Swedish University Professor May Get Fired For Saying That Men And Women Are Biologically And Anatomically Different

In other news, war is different than peace, freedom isn't slavery, and ignorance isn't strength...

Grand Frer Regarde Vous*: Judge Orders Le Pen To Have Psychological Testing For Posting Pics Of ISIS Murders

This is completely f*cking insane.
I mean...it takes a lot these days to actually, physically make my jaw drop...but this did the goddamn trick.

Per Instapundit: France: partying like it's 1789...

*Or something like that. I can stammer out like virtually no French...though JQ once told me that I can do more with the modicum of it at my disposal than anyone else she's ever seen. Which is the kind of compliment I find extremely aw-shucks-ifying. I actually wrote some pretty cool Basic programs despite knowing jack shit about Basic... Similar things might be said about my knowledge of philosophy...

Dorothy Roberts: What's Race Got To Do With Medicine?

Just heard the NPR "Ted Radio Hour" show on this on the way home.
Wow.
Just. So. Bad.
I just can't believe how these crazy fads driven by leftist politics so take over. She was saying things like "Ha ha can you believe that some doctors think that someone's race can tell them about their genes?!" Yeah...that sure is a crazy thing to think alright... Kinda like thinking that their sex could tell you about 'em...
   Presumably the actual sciences will continue to reject this kind of nuttiness...but who knows? They might also knuckle under nominally and just reintroduce race under another term.
   Anyway, then there was the Z0MG something about some kind of breath-measuring machine and race! argument. Apparently there's something called a "spirometer," which measures lung capacity, and maybe whites typically have greater lung capacity, and the machine was invented by a racist!!!!
   It was textbook fallacies on parade.
   When I was a kid, I was astonished by the stupid things people would say...but those were normal people. I went into academia because I thought it was some kind of refuge from that stuff...but it turns out...academicians are just as dumb and misinformed as anybody else. I mean...I dunno...maybe they're better. But if they are, they're not much better. Not enough better for all their alleged training. They've largely got a different set of prejudices--politically correct ones. But they seem just as likely (and currently perhaps more so) just to parrot what the people around them tell them they have to believe.

John Tierney: "Reeducation Campus"

Depressing as hell.
I'm not at all sure that universities can--or should--survive in their current form.

Trump Defends Kavanaugh Against Sexual Assault Charges...2

"You call that sexual assault?"

Do The Ideas Of The Contemporary Left Have Their Origin In Soviet Dezinformatsiya?

link...but...you aren't going to like it...

   That's the kind of thing I'd not have read without a radiation suit on ten years ago...but now I find it interesting. First, because some of it's true--e.g.: Joe McCarthy was kinda right, as it turns out (as the Venona decrypts prove). My God. I sure never thought I'd by typing sentences like that one... Holy crap! Also Operation INFEKTION. That shit's totally real, of course. And I've heard that stuff about non-representational art before, but don't know whether it's true or false.

   But, anyway... I'm not going to be in any way surprised if some of those other claims are true. There's a whole lotta crazy in that list. And they're crazy whether or not they were pushed by Soviet intelligence to ruin the West. There's no question about whether they're crazy; the only question is whether the Soviets ever tried to use them in ideological warfare. (Well...one or two aren't crazy...just false.)

   But...why not use the quasi-Cartesian trick of thinking about all such ideas in that way? It's a way to help break the hold of custom and habit. A lot of those ideas survive just because students and faculty have basically been brainwashed into them. They accept them largely because they just can't imagine them being wrong. They've never been able to back away from them long enough to get any perspective on them. Imagining them to be the products of Soviet intelligence is like thinking of them being suggested to you by the evil genius or some similar malevolent force. (Though...a lot of faculty don't think that the USSR was malevolent...) 

   Anyway...anybody know anything sane about the actual history of this sort of thing, if any?

It's National Preparedness Month!!!

You know what to do.
Or maybe you don't.

You May Not Be Ready For Skynet, But...

I, for one, welcome our new etc. etc.

Tu Quoque Watch: Teenage Cory Booker Made Out While Drunk Once

Oh come on.

Did Biden Call Trump Supporters "The Dregs of Society"?

I don't really care, and I'm done trying to figure it out. Five minutes is enough.
   Sounds to me like a "Trump said all Mexicans are rapists!" case. Biden kind of said something stupid, which his supporters are parsing closely and his opponents are interpreting loosely.
   But, again: I don't care.

Trump Defends Kavanaugh Against Sexual Assault Charges

link
This is me striving to keep a straight face.

Remember How Anyone Who Questioned The Obviously False UVA/Rolling Stone Rape Hoax Was a Rape Apologist?

Just asking.
No reason.
Some dead-enders like Amanda Marcotte still won't admit it was fake. Listen and believe...even in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary... Though I don't think Marcotte ever even admitted that the Duke Lacrosse accusations were bogus...
   It's different in the Kavanaugh case, of course...but the Jackie case was instructive: feminists and other progressives not only believed an obviously false story, but many insisted that anyone who doubted that obviously false story in any way was a "rape apologist." That mindset has in no way changed since that time. If they're willing to believe a patently absurd story like "Jackie's", it's no surprise that they're willing to believe the Kavanaugh accusation...which at least has the virtue of not being an obvious fabrication.

"Why Are Pediatrician Groups Conforming To Transgender Orthodoxy?"

link
The answer's pretty obvious: group think / social fad + the influence of the left on quadi-medical quasi-science.
Unfortunately, after this embarrassing spasm of lunacy is over, there won't be much soul-searching by the relevant quasi-sciences, any more than there was soul-searching after the satanic panic.

Kavanaugh Accuser Won't Testify Unless FBI Investigates; Grassley Says It Can't

link

Accuser's Schoolmate Says There Were Rumors Of Kavanaugh Incident At The Time

Big if true.

Hey, Men: "Shut Up" and "Step Up"

I.e.: do as you're told
Counterpoint: get bent.
Speaking for myself, I won't shut up, and I certainly won't shut up and "step up"...given that that means: do what we say and believe these unsubstantiated allegations. And don't give us any lip about it.
   That press conference is a nauseating joke, and it illustrates pretty well why the Dems are losing me and people like me. To some extent it's just cynical political expediency...I've learned to live with that. But to some extent I think they really believe the bullshit they're spouting. That's the scary thing. They aren't entirely separated from the PC left.
   Slow down...investigate...keep an open mind...try to find the truth. But don't preach to me your trickle-down radical feminist nuttery.
   Men are the problem? You want to play that apocalyptic game, then perhaps you should recognize that, without false accusations made by women, this particular problem would basically go away. Nobody thinks this kind of assault is permissible. We just don't know whether it actually happened. We also know that the left is addicted to false accusations--to some extent simply as a means to achieve their political ends. (Though I suspect that doesn't matter in the Ford case.)
   The Merrick Garland thing sucked...but at least it was kind of straight-up power politics. This stuff is even worse in my book. (Well...in some ways, anyway.)

"The Hysterical Campus"

By the great Heather Mac Donald.

Ana Marie Cox: Men Should Be Judged On How Empathetic They Are Toward Their False Rape Accusers

Feminism has lost its shit.
   Of course we don't know that Ford's accusations are false--but that's what Cox is saying: that even if they are false, Kavanaugh should be judged on how sympathetic he is toward the person who has made a scurrilous accusation against him that will follow him for the rest of his life--and beyond. Because, y'know...women's pain is more special than the ordinary male variety. Also more important than justice. And truth. I can't believe that the average woman believes that. And if she does, she's sorely mistaken.

Kavanaugh's Accuser Wants FBI To Investigate

That seems like a good idea...though, I'd guess, it's unlikely to be a fruitful idea. Still: why not do it?
Also:

   [Mark] Judge, who Ford said was in the room at the time of the alleged assault, said in a letter to the committee that he did not wish to speak publicly. In the letter, relayed by his attorney, Judge said that he has “no memory of this alleged incident.”
   "Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school, but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter,” Judge said. “More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.”

Okaaayyy...though, honestly, I'd hope that if anyone ever accused me of such a thing, any friend of mine would either laugh in their face or punch them in the nose... At the very least, I'd expect a much stronger denial...something more along the lines of that's the most ridiculous f*cking thing I've ever heard...
   But it is definitely a denial.
   What a mess.

What You Hear At My School

Diversity diversity diversity--diversity diversity diversity. Diversity diversity; diversity. Diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity. Diversity and inclusion. Diversity. Inclusion. Diversity. Diversity inclusion and access, of course; access, inclusion and diversity. Diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity diversity.

Caitlyn Flanagan: "I Believe Her"

link
Flanagan's very reasonable.
I don't see that the truth is knowable without additional information that's not likely to manifest itself...though the truth did eventually emerge about the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas stuff.
   One thing that does, weirdly, stick in my head is the part of the story about Kavanaugh's friend stopping the alleged assault by jumping on them. That's so weird that it's somewhat difficult to believe that it's made up...if that makes any sense...
   Without additional information, however, I myself wouldn't press a button to torpedo the Kavanaugh nomination.

Former Sex-Crimes Prosecutor's Take On The Kavanaugh Question

More thoughts.

Soave On The Kavanaugh Allegations

Also reasonable.

"Birth Certificates Have Always Been A Weapon For White Supremacists"

facepalm:

   The Trump administration’s decision to revive and expand the Bush and Obama-era practice of denying U.S. passports to Latinos born in South Texas should come as no surprise. From his assault on Barack Obama’s citizenship to his allegations that Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists to his promise to institute a Muslim ban, Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes the only true Americans are white.
   But long before Trump rode to prominence promoting birtherism, birth certificates were an important instrument for policing the racial boundaries of citizenship. In the Jim Crow era, states used these seemingly innocuous public records to ensure that the rights of citizenship were accessible to white Americans — and no one else.

Trump has, of course, not said nor suggested any such thing. Also, the article is all about one dude from VA named Plecker. And, nutty asshole thought he apparently was...he was just one dude. And the phrase "the racial boundaries of citizenship" makes no f*cking sense. Also: note that she just breezes right over the fact that this is an expansion of a policy that Obama also apparently supported. So...was he "policing the racial boundaries of citizenship?" And none of that is even to mention that her description of the program is utter bullshit: "denying U.S. passports to Latinos born in South Texas..." That's so misleading as to be, basically, a lie. 

   The title is so insanely stupid and misleading, however, that I kinda gotta guess that it's that thing about authors not writing their own titles at work again.

David French: Evidence Against Kavanaugh Serious But Not Solid

This seems pretty good to me.
I'm embarrassed to say that my mind just flitted right over this excellent point:

But even the allegedly corroborating notes of the therapist raise a separate problem. They actually contradict her story on a key detail. According to the Post, “The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy that Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.” Nor do the notes mention Kavanaugh’s name, even though her husband says Ford named Kavanaugh in the sessions.

The former seems more important to me. As for the latter one: is there, perhaps, some practice among shrinks not to include people's names in such notes? Just wondering.
   Damn I hate this kind of stuff.

 

Megan Garber: "Brett Kavanaugh And The Revealing Logic Of 'Boys Will Be Boys'"

   Garber is--as should go without saying--right that 'boys will be boys' isn't a good defense. That's not exactly what Miller wrote, but what he wrote was in the vicinity. It's rightfully derided.
   But Garber simply ignores the obvious and unavoidable central issue: that the accusation is merely an accusation. If you were asked to bet your life...or even your house...or even your car...one way or the other, you'd probably be more circumspect than you are just shooting your keyboard off on the internet. The accusations are long-standing, and the accuser seems to have been reluctant to make them public. And it's the kind of thing there's usually no corroboration for. Though in this case...there is alleged to have been a witness.
   One can't help but cast one's mind back to the Anita Hill affair...and the truth did emerge there, though several years late. I basically just believed Hill, and thought it was an outrage. I still remember one of my housemates...female, and a dancer...reluctantly telling me that she basically thought I was full of shit, on the grounds that sexual banter was a harmless fact of life...everywhere but the philosophy department... I was basically accidentally right to believe Hill...and I still kinda think I was right that Thomas's actions were outrageous...but I do now appreciate more that the philosophy department isn't a place filled with normal people....
   Which really has nothing much to do with the Kavanaugh allegations. I don't have the foggiest idea what to believe. So I guess I defer to the wisdom of the ages, and don't believe the accusations, barring the production of some further support. Kavanaugh's friend allegedly witnessed the alleged incident... So that's something rather than nothing.
   Incidentally, both sexual assailants and false accusers belong in in a fairly deep circle of hell. Though I guess that the former already are supposed to end up in the seventh circle, what with them being violent and all. Does a false accusation count as fraud? Because, if so, that'd actually put false accusers one level below the assailants. Weird.

Signs Of The Trumpocalypse: Kellyanne Conway Being Reasonable Edition

I caught a couple of minutes of KaC on somewhere...maybe PBS?...this evening...and...she was being very reasonable. I was so astonished that I paused to so JQ could see it, but she was having a cranky day and threatened to burn the house down if I didn't turn the channel...but still....I know what I saw....

Soave: Ed Unveils Reasonable New Title IX Rules

Wow.
It's downright amazing how much better Trump's Ed leadership is than Obama's.
Strange but true...

The Accusation Against Kavanaugh

Well, honestly, it does have some trappings of credibility. 

   But...false accusations are the very lifeblood of the PC left...well...along with the sophistical manipulation of language...so...I guess it's got two lifebloods...

   A particular red flag, however, is that Kavanaugh allegedly did this with his friend in the room. That bit seems especially implausible, not only because the other guy is then a witness to the assault, but also because, well, honestly: kinda gay. Nobody wants to do anything even vaguely sexual in front of their friends. Well...I guess some guys must...but...can't be many.

   At any rate, given that such false accusations now produce status on the left...and given that false accusations of many kinds are now used routinely as weapons/tools over there...I think I'm more-or-less bound by something like principle to simply ignore such unsubstantiated accusations. 

   This is, as I think I mentioned recently, a departure from a long-standing inclination of mine to err on the side of believing accusations of sexual assault. An inclination, incidentally, that more than one female friend of mine has derided... 

   Anyway. One might say: can't risk this with a SCOTUS nominee. That's worth thinking about.

   Also anyway: more evidence might emerge.

Mueller: Text Us When It's Over

My sentiments more-or-less exactly.
More or less.

tl;dr: High School Biology Classes Are Now Politically Indoctrinating Students And Teaching Them Falsehoods, And That's A Good Thing

I couldn't even finish this it was so angrifying.
   Instead of indoctrinating students with the PC falsehood that races aren't natural kinds, you might at least just tell them that it's complicated and controversial and leave it at that. In fact, that'd be the best thing to tell 'em given the state of the contemporary disagreement.
   Here's a question from a test discussed in the piece:

5. True or False: When several traits are combined they can be used to distinguish one racial group from another.

We're told:

...on several questions—including number five—the students split nearly 50-50. “They’re guessing,” Strode says. (For the record, the answer he says he was looking for on number five was “False.”)

That may have been the answer he was "looking for," but it isn't the correct answer. The article complains that high school teachers used to avoid the topic, and praises them for moving back to addressing it...but it'd be better not to discuss it at all than to indoctrinate students with politically-motivated falsehoods...or at last not-known-to-be-truths. And as for the students guessing: too bad the teacher isn't guessing. If he were, he'd have a 50-50 chance himself. Instead, he's using a method that'll produce more wrong answers than right ones...and passing that along to his students. Much better to guess than to allow your views to be determined by the PC answer.

   Behold:

   Strode’s exercise is an anomaly. Most American biology textbooks and curricula don’t discuss race at all — nor do they grapple with the biology of sexual orientation or gender, for that matter. To some, these omissions seem appropriate. Early 20th-century biology textbooks, after all, were replete with ignorant racial and gender stereotyping and classifications purporting to be scientific—and some even extolled the virtues of racial purity. It would be hard to find such discussions in today’s biology classrooms and supporting materials.
   But to a growing number of academics, that’s a problem, and the omissions represent glaring intellectual lacunae—a sort of sanitized approach to biology that ignores the political and cultural veins that have historically run through it. After all, the history of racial, sexual, and gender classification is very much a story of scientific debate. And biological concepts—and misperceptions—continue to exert profound influence on national conversations about diversity and human difference.
   With these realities in mind, some educators, scientists, and sociologists are working to bring such discussions back into American biology classrooms and textbooks. Along the way, they’re criticizing common models of teaching—and raising questions about what, exactly, responsible biology teaching looks like during an age of resurgent scientific racism, bitter political struggles, and shifting notions of identity.*

Read more »

James Traub On The Swedish Immigration Crisis: "The Death Of The Most Generous Nation On Earth"

Very much worth a read.

   Diana Janse, a former diplomat and now the senior foreign policy advisor to the Moderate Party (which Swedes view as “conservative”), pointed out to me that some recent generations of Swedish refugees, including Somalis, had been notably unsuccessful joining the job market. How, she wondered, will the 10,000-20,000 young Afghan men who had entered Sweden as “unaccompanied minors” fare? How would they behave in the virtual absence of young Afghan women? But she could barely raise these questions in political debate. “We have this expression in Swedish, asiktskorridor,” she said. “It means ‘opinion corridor’ — the views you can’t move outside of.” Merely to ask whether Sweden could integrate Afghans today as it had Bosnians two decades before was to risk accusations of racism.
...
   An observation that is now taken for granted in the United States — that values matter, that they are transmitted culturally, that they can be only partly changed by social institutions — is treated in Sweden as a form of racism, as well as an implicit admission of failure. Low levels of achievement aren’t “in people’s DNA,” said Aron Etzler of the Left Party. “People change, cultures change. Society is there to give people the tools.” Swedes have good reason to have faith in their social democratic model, and they seem confident that it can do again what it has done before. Virtually everyone I spoke to on the pro-refugee side insisted that Sweden was not paying a price for its open-ended commitment to refugees, but rather gaining a benefit, albeit a long-term one.
...

Read more »

David French: "Now Even Evidence Of Kavanaugh's Good Character Is Used Against Him"

This was DA's self-sealer: the fact that Kavanaugh has a long list of women willing to attest to his good character is itself evidence against him.

Something Not Very Good On "Safe Spaces"

link

Noam Schpancer: "Stereotypes Are Often Harmful And Accurate"

More on stereotype accuracy.

After Reading Dahlia Lithwick's Indictment Of Kavanaugh, I Believe The Accusations Against Him Even Less Than I Did Before

He was on a naughty email list!!!!!1111
   Seriously, this is just about the thinnest gruel imaginable.
   Now that false accusations of sexual assault and hate crimes are basically just another tool in the PC toolbox, my view is basically that a few such accusations are to be expected against any prominent man. What a surprise that a SCOTUS nominee that the left has lost its shit about should be the target of an anonymous, 11th-hour, allegedly 30-year-old accusation... Each accusation has to be treated according to its own merits, of course...but merely qua unsupported accusation...well...you know...
   Honestly, I used to be strongly disposed to believe accusations of sexual assault. Either I was an idiot, or bogus accusations have simply become more common. (Note: inclusive 'or'.) One would, of course, predict that something would become more common when it is normalized and heroified. In fact, feminists have long argued that most accusations of sexual assault should be considered veridical because such shame and stigma attach to them. However, just the opposite is now the case. So, if that argument was previously sound, then it should be taken to point in the opposite direction now: now there are incentives to make accusations.
Read more »

Man Who Thinks Dinosaurs Were On Noah's Ark Tapped To Review AZ's Standards Of Teaching Of Evolution

Whelp, there's this.

Brendan O'Neill On Britain and "Non-Crime Hate Incidents"

I still can't believe this shit.

Heather Mac Donald: "How Colleges Teach Students To See Bias Where It Doesn't Exist"

link
To some extent, I blame postmodernism and the so-called "death of the author." Craziness among leftist activists is interwoven with craziness among leftist scholars. In fact, it's central to the PC left that there's no real distinction between the two. One central tenet of pomo is that all interpretations are equal. Thus you're free to claim that anything means anything; no interpretation, no matter how wacky, is better than any other, no matter how sober. Add to this the generic leftist tenet that politics gets to close any open gaps, and what you get is a view that says that everything can and should be interpreted in a way that advances leftist politics. And that means, among other things: interpreting everything that fails to so accord as racist, sexist, etc.
   Whether that's what's going on with the Coast Guard OK/"white power" dust-up...or whether that's a more garden-variety kind of PC nonsense, I dunno. I mean....of course it's not impossible that that guy is actually just a really, really incompetent Klansman or something...but if people had to bet actual money instead of just shooting their mouths off for free, a lot fewer people would be shrieking "racism!" I'd be willing to bet...oh...say a couple of hundred bucks that it was a Pepe-esque attempt at humor. Poor guy underestimated the craziness of the people he was trolling, unfortunately.

Woodward: I Searched For Two Years And Found No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion

Behold my complete lack of surprise.

However: Woodward is not Mueller.

4chan OK/WP Campaign Continues to Pay Dividends: Trolling The Coast Guard Edition

facepalm
[In case you need even more cringe...check out the comments in which progressives are insisting that this completely made-up "white power" symbol really is a white power symbol after all...even after the trolling campaign has been explained to them. "Seeing" racism everywhere is one level of crackpottery...but "seeing" it in some made-up shit specifically made up to make fun of the fact that you "see" it everywhere / make shit up...that's a whole 'nother level of nuts.]

Spiked On Transanity

It's Now a Thoughtcrime To Criticize Transgenderism
Trans Activists Have Declared War On Free Speech
Women Don't Have Penises
It Takes More Than A Makeover To Make A Woman