As a change of pace, a non-political palate cleanser, here’s a second selection of the games scattered throughout the Friday Ephemera posts, with a couple of new additions that may entertain: 

John Staddon on Ethnic Studies standards: 

The anonymous sociologist’s claim that empirical facts are irrelevant… raises an important question: if theories in the social sciences are not constrained by empirical facts, what are they constrained by? The answer seems to be that theories in Race and Ethnic Studies sociology are mainly constrained by the political opinions prevailing in that branch of the field… [‘Race theorist’] Eduardo Bonilla-Silva scorns the very idea [of truth], speaking of the “devil of ‘objectivity’” (note the scare quotes). Without the possibility of objectivity, there is no science. Has sociology become, then, just political activism? To some extent, yes. According to Tukufu Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva: “The aim is to attain epistemic liberation from White logic.” 

Professor Bonilla-Silva and his nasty, paranoid contortions have been mentioned here before. When not denouncing objectivity and “white logic” – or complaining that his employer, Duke University, “oozes whiteness,” which is, it goes without saying, a terrible thing to ooze – the professor equates critics of affirmative action with 19th century supporters of slavery. He also claims that non-racial ‘colour-blind’ attitudes and policies are merely a “way of calling minorities niggers, Spics or Chinks.”

One of the more bizarre indicators of Bonilla-Silva’s mental state is his written insistence – published in a course syllabus – that students must control their “body language” and avoid any “irresponsible contestation” of his arguments. Black students who disagreed with the professor’s lurid racialist theories have been denounced by him as “Uncle Toms.” Oh, and Professor Bonilla-Silva, a grown man, a tenured academic with a six-figure salary, refers to the United States, in class, as “Gringoland” and “AmeriKKKa.”

Further to this recent hoaxing drama, James Lindsay on laundering hokum: 

‘Critical race theory’ is a mess, for example. It’s an explicitly political situation, in which ‘whiteness’ has to be bad and therefore can’t do anything right, and they take these ideas and launder them through the academic process. And these departments exist specifically to launder these ideas, to put them through the academic process and give them the appearance of being rigorous studies, so then activists can go and say, “Oh, a study has shown…”

For more on so-called “critical race theory,” see also this. 

Question, answered. || The future is now. || You want one and you know it. || “I have a lot of moths.” || Miss Correct Posture Contest, 1956. || A present for the mistress. || Miniature replicas of lonely deaths. || Playing with gusto. || “This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline.” || Assorted control panels. (h/t, Things) || Just a little obsessive. || She’s an educator, you see. || She’s a journalism major. || Woke, woker, wokest. || Political correctness as status signal. || Scenes. (h/t, Damian) || Assorted loops. || Chasing Lights in the Himalayas. || Heh. || Nuking Hurricanes: the history of a really bad idea. || And finally, if you laugh at this you’re a terrible, terrible person.

Our beloved state broadcaster brings tidings of intersectional joy: 

Reading about quantum physics has really helped me understand my queer identity… It is in this model of space-time as a series of entanglements that I’m able to piece together all of the fragmented sects of my identity – being able to identify as British and Iraqi, as queer and Muslim, as someone of many genders and potentially no genders at all.

Readers may wish to imagine the faces of, say, Erwin Schrödinger or Max Planck on hearing their field being compared with the staggering intellectual heft and rigour of “queer theory.” By a chap with blue eyebrows, fake boobs and voluminous pink acrylic hair.

Via sk60.

Today’s tip: Don’t let demented people take control of traffic.

Oh, there’s more: 

The following is lifted from an article titled Why Are So Many Smart, Gorgeous Women Single? It’s Almost An Epidemic: 

7. We’re Becoming Our Own Husbands.

Thanks to feminism and our ability not only to work but to take on positions of leadership in our careers, women are now able to provide ourselves all the benefits husbands used to provide us. We don’t need a guy to spoil us or buy us a house – we’ve got that locked down already. We don’t even need a husband for kids; if we really want to become mothers, there are ways to achieve that without having to tie the knot with someone we’ll just end up divorcing a few years later.

As Damian Counsell quips in reply,

And you know the worst thing about men these days? Their seemingly endless sense of male entitlement.  

Oh, and from the same publication, this. 

It’s all in the nipples. || Hair recoil of note. || A horse walks into a bar. || A suitcase for your wine. || An alternative approach. || Magazines of yore. || Designer megaphones of note. || Think good thoughts. || Plot twist. || Somewhat fancy pastries, part two. || “Activist Adrian Harrop claimed that the posters were dangerous.” || “He’s raping us through technology.” || Warsaw Tetris. || When you can’t be trusted with a real one. || Snail racing. || It’s a sink, it’s a stove, it’s a fridge. || Cooking crab in the forest. || Dissonance detected. || How to detect extra dimensions. || Toilet dilemma of note. || Today’s word is contrabassoon. || And finally, behold ye a super-woke hairstylist-activist and male feminist ally.

Jillian Kay Melchior shares an eye-widening guide to the Clown Quarter’s academic standards, and the unhappy personalities it attracts: 

The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences… Beginning in August 2017, the trio wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms… Journals accepted seven hoax papers. Four have been published…

One hoax paper, submitted to Hypatia [a journal of feminist philosophy], proposed a teaching method centred on “experiential reparations.” It suggested that professors rate students’ levels of oppression based on race, gender, class and other identity categories. Students deemed “privileged” would be kept from commenting in class, interrupted when they did speak, and “invited” to “sit on the floor” or “to wear (light) chains around their shoulders, wrists or ankles for the duration of the course.”

Students who complained would be told that this “educational tool” helps them confront “privileged fragility.” Hypatia’s two unnamed peer reviewers did not object that the proposed teaching method was abusive. “I like this project very much,” one commented. One wondered how to make privileged students “feel genuinely uncomfortable in ways that are humbling and productive,” but not “so uncomfortable (shame) that they resist with renewed vigour.” 

In the world of intersectional grievance hustling, citing dog-humping incidents as evidence of “rape culture” constitutes “very good work” and “excellent scholarship.” We also learn that an aversion to transsexuality can be “challenged” with “receptive penetrative sex toy use.” Oh, and it turns out that you can impress a peer-reviewed feminist social work journal with chapters of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

And yes, there is a video by the hoaxers, explaining their motives and unexpected success, embedded below the fold. 

As your host has been laid low by the common cold, here’s an open thread, in which to share links and then bicker about them. If you fail in your task of entertaining each other, feel free to rummage through the reheated series. 

Oh, and via Dicentra, here’s a spoiler of note. 

For want of anything better to do, we turn to the pages of the Guardian, where columnist Zoe Williams is once again unhappy and resentful: 

The tweeting began before 6am, as healthy, responsible people announced to the world that they were going to the gym for their 6am workout, and might go for a run later… By 7am, someone had posted a picture of themselves doing a complicated yoga posture on a log, and I was as angry as a bull. The problem wasn’t the hashtagging; the problem is with fitness itself.

Ms Williams, it seems, spends every dawn monitoring Twitter hashtags of which she disapproves and raging at the thought of strangers exercising. And she does this while writing an ostensible fitness column for the Guardian, the details of which she struggles to retain:  

I have been writing a fitness column for a year and in this time I’ve digested very little about what exercise does for your body.

Or as the headline puts it,

I’m not sure what exercise does for your body.

This appears, incidentally, inches above a reminder of the importance of supporting the paper’s relentless professionalism. However, there are some things Ms Williams does know: