Intersectionality - A new approach

 If they can do it, then we can too. Definitely a QOTD here, no?

UPDATE: You know, following the drama at Harvard it seems like it would be a good time for some prankster to plaster the campus with those ISLAM IS RIGHT ABOUT WOMEN and ISLAM IS RIGHT ABOUT GAYS posters, and let the intersectional fun begin!

Didn't mention where you get those posters, but yes, they should be everywhere. 

You Can't Win

 In a recent competition of the best and brightest of Americas High schoolers, kids demonstrated real genius in developing products with real utility, including adding an ingredient to soap that combats Melanoma. Here's the picture of the 10 winners up on the stage with their medals:

Click to enlarge. Note that most of the winners seem to be Asian. Big surprise. 

Note also that when you're short, and get placed between the 4 tallest people in the picture, you tend to get edged toward the edge of the dias. If you're holding your hands together (never do this!) and try to step back off the cliff, the photog will press the button just as you move, making it look like you're overdue for a bathroom break. Kid #8 probably invented antigravity, but this picture will NEVER adorn his wall without some serious cropping. I wish them all the greatest success and fortune downstream, although I suspect the biggest fortune will be won by someone who figures out how to subliminally compel people to buy his brand of sneakers.

Cynical? Moi?

Understanding Reality

Elon Musk seems to have tweeted this, which came out highly compressed and pretty much unreadable. Several others came up with larger, more readable versions, and I rearranged it into 5 pages which you can print in landscape format if you like, and read easily in any case. Click to enlarge the pictures and reduce your biases.

Practice

 Out walking today past a park pond, and here's the fire rescue people practicing pulling someone from the pond. 

As the "victim" was wearing a full exposure suit, it was pretty clear it was an exercise.

QOTD - Education

 Dr (very important) Jill Biden produced a paper back in 2006 on retention of students in community colleges that contained this gem, found at Gateway Pundit:

"Three quarters of the class will be Caucasian; one quarter of the class will be African American; one seat will hold a Latino; and the remaining seats will be filled with students of Asian descent or non-resident aliens."

 Now we all know that Harvard has been trying to reduce the number of Asian students enrolled there for the last few years by one subterfuge or another, but here's a scholarly paper on how to do it.

Who's In Charge Here?

 Found at Breitbart, this story about Clear Channel, the billboard division, who sold a billboard to Urban CURE, a group that promotes self help. Click the link to see the board.

Useful stuff, no? I suppose if I was a hard-core Karen, I could complain that it was cultural appropriation, with U.C. encouraging blacks to appropriate culture from whites, and maybe that's what's going on here.

Parker said the Milwaukee chapter of Black Lives Matter “didn’t like it” and “went after our boards,” alleging they were racist and sexist.

“They told Clear Channel Outdoor,” the company that approved and posted the billboards, “that they will control messaging, that they will control narrative,” she alleged.

Now when someone buys a billboard, who's in charge of the message? Would that be the buyer of the board, the seller of the board space, or any hobo walking down the street that disapproves of the message? I suppose it depends. If Al-Quaida bought one that said "Kill All Jews" there would be grounds to object coming from several sources. If the Republicans bought one that said "Vote For Trump" would a democrat have grounds to demand it be taken down? If this idea is taken to its last logical extreme, no billboard would exist anywhere. 

Superficially this is a good idea as it reduces visual clutter, OTOH a working capitalist economy demands that products be bought and sold, and advertising greases the skids. Conversely, silencing your opponents reduces the competition which goes against the 1st amendment.

Clear Channel Outdoor told the news station that the ad “did not receive proper approvals” and “lacked appropriate attribution.”

Which sounds like Clear Channel is turning an editorial function over to an outside 3rd party, BLM in this case.

 

 

Unforeseen Consequences

Looking at an article on getting college campuses open again this fall, and considering other articles suggesting that a large part of going to college can be done from home electronically and at much lower cost, I'm wondering if there isn't an unforeseen opportunity here for the right.

College towns are notorious for being hotbeds of leftist thought, probably because they provide 15-20,000 ignorant kids being taught by a few Marxist professors, and kept in line by an equal number of diversity administrators. Now imagine that the coursework is being taught online. If a student has a question, the same computer that brought the lecture, can also search the answer to his or her questions. In some cases, the students parents might also be available.

Since the students are staying home instead of being concentrated in the academic camp, there's more incentive to register to vote where you live. This reduces the supply of lefty votes in the college towns and gives the working parents who actually live there more clout.

Hmmm

UPDATE: If the CDCs guidelines for opening primary schools are carried into colleges, no one will want to go there anyway, and the party of micromanaging nannies will fall into even more disrepute.

Best Idea Yet

Dave Burge has a suggestion for schools trying to figure out what to do now that Robert E. Lee Sr High is no longer PC. In an effort to help with the exorbitant cost of changing the signage and the mascot, here are some suggestions:

Bruce Lee Dragons 

Christopher Lee Vampires 

Brenda Lee Apologists 

Stan Lee Marvels 

Spike Lee Joints 

Stagger Lee Knives

 Sarah Lee Calories 

Tommy Lee Sextapes

Lee Van Cleef was also suggested and I will propose they become the Lee Van Cleef Badasses.

How about the Lee DeForest Tubes?

I'm sure there's more.

Arguing With Liberals

Found at Power Line Blogs week in photos which is always worth the clickover:

To my observation, asking questions back is the quickest way to silence a liberal.

Next year I plan to attend the hearings for the anti-gun bills and ask a lot of questions.

Flat Earth - The Convention

The Colorado Sun, a new news source made up of refugees from the dying Denver Post and other places, went to the Flat Earth Society convention here in Denver, and has reported on the doings. I almost wish I had been able to go as some of the memorabilia would have made fine supplements to my collection.

Maker Faire

The Maker Faire events are one of the most fun ways to spend a weekend I've found, the only problem being when the stuff I bring proves to be one of the most popular items there and supervising an endless flow of kids keeps me from visiting some of the exhibitors I personally wanted to see.

Last weekends Faire filled a large exhibition hall at the Denver stockyards with demonstrations of everything from Rube Goldberg robot making to high end 3-D modeling software. There were exhibitors with fancy clothing 

Laser cut doo-dads like this light switch cover

 which might inspire other things made the same way

An exhibit of the steps involved in custom motorcycle building 

Some very fancy steampunk lamp fixtures 

An exhibit of stuff produced by the STEM students at a local school including fighting robots and pumpkin tossers 

Metal working, casting, metal cutting and engraving

Another exhibit gave everyone a chance to raid a junkyard for parts and build their own robot

And of course a chance for the kids to take a shot at a stuffed camel

with a huge Nerf gun 

This year the nerf gun featured a rifled barrel which got the kids noticeably smaller groups. This called for better sights 

 which the folks at Epilog Laser were kind enough to knock out right there

I also brought my can crusher and the kids ran some 3 large bags of cans through it for me. We discovered that when mounted horizontally, the crusher can't reliably hit a rectangular trash can sitting directly under it. Turned vertically, it tosses the cans about 12-15 feet giving the kids a challenge to catch them in a bag.

A rudimentary Iron Man exoskeleton which may find application in assisted living facilities was right next to me but somehow I don't seem to have any good pictures. That's it behind the crusher.

There was one drawback to all this. When the nerf dart (2in dia x 12" long) hit the table holding the camel, the bang of the impact on the sounding board of the table immediately attracted every kid within 100 yards to get in line for a shot. As a result I was busy herding cats being range officer from 9 AM to 6 PM at which point I was barely able to remain standing. It also meant I missed seeing some of the exhibitors I really wanted to talk to. The Solid Works rep, for example.

Judenrein at Denver University

Well, not exactly Juden, but in this case, they have effectively driven out the Young Americans for Freedom and the Federalist Society. The target is different, but the philosophy remains the same. Tuition at D.U. is steep so only the best-heeled liberals can send their offspring to it and if they tend to be of a conservative bent, they need to learn to keep their opinions to themselves.

This is a university! You can't take a conflicting opinion here!

It's embarrassing to find oneself living so near such a bastion of bigotry.

Social Scores

In China, it kind of looks like you start out with a social score of zero. If you do nothing, it stays at zero. Grumble about life in general or the government in particular, and it drops. Unless of course the official you were complaining about happens to be on a higher ups list in which case the officials score goes down and yours goes up.

Setting the same system up here involves first setting it up in the school system where anything can be rationalized as being for the greater good and necessary to keep things orderly. By the time a kid graduates, it's the only system they've known and they know that complaining will reduce your social score.

Seasonal Entertainment - Punkin Chunkin

Season change here is when Mother Nature grabs the switch from Summer to Winter and bangs it up and down several times just to keep everyone on their toes. Last night the first snow hit, projected to be 2-5 inches of heavy wet stuff that melts on contact with the streets and sticks to all the foliage. Since none of the trees here have lost any leaves yet, I'd say that the next week or two will be a busy one for the tree people or anyone with a chainsaw. The power just came back on, so here's a post.

Last weekend was the official Punkin Chunkin contest as the Delaware site remains tied up in a lawsuit. I've been helping the Jefferson County Open School with their entry, the Dead Ent Resurrection as they hoped to better last years toss of 430 feet and second place in their class.

Here they are, putting some between shot repair work in. Seems the improvements put a bit more strain on the arm and some of the structure. Their practice of taking the machine apart and stacking it outdoors uncovered probably didn't help either, but they made 493 feet this year and reportedly took first place in their division, so yay us!

Other friends of mine included the local SCA chapter with a historically correct machine

 Complete with decorative young ladies and armored knights
Also there was a centrifugal machine, Inertia II, which had some issues with its release timing

In this pic the tapered arm is spinning at a pretty good clip. the whistle of the air is impressive. Motive power is from a 454 cu in Chevy engine. In the foreground is Sonic Pumpkin, a compressed air gun.

Big 10 Inch is a perennial contender. The air guns were able to consistently get out beyond 4000 feet although I did not hear of any reaching the elusive goal of 5280 ft this year. The Kamikazi is the redecorated effort of Mike B who added 22 ft of barrel to get into the 4000+ club this year.

Looks like the condensate might be building up in his tank. Building these things is always a problem as most of us live in the 'burbs and no matter how friendly the neighborhood, there's always some curmudgeon complaining about artistic endeavors like these, especially if it's being done out where it can be seen.

In the foreground is a linear catapult of the sort the Navy favors for launching planes. The big one behind it features a huge collection of garage door springs and is called "Not In My Driveway" which was named by the builders wife.

The red and white machine is called Pluto and features 2 articulated arms plus a sling. This one has broken into the 2000 ft club and was built just down the road from me. I think there's more cement in its counterweight than in my driveway.

QOTD - Mathematics Is Oppressive

Having made most of my living by knowing simple math, I never thought it was all that oppressive or difficult, but then this is a journalist talking. She cites a new paper covering "intersectional mathematics". The lines quoted in the article read:

Mathematical ethics recognizes that, for centuries, mathematics has been used as a dehumanizing tool. Does one’s IQ fall on the lower half of the bell curve? Mathematics tells us that individual is intellectually lacking.

And here I thought that psychologists defined what constituted "intellectually lacking" and the math was only to figure out the degree to which you were afflicted.

The thing about mathematics is that it can be used by almost anybody to add a sometimes much needed patina of legitimacy to an otherwise completely hare-brained theory of anything from global warming/cooling to even suggesting an economic validity to a government budget request. As long as half of ones constituents fall on the wrong side of that bell curve, adding a few formulae to an otherwise dull Power Point presentation will fool 50% of the voters into thinking you're on to something. Include a bribe for one or two people who can see what you're doing and voila! you get your grant.

QOTD - Saying No

You can say No in a variety of ways. When asked to surrender by the Germans, Gen McAulliffe famously replied "Nuts!"

When asked to surrender by Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman empire, the Cossacks of Ukraine came up with a much wordier response. Cossaks being the Klingons of the diplomatic world, the thought that this response might start a war was probably considered a feature rather than a bug.

Found the initial reference to this on Samizdata in the comments of a piece comparing various methods of attacking the press, some of which sound like great fun. The references there took me to Wikipedia where not only the quote in its entirety appears , but also the initial demand by the Sultan that inspired the thing:

Sultan Mehmed IV to the Zaporozhian Cossacks:
As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God Himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians - I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.
--Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV

The Cossacks' reply came as a stream of invective and vulgar rhymes, parodying the Sultan's titles:

Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!
O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shallt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.
Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
- Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.

Interesting to note that when translating obscure languages that while some terms may become subject to debate over time, like the word "brewer" which might also mean "drunkard", none of the really good inferences seem to have had any such problems. You have to wonder though if being a Macedonian wheelwright might be like being a quality engineer with Yugo.

 Ladies are commended to the study of fine literature so as to be able to say no in such a way at to not foreclose on getting the young man in question to help with your car or moving at some point in the future.

How To Succeed In Education

First off don't major in education. Major in something useful like deconstructionism of gay female African pottery, then get a job as the administrator of multiculturalism at the local middle school. Think I'm kidding? Check this:

The first hint is that staffing is going up faster than the student population. The second clue is that administrators are getting hired faster than teachers.

One other takeaway is that Colorado student population seems to be growing at least twice the rate of the other states in this article. People are fleeing the socialist hell holes like CA, IL, and NJ and coming here, where they vote in more socialists. Better border controls are obviously called for.

The State Of Education

In Colorado anyway. Saw this on a car in the faculty parking lot at a middle school on my dog-walking route:

The owner should know after all, he/she teaches both of them.

Speaking of dog walking:

Doesn't this look idyllic? It's about 25 yards from one of the busier streets here. Good thing it doesn't come with a sound track.

Not Quite Gun Control

Prof Timothy Smith of the U of Minn. has a plan to at least help cover the costs of gun violence which he sees as quite reasonable. It's an annual registration fee on rifles and pistols amounting to $15/year on rifles and $200/yr on pistols. Presumably we would get little license plates to affix to our guns to which the year and month sticker would be attached.

Only a couple of problems.
Item 1 is that word "registration". It's been tried in Australia, Connecticut, New York, and Canada and the compliance rate varies from 5-20%. In less liberal areas I foresee lower rates.
Item 2 is that you're assessing a tax on an enumerated right, you know like voting. Of course if Hill gets elected the poll tax may see a revival and I'm sure her Supreme court will see nothing wrong with that.

My suggestion if you really want to reduce the number of gun deaths in this country would be to attack not the guns, but the users. Since the professor has no problem with a poll tax, let me suggest he switch his emphasis to the users and bring back the post civil war Black Codes. Most homicides are, alas committed by black and Hispanic youth against other black and Hispanic youth. making it illegal for blacks or Hispanics to own guns would no doubt reduce the firearm death rate by about 90%, excluding suicides.

Might be worth a government grant and certainly a couple of doctoral dissertations to gather up some grad students and visit the appropriate areas of Minneapolis-St Paul and try their hands at getting the high risk population to turn in their guns voluntarily.

Don't Know Much About Government

I like to think I know more than the average bear, but that clears a rather low bar. Here's an article from George Korda bemoaning the fact:

There’s a problem when American citizens are asked such questions as who was the first president of the United States, who won the Civil War, or are asked to describe ISIS; and the answers come back along the lines of Abraham Roosevelt, the French, and a British rock group.

Americans’ obliviousness of their governmental institutions and their country’s past runs deep, as illustrated by a survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It was unveiled in Sept. 2014 with a news release titled "Americans know surprisingly little about their government, survey finds.

Part of this I think comes from Americans deep-seated distrust and dislike of government in general which leads us to equate studying government to becoming an expert on say tapeworms. The problem here is that if you don't know at least a little about tapeworms, you won't know when you have a problem with them and need treatment.

The other part of the problem is that the tapeworms control the educational system and have an interest in the public knowing as little as possible about them.