Eric S Raymond on crime, reporting and “black privilege”: 

No conspiracy theory is required to explain the silence here. Reporters and editors are nervous about being thought racist, or (worse) having “anti-racist” pressure groups demonstrating on their doorsteps. The easy route to avoiding this is a bit of suppressio veri – not lying, exactly, but not uttering facts that might be thought racially inflammatory. The pattern of suppression is neatly explained by the following premises: Any association of black people with criminality is inflammatory. Any suggestion that black criminals are motivated by racism to prey on white victims is super-inflammatory. And above all, we must not inflame. Better to be silent. I believe this silence is a dangerous mistake with long-term consequences that are bad for everyone, and perhaps worst of all for black people.

KC Johnson reflects on the Duke lacrosse scandal and those left unscathed by it: 

Higher education is perhaps the only product in which Americans spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars without having any clear sense of what they are purchasing. Few parents, alumni, legislators, or prospective students spend much (if any) time exploring the scholarship or syllabi offered by professors at the school of their choice; they devote even less effort to understanding hiring patterns or pedagogical changes that have driven the contemporary academy to an ideological extreme on issues of race, class, and gender. At most, there seems to be a general —incorrect— impression that while colleges have the occasional “tenured radical” who lacks real influence on campus, most professors fall well within the ideological mainstream… The lacrosse case provided a rare opportunity to glimpse inside the mindset of an elite university — and the look was a troubling one.

More glimpses here, here and here. 

And Theodore Dalrymple on policing speech: 

In [philosopher François De Smet’s] view, some opinions have been responsible for so much mass murder that it is quite permissible, perhaps even essential, to ban them. But as with all such proposals, the question is where the limits should lie. For example, it is a moot point whether racism or economic egalitarianism was responsible for more deaths in the last century… It occurred to me that, on the above author’s principles, there would be every reason to ban egalitarian discourse, which has the effect and often the intention of promoting hatred and resentment of the rich, who in the not distant past have been massacred horribly, especially when rich means above averagely endowed with worldly goods, however gotten. Monsieur Hollande, for example, President of the French Republic, should be taken into preventive detention (and heavily fined) for having said that he did not like the rich, a statement clearly intended to bring the latter into hatred and contempt. The same applies to Mr Miliband, the silencing of whom would at the very least add to the gaiety of the nation.

In fairness to Mr Hollande, he doesn’t seem to like the poor much either. 

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

This just in: 

A zoo in Japan has been forced to admit that it tried to mate two male hyenas for four years, after mistakenly thinking that one of them was female… After the two animals struggled to reproduce, the zoo conducted a gender test under anaesthesia.

I’m tempted to ask just how valiantly they struggled. No laughing at the back. 

Unnecessary explosions are totally unnecessary. // Undulating clouds. // No likes yet. The unloved of Instagram. // At last, your very own wearable drone. // People on a mountain, arranged artfully. // Cross the Alps by tightrope, in a hammock. // Volcanic shockwave. Watch the clouds. // Very loud indeed. // An archive of earthquake data and a map of quakes across the world. // AutoCompleteMe. // Mongolia’s golden eagle hunters. // Rock band stage configurations. // Big and curvy rides. // Big cats divided on the charms of Marmite. // “Human Be-In,” San Francisco, 1967. // Earthworm-eating leech of note. // Japan in colour, 1886. // “I think computers was far enough. We didn’t need to go beyond that.” // How Big Bird works. // And finally, I think these cats are broken. 

The eyes of Hitchcock. 

By Kogonada. Related: Rear Window reconstructed. 

Tim Blair marvels at the diffidence of leftist opinionator, Guardian contributor and soon-to-be Doctor of Creative Practice, Margo Kingston: 

This [need for research and subsequent expertise] shouldn’t be too difficult. The topic that Margo will deeply research for her taxpayer-funded PhD is… herself: “The [thesis] will be a professional memoir which seeks to explain my journey from mainstream political journalist to Sydney Morning Herald political blogger and editor with Webdiary, website owner when I went independent in 2005, and my new project after a seven-year break, No Fibs.”

She won’t just be Doctor Margo – she’ll be a doctor of Margo. This might be the most indulgent exercise in academic history. Let’s hope Margo’s expert in-depth Margo analysis covers the time she blew more than $40,000 in three months running a blog, her attempt to establish a Margolian legal system, her discovery that Jews controlled Australia, and her whole decade-plus of paranoid gibberish, right up to the moment she somehow gained taxpayer funding for a demented Twitter site. 

There are plenty of links in Tim’s piece and a sample of Ms Kingston’s pronouncements can be found here. Among them, a call for fellow socialists to rise up and “overthrow this illegitimate government,” her enthusiasm for “civil war,” her statement that the United States used nuclear weapons in Vietnam, and her belief that Australia is “at war with Norway.”

From Japan’s Teramoto Corporation, a thrilling breakthrough in dog behaviour management. 

“It shapes winsomely and is not intimidating.” There’s a pdf, a gallery and a video. Via sk60. 

Update: 

Daniel Greenfield learns of more racism that’s invisible to the sane: 

Are there not enough black people who build ships in bottles? There must be something racist about it. It couldn’t possibly be that black people aren’t as interested in building ships in bottles.

Remember this? 

Roger Kimball on that pernicious little tool in the White House: 

Just yesterday, the president of the United States… stood before the United Nations and heaped praise on Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, a Muslim cleric who has endorsed a fatwa calling for the murder of U.S. soldiers. Yep, Bin Bayyah is Obama’s candidate of the week for the prize of being a “moderate Muslim.”

And Heather Wilhelm weeps at the suffering of “Goodwill Ambassador for U.N. Women,” Ms Emma Watson: 

While Watson, to her credit, did give a few shout-outs to actual oppression around the globe — child brides and uneducated girls in Africa, specifically, along with an admission that “not all women have received the same rights I have” — her speech [to the U.N.] was an unfortunate reflection of the “we’re all victims,” zero-sense-of-proportion mishmash that makes up modern Western feminism. If you don’t believe me, here is what Emma Watson, Hollywood actress, actually complained about before a body of 192 member states, some which have more terrifying dictatorships than others: 1. She was called “bossy” as a child; 2. She was sexualised by the media as a young movie star; 3. Many of her girlfriends quit their sports teams because they didn’t want to grow muscles.

Now, if, for instance, Ms Watson had directly addressed the representative of each member country in which women really are treated appallingly – and listed that country’s sins in graphic detail – I’d have been more than happy to applaud. But that didn’t happen, and was never going to happen. What we got instead was a piece of flimsy theatre that we’re expected to applaud anyway. It’s the U.N., after all. But it seems to me that if you’re going to use a U.N. gathering to shame backward cultures and their various representatives – shame them into change – it’s best not to appear clownish and morally frivolous while you’re attempting it. And if you want to highlight real oppression in the world – say, women being disfigured by Muhammadan savages – it’s probably best to avoid moaning about having once been called “bossy.”*

Ms Watson’s feminist credentials have been noted here previously. 

*Added via the comments. Feel free to share your own links and snippets below. 

Roller-skating monkeys and other things photographed by Stanley Kubrick. // Hardcore cough syrup of yore. // Rush hour. // Real-time aurora. // There are ruins in New York City. // The chemistry of autumn. // When elephants frolic. // The sheep have penetrated our defences. // Seen in dentist school. // Test your pitch perception. (h/t, Dr W) // Tiny paintings. // World’s deepest pool. // Parasitic worm of note. // An alternative ‘Occupy’ syllabus. // “Even though it was a trick, the reaction was pure and honest.” // The relative sizes of fictional spacecraft, updated. // Strange sexual organs. // How to attract frogs. // Coffee time. // Spoilers. //A brief history of the vocoder. // Phantom vibrations. // And finally, someone’s gone and copied your host’s own early morning exercise routine. 

A Guardian headline brings to light another pressing issue for its readers to fret about:

Why does a black butt only look good in white skin?

Our fearless interrogator, our prober of deep mystery, is Yomi Adegoke, who tells us that she “writes about race, popular culture and intersectional feminism.” Heavens, what a surprise. It’s not Ms Adegoke’s only question, though. She has more:

So the attributes that black women have so long been shamed for have finally been given the… seal of approval due to a new Aryan aesthetic?

Oh my. An Aryan aesthetic. She went there, being so fearless.

Ms Adegoke’s article is at times hard to follow and extrapolates a little too wildly from things that someone said on Twitter. It isn’t without its gems, however – candidates for our ongoing series of classic Guardian sentences. Among them, this:

The black female body is still played for laughs as butt prosthetics become the new blackface.

From what I can make out, our indignant Guardianista is upset that some white female celebrities have been happily drawing attention to their fulsome hindquarters, which are, it seems, the latest must-have fashion item among the suggestible and insecure. No, I hadn’t noticed. Possibly on account of my total lack of interest in MTV and celebrity tattle magazines. But apparently it’s a thing, the hugeness of one’s arse. And this pride in ample buttocks simply will not do. Not when ladies of pallor are the ones doing it:

White women popularising what black women have always had is the latest example of the mainstream media’s cultural appropriation… The era of the big booty has neither started nor ever stopped for black women… Despite what the mainstream media told us, black women never stopped aspiring to possess the curves society so hated.

It turns out that the well-upholstered rear has been “appropriated” in “a world where white is right.” Two ladies named Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry, possibly pop artistes, have been,

using huge novelty bottoms as performance props in a bid to appear contemporary and comedic while accessorising the black aesthetic.

A pop cultural detail that had hitherto, and regrettably, escaped my notice. Doubtless all pale women, being so determined to appropriate and oppress, will soon be turning up to work with huge foam bottoms attached to their person. And according to Ms Adegoke, larger than average buttocks are a “part of black culture” – a part that is “now deemed good enough to gain a level of mass respectability after getting a belated thumbs-up from white society.”

You heard her. Thumbs-up or not, big buttocks are black culture. So you white folk mustn’t pinch them.

Update, via the comments: 

From the Guardian, a headline of note:

Polygamist women dressed ‘like ninjas’ attack home of witness in Utah sex assault case.

I know. Polygamist Women Dressed Like Ninjas has potential as a band name. The story’s quite odd too:

Two armed “polygamist women” dressed like “ninjas” were subdued by a sword-wielding man during a home invasion, according to police in suburban Utah. Police said the two women, aged 18 and 22, were attacking the home of a witness and victim in a criminal child sex assault case against a man the women called their “husband.” The women “violently attacked one of the adult males in the house who came to see who was coming,” Ian Adams of the West Jordan police department told the Guardian. “Another adult male joined the fray in defence of the first male victim. He was armed with a sword, and using a sword… and with the other male [was] able to subdue the two women until police arrived and took them into custody.”

How humdrum your own life must seem in comparison, what with its lack of sexual triangulation, sword-wielding and suburban polygamist ninjas.

Spotted and shared by Randall Sherman.