PUTIN CRITIC BORIS BEREZOVSKY dies mysteriously.
Archive for 2013
March 24, 2013
March 23, 2013
THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE in two charts.
REALITY BITES: French Scrap 75% Tax On The Rich.
AT AMAZON, winter markdowns galore in Men’s & Women’s Clothing.
Also, today only: Total Gym XLS Trainer, $544.99 (72% off).
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Senate votes 53-46 to stop US from joining UN Arms Trade Treaty. “Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment that would prevent the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty in order to uphold the Second Amendment. His amendment passed on a 53-46 vote.”
Plus, the straight line of the weekend: “Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said he thought it was irresponsible to be considering major foreign policy decisions at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning.”
MICKEY KAUS: Ammo vs. Amnesty In The MSM:
Of course, in this the press is only following Obama administration priorities, which have always privileged amnesty over gun control. ((1) It’s way more important, given the limited efficacy of gun control measures;(2) it’s closer to having enough votes; and (3) as Mark Krikorian notes, once the influx of new Latino voters pushes the electorate to the left, Dems can probably get the gun control they want.)
That’s the plan, anyway.
RACIAL ALIENATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: The case of straight, white men.
Most people who are not straight white men would probably smirk at the idea that straight white men feel alienated in the higher education workplace.
Those who smirk, Sandra Miles said here at the annual conference of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, are hindering meaningful discussion about race.
Miles, whose dissertation on the professional experiences of black women in her field produced an unexpected sub-study about the alienation of straight white men, made this argument to a couple hundred people who turned up to hear more about her research. The ensuing debate was, unsurprisingly, somewhat contentious.
A comment by one white graduate student toward the end of the session summed it up well. He described a recent discussion about privilege in a higher education class, when he was shot down after offering his own thoughts.
“I couldn’t even begin to have that conversation because it was automatically assumed I didn’t understand,” he said. “To go through that experience in a higher education class – which is supposed to be the safest place to talk about that – was just terrifying.”
The preconceived notions and biases apparent in the reactions of that student’s peers spoke to the overall takeaway of Miles, who is university ombudsman at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus.
“We’re all unhappy – apparently that’s what equality looks like,” she said. “Every other group feels discriminated against as well, and when having these conversations with people who are members of these other groups, it’s important that you understand that.”
Miles surveyed 671 student affairs professionals, primarily in the South and Midwest. About 230 respondents were black, and 415 were white.
Snippets from the responses of white men suggested many of them feel unfairly judged and at times professionally limited because of their race and gender.
Well, you can only call people the enemy for so long based on their race and gender before they start to notice.
And note this, from the comments: “When I started in the student affairs field in 1975, there were slightly more men than women in the student personnel graduate programs around the country. Today, go to virtually any school and take a look at the gender breakdown either in student development graduate programs or in the student affairs division at that school. You will find that the gender scene has changed dramatically since the 70s. In fact, the field is probably closer to 75% – 80% women. That fact should have us take heed and explore what has changed. The pay is still education pay and lousy so that hasn’t changed. Men have fled from the field for some reason.”
If it were any other race and gender fleeing, it would be a crisis. And if student affairs offices were 75-80% male, it would be seen as creating a hostile environment for female students.
In truth, of course, an increasingly feminized higher education world is, in fact, hostile to men in many ways, and that’s one reason why male enrollment is falling, exacerbating the higher education bubble’s bursting.
Related item here:
Men don’t join the conversation now for the same reason that women didn’t in the 50′s.
In the 50′s if a woman complained about her sexist boss then the entire weight of the organization and society came down on her for not playing her part, and being uppity enough to challenge the real power.
Now after decades of the government and corporate legal counsel’s actively stamping out sexual harassment a new paradigm exists. If a woman complains about a sexist man then the man is presumed guilty until he can prove his innocence. (usually because the company would rather fire him on the spot rather than risk a lawsuit or government interference in their operations) In other words, “the entire weight of the organization and society come down on the uppity man for questioning a powerful woman.”
Maybe someday we’ll achieve that actual equality we’ve been seeking, but for now it’s just safer and better for the man to move on to a less dangerous place and continue his career there.
Coming soon in response: A wave of “Black Knights?”
COMING SOON TO THE U.S.: Two-Day Waits For Doctors?
AT AMAZON, Coupons Galore in Home & Kitchen.
STACY MCCAIN sticks it to the One Percent.
THE BIZARRE HISTORY OF INSECT HEAD TRANSPLANTS. “The entire process seems to have started in 1923, when a biologist named Walter Finkler reported that he had managed to successfully transplant the heads of insects. He’d been working with water boatmen, meal worms, and common butterflies – both in adult and grub form. The transplantation process was not complex. He’d grab two insects, cut off their heads with sharp scissors, and switch them. The fluid that the insects themselves leaked cemented the new heads in place. After a little time — a 1923 article says a few weeks — the insects were healed up and doing whatever their new heads told them to do. Finkler claimed that the heads of female insects on male bodies continued female behavior, and the head of one species of butterfly kept the habits of its own species, even when its body belonged to a different species.”
IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY’S KNIFE-SHARPENER REVIEW, reader Marc Greendorfer emails:
Your link to the review of the Tormek sharpening system reminded me of an item I purchased from Amazon recently.
It’s a lot cheaper than the Tormek, though it really is far from being the industrial strength sharpener that the Tormek is. But the Lansky system is a bargain for what it does. I took all my hunting and kitchen knives and ran them through the Lansky and they are better than new. You never know how dull your knives get until you sharpen them. The kitchen knives, in particular, really benefit from a regular sharpening/honing. And what could be more energy efficient/disaster ready than a knife with a manually operated sharpening system?
Good point!
WELL, FRANKLY, THAT’S WHERE IT MOSTLY BELONGS: More watching TV in the toilet. ” Nearly one in five people uses a smartphone to watch television in the toilet, a report has revealed. The study found Britons spend more than one day a week enjoying programmes and movies. They factor around 24.3 hours of viewing into their weekly routines, increasingly watching programmes on the go, the study showed. It found 16% of consumers use their smartphones in the bathroom and 10% of people watch shows on a tablet in the toilet.”
ARE YOU VIOLATING PUBLIC NUDITY LAWS IF YOU’RE WEARING BODY PAINT? “It’s a gray area.”
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Sporting Goods.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: IRS calls ‘Star Trek’ parody video a mistake.
Nobody’s going to win an Emmy for a parody of the TV show “Star Trek” filmed by Internal Revenue Service employees at an agency studio in Maryland.
Instead, the IRS got a rebuke from Congress for wasting taxpayer dollars.
The agency says the video, along with a training video that parodied the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” cost about $60,000. The “Star Trek” video accounted for most of the money, the agency said.
My wife made an hour-long documentary for less than half that.
IN PACKS: More guys are now shopping like girls. Plus, a trend toward “man-friendly” shopping spaces.
TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: New York Uses ‘Jimmy Fallon Tax Credit’ to Lure The Tonight Show From L.A.
TURNING SKATEBOARDS INTO Skate Guitars.
MY DUE PROCESS WHEN EVERYTHING IS A CRIME PIECE is still #1 on SSRN’s recent-downloads list for law. It’s almost up to 15,000 downloads.
EUROPE’S LATEST EXPORT: Jihadists.
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO MAKE SACRIFICES FOR DESIGN: 15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes That Will Kill Your Children.
TEENS PREPARE FOR CYBERWAR. “At events like the CyberLympics, CyberPatriot contest or just-announced ‘Toaster Wars,’ sponsored by the National Security Agency, high school geek squads are competing to see who does the best job at preventing unauthorized computer intrusions. This growing interest in cyberdefense comes at a time when the Pentagon officials are warning against damaging computer attacks from China and other nations, while stoking concerns that the United States education system hasn’t trained enough cyber-warriors to protect either military or civilian computer systems.”