Plane loses wing, defies physics. (h/t, AC1) // Spacecraft force field inches closer. // Space elevator, maybe. // Monsters vs Aliens. // Sunspots and the Dow. (h/t, Maggie’s Farm) // Astronaut ice-cream. // Fibreglass igloo. You want one and you know it. // Crystal speakers. // Bacon flash drives. // Bacon lampshade. It’s a versatile product. // Chessboxing revisited. // Matchbooks of yore. (h/t, Coudal) // World’s most powerful wind tunnel. // Diffusion spectrum imagery of the brain. // Physical Loops. // Japanese gardens. (h/t, Stephen Hicks) // Sculpting with sugar cubes. // The headquarters of the Basque Health Department. // A gallery of American signs. // Creepy automata. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Lalo Schifrin. 

If I can borrow from The Onion… 

It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.

Whatever the political preferences of readers, this is a moment in history, and questions come to mind. With the first black president soon to take office in the most powerful nation on Earth, where does that leave calls for affirmative action? Is it still possible to defend policies that extend privilege on the basis of pigmentation rather than character and talent? Will “colour-blind” attitudes, which echo the sentiments of Martin Luther King Jr, still be denounced as “racist” and “rightwing” – and as an attack on civil rights, rather than an affirmation of them? What of racially segregated student orientations conducted in the name of “diversity”? Will Professor Noel Ignatiev continue to insist that “whiteness is a form of racial oppression” and should therefore be “abolished”? Will students still be told that “the term [racist] applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States”?

And I wonder what Obama’s election, and much of what it symbolises, says about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn’s forthcoming book, Race Course Against White Supremacy, the premise of which is that,

White supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days – and that it is still very much with us.

Will it be as insightful as earlier efforts by this “veteran political activist”?

Update via the comments:

The justifications for PC racial discrimination have never been entirely convincing or morally palatable. Treating people not as individuals but as generic representatives of some designated victim group is condescending and unfair, and seems likely to perpetuate racial hang-ups and give license to opportunist role-play. Unsurprisingly, the negative fallout of such policies has all too often been ignored by those who favour them. See, for instance, this article by Heather MacDonald:

In 2004, a groundbreaking study of affirmative action in law schools blew away every rationale for racial double standards ever put forth. UCLA law professor Richard Sander found that law schools that admit black students with lower GPAs and Law School Admissions Test scores than their nonblack peers – almost all law schools, in other words – actually lowered those students’ chances of passing the bar. Because of the ‘mismatch’ between their academic preparedness and the academic sophistication of the school that has bootstrapped them in, the preference beneficiaries learn less of what they need to pass the bar than they would in a school that matched their capabilities. Far from increasing the supply of black lawyers, affirmative action actually decreases the diversity of the bar.

And this, by Gail Herriot:

It didn’t seem to matter that… students admitted with lower academic credentials would end up incurring heavy debt but never graduate.

Both of the articles are worth reading in full. And note how proponents of “diversity” often reacted to contrary data with glib dismissal or disingenuous boilerplate. I’m therefore inclined to wonder how much reality it will take to alter the convictions of people who seem quite proud of their fashionable prejudice and are willing to lie about how well that prejudice works. As Heather MacDonald argues in the piece above:

Yet for the [racial] preference lobby, a failing diversity student is better than no diversity student — because the game is not about the students but about the self-image of the institution that so beneficently extends its largesse to them. 

(h/t, sk60)

Apparently, there’s an election taking place somewhere overseas. Those in search of distraction may wish to explore the Museum of Antique Dental Instruments. It’s surprising and melodious. Alternatively, the archives are worth a poke, as are the greatest hits. 

Further to our discussion on redistribution, the following reader’s comment, left at Protein Wisdom, caught my eye. It’s a sort of mouth-and-trousers thing. 

As a business owner who employs 30 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barack Obama will probably be our next President, and that my taxes and carbon fees… will go up in a big way. To compensate for these increases, I figure that the customer will have to see an increase in my costs to them of about 20%. So connect economic ankle to shin, shin to knee, knee to thigh, and I will have to lay off roughly 8 of my employees in my forced tithe to “The One.” This really, really bothers me. I believe we are family here and I wasn’t sure how to choose who will get to stay and who will have to go.

So, I strolled through the parking lot this morning and found 8 Obama bumper stickers on my employees’ cars. These folks will be the first to be laid off.

Fair?

Answers on a postcard, please.

A couple of weeks ago, while noting another example of academic attitude correction, I wrote:

I’m inclined to wonder exactly how egregious and pervasive this phenomenon has to be before concern becomes legitimate. After all, if you want to propagate tendentious ideology and make it seem normative, respectable and self-evidently true, insinuating that ideology into schools and universities would be a pretty good way to do it. “Debate” can then be had on what is most likely an unequal footing, thus arriving at the approved conclusions with a minimum of informed and realistic opposition. If faculty and students are obliged to regurgitate that ideology and perhaps internalise it, while mouthing fuzzwords like “social justice,” all the better. Is it enough to bemoan certain socio-political trends or bias in areas of the media if one doesn’t also address the place where many of these things originate? And are we supposed to believe that the ideologues who push for such measures are going to get tired and desist of their own volition, and then politely roll back the idiocy they’ve been so keen to put in place?

Regarding that last question, the good people at FIRE have revisited last year’s Delaware indoctrination saga (discussed here) and provided an answer of sorts. 

First, lest we forget, here’s a reminder of what was being shoehorned into soft student brains:

The University of Delaware’s Office of Residence Life… used mandatory activities to coerce students to change their thoughts, values, attitudes, beliefs and habits to conform to a highly specified social, environmental, and political agenda… We were first alerted to the situation in October 2007, when a parent wrote us about the coercive activities his son was experiencing in the University of Delaware (UD) dorms. His son described the first set of activities as,

ugly, hateful and extremely divisive. It forced the students to act out the worst possible racial stereotypes and was replete with left-wing ideological commentary and gratuitous slurs… The teachers handed out an array of propaganda materials to support this seminar. However, at the close of the session, they insisted on collecting all the materials so that the students could not take it with them.

We heard similar reports from two UD professors, Jan Blits and Linda Gottfredson… Anything deemed remotely “oppressive” by anyone was to be stamped out, and resident assistants were being taught that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

Interactive 360º light field display. Yes, it’s done with mirrors. (h/t, The Thin Man) // Things found in the folds of fat people’s skin. Cutlery, marijuana, uneaten sandwiches. // The personal blimp. I’m sorely tempted. // A gallery of vintage airships. // Airship rides. $495. // Ejaculation “a potential treatment for nasal congestion.” Or perhaps not. // Being offended on someone else’s behalf. (h/t, AMac) // “What are the Joker’s powers again?” // Marvel superheroes versus giant robot. // Ninja Terminator. // Vintage detective badges. // Underwater panoramas. // Galapagos sea life. Wait for the whale shark. (h/t, Coudal) // Collective animal nouns. A siege of herons, a parcel of hogs. // A visual history of video recorders. // A time-lapse tutorial. // Baconnaise. // Brokers with hands on their faces. // Broccoli mystery deepens. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Kim Jong-il.  

With Halloween almost upon us, I feel it’s time to share François Macré’s multitracked a cappella rendition of Thriller. Be sure to wait for the Vincent Price monologue.

(h/t, Coudal)

Daito Manabe attaches electrodes to his face and triggers contortions in time with techno music. As you do. 

An earlier experiment.

Robert Bluey offers an experiment in wealth redistribution: 

In a local restaurant my server had on an Obama 08 tie; again I laughed as he had given away his political preference – just imagine the coincidence. When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need – the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight. I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I’ve decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient deserved money more. I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

One might, I think, quibble about the distinction between “deserved” and “needed,” but still, it’s worth some reflection. 

(h/t, The Thin Man)

The Guardian’s Theo Hobson tells us why he doesn’t approve of James Bond: 

It feels like breaking rank with modern heterosexual British malehood, to which I more or less belong, but here goes. I hate James Bond. The continuation of his cult disgusts me, embarrasses me, depresses me.

Poor lamb.

Call me Licensed to Killjoy, but it has to be said: this cult hero is a deeply malign cultural presence. He represents a nasty, cowardly part of us that ought to have been killed off long ago.

Er, killed off by whom, and how? A hail of bullets? Laser beams? Or just the weight of tutting and pretentious disapproval?

Of course there is a very serious case to be made against 007 on strictly feminist grounds. The women in the books and films are silly, naughty, flimsy things who need hard male mastery.

It seems Mr Hobson hasn’t seen recent Bond outings – say, any made in the last fifteen years – in which female characters are spies, assassins and fighter pilots and typically portrayed as tenacious, resourceful and absurdly competent, no less so than Bond himself. Hence, perhaps, the continuing popularity of this “malign cultural presence.”

I don’t know how offensive this is to women, but it’s offensive to me. Indeed I think the real victims of the Bond cult are men, who are impelled by a vile peer-pressure to worship at the shrine of this lethal lothario… The fact is that James Bond’s sexual career does real harm to the male psyche… I seriously believe that Bond is a big factor in the sexual malfunction of our times; the difficulty we have finding life-long partners, and the normalisation of pornography.

As so often, Guardian commentators are singularly immune to the “vile peer pressure” which presumably controls all other sentient beings. Still, at least we can count on them to direct us in our tastes, i.e. away from amusingly hyperbolical cinema and towards socio-political righteousness. I’m sure it will be good for us, if not exactly fun.