From the Sydney Morning Herald: 

Student gets stuck in giant stone vagina.

There’s a photo for the curious. 

Peter Matthews, an Urban Studies lecturer with an interest in “urban inequalities,” questions the “rosy image of mixed communities.” And yet he wants to ensure more of us live next door to “the poor and marginalised.” 

When trying to create a better social mix, the focus is almost always on deprived areas. Aren’t the posh bits a problem too?

You see, in his mind,

Poverty and affluence are two sides of the same coin. One would not exist without the other.  

He therefore entertains a “physically radical intervention.” Specifically, 

The idea that we must demolish large areas of high-value owner-occupied housing and replace it with high density, socially-rented housing is still way off the agenda. Maybe it is time this changed.

He’s so daring, our academic. And hey, what a headline. 

If we really do want to mix communities, where better to start than in west London, in the decidedly unmixed Belgravia (average house price £4.4m)? Of course, such a move is unlikely to happen any time soon. The powers that be tend to live in such areas, after all,

Unlike Guardian columnists and editors, or leftwing academics, who invariably seek out only the most humble accommodation.

and are unlikely to appreciate the deliberate urban degeneration.

Imagine those three words, in bold, on the policy document. Followed by, “It’s what you people need, good and hard.” 

As someone who grew up in what would now be considered a “deprived area,” amid lots of “social” housing and all manner of inventively antisocial behaviour, and then escaped, I’m not sure I’d appreciate a second taste of what it was I was hoping to get the hell away from. It’s hard to feel nostalgic for casual vandalism, routine burglary and bus stops and phone boxes that stank reliably of piss. 

“I was gonna put it in a box.” // Iceland, baby. (h/t, Mick) // Baby cage, circa 1930s. // Cliff-edge swing for maximum thrills. // Swing of a different type. Comes with lube and “love mask.” // Miss Sausage Queen, 1955. // Smart cups will judge you. // Eavesdropping gear. // Gourmet dehydrated meals for discernment on the go. // Koh Yao Noi. // Karen Carpenter’s voice. // What Vine is for. // For those who like their sweets in the form of a Zen rock garden. // Russian salt mining. // Switzerland’s timber bridges, all 1055 of them. (h/t, MeFi) // Bald animals. // Neighbourhood peacocks. // Dark Central Park. // “Coffee in extreme conditions.” // And finally, for the ever-so-slightly obsessive, roam the Enterprise-D with PixelTrek. 

K.C. Johnson on dogmatic faculty, the Duke rape hoax, and why due process matters: 

It was, I think, unprecedented, the sort of behaviour we saw from the Duke faculty. Faculty members essentially chose to exploit their students’ distress to advance a campus pedagogical agenda, to push their own ideological vision and to abandon any pretence of supporting fairness, due process and the dispassionate evaluation of evidence… A complete abandonment of any pretence of objectivity, of any interest in the truth.

Ann Althouse parses Hillary Clinton and is taken aback by what she finds:   

Read it again and see how shocking it is. Not only did Hillary completely turn her back on “balancing competing values” and “more thoughtful conversation,” she doesn’t want to allow people on one side of the conversation even to believe what they believe. Those who care about gun rights and reject new gun regulations should be stopped from holding their viewpoint. Now, it isn’t possible to forcibly prevent people from holding a viewpoint… but the question is Hillary Clinton’s fitness for the highest office, and her statement reveals a grandiose and profoundly repressive mindset.

Somewhat related, Jayson Veley on the joys of modern schooling:   

Andrew Lampart, a student at Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut, was assigned an in-class debate on gun control during his “Law & You” course. While preparing for the debate during study hall, Lampart logged onto the school-provided internet and found that students were forbidden from visiting The National Association for Gun Rights… “I used my study hall to research gun control facts and statistics. That is when I noticed that most of the pro-second amendment websites were blocked, while the sites that were in favour of gun control generally were not… I found it nearly impossible to get solid information to debate my side of the argument.”

Meanwhile, a book critical of modern feminism, but written by a feminist, catches fire mysteriously. And Perry de Havilland discovers another classic Guardian sentence. 

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

By Parker Paul.