lemon, tomato, pepper, have your egg-laying hens.

So everything’s fine, basically. Just as it was in Moscow, circa 1990, where proletarian laughter echoed down the aisles of every supermarket. 

Tokyo at night.