Elsewhere (275)

Zareer Masani on artefacts, treasures and preservation: 

Before the British came [to India], there was no indigenous tradition of exploring or conserving antiquity. The wonderful Buddhist stupas of the Mauryan empire (circa 2nd century BC) were destroyed, abandoned and forgotten during the Hindu revival, and then many Hindu temples met a similar fate during Muslim invasions from the 12th century… The fact is that we have no idea what would have become of the world’s ‘looted’ antiquities if they hadn’t been preserved in Western collections. Would the treasures of Beijing’s Summer Palace have survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution? Would the Elgin marbles have survived Turkish tour guides chopping off chunks to sell as souvenirs? Would ISIS have spared those Middle Eastern artefacts that survive in European museums?

Readers may care to speculate as to whether, for instance, the Natural History Museum of Berlin’s famous Brachiosaurus, the tallest mounted skeleton in the world, which was discovered and excavated by German palaeontologists in 1909 and is currently maintained by German taxpayers, would have fared better had it remained in Tanzania. 

Jonah Goldberg on “affirmative action” and its victims: 

If Harvard lifted its anti-Asian [admissions] criteria, Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research said the share of Asian students at Harvard would more than double, from 19 percent to 43 percent. But that 43 percent wouldn’t be distributed equally among all courses and disciplines. It would be a boon for computer-science and biology classes, but even more seats would go empty in women’s history or poetry courses. And I can’t help but think that the faculties in the humanities and the softer social sciences have disproportionate sway on the cultural and political assumptions of the school’s administration. They are, after all, the talkers.

Related: Law professor Gail Heriot on the same, and on other campus dramas: 

You can bet that if it’s your job to find and worry about race and sex discrimination, then one way or another you’re going to find that discrimination, even if you have to define sexism and racism down, sometimes way, way down. Only the hopelessly naïve would expect that none of this would affect campus culture.

And not entirely unrelated to that, Sarah George on correcting the inherent evils of pallor:

Humboldt State University, in Arcata, California, is offering its students a series of workshops this summer designed to cultivate a “positive white racial identity” in its white participants.

Apparently, the “racial identity” of pale-skinned students is uniquely monstrous and dysfunctional, being as it is so “ignorant” and “oppressive,” and must be dealt with accordingly. Readers are welcome to imagine any other campus demographic being told repeatedly and at length, by administrators and educators, that its “identity” is not only insufficiently “positive,” i.e., insufficiently deferential and submissive, but also the cause of almost all human woe.

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

Comments

[David]

Riposte of note.

[jen]

Riposte of note.

Ouch. :-)

[David]

Ouch. :-)

Naturally, Ms Mire is a professional researcher, a provider of “the highest quality content,” and clearly sees herself as a bringer of woke enlightenment.

And yet.

[champ]

Beautiful video of Hawaiian volcano lava flow...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonder/the-latest-aerial-video-of-hawaiis-lava-flow-is-absolutely-mesmerizing/vi-AAzmxxl?ocid=U452DHP

[David]

Ouch. :-)

Via Dicentra, more of Ms Mire’s deep racial wisdom.

[Para Ingles Oprime Dos]

What they mean by positive racial identity is keep your mouth shut and don't run for student governance groups.

[WTP]

That this racist discrimination against asians at certain “elite” institutions goes on in America in this day and age is shameful. This crap should be thrown back into the faces of every useless politician who rants about racism holding the country back. And that goes triple if that pol actually went to an Ivy League school. This BS is no different than what they did to Jews for decades. Even assuming the racially charged, though likely true, excuse that such students lack “polish” or are socially “boring” ( no institutional bullying there, eh?) is it not the job of such an institution to help the student become a more complete, well balanced individual? Isn’t that some of the reason even MIT has a football team now?

Which leads me to another of my many pet peeves, wth does it mean when people say such-and-such is a “good school”? If a school only takes in students who are already quite capable in the skills they already possess, well obviously that school will look superior. But does that really mean anything? Though if Hahvahd, Yale, etc. want to discriminate against Asians (which though not commonly perceived in the US as including sub-continent folks I think the discrimination applies here as well, anyone confirm?), more to the benefit of the second tier and lower schools in the long run. Kinda my dream before I die to see Hahvahd, Yale, and MIT twisting on the vine.

[WTP]

Ms Mire’s deep racial wisdom.

Stop forcing WASP culture on us lmao

lmao? There’s a rabbit hole for my OCD.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...more of Ms Mire’s deep racial wisdom.

I have never met a polite African or Jew that insisted on manners over urgency so. Stop forcing WASP culture on us lmao.

Leaving aside that she seems to be implying a) Jews are in this instance counted among PoCs, and b) that they and Africans being polite is to her apparently a rare thing, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I am guessing that she has never been to Africa, or anyplace other than Canada. Having been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica, one constant that occurred, was formalities one went through when meeting people at a general peer level. In one instance (in an African country) it extended to sitting around trading life stories, cigarettes, and drinks before we could address the actual emergency taking place.

In Israel, OTOH, we addressed the emergency then sat around schmoozing, so I am trying to figure out what the hell she really means by "over urgency", or what she means at all.

[TimT]

Civility is also white Anglo culture

It doesn't take much reading in different sources to discover that good manners is a universally agreed-upon concept. The reason is fairly obvious: people who are courteous and respectful to you are far more likely to be treated the same in return.

[Ten]

So when does the right reject its own passive, normalized, give-us-your-poor-and-your-tired ideology and start seeing a people as a people?

[David]

I am guessing that she has never been to Africa,

I get the impression that churlish preening is far more important to Ms Mire than logic, history or facts of any kind.

[Clam]

Another win for socialism: Venezuela's inflation hits 40,000%.

"Venezuela began its 'experiment' with Bolivarian Socialism when crude oil was about $17 per barrel. Now it's closing in on $80. And the country is broke, teetering on being a failed state."

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/300897/

[David]

From Portland, Andy Ngo reports on Jordan Peterson and the Mao-lings who protest him.

[Luana Anders]

Christopher Langan on identity politics

But when group self-identification is officially granted to some groups yet denied to others against which they compete, this can only result in imbalance and injustice. For example, when some overpopulating groups which have overtaxed their own resources by reproductive incontinence and homegrown oligarchy are allowed to migrate into the sovereign territories of worldwide ethnic minorities - e.g., people of European descent - and enjoy special “oppressed” status whereby they reap special benefits such as free food, free housing, free education, free healthcare, affirmative action, reproductive subsidies, and special treatment under the law, and are even credited with moral superiority due to their alleged “oppression”, this can result in the destruction of the national, cultural, and ethnic identity of the hosts, leading ultimately to their extinction. Incoming groups which assert their own collective identities while denying their hosts any reciprocal right of political group cohesion thus amount to noxious, invasive, and ultimately lethal socioeconomic parasites.

[Sort-Of-Mad Max]

And I can’t help but think that the faculties in the humanities and the softer social sciences have disproportionate sway on the cultural and political assumptions of the school’s administration. They are, after all, the talkers.

They are also the ones that'll show up at your office with a few dozen thuggish C- students looking for a bump-up in their grades screaming into bullhorns and waving fake-blood-drenched plastic replicas of your severed head, in order to get their point across.

So there's that.

[Daniel Ream]

Riposte of note.

I outright laugh at anyone of any colour that tries to push the BLM narrative here. We've never enslaved anyone, least of all Africans. The vast majority of non-white immigration into Canada has happened post-Trudeau I and post-Charter, which means that no one harping on about oppression has ever actually been oppressed in any meaningful sense.

Natives, yes. We have a pretty awful track record there, and we have plenty of native race-hustlers and grievance-mongers. But when BLM hijacks parades, the reaction of the populace tends towards "what the hell are you bitching about?"

[David]

I outright laugh at anyone of any colour that tries to push the BLM narrative here.

Judging by her Twitter feed, Ms Mire has managed not to process any of the factual corrections directed to her attention. Instead, she’s tweeting about Somali fashion models and the “gentrification” of food.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Instead, she’s tweeting about Somali fashion models...

That could be not very woke and problematic for Feminists of Enhanced Avoirdupoisity - there is a reason Somalis have been called "skinnies*".

*(Probably one of the most accurate descriptions and least offensive names for the other team in the history of combat humanitarian assistance operations)

[David]

Another lady of immense wokeness. A “senior legal analyst,” apparently. Currently blocking the world and his wife.

[TDK]

The dinosaur bones belong to it's descendants or closest relatives, in that order.

If we want to say they belong to a different species that happens to live in the same geographic spot, then logically it can belong equally to any one of those species who happen to live in that spot or their descendants in the 65m years since. Since all humans come from African, we all have an equal claim.

Personally I say the birds have a better claim

[prm]

'Guilty of Loving You: A Multispecies Narrative'

Written by Susan Naomi Nordstrom (University of Memphis) and her two cats. One of whom is dead.

"Writing together as we disrupt the categories between humans and animals, human-centered philosophical concepts, and human-centered narrative inquiry."

Susan Naomi Nordstrom, homo sapiens, is an assistant professor of educational research specializing in qualitative research methodology at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Her research agenda includes poststructural and posthumanist theories about human–nonhuman relations and qualitative research methodology.

Amelie Nordstrom (ca. 2001-2017), felis domestica, was a black cat specializing in making kin with humans and (sometimes) other nonhumans.

Coonan Nordstrom (ca. 2009-present day), felis domestica, is a tuxedo cat specializing in a Haraway-influenced becoming with other species.

As WM Briggs says: "Here is a peer-reviewed paper—read and approved by peers, which means (1) peers exist, and (2) peers agreed."

[David]

As WM Briggs says: “Here is a peer-reviewed paper—read and approved by peers, which means (1) peers exist, and (2) peers agreed.”

That.

[ Added: ]

As noted some years ago in the comments following this:

This kind of narcissism and stupidity exists – and flourishes – because it’s institutionally supported. The people that [David Horowitz] mentions (and the dozens of academic clowns noted here) don’t exist in a vacuum. However incompetent or unhinged they may be, almost every one of them has enjoyed endorsement and approval from their peers. You don’t get tenure, or get to be a Distinguished Professor or a department chairman, without some institutional backup. They’re not just random anomalies; they’re expressions of a culture, a fiefdom - one that’s become dishonest and dysfunctional.

It's where the left prototypes its light-bringers, its Superior Beings.

[Freddy Quinn]

Coonan Nordstrom (ca. 2009-present day), felis domestica, is a tuxedo cat specializing in a Haraway-influenced becoming with other species.

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/10/pangur-ban/

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

[David]

Heh.

See also the first item here.

[Pst314]

“Another lady of immense wokeness” rants about “white dudes and their dictionary definitions of racism”

Because when the Ministry of Truth tries to change the meaning of a word we must all acquiesce.

[Governor Squid]

The Ministry does not try to change the meaning of a word. The Ministry simply observes what the meaning is, and always has been.

[Jeff Wood]

I had occasionally looked for this, and just found it elsewhere:

Joseph Sobran: "Western man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible. It's Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself. Other races feel like subjects of western power long after colonialism, imperialism and slavery have disappeared. The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will, because they don't grasp what it really means: humiliation. The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn't conscious of it. Superiority excites envy. Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call 'minorities."

Explains a lot.

[champ]

Russian bummer...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/downtime/massive-hailstones-destroy-car-in-russia/vi-AAzu8S3?ocid=U452DHP

[champ]

Iowahawk scores another winner...

https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/1013855789902163974

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Natives, yes. We have a pretty awful track record there, and we have plenty of native race-hustlers and grievance-mongers.

Technically, didn't Canada's "First Nations" of today ethnically cleanse other groups who moved further south?

[champ]

Technically, didn't Canada's "First Nations" of today ethnically cleanse other groups who moved further south?

The Canadian government apologized to their native peoples for taking over 150,000 native youths from their parents, and raised them in Christian boarding schools, all in an attempt to destroy the native peoples cultures.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-apologizes-to-aboriginal-natives/

[Nunya Bidness]

The wit and wisdom of Google dictionary

Mire

1. a stretch of swampy or boggy ground.
2. a situation or state of difficulty, distress, or embarrassment from which it is hard to extricate oneself.

Perfecto

[Richard]

"Feminists of Enhanced Avoirdupoisity" ... is that like "Intemperate Kelvin Kiddies"

[Pogonip]

I remember Imani Gandy, who was already in a permanent sulk several years ago when she wrote for balloon-juice.com. Sounds like her disposition hasn’t improved since then.

[Nunya Bidness]

I hereby charge Ms Mire with animal oppression and captivity. She presumes to know the cats names, but provides no evidence that these are in fact the names chosen by the cats themselves. What are their preferred pronouns? Did she even try to ask?

Qualitative research means no data, no statistics, no research question - all that is just so normative and oppressive. Qualitative research is for Mire just idle rambling on a laptop in the presence of cats.

[champ]

Islam, is there anything it can't do?

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/al-qaeda-to-roger-federer-convert-to-islam-for-10-more-years-of-success/

[Darleen]

Well, yeah, pretty much.

https://twitter.com/AdrianAlaberg/status/1012886379724828672

[Chester Draws]

All the cats I have owned have been passionately interested in other species.

Largely catching, torturing then eating them, mind you.

It's only size difference that prevents Felix Domesticus from giving us the same treatment. It's larger relatives have no such issues.

[Ed Snack]

Actually drove through a hail storm like that Russian one, but despite it sounding like the car was being pelted with rocks and seeing hailstones bigger than golf-balls bouncing off the windshield and bonnet, not a mark on the car. But it sounded like I was about to need a very expensive panel and paint job.

Maybe cheap Lada's don't withstand the impact quite so well.

[David]

Civility is also white Anglo culture

Ms Mire, who now lives, fashionably, in Brooklyn, has presumably attended an expensive university, where she internalised all of the ideological affectations expected of her class, and has since been employed as a journalist and researcher for Vice, the New York Times and Condé Nast, with her work on the cover of Teen Vogue. For a self-styled “child of refugees,” an escapee of Somalia, she has, it seems, done well. Better than many.

And yet if you browse her online output, there’s no hint of appreciation or gratitude. No recognition of how things might have been. Instead, there’s a well-rehearsed disdain for the nation that made her new life possible, a general air of churlishness, and intimations of some ill-defined but never-ending victim status. A victim status that we’re expected to reconcile with Ms Mire’s new and better life, and her position as a left-leaning media figure who gets to bitch about how oppressed she is, on account of being black or bisexual or whatever, in glossy magazines.

We learn, for instance, that in America, “homophobia, transphobia and toxic masculinity” are all-pervasive, inescapable and matters of crushing import - for middle-class women who went to university and work for Condé Nast, and who get paid to write about how fabulous and edgy queer poetry is. “American culture fuels homophobia,” we’re told.

Unlike in Somalia, presumably.

[TomJ]

It's almost as if there's a certain worldview that systematically ignores evidence.

[David]

It’s almost as if…

“The source data used in the piece is not our concern, and we don’t believe it would be productive to comment on it.”

Now there’s a sentence to ponder.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Now there’s a sentence to ponder.

Related, Profs say female STEM grades don’t reflect ‘perceived effort’

Four Otterbein University professors suggest that women may be averse to STEM fields because they feel they work harder than male students without earning higher grades..."This, in turn, returns us to questions of grading practices,” the professors write. “Does a course grade primarily reward conceptual understanding and problem-solving ability, or does it primarily reward hard work, reflected in course attendance, submission of assignments on time, etc., or some mixture of the two?”

Well, you are still dumber than a creosote post without the creosote and don't know any of the material, but gosh darn it, you worked hard, here is your A.

[Flubber]

"Well, you are still dumber than a creosote post without the creosote and don't know any of the material, but gosh darn it, you worked hard, here is your A"

And here's you engineering degree. And here's your job building bridges. And...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43418898

[David]

Meanwhile, in India, more post-colonial piety:

Satyapal Singh, the minister for higher education, asserted that “my ancestors were not apes,” calling for the theory of evolution to be struck out from the curriculum, saying that it was part of the “mentality of the British” that still dogged modern India.

Apparently, evolution is merely an artefact of “the imperialist mentality of the West.”

[David]

A mystery unfolds.

[jabrwok]

evolution is merely an artefact of “the imperialist mentality of the West.”

So it's like science and sanitation and the Rule of Law then. Yep, the rest of the world should really stop culturally appropriating those artifacts of Western Imperialism.

[TomJ]

When I were lad, my school have each bit a bipartite grade for each subject: A-C for effort and 1-5 for attainment. I don't think I ever got a C1 (really isn't trying, but knows this inside out) but it would have been the ideal…

[Governor Squid]

...because they feel they work harder than male students without earning higher grades...

One's heart bleeds for the feelings of these young women, but one must ask whether their feelings are reflective of reality. Has any research gone into finding out whether the females really do work harder? Do they spend more time at their studies than their male counterparts? Do they lack the informal support structures (study groups, office hours, etc.) that others take advantage of? (This would be surprising, given the heavily-reported superiority of women when it comes to social interaction and cooperation.)

If it is the case that male students are finding success with less effort, perhaps universities could encourage the male students to complain more often and more insistently about how much time and effort they need to put into their studies. Refocusing the natural competitive tendencies of young men to reward claims of sustained effort -- rather than claims of easy success due to superior talent -- may be all that is required to help their female counterparts to mend their tender feelz.

Which is, after all, the highest and most important priority of any good engineering program.

[Daniel Ream]

Technically, didn't Canada's "First Nations" of today ethnically cleanse other groups who moved further south?

Yes. Also, Great Slave Lake is called that because its shores were the slave trading highway for the native tribes of the area, before the British showed up and put a stop to that nonsense.

[Pogonip]

http://theothermccain.com/2018/07/03/bisexual-gender-fluid-7th-grader-leads-pride-march-in-maryland-capital/

Did you ever notice how these Woke kids all talk like 35-year-old SJWs? I call bullshit.

[WTP]

Well, you are still dumber than a creosote post without the creosote and don't know any of the material, but gosh darn it, you worked hard, here is your A.

You need to understand that there are a tremendous number of people out the who ascribe to the labor theory of value. Very, very smart people. Educators, professors even, with PhD’s and stuff. WTF are you to question this?

[Governor Squid]

Perhaps a workable solution would be to augment the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Science degrees with an equivalent* Bachelor of Participation degree.

* Not really.

[SumDumGuy]

Heh.

Nonsense, we have already established that illegal immigrants make us safer. We must forcibly relocate as many Central and South Americans as possible immediately. For the Women.

[champ]

Well, here's a novel problem...

https://metro.co.uk/2018/07/02/nobody-knows-why-its-rained-poo-18-times-over-british-colombia-7676952/

[champ]

Bachelor of Participation degree.

And, everybody who participates wins a trophy!

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Well, here's a novel problem...

San Fransisco to British Columbia: Here, hold my syringe and spoon.

I commend whoever put it in a bag. It could have been much worse.

OK, then. San Fransiscans are now at the point of patting people on the head for putting crap in a bag and not just crapping on the street, can't wait not to go there.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Alan Diaz dies at 71.

For reason, the article doesn't show the prize-winning photograph.

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

Er, that was supposed to say "for *some* reason".

[champ]

Then why do I keep reading about people dying whilst on a surgery waiting list...(kind of like the Canadians coming to the US to pay to have a procedure performed because it would take years to have it done in Canada [however, in Canada, it's "free"])

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jul/02/is-the-nhs-the-worlds-best-healthcare-system

[PiperPaul]

That photo still looks staged. What was Diaz doing in the house during the raid?

[champ]

As I've said before, pretty soon everything will be declared racist...

https://www.therebel.media/mic_com_says_square_dancing_is_racist

[Ted S., Catskill Mtns., NY, USA]

If you read the obituary, he was supposedly nearby, having gained the family's confidence, and was able to get in the house quickly when the raid started.

[champ]

Well, here's a novel problem...

I'm wondering if it's caused by the massive butthurt that the regressives are experiencing over Trump lately...

[dcardno]

...he was supposedly nearby...

I'm sure - since those sorts of raids are usually carried out very slowly and deliberately, the element of surprise absolutely *not* being an issue. It strikes me, as well, that when harbouring a fugitive and hearing a knock on the door (or hearing it kicked in), MY first reaction would be to carry said fugitive to the door - no doubt to save wear and tear on the lino.

[Darleen]

You know, sometimes you don't want to argue, you just want to slap the snot out of someone.

[Tom]

MY first reaction would be to carry said fugitive to the door - no doubt to save wear and tear on the lino.

I remember this very clearly, and they didn't bring Elian to the door. If you notice they're in an internal room with a closet to the right of Elian and the man holding him.I believe they were hiding in a back bedroom of the house at the time.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...you just want to slap the snot out of someone.

Indeed, as someone downstream from that pointed out, not nazi.

[WTP]

.I believe they were hiding in a back bedroom of the house at the time.

That was my recollection of the story as well. The cameraman was in the house with the family at the time of the raid. IIRC there was a long siege (for lack of a better word) where authorities were asking for the child to be handed over. Media were all over the place and a few friendlies were invited inside to get as much of their story our as possible. While I agree the photo definitely looks staged, I didn’t see it that way at the time. Seemed quite opportunistic but believable.

[Pogonip]

That cat lady ain’t going to dethrone Paul Gallico, for sure. He was an unjustly forgotten 20th-century American writer who wrote at least 3 novels from the viewpoint of an animal: The Abandoned; Thomasina, The Cat Who Thought She Was A God; and The Silent Miaow. And then we have Jack London, Anna Sewell, Richard Adams, Donald Harington, Felix Salten...