My sister had a “front row” seat for the June 1, 2005 – AFA graduation. From outside her home.
Envy much?
🙂
“… the destruction of higher learning by identity politics”
Heather MacDonald fisks the Harvard template for diversity scams
Via a link from Powerline, this City Journal article by Heather MacDonald: Harvard’s Diversity Grovel
Harvard University has just pledged $50 million for faculty “diversity†efforts, penance for President Lawrence Summers’s public mention of sex differences in cognition. The university would have been better off hiring a top-notch conjuror, since only magic could produce a trove of previously undiscovered female and minority academic stars suitable for tenuring.
Even Harvard’s bottomless resources cannot buy a miracle, however. So instead of a magician, the university has brought forth the next best thing: a report on “diversity†that, like all such products, possesses the power of shutting down every critical faculty in seemingly intelligent people…
MacDonald skewers, marinades and thoroughly roasts the idiots who can’t see their noses on their own faces. It’s a joy to read. Unfortunately, those who need to read it most will either not, or, reading it, will deliberately blind themselves to its plain text meaning.
Get in touch with your boomer memories
No, not “Boomer Sooner”—Baby Boomer
Over at Keep The Coffee Coming, Kat’s doing pop audioblogging that evokes a lot of Baby Boomer memories—even for folks like me whose most powerful musical memories are classical. Check it out. The Sounds of Silence, A World of Our Own and more.
Oh, and one more thing. Thanks, Kat, for the link to RadioWales (BBC)! Sure, the BBC is still stuck requiring folks to have a proprietary “Real Media” player, but don’t let that little piece of snottiness from the BBC prevent you from checking out this great site! If you like good folk, blues (and all kinds of derivatives), this site is worth hunting down, d/l-ing and installing a Real Player alternative. In fact, I’ll just give you a link to one that works, here. Transparent and (completely unlike Real Player) non-intrusive, non-invasive, Real Alternative is a decent software solution to Real Player’s stinkiness.
See what’s happening at Random Rambling
Some interesting viewpoints and some growth as a writer going on over there at Random Rambling.
Drop on over and comment on one of his posts—particularly the one where he’s asking for reading suggestions in sci-fi. It’s kinda fun for me to see someone’s writing and thinking visibly tighten up as they write more (unlike mine, which remains as prolix and obscurantist as ever, no matter what I try to do to be brief and simple and stay on topic. See what I mean? *LOL*).
Oh, and while you’re at it, why not send other folks by to make sci-fi reading suggestions or just (constructively) comment on one of his posts?
BTW, for those of you who care, he’s one of the good guys. yep. That’s what I said. A devoted coffee drinker. Don’t get me wrong; he’s got his own set of problems. Yep. He likes rap “music”. *shudder*
🙂
A Pervasion of Computers
Hey! A new collective noun: a pervasion of computers. heh
The English Guy has a thought piece up that will… provoke thought (d’oh!). 🙂 “Computers – Pervading Everything”
Give it a read. Comment there. Come back here and tell me your thoughts, too.
Remember: someone on some computer somewhere will be watching. So, you had better do this. ‘K?
🙂
ACLU Coverup?
Even Nat Hentoff, of longtime ACLU involvement and support, has written in recent times of ACLU improprieties and hypocrisy, but this?
From Drudge:
American Civil Liberties Union has been shredding documents over repeated objections of its records manager and in conflict with longstanding policies on preservation, disposal of records…
What is the ACLU hiding? Even the New York Slimes is all over this one. (Use bugmenot.com to bypass registration. 🙂
The matter has fueled a dispute at the organization over internal operations, one of several such debates over the last couple of years, and has reignited questions over whether the A.C.L.U.’s own practices are consistent with its public positions……Janet Linde, who oversaw the A.C.L.U.’s archives for over a decade until she resigned last month, raised concerns in e-mail messages and memorandums for over two years that officials’ use of shredders in their offices made a mockery of the organization’s policy to supervise document destruction and created potential legal risks.“It has been shown in many legal cases over the years, including the Enron case, that if a company has an established and documented shredding program they will not be liable if documents at issue in a lawsuit are found to have been destroyed,” Ms. Linde wrote in a 2003 memo. “If, however, the means for unauthorized shredding is present in the office we cannot say that we have made a good faith effort to monitor and document our records disposal process.”
But I certainly trust the ACLU to only shred outdated grocery reciepts and the like. Don’t you?
Funny
*YAWN*
While it’s big news (WOW! A link on Drudge! *LOL*), the BIG STORY in the NYT, today, “Researchers Say Intelligence and Diseases May Be Linked in Ashkenazic Genes” was old hat to some of us who frequently lurk (and infrequently participate) on an online discussion—what? Place? Room? Site? hard to categorize this one—at Jerry Pournelle‘s place. Greg Cochoran, among others, has been answering questions on this topic there for years.
It’s not news, except to the New York Times.
Drop in over there. You may be surprised atthe range of topics dealt with. Arguments aplenty, as long as they are well-reasoned. You may become one of the 150,000 or so regular visitors… maybe even a participant.
Saturday Fodder
Here’s a little Saturday food for thought from a Rod Schaffter email at Chaos Manor (just scroll down)
David Warren came across some excellent observations by Nicolás Gómez Dávila, a Catholic writer from Colombia:
— Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts.
— Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.
— The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows.
— The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation.
— Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it.
— To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking.
— Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities.
— The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.
— An individual declares himself a member of some group with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.
— The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence.
— “To be useful to society” is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.
Chew on those observations for a while…