Behold the oddly resilient Japanese pig toy.

$2.50. More. And. Via.

Evil Dead: the Musical. // Wheelbarrow racing. Wait for the cunning manoeuvre. // Human marvels. Including Stefan Bibrowski and the two-headed boy of Bengal. // Natural phenomena of note. The Catatumbo lightning and the rain of fish. // The big-eared thingamajig. Video. // Photographs of the Iron Curtain. (h/t, Things.) // Fareed Zakaria interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali. “In Europe, when radical Islamic movements use freedoms to destroy freedom, they seem to get away with it.” (h/t, Cookslaw.) // Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller on Edward Said. “Said’s substitution of politics for scholarship in the name of ‘speaking truth to power’ has spawned scores of students, professors, and journalists who seek to emulate his path to fame.” // Oliver Kamm on Stockhausen. // Deogolwulf on the Feminist Association of Iceland. // Radioactive condoms and beauty cream laced with radium. // Pepsi: Ice Cucumber. The goodness of Pepsi with the taste of cucumber. // “Sometimes a cigar is [not] just a cigar.” (h/t, Maggie’s Farm.) // How to spot a cylon. // Concealed hearing devices of the 19th century. Canes, hair-bands, the acoustic beard. // Aaron Duffy’s film of wool and forbidden love. (h/t, 30gms.) // Chris Cunningham’s video for Aphex Twin’s Monkey Drummer. Looks fun, sounds like a pile of arse. // The design work of Kashiwa Sato. (h/t, Coudal.) // More Japanese vending machines. Beetles, porn, toilet paper. // Shaolin: Temple of Zen. // How to be a ninja. // Superman and Jesus. Together at last. // The good bit of Superman Returns. // Map of space in Star Trek. Some dimensions not shown. // How to explode a star. // Ray guns we have known and loved. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Ray Anthony.

What’s the word for something that’s impressive and disgusting?

Via.

In light of the recent thought policing of students at Delaware University, and similar efforts elsewhere, Robert Maranto’s article on academic monoculture may help explain how such absurdities come about, and persist, apparently unchallenged from within these institutions. 

At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-centre view portrayed in a positive light… Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University looked at all the reliable published studies of professors’ political and ideological attachments. They found that conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and Marxists by roughly two to one in economics, more than five to one in political science, and by 20 to one or more in anthropology and sociology…

I believe that for the most part the biases conservative academics face are subtle, even unintentional. When making hiring decisions and confronted with several good candidates, we college professors, like anyone else, tend to select people like ourselves. Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach… A leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas.

In an environment supposedly geared to the cultivation of critical thinking contending ideas should be grist to the mill. Responding to dissent, even outlandish or ill-informed dissent, may prompt us to revisit our own ideas about the world and our own political assumptions – assumptions that are not infrequently arrived at by unconscious imitation or a kind of peer group osmosis. It generally helps to know why we think whatever we think, especially if claims of unassailable righteousness are being staked upon it – and disagreement is, very often, how that insight comes about. And yet, as we’ve seen, great efforts are being made, often successfully, to eliminate debate and the testing of ideas.

Update:

KC Johnson asks whether events at Duke, Colorado, Delaware and Columbia are merely shameful anomalies or evidence of something more systemic.

Related. And. Also.

Further to Madeleine Bunting’s righteous agonising over ecological issues, perhaps this proposal will bring a fleeting smile to her sweet, sweet face.

Couples who have more than two children should be charged a lifelong tax to offset their extra offspring’s carbon dioxide emissions, a medical expert says. The report in an Australian medical journal called for parents to be charged $5000 a head for every child after their second, and an annual tax of up to $800. And couples who were sterilised would be eligible for carbon credits under the controversial proposal.

Perth specialist Professor Barry Walters was heavily critical of the $4000 baby bonus, saying that paying new parents extra for every baby fuelled more children, more emissions and “greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour.” Instead, it should be replaced with a “baby levy” in the form of a carbon tax in line with the “polluter pays” principle, he wrote in the latest Medical Journal of Australia… By the same reasoning, contraceptives like diaphragms and condoms, as well as sterilisation procedures, should attract carbon credits, the specialist said.

Related. And. Via Protein Wisdom, with thanks to The Thin Man.