Star Trek: TNG as it was meant to be seen. || Cats sitting on glass tables, a photographic study. || Crafting With Cat Hair. || Ladies ogling men in old movies. (h/t, Damian) || “Trying to lure women.” || A short history of the long-necked theorbo lute. || Skillz. || Stump. || Simpler times. || This collection of synthesizers is way bigger than yours. || No, you first. || Etruscan dentures. || Oh dear. (h/t, Dicentra) || “Truthful statements can… meet the definition of hate speech.” || Heroism detected. || When you’re worried about your voice-activated device. || You want a pair and you know it. || Lambeth scenes. (h/t, O&G) || Outdoor elevator. || Hairy and dilated. || Partial eclipse. || And finally, a tough crowd to please.

In crime news:  

A 25-year-old Chicago woman with a concealed carry license shot and killed a man who attempted to rob her at gunpoint last week. Police say the armed 19-year-old man approached the young woman at a bus stop in Chicago’s Fernwood neighbourhood Tuesday morning. Surveillance video captured across the street from the bus stop shows a struggle between the two before the woman pulls out her own firearm and shoots the man in the neck.

One less rat, you might think. However, a woman defending herself from an armed male mugger is, it turns out, terribly problematic: 

“If she had let him rob her” is an interesting series of words. “She should not have had a gun in the first place,” says Zack.  

Mr Ford, now busy deleting tweets, is “LGBTQ Editor” at ThinkProgress. And, says he, a “proud SJW.”

Update, via the comments:

Christopher DeGroot on attempts to pathologise masculinity: 

Published this week, the American Psychological Association’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice for Boys and Men is a remarkable and frightening document. Throughout, value judgements are expressed under the guise of “science.” Social constructivism is assumed to be true, the implication being that “gender roles” don’t represent anything deeper, such as biology or an enduring human nature. Thus, if most nurses are women, and if most engineers are men, the only explanation is the patriarchy, that insidious, mysterious, inescapable evil. One is struck by the facile, trendy cant that the authors take for granted. Three sentences in, we read this assertion: “Boys and men, as a group, tend to hold privilege and power based on gender.” There is no recognition here of male accomplishment — that falls into the category of “privilege and power,” words which, like “patriarchy,” we encounter with mind-numbing frequency.

Readers who can bear to plough through the entire APA document, supposedly thirteen years in the making, will note the framing of masculinity (or “traditional masculine ideology”) as entailing violence, bullying, sexual harassment, “dominance and aggression,” ableism, ageism, racism, and outright sociopathy. Or as Stephanie Pappas says in a summary here: “Traditional masculinity… is, on the whole, harmful.” In poking through the document, readers may also note the absence of any meaningful reference to biology, testosterone, evolution, etc., as if such details were irrelevant to fathoming male behaviour. However, the word privilege occurs 19 times, and the word transgender no fewer than 60.

As DeGroot points out, it seems unwise to redefine masculinity in order to flatter the resentments and insecurities of the fringe and maladjusted – say, “social justice” enthusiasts who consider themselves “marginalised” by expectations of competence, competitiveness and emotional self-possession. Or those who describe themselves as transsexual, non-binary or “gender non-conforming.” As if a proclivity for adventurousness or risk-taking, and a desire for achievement, were fundamentally a problem, something to be fixed. And it goes without saying that the writers of the APA’s guidelines would be unlikely to enjoy lives of comfort and status without a great many others embracing the values and inclinations – including ambition, stoicism and courage – that our self-imagined betters strive to pathologise.

If fruit could move. || Uncanny mom powers. || Progress. || How to optimise your roast potatoes, mathematically. || Miracle breakthrough. || Bee waves. || Windblown snow, from above. || She does this better than you do. (h/t, Tim) || Rolling below. || Brain coasters. || “The effort of vomiting pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor.” || Fridge-and-houseguest-related idea of note. Do let us know how it goes. (h/t, Julia) || Fixing the world one step at a time. || Safety first. || Wheels. || You want one and you know it. || Scenes. (h/t, Dicentra) || Extra strong. || Woodland. || Comb-over. || On the domestication of cats. || Incoming. || And finally, a caption competition.

The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania sent out an email to parents after a photograph of a student in a white hooded robe made the rounds on social media and caused some sort of panic. The individual was in a hallway in Lower Merion High School.

Run, children! The Klan are in town! 

The student was wearing part of a monk costume from the play Romeo and Juliet, which was being used by a 9th grade class. The student appeared to be returning to the classroom.

The image, of a child dressed as a monk for a school play, was deemed “disturbing” by school administrators, and as a result of this mind-shattering trauma, “The costume will not be used in future enactments of Romeo and Juliet.”

Yes, you’re getting an open thread, in which to share links and then bicker about them. Our first of the year. It’s very exciting. I’ll set the ball rolling with a history of early surgery; a “social justice” educator who seems somewhat unhinged; and via Things, what to do with that 50 square metres of cardboard you have lying around.

Oh, and via Dicentra, a would-be robber has a bad day.

Those hankering for more can avail themselves of the reheated series and greatest hits.

With expectations of competent spelling:

[Professor Inoue] will lecture about “language standards that just kill our students” by subjecting them to “single standards,” which perpetuate “White language supremacy.”

You see, those composition classes you’re paying for, or that some poor sap is paying for, shouldn’t teach students how to write clearly. Instead, “compassionate” classrooms should be grounded in “dimension-based rubrics” and “labour-based contracts,” which presumably reward the length of time a student spends getting something wrong, repeatedly, irrespective of whether they actually, eventually, get it right; thereby avoiding “white racial habits of language.” It’s the path to “a socially just future,” apparently. And not, as one might suppose, somewhat narrowed hopes of employment. Because an “anti-racist” education, at a university, should ideally leave its beneficiaries sounding uneducated. With mangled conjugation, missing verbs, and saying axe instead of ask.

Professor Inoue has, of course, been mentioned here before.

Very much related, this. In which, fellow “social justice” enthusiast Dr A W Strouse informs us that correcting errors of spelling and basic grammar can “make students feel bewildered, hurt, or angry,” and should therefore be avoided. We’re also told that job applicants who, as graduates, struggle with even elementary spelling, should bristle at any acknowledgement of this shortcoming, telling potential employers – and I quote – “Fuck you.”  

Update, via the comments: 

As I’m still finding my feet after the holidays, you’re getting a chance to assemble your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. I’ll set the ball rolling with how to forge your own lock box, because you need to know these things; a brief history of tea; a transplanted peanut allergy; some notable positioning; and the wiring you’ve always wanted. 

Oh, and today’s words are tuition fees. 

Christopher Rufo on excusing habitual crime, in the name of “intersectionality”: 

The latest fad in criminal-justice activism is the concept of “survival crime.” The theory holds that the homeless, the poor, and people of colour commit property crimes and low-level infractions in order to secure their basic survival. Any enforcement of these laws is thus a violation of their basic human rights… Survival-crime theory argues that local governments should decriminalise [property crime, drug possession, and public nuisance] offences because vulnerable individuals have been compelled by social conditions to commit them… Over the past five years, the classification of survival crime has expanded well beyond stealing the proverbial loaf of bread. In California, for instance, Proposition 47 downgraded theft of property valued at less than $950 to a misdemeanour, meaning that the police are unlikely to pursue even habitual shoplifters and thieves. The predictable result: a state-wide rise in petty theft. 

Exempting favoured identity groups from the normal consequences of predatory and antisocial behaviour is the Hot New Fairness, apparently, at least among the enlightened. And if someone steals your phone or laptop, it would be wrong of you to protest, especially if the thief happens to be “of colour” and therefore, obviously, entitled to your stuff. Mugging, it turns out, is a form of “social justice.” We’ve been here before, of course. As when the Harvard-educated sociology professor Crystal Fleming championed the recreational looting of trainers, in bulk, and other fashion items, on grounds that the law-abiding are “hoarding resources.” 

Somewhat related, Heather Mac Donald on school indiscipline and so-called “disparate impact” policies:

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began on a highbrow note as the University of Denver’s Professor Ryan Evely Gildersleeve informed the world that laziness is a “a political stance,” a way to “combat the neoliberal condition,” and a “tool for contributing to social justice.” Half-arsed incompetence is, we were assured, both radical and empowering. The professor also shared his belief that plastic is sentient. Inanimate objects also troubled Dr Jane Bone, a senior lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne, who specialises in “feminist post-structural perspectives” and the political implications of problematic furniture. Dr Bone’s research involves quite a lot of “embodied knowing,” i.e., visiting IKEA and sitting on chairs. Her work, she revealed, is “not necessarily logical.” Further feminist insights came via Phoebe Patey-Ferguson, whose feminist fight club is “a mode of resistance,” because the spectacle of unhappy ladies body-slamming each other and breaking each other’s ribs is an obvious way to “destroy the Conservative government” and “bring down the patriarchy.”

In February, we turned our attention to the world of aesthetics, where performance artist Sandrine Schaefer presented her buttocks to the world then waited for applause. We also learned that space exploration is all about “abuse” and “male entitlement,” thanks to Women’s Studies educator Marcie Bianco. Ms Bianco, who claims that sending spacecraft to Mars is akin to grabbing ladies’ genitals, teaches “social justice courses” at Rutgers University and John Jay College.

The ability of Jordan Peterson to trigger fits of theatrical hysteria among leftwing students was a highlight of March, when an attempt to speak at Queen’s University, Ontario, resulted in memorable and telling scenes, as students unleashed their inner screeching id. Also memorable, though for very different reasons, was this short, rather lovely film by Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet. And at Simmons College, where recreational indignation is very much in fashion, and annual tuition is a mere $40,000, we learned that responding to a sneeze with the words “bless you” is problematic and oppressive, and that compiling lists of things that are problematic and oppressive, and therefore to be avoided, is itself problematic and oppressive.