Elsewhere (251)

Myron Magnet on ‘progressive’ policy versus the skills of city living: 

Civility — the art of living in a city — is not innate. We have to learn to stand in line and take our turn, not to blast music from our apartment or car, not to block the sidewalk or market aisle, not to yell on our cell phones, not to litter, not to monopolise public spaces with our “expressive” behaviour, not to bother or offend others unnecessarily. We no longer teach civility in schools: instead of the “citizenship” that my generation learned, we impart “social justice,” which teaches grievance and resentment of others; and city officials, with an Obama edict’s backing, have hamstrung school discipline, fostering misbehaviour. In college, we don’t teach free and civil discussion, tolerance of intellectual differences, or respect for learning, but only a kid’s right to resent microaggressions and silence politically incorrect speech as “violence.” The result will not be urbanity.

And further to this item here, Professor Charles H F Davis returns to the public eye: 

A University of Southern California professor says he stands behind his tweets that… call for whiteness to be “destroyed,” and the promotion of violence against the “white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.”

“White supremacist heterosexist patriarchy needs to get the violence it imparts,” says the professor, who invokes “black rage” as a self-validating phenomenon, a kind of moral mic-drop, as if anger were synonymous with righteousness. “Whiteness and white supremacy,” he adds, “must be, by any and all means, destroyed.” This bold, if adolescent, proclamation is followed, belatedly, by a denial of cultivating racial acrimony, and an assurance that “whiteness,” which the professor despises and wishes to see “eradicated,” is “neither synonymous with nor exclusive to white people.” Which I’m sure is a great comfort to any melanin-deficient students in the professor’s proximity, and whose concerns regarding such language are dismissed as “white fragility.” Readers may wish to ponder how such assurances can be squared with the professor’s chosen Twitter banner, or his endorsement via Twitter of sentiments such as these.

Added: Somewhat relevant.

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

Comments

[Clam]

Readers may wish to ponder how such assurances can be squared with the professor’s chosen Twitter banner, or his endorsement, via Twitter, of sentiments such as this.

SJWs always lie.

[David]

Priorities:

Hampshire College cancelled classes Tuesday for students to attend a diversity conference on “anti-racism” and “social justice.” Classes at the private Massachusetts college were cancelled in order for students to attend the “Engage!” conference, “a day-long learning opportunity for all Hampshire community members that centres conversation and reflection to promote a deeper understanding of anti-racism, social justice, and the cultivation of an inclusive campus climate.”

Because that hokey, question-begging leftism must always come first, using class time that someone else is paying for.

[David]

SJWs always lie.

I’d say it’s a safe bet that this one does.

Our professional educator and proponent of “social justice” seems fixated with racial violence and annihilationist sentiment, such that he endorses a fellow academic’s tweet in which a massacre of white people is described as a “good thing indeed,” and whose author declares his enthusiasm for “white genocide.” Professor Davis then dismisses concerns regarding these fixations and endorsements as mere “white fragility.” And he does all this while expecting us to believe that he bears no animosity whatsoever towards those of us with low levels of melanin.

[Pogonip]

In what city does Myron live that residents learn not to blast "music" from an apartment? I want to live there!

[R. Sherman]

You note, Professor Davis "return[s] to the public eye." Wherever he's been, I rather doubt it included, oh say, assisting those displaced by the hurricanes in Houston or Puerto Rico, where "white supremacist heterosexual patriarchy" was on copious display in the form of the myriad of Nitro bass boats used to rescue fellow citizens trapped by flood waters.

[R. Sherman]

"Asked if he’s worried his tweets may rub some of his students the wrong way and might lead them to believe he is biased, Davis said creating discomfort is a tool that aids learnin..."

Unless, of course, that discomfort originates with someone I dislike, such as Ben Shapiro . . .

[Clam]

Unless, of course, that discomfort originates with someone I dislike, such as Ben Shapiro . . .

If they didn't have double standards they'd have no standards at all.

[David]

Like so many of his Angry Studies peers, Professor Davis has found an environment in which his nasty racist fantasies and general moral delinquency are not only tolerated but deemed statusful and funded. It’s a cushy number in which he gets paid to peddle pernicious horseshit and racial neuroticism, despite the fact that his ‘teaching’ will likely have a negative effect on the life chances and happiness of his credulous students, and then ripple outwards from there.

And it occurs to me that a civilisation that allows its children to be educated by its self-declared enemies may be in for a surprise.

[R. Sherman]

...a civilisation that allows its children to be educated by its self-declared enemies may be in for a surprise.

The process is a slow one, but I think the hoi polloi are beginning to catch on. For too long, many of these universities have traded on their names and the cachet of having a those names on a degree. Parents ultimately control where their children attend college, inasmuch as their participation is required in order for students to qualify for financial aid, not to mention writing checks for the "expected family contribution." If I want my sons to be brow-beaten for four years, I'll hustle them off to a U.S. Marine Corps recruiter. They'll actually learn something and it won't cost me a dime.

[Joan]

any melanin-deficient students... whose concerns regarding such language are dismissed as “white fragility.”

Microaggression! Hate speech! I feel unsafe!

Oh that crap only goes one way...

[David]

Oh that crap only goes one way...

Bingo.

[R. Sherman]

Bingo

I've never understood the "emotional labor" craze or the idea that being genuinely interested in someone else's background, especially where it's different from one's own, is somehow insulting. How else then are we supposed to learn about each other and reach an understanding of our common humanity?

I recall a few years back when I happened to wake up in an intensive care unit at a large teaching hospital. One of my attending nurses was a lovely young lady with a vague British accent. She happened to be black. Over the course of the few days I was there, she and I had some marvelous conversations about her upbringing in Zimbabwe. It was an enjoyable time and she told me that I was one of the few people who seemed actually interested in her as a person. I may be all wet, but I attribute my recovery in substantial part to her care and those conversations. Query, was that "emotional labor" on her part?

I suppose, we should just shut up and let the likes of Professor Davis lecture us all on what our responses to our fellow humans should be, based solely on their melanin levels.

[Anniemouse]

Statement in part by the USC Admin in response to twitter comments by Davis:

".....USC does not condone violence or threats of violence in any form.”

A University of Southern California professor says he stands behind his tweets that include obscenities directed toward President Donald Trump, calls for whiteness to be “destroyed,” and the promotion of violence against the “white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.”

And might I add the police as well.... or is that the same as the patriarchy.
-----------

American blacks (Afro-Americans) have been in the U.S. for several hundred years,some longer than 300 years. That's at least 15 generations. Over that time period miscegenation has indeed taken place. (Thomas Jefferson?) And today, judging by TV programming, commercials, and social media which seem to encourage this racial mixing, I will surmise that many believe it is a way to solve our racial problems.

Mr. Davis (by appearance), Mr. Obama and Mr. Kopaernick (by fact) all are examples of miscegenation (the Kardasians, Beyonce, as well) Yet this has not solved anything ... or so it seems.

When I was a very young man my good friend's father was very much anti-black. One day I pointed out to him that most American Blacks were of at least some degree mixed racially. His response was "that's why they're so mean." That ended the conversation. But it did make an impression.

Random thoughts.....

[pst314]

"I've never understood the 'emotional labor' craze..."

[PiperPaul]

"Professor Charles H F Davis returns to the public eye"

It's all fun and games and social experimentation/engineering until someone loses an eye.

[David]

I’ve never understood the ‘emotional labor’ craze...

According to the terribly oppressed Laurie Penny, “emotional labour” includes remembering that your partner has allergies.

[Connor]

According to the terribly oppressed Laurie Penny, “emotional labour” includes remembering that your partner has allergies.

I pity the man, woman or polyamorous non-binary queer-spirit she ends up with when she's forty.

[pst314]

And it occurs to me that a civilisation that allows its children to be educated by its self-declared enemies may be in for a surprise.

Indeed. Either the left has got to go or our civilization will.

[David]

I pity the man, woman or polyamorous non-binary queer-spirit she ends up with when she’s forty.

It’s not just allergies, of course. Remembering your partner’s birthday, that’s unbearably oppressive, too. And cooking a meal, obviously. And cleaning up even occasionally is an outrage too far. Oh, and remembering to feed the children. These things and many, many more are both personally crushing and an affront to Laurie’s intersectional feminism.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Not to be outdone by their comrades in California, the nitwits at the University of Kansas hires a BLM "activist" who had already been banned from other parts of the campus, and who also appears not to be fond of those less melanated than his own bad self.

[Monty James]

If your culture didn't have a written language until white people came along, you need to sit this one out.

NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW

NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW NSFW

Ohhhhh, no . . . you watched it, didn't you?

[David]

Ohhhhh, no . . . you watched it, didn’t you?

I’m… not familiar with the kind of thing I’m seeing.

[David]

Ah, a generous glass of red. This should dull the trauma from watching all that bare-breasted liveliness.

Wine goes with pizza, yeah?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

If your culture didn't have a written language until white people came along, you need to sit this one out.

The irony that all the "post-colonial" authors they want to "study" are apparently writing in English seems to be lost on the poor put-upon dears.

I’m… not familiar with the kind of thing I’m seeing.

You need to get out more...

[Monty James]

Wine certainly helps out with Bare Breasted Stress Disorder.

[WTP]

Wine goes with pizza, yeah?

A fine Chianti works. Less'n you drank it all with the last SJW's liver.

[Hal]

If your culture didn't have a written language until white people came along, you need to sit this one out.

Cambridge University English academics may be forced to include more ethnic writers in an effort to 'decolonise' the curriculum for students. . . . . Students at the university study a range of 'period papers' ranging from 1350 to the present day - including the works of Shakespeare.

Finally. Hear, hear!!

It's utterly long overdue for the English language to become free of such clearly foreign and colonizing intrusions such as William Shakespeare.

[R. Sherman]

You need to get out more...

I'm confused. The title says,"Girl Street Fight in London," but the police uniforms say "Austin." Is that some West End neighborhood, with which I'm not familiar?

As for KU, my ancestors knew that place is hell on earth in the middle of the 19th century.

[R. Sherman]

BTW, this thread has taken a strange turn.

[David]

BTW, this thread has taken a strange turn.

Unlike all those others.

[WTP]

Heh...All those NSFW's and I go and watch it here at work...Fortunately (?) they owe me about 6 weeks back pay so...feeling a little liberal, iykwim.

[David]

Wine certainly helps out with Bare Breasted Stress Disorder.

It’s a two-glass trauma.

[Monty James]

It’s a two-glass trauma.

Two hands on the stemware, it reduces the shaking.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

...Bare Breasted Stress Disorder...

Yet another fine band name.

[john b]

Intelligence is (a) white privilege.

[R. Sherman]

Unlike all those others.

Well, to be honest, when I started visiting these pages, the tone was a bit more, shall we say, "elevated." Which is not to imply a correlation between my visits and bare-breasted cat fight videos.

[pst314]

Which is not to imply a correlation between my visits and bare-breasted cat fight videos.

[David]

Well, to be honest, when I started visiting these pages, the tone was a bit more, shall we say, “elevated.”

Yes, that extensive collection of navel fluff, linked in 2008, really set the classy tone.

[PiperPaul]

I think by the end of the fracas there was more than just bare boobz; she lost control of all of her ensemble. Quite the accomplishment.

She should meet this guy

[The original Mr. X]

Cambridge University English academics may be forced to include more ethnic writers in an effort to 'decolonise' the curriculum for students

Wait, I'm confused... Isn't a university in England studying authors from England pretty much the opposite of curricular colonialism?

[champ]

and whose concerns regarding such language are dismissed as “white fragility.”

Which is it, "white supremacy" or "white fragility?" Make up your mind...

[Kate Eliys]

Thanks for sharing...

[Pogonip]

How do people become as selfish as Laurie? Most of us help our families, at least, whether out of instinct, noblesse oblige, or the despairing knowledge that, no matter how tired you are, the baby is not going to stop yowling until you get up and change his soaked diaper and sleeper (and after all, he can't very well do it himself). I can't even say she sounds inhuman. Dog and cat mothers eat their offsprings' poop for the first week or so--a perk for a dog, I suppose, but probably pretty disgusting if you're a cat. I guess we could say Laurie sounds alien? As long as she's happy, I guess it's OK as long as she doesn't reproduce and inflict herself on a baby.

[Monty James]

Yale ‘decolonizes’ English dept. after complaints studying white authors ‘actively harms’ students

Empires dissolve and peoples disappear, song passes not away.
William Watson

National Review Online: Conservatives Should Reconsider Their Opposition to Hip-Hop

Goddamnit.

[Hal]

Ohhhhh, no . . . you watched it, didn’t you?

I’m… not familiar with the kind of thing I’m seeing.

Oh, the camera operator was just being up front about keeping abreast of things. And getting behind the spirit of the moment.

[Hal]

National Review Online: Conservatives Should Reconsider Their Opposition to Hip-Hop

Goddamnit.

Such Language!!!

And aside from following up that straight line . . . . Weeeeeellllllll . . . .

Most conservatives don’t like hip-hop.

The typical conservative case against the genre amounts not to music criticism, but to the charge that it promotes dangerous behaviors in the culture.

Actually, no, mainly because rap is not music and therefore musical discussion of rap is impossible.

In my case, I've always simply lacked any interest whatsoever because if I wanted to be utterly bored with random chanting that occurs with equally boring random non verbal noise, then I would turn on the news, stick a pot under a dripping faucet, and get the exact same result(1).

Beyond that, as far as any content in rap, as is noted constantly, For you will always have the hipster among you,and in noting that, just because hipsters insist on being hipsters---or rappers---there is no reason anyone else needs bother. Shakespeare can be performed on street corners, and Richard Burton had a party trick of reciting Shakespeare backwards, but as David keeps pointing out, merely using a microphone on a stage does not produce or demonstrate being an artist.

(1) A number of years back I was explaining Unix and multitasking to a couple of coworkers who kept getting very confused between rap and music. First, I noted that humans create music---and yes there are the discussions of animals making music---, but getting a computer to try and make music had, at the time, only gotten some rather spot on reproductions of Schoenberg.

Absolutely by contrast, I noted to them that in Unix one can set up a script where assorted random text can be fed through a speech synthesizer, say, a phone book or tax regulations. In parallel, one can have the computer generate some very random loop of noise and have it repeat endlessly, say about eight beats, repeat, eight beats, repeat. Finally, what one has the computer do is to broadcast this recitation of the phone book or tax regulations in unison with the looping noise, and thus one has succeeded in having the computer crank out very obvious, undeniable rap, entirely at whim, without having to waste money paying for some overpriced shiny drink coaster and accompanying publicity packaging.

Once my coworkers absorbed the new concepts, I started seeing expressions of absolute horror.

No . . no . . no, no, That's Not funny, man!!!

Okaaaay, but I wasn't being "funny", I was just explaining the advantages of modern computers.

No, man, we mean it!!! That's Not funny man!!!!!

Oy.

In the meantime, at some point I did come up with the idea of the world's most boring sight gag;

Liberace plays rap.

Just think; The stage lights up, the piano is covered in sequins, the candelabra is glittering, Liberace comes sweeping out on stage, big smile, big smile, hands over the piano keys, Aaaaaaand-----Tunk! Tunk tunk tunk, T-tunk, tunk tunktunktunk, tunk. Tunk Tunk.

Talk about a one note performance.

Literally.

[Hal]

. . . if I wanted to be utterly bored with random chanting that occurs with equally boring random non verbal noise, then I would turn on the news, stick a pot under a dripping faucet, and get the exact same result.

And The Ship Sails On.

[David]

USC does not condone violence or threats of violence in any form.

Evidently it does. The man is paid a salary to mouth these things, and variations thereof. As the professor, a self-declared activist puts it, he “teaches about resistance.” Though I suppose there’s the question of how, exactly, the professor plans to inflict “violence” on an apparently all-powerful and all-pervasive conspiracy, such that it is “destroyed” and “eradicated” – a conspiracy, incidentally, that he struggles to define in any meaningful way, and whose allegedly crushing practical effects aren’t illustrated with even a single credible example.

[Hal]

. . . a conspiracy, incidentally, that he struggles to define in any meaningful way, and whose allegedly crushing practical effects aren’t illustrated with even a single credible example.

Oh, nonsense. Of course the conspiracy exists!!!

[Jonathan]

Ohhhhh, no . . . you watched it, didn't you?

Ahh, those charming Southern Belles....

[Pogonip]

From Cosmopolitan, a trade journal for sluts:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a13069023/moana-halloween-costume-racist

I think what's happening here is the normal female instinct "make sure the kids don't hurt themselves while having fun" has become perverted and is manifesting as "make sure the kids don't have any fun." Something about 21st-century life twists and perverts normal human instincts.

I sure hope that something isn't the Internet, which I happen to use every day, not only to keep an eye on important things like Ephemera, but to get paid at my job.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Liberace plays rap.

Pat Boone covers Little Richard.#whiteculturalabomination

[WTP]

Re Pat Boone, I dig how he snaps his fingers on his right hand, then his left, then goes back and forth throughout the song. A real cool cat, daddy-o.

[David]

Pat Boone covers Little Richard.

I don’t think I’m ever going to forgive you for that.

From Cosmopolitan, a trade journal for sluts:

Setting aside the numbing idiocies of identity politics, aren’t they rather missing the point that Hallowe’en – when children dress up as witches, vampires, the undead, etc., and demand sweets from strangers - is meant to be a little transgressive? Isn’t that the spirit of it?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

I don’t think I’m ever going to forgive you for that.

#notedfamilyappropriateswitheculture

[PiperPaul]

"animals making music"

This otter be interesting ('borrowed' from Twitter)...

https://streamable.com/8e2kh

[David]

Toby Young encounters our educational establishment. It turns out that politely questioning the egalitarian ‘blank slate’ assumptions that many leftist educators “believe to be true” – but which obviously aren’t - must not be permitted.

Via Ben Sixsmith.

[MC]

If your culture didn't have a written language until white people came along, you need to sit this one out.

I notice the Daily Mail's list of 'ethnic' writers for English courses includes one who wrote in Spanish.

[Charlie Suet]

Western civilisation was rather nice while it lasted.

[David]

If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll poke the spam filter.

[David]

Steve Sailer on the dull, unpleasant mind of Ta-Nehisi Coates:

A couple of years ago, Coates was awarded a MacArthur Foundation genius grant of $625,000 for his best-selling micro-memoir Between the World and Me, in which he recounted not just one but two anecdotes about people he knew who were the victims of white racist oppression. In one, a black guy whom Coates had vaguely known in college was gunned down by a policeman. Eventually, Coates admits the shooter cop was black too, which you might think wrecks the moral of his tale… And that’s not all Coates could remember from his first forty years of life. His memoir also included the celebrated story of how Coates let his little boy dawdle upon an escalator and then a white woman about to crash into the lad said, “Come on,” which is racist.

I also like the term dorm-lounge performance art.

[Pogonip]

"...I'll poke the spam filter..."

If it continues to act up threaten to throw pickled "eggs" at it.

[Pogonip]

It has always put MY golden nuggets of wisdom right through, by the way, so there can't be too much wrong with it.

[pst314]

Does the spam filter ever poke back?

[David]

For some reason, she’s taken a dislike to MC.

[David]

Jessie Daniels is a sociologist and, she says, “an expert on race.”

[Hal]

Fan club.

[QuintAmpersandJessel]

Muldoon's first link shows, on the right, a link to a "Cocks not Glocks" protest. Showing what democracy looks like means, apparently, shrill twats waving dildos in the air.

[Pogonip]

Don't point that thing unless you intend to use it! 😄

[Monty James]

Such Language!!!

First, I'd better apologize to Hal and everyone else for my bad language.

@JessieNYC

Part of what I've learned is that the white-nuclear family is one of the most powerful forces supporting white supremacy, . . .

Second, I shall decline herein to comment further, because the Twitter post to which David linked inspires me to more bad language, an ocean current, a volcano, a bee swarm of bad language.

Seriously, how do we get along in a society with these plain lunatics and blaggards?

[David]

More from Professor Jessie Daniels.

Note that it’s hard to reconcile her sentiments with the claim, by Professor Davis, that the hated phenomenon of “whiteness” is “neither synonymous with nor exclusive to white people.” It seems that white families are the only ones that should be discouraged from existing.

Professor Daniels is employed by Hunter College and the Graduate Centre, CUNY.

[David]

Remember, students. If you’re white and marry a white person and then have white children, you’re “part of the problem.”

[WTP]

No. If you’re white and you pay the taxes that support this BS, you’re part of the problem.

[jabrwok]

If you’re white...you’re “part of the problem.”

Brevity is the soul of wit.

The Left really seems to want a race war.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

No. If you’re white and you pay the taxes that support this BS, you’re part of the problem.

Alas, being a gainfully employed Person of Pallor means that taxes are not an option, nor is how that tax money gets spent.

The Left really seems to want a race war.

The puzzling bit is that seeing as how most of those calling for it seem to be Persons of Pallor, such as Miss Jessie above, how exactly do they think it would end up for themselves if their side won ?

[R. Sherman]

Note well, however, that if a white person chooses to marry and procreate with someone of a different race, that is also "problematic" as it seeks to "exotify" the other race and constitutes participating in "genocide" by diluting the other race's "purity." And, of course, the non-white spouse is also a "race traitor," as well.

Good times.

[R. Sherman]

There recently was viral video where college students swooned over "Bernie Sanders's" tax plan, only to be told it was Donald Trump's. It would be interesting to do a similar experiment by reworking the Nuremberg Laws with SJW/Progressive language and seeing how the likes of Professor Daniels would react.

[WTP]

taxes are not an option, nor is how that tax money gets spent.

Where you live, who you vote for, who you support monetarily and socially is well within your control.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Where you live, who you vote for, who you support monetarily and socially is well within your control.

To a degree. I live in a very red state in South Flyoverlandia, but regardless of for whom I vote, I don't get a say in which moonbats our public universities hire.

[R. Sherman]

I don't get a say in which moonbats our public universities hire.

See also, "Deep State."

[R. Sherman]

And right on cue.

[Jonathan]

Remember, students. If you’re white and marry a white person and then have white children, you’re “part of the problem.”

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

And right on cue.

Universities abandon core curriculums, offer ‘thin and patchy education,’ survey finds

Indeed. If they hadn't abandoned the core, the person who wrote this would have known it is "curricula".

[Spiny Norman]

jabrwok,

The Left really seems to want a race war.

>_<

[Charles Manson's maniacal laughter echos through his San Quentin cell block.]

[Jeff Guinn]

(From the Steve Sailer link) In one, a black guy whom Coates had vaguely known in college was gunned down by a policeman.

Eventually, Coates admits the shooter cop was black too, which you might think wrecks the moral of his tale.

To be fair to Coates (perhaps too fair, because nothing I have read from him shows any recognition he has sussed the real problem; certainly Sailer hasn't figured it out), that the cop was black has nothing to do with the moral of the Tale.

The melanin count of the police officer is irrelevant to what is really going on: the police and the citizens of black communities are cats in a sack, both driven to a fight that neither started. Which I further discuss here. (I can't be accused of blog flogging, the lights went out on that one a few years ago.)

The reason I think Coates is fundamentally clueless is that Balko reports a very convincing account that the problems in the St. Louis area are driven by blatantly racist policies that are now, thankfully, virtually unthinkable.

The marks they left aren't going to disappear overnight. Coates, by insisting that the situation of blacks in the US is essentially permanent, is showing he hasn't, or can't, give the real problem any serious thought.

[Jeff Guinn]

{Mr. F. Muldoon:] Indeed. If they hadn't abandoned the core, the person who wrote this would have known it is "curricula".

The next pickled egg is on me.

[David]

[ Stirs jar of murky brine. ]

The bits add flavour.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

Meanwhile, speaking of murky brine, in the world of art, The Powerful Reason Why This Artist Has Been Saving His Urine For The Last 200 Days". (Link to Puffingtonhost and probably NSFW for language and a couple of photos)

The piece, PISSED, was created in response to President Donald Trump’s February decision to rescind President Obama’s directive that transgender students should be able to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

Why, you ask, did this titan of art, who is apparently also channeling Moe Howard, feel compelled to do this ?

“It seems insane that I have to make a cube of piss for people to get this idea. I shouldn’t have to make this. I shouldn’t have to hold my own urine.

To be fair, it doesn't seem insane, but I am sure a cube of urine in an obscure NY "art" museum will change the minds of everyone in East Sasquatch, Iowa about this vital subject.

[Pogonip]

Well, he has certainly changed MY mind.

[PiperPaul]

Perhaps on November 8 all those screaming people in Boston, New York and Philadelphia could douse themselves with Cassils' collected precious bodily fluid resources to demonstrate how really (literally) pissed they are.

[Transaustraliaexpress]

Someone probably ought to take the role of parent here;

http://www.williamofockham.com/2017/10/29/someone-probably-needs-to-take-the-role-of-parent-here/

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

Someone probably ought to take the role of parent here;

Related, an alleged assistant professor of fairy tales thinks her four year old is in one of her clases, evidently.

When she announced she was dressing up as Disney’s famous princess Elsa for Halloween, my heart froze. Not only was Elsa no longer that cool, but also I thought we had successfully navigated past the sparkly, frilly land mines of early girlhood with progressive schooling and the sensible, Old World charm of Peppa Pig, who was only, by an unfortunate circumstance of birth, colored pink.[italics in original]

Froze, I tells ya, but I am not sure why a pig being pink is an issue, unless it is that pink pigs have white privilege or something.

Halloween is complicated when you teach fairy tales for a living, and it’s no easier being the daughter of a professor than being the mother of a princess. I try to help my students see fairy tales as living narratives that underwent countless changes as they were told, written down and eventually adapted for the screen. The Disney princesses we know and love take much of the fun, feminist spark and quirky historical value out of the fairy tale tradition.

Feminist spark of fairy tales. Right.

With the Grimms, and ever after, it’s her beauty and martyrdom that win the day. The Grimms not only infused tales with strong Christian values but also systematically rewrote many stories to reinforce patriarchal gender norms.

Right, that is exactly what they were thinking back in the early 1800s.

My 4-year-old doesn’t need a feminism lecture. Nor, for that matter, does she need to know the finer points of incest, infanticide or Little Red Riding Hood’s slut-shaming (by her grandmother’s cat — that happens!).

I had a cat like that once, had to take it to sensitivity training the way it kept eyeballing my girlfriends.

I never cease to be amazed at what the perpetually offended will take umbrage with next.

[Monty James]

That's not how debate works. That's not how any debate works:

@TeachFirst

We made a mistake.We published 2 blogs with opposing views as part of a recent debate on education. One was wrong. We’ve removed it. Sorry

Wrong opinion, considerately removed for the sake of debate:

Are there any limits to what schools can achieve?

[Hal]

Judge recalls key rulings from his 50 years on federal bench

The phrase “Equal justice under law,” which is etched onto the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, drives Keith and reminds him of lessons Thurgood Marshall taught him as one of his professors at Howard University. Marshall became the first black Supreme Court justice in October 1967 — the same month Keith, a prominent lawyer in his own right by then, was appointed to the federal bench.

He recalled Marshall saying, “The white men wrote those four words. When you leave Howard, I want you to go out and practice law and see what you can do to enforce those four words.”

[Hal]

How a Runaway Nun Helped an Outlaw Monk Change the World

[Lancastrian Oik]

Earlier this year, Peter Salovey, the president of Yale, announced that the university will rename a residential college that was named for John C. Calhoun, because Calhoun’s “legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery as a ‘positive good’ fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values.” This move, which was not without its critics, was emblematic of a broader trend to look back skeptically at individuals who were venerated in earlier epochs, and ask how they should be judged by the moral standards of today. At Oxford, a Rhodes Scholar from South Africa recently led a campaign to take down a statue of Cecil Rhodes.
One great fortune—and reputation—that has evaded such scrutiny is that of the Sacklers, a family whose dubious business practices are not an artifact of previous centuries but an ongoing reality. If present statistics are any indication, in the time it likely took you to read this article six Americans have fatally overdosed on opioids. Yet Yale appears to be in no hurry to rename its Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences, or its Richard Sackler and Jonathan Sackler Professorship of Internal Medicine. Perhaps it’s because the Sacklers, unlike the Calhoun family, still have a fortune to give away.

Long, but worth a read.