He’s a Seoul Man...

On screen: Trump's Seoul Train 

Let's start with this: 

Democratic expert on negotiations schools us deplorables

The Diplomad points out the irony of how the swell people failed with the Norks: 

We are now seeing the leaders of the two Koreas meeting, vowing to formalize the end of the war and to seek a way to denuclearize the peninsula. Huh? What happened? It must have been some tweet from Hillary or Obama, or some wise statement by Pelosi or Corbyn that did it. Gotta be. Or that Kim Jung-un, he's really just a pussy cat who loves his people and peace. Can't possibly be the man in the White House, because we all just KNOW that he's a clown and a loudmouth who doesn't know what he's doing, and thank God, that at least Putin controls him, or who knows what would happen, eh? 

Sorry, scoffers. Trump gets the credit.

It’s amazing what a president can accomplish when he stands on his feet instead of his knees. 

As James Woods pointed out, Trump will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize if this goes off, but they’ll probably give it to Kim Jong Un, because, well it’s Donald Trump, and they can’t even... 

I’m betting Iran begins to get much more reasonable sometime soon. 

The Future is Stranger Than We Can Imagine

On screen: Bill Cosby retrial verdict: Guilty on all 3 counts of aggravated indecent assault

Imagine if you could time travel back to about 1985 or so and tell people:

I have seen the future, and in it:

•  Olympic decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner will become a male-to-female transexual
• OJ Simpson will kill his estranged wife and someone who just happened to be with her with a knife, and get away with it. Sometime after, he'll be convicted of armed robbery to steal back his own memorabilia and go to prison for eight years. 
• Donald Trump will become president of the US 
• Bill Cosby will be convicted of rape.

People would think you were a complete mental case.

Kind of a shame about Cos. He was sort of a childhood hero, until it came out that he was drugging women and raping them.

A quality rant. Not my own.

On screen: Fucking Leftist Bullshit

Kim DuToit is pissed, and I can't argue with him (language alert):

One of Obama’s more telling pronouncements (as opposed to his bald-faced lies) was “Punch back twice as hard.” Well, that’s what I’m going to do in future. I’m not going to let some asshole Leftist get away with behavior that as few as twenty years ago would have been unthinkable to the Left itself. If they attempt to suppress my speech because it’s “hateful” or “hurtful” or “threatening” or any one of their little masquerades which all mean “Shut Up!”, I’m just going to ratchet up the venom quotient.

If they think that I’m “hateful” now, just wait: I haven’t yet begun to hate.

Also this about the most extreme and vocal of the left:

But if the NeverTrumpers irritate me, the pillars of the American Left (academia, the Press, the Democrats and so on) have a different effect. Where before I looked on them with scorn and some amusement — FFS, do they actually believe that bullshit they’re spouting? — I now look on them as I would a rabid dog or a black mamba: they really do believe that crap, and they are that fucking dangerous.

[Emphasis mine]

I'm with him. I think there are a lot of others who are. Maybe the left is overplaying their hand and waking people up. We can only hope.

Read the whole thing, and remember that they're the people that want us all disarmed too.

Girl Boy Scouts? Or is it Boy Girl Scouts?

On screen: Visible in Absence
Links to: Thousands of girls joining boys as Cub Scouts
And just for fun: Girl Scouts slam Boy Scouts' decision to accept girls: 'The Boy Scouts' house is on fire'

It’s been about six months since Boy Scouts decided to give up on their mission and let girls into Boy Scouts. Apparently some Cub packs have decided to start early and get the girls in before the official program start. Sooners, to coin a phrase. Time to see if my opinion has evolved on this.

Nope. The idea hasn’t gotten any better with time.

I've been involved with Scouting as an adult leader for over 20 years. Hilda and I raised two Eagle Scouts. We know the program and have seen how it works. It's been a very good thing for us and our sons (and a shitload of work too). So what about the "girls in Boy Scouts issue"? It's been a while since the announcement, and I've had time to ponder it. What now?

I still think the Boy Scouts executive leadership have lost their fucking minds. I also find it ironic that the leaders of the Girl Scouts have the clearest picture on this issue:

The girls have gotten an enthusiastic welcome from Scout leaders and the boys themselves, he said. Some of the new members are friends the boys recommended, while others are sisters of Scouts. BSA officials have said the changes are aimed, in part, at making things more convenient for busy families, though that notion doesn't sit well with some leaders at the Girl Scouts of the USA.

"To me, a daughter is not a matter of convenience. You've made the choice for your son based on what you thought was best for him, and the daughter should be getting a similar decision. We know facts prove that the Girl Scout program is the better program for the girls and young women we serve," said Patricia Mellor, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains, which serves Vermont and New Hampshire.

"I welcome opportunity for girls, but for years, I've been reading the cases and the information coming out from Boy Scouts that their program was specifically designed for boys, only for boys," she said. "I see that they're not changing their programming and wonder why they believe a program designed by men for boys is going to meet the needs of today's girls."

Emphasis mine. First of all, she's right - but only temporarily. The program won't be "designed by men for boys" much longer. I also find the first paragraph above amusing. With a very few exceptions, the idea of girls in the program has gotten far less than an "enthusiastic welcome" from the adults and boys in Scouting that I come in contact with. The key thing, though, is the last sentence above, which I believe Ms. Mellor has wrong ("I see that they're not changing their programming"). I think big changes are coming. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but Boy Scouting won't be recognizable in a few years. This is how I think it's going to go down. 

1. The national office's promise to not force units to be coed will be broken as soon as the girl cubs start crossing over into Boy Scout troops. Moms who are feminist troublemakers (some redundancy) will make a general nuisance of themselves and claim their daughters are getting a second class experience if they are not right there with the boys, and the national office will cave in and order ALL troops to take both girls and boys.
2. This is going to cause major problems, because, duh, girls and boys are different. For one thing, girls mature sooner. A fifteen year old boy is a slobbering hormone-driven moron. A fifteen year old girl is a young woman. The level of potential distraction is off the charts, to say nothing of the variation in attention span, organization and compliance.
3. Girls mature sooner, part 2: because girls of the same age are more mature, they will begin to take over leadership positions in coed troops. Even if they don't win elections for top positions, they will swell the ranks of appointed ones, and if the boys vote them down, the adults will override the troop's preferences in the name of diversity, or something. They will likely outpace the boys in achievement and rank advancement as well, because they are more mature and organized (again, compared to boys of the same age). This will have the effect of discouraging the boys and and making them second class citizens in their own organization.
4. Organizations tend to like girls more because they are COMPLIANT (again, at least compared to boys). Just like in schools, leaders will eventually like the fact that girls are better at sitting still and listening than boys (go to a troop meeting sometime), and this will have the unintended effect of making the program change to suit the girls and not the boys - just like classrooms. Adult leaders will subtly change the program format to cater to girls and not boys, because boys are just harder to deal with. And that's why it's BOY Scouting to begin with, so the program can be tailored to their learning style and needs, and accommodate the chaos that comes from a room with several dozen boys milling around in it.
5. In today's Scouting units, there are many female adult leaders, and all of the ones I've worked with have been outstanding leaders who buy into the program and do their jobs well. This is because they are there FOR THEIR SONS. When the Cub Scout moms (dads too) start coming into the troops with their daughters, you can count on this changing. They will be interested in how the program serves the girls, because they are looking out for their daughters. This is going to accelerate the problems in items 3 and 4 above.
6. And, the masculine aspects of the Scouting program will begin to be downplayed. I fully expect the outdoor program to get watered down considerably. The outdoors can be uncomfortable and, well, icky. Can't have that.
7. The boys will lose their safe space. Instead of an all-boy environment where they can indulge their crudeness, poor hygiene, immaturity, curiosity and pyromania, they'll have to be on their best behavior. This will take a lot of the fun out of it.
8. The boys and their parents will grow tired of the political correctness that will inevitably come from all of this. When the BSA starts requiring anti-sexism training, we'll know we've arrived.
9. The boys will start to drop out. 
10. One thing that keeps the organization going is long time adult leaders who stay involved after their boys move on. The dedication and experience of these people is invaluable. Many of them (mostly men, but a fair share of women leaders as well) will grow disgusted with all of this and quit volunteering. I can attest to this personally, as I know some of these folks.
11. Boys who need male role models will lose them, and be surrounded by girls and women. This will hurt the boys who need the program, in its intended form, the most.

RE: the last point. Dalrock quotes a single mom in his article:

Since women don’t have to be chivalrous, the mothers of boys are the only ones who can point out that the girls are being petty by invading all male spaces.  In the comments to the article single mother ClaireW laments what girls are taking away from her son:

This is heart breaking to me. As a single mom to a young boy I know he desperately needs strong male role models guiding him. He’s just turned 8, this is the time he needs these men most of all, but now it’s not going to happen. Why can’t the girls have these activities in Girl Scouts? Girls and boys are equal, but that doesn’t mean they are the same. And why would we all want to be?

Emphasis mine again. I promise you there are a very large number of moms who feel exactly like this. I've seen many single moms bring their boys to Scouting because it's the only contact their sons have with adult males. If anyone thinks that all women are on board with this, I assure you they aren't. Many of them are PISSED.

If history tells us anything, it's that boys can only be civilized and mentored into high quality young men BY OTHER MEN. Women have a role, but they cannot finish the job. Only a man can be a male role model. Our society is crippled by young men who have never grown up to be real men because of missing fathers and lack of male mentors and role models. Many either become girls with male parts, or feral pack animals. Take your pick. Society suffers from it tremendously, and ironically, young women will pay the biggest price ("where are all the good men?").

Boy Scouting is no panacea for this problem, but at least the organization was, until recently, fighting the good fight. Now they've been kneecapped. By themselves.

But I'll let the Girl Scouts have the last word (last link above):

"Girl Scouts is the best girl leadership organization in the world, created with and for girls," the organization wrote in the post. "We believe strongly in the importance of the all-girl, girl-led, and girl-friendly environment that Girl Scouts provides, which creates a free space for girls to learn and thrive."

It continued, "The benefit of the single-gender environment has been well-documented by educators, scholars, other girl- and youth-serving organizations, and Girl Scouts and their families. Girl Scouts offers a one-of-a-kind experience for girls with a program tailored specifically to their unique developmental needs."

Well stated, ladies. I couldn't have said it better. Respect for standing on your principles. Change "girl" to "boy" above, and it exactly states my position. Good for the goose, good for the gander. Maybe we could send it to the BOY Scouts to remind them of their purpose.


And if any feminists have somehow found their way here, read to the bottom, and think I'm a sexist monster, my response is this: Piss off, and should you have children, I hope you have nothing but boys. That'll be a bitch of an eye-opener! 

One Does Not Simply Walk into Science

On screen: Puritans and Progressives

I started writing something on IQ and its effect on society and race relations in general, and it kept growing. I’m not sure I’ll post it. But I thought this quote from the Z-Man would serve as an appetizer: 

This is a good place to note that a generation ago, Progressives smugly put Darwin fish on their Subaru. Today, they shake their fist at the “scientific racists” using new finding in genetics to reveal the origins of modern people. Because unity is the promised land, anything that divides people is the work of Satan. It’s why racism is the great bogeyman of the Left. The growing mountain of scientific data revealing the diversity of modern humans, is seen as a gathering storm, threatening the righteous. Science is now Mordor. 

People are different. IQ is part of that. Science is confirming it. Now what? 

NYU Actually Has Some Adults on Staff

On screen: How to Rein In Student Mobs
This too: Long After Protests, Students Shun the University of Missouri

It's nice to see a college that is run by the adults in charge and not the kids. There was a student sit-in to occupy the NYU student center for the usual basket of progressive causes, and they figured they'd get concessions from the admin. They did get a response...

The extent of student fortitude was mapped out in a natural experiment conducted at New York University last week, when students vowed to occupy a student center around the clock (it normally closes at 11 p.m.) until their demands for a meeting with the board of trustees were met. A photo in the Village Voice showed seated students blocking access by taking up most of the space on a stairway. The underlying ideals appeared to be the usual dog’s breakfast of progressive fancies — something about divesting from fossil fuels, and also allegations of unfair labor practices.

NYU administrators showed little patience for the activists disrupting the proceedings at the Kimmel Center for University Life. But how to dissolve the protest? It turned out that there was no need to bring in the police. Ringing up the students’ parents was all it took. The phone calls advised parents that students who interfered with campus functions could be suspended, and that suspensions can carry penalties of revoked financial aid or housing. The students “initially planned to stay indefinitely,” notes the Voice’s report. “Instead, the students departed within forty hours.”

Emphasis mine. Forty hours seems a bit long to allow a mob to linger, but otherwise, I approve. Further:

Flustered NYU students, unfamiliar with the proposition that open hostility to the university could be repaid in kind, reeled. A Puerto Rican student, Carlos Matos, told the Voice he didn’t expect administrators to call his father on him. “I don’t believe it is appropriate for NYU to use emergency contacts in this way,” he said.

NYU spokesman John Beckman told the paper that the tactic used by the school was “in line with our long-standing practice.” He insisted that the administration did not “threaten students about their housing or other financial aid, but it is simply the case that certain possible disciplinary outcomes — such as suspension — would have an impact on those matters.”

I suppose Beckman and I will have to agree to disagree on whether to inform a parent, “If your son doesn’t vacate the premises, it might blow up his financial aid” constitutes a threat. The point is: It worked! Order returned, unimpeded access to the student hangout was restored, and students were generously freed from their monotonous sit-in and pointed back in the general direction of the classroom.

Again, emphasis mine. In other words, "nice college experience you're having - it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it".

You'd have to have a heart of stone to not laugh at this. But maybe the people in charge have been paying attention to what's been going on at Mizzou (second link):

Freshman enrollment at the Columbia campus, the system’s flagship, has fallen by more than 35 percent in the two years since.

The university administration acknowledges that the main reason is a backlash from the events of 2015, as the campus has been shunned by students and families put off by, depending on their viewpoint, a culture of racism or one where protesters run amok.

Before the protests, the university, fondly known as Mizzou, was experiencing steady growth and building new dormitories. Now, with budget cuts due to lost tuition and a decline in state funding, the university is temporarily closing seven dormitories and cutting more than 400 positions, including those of some nontenured faculty members, through layoffs and by leaving open jobs unfilled.

Few areas have been spared: The library is even begging for books.

I'm amused by this article, because it appears to emphasize the idea that minority students are staying away in droves because of racism or something. But the numbers don't lie. 

Students of all races have shunned Missouri, but the drop in freshman enrollment last fall was strikingly higher among blacks, at 42 percent, than among whites, at 21 percent. (A racial breakdown was not yet available for this fall’s freshman class.)

Black students were already a small minority. They made up 10 percent of the freshman class in 2012, a proportion that fell to just 6 percent last fall.

In other words, look to the 90% for the actual story. The drop in enrollment is almost entirely due to normal families (all races) who don't want to send their kids into a place where social justice nonsense threatens their kids' education, freedom of speech and, quite likely, their physical safety. 

If nothing else, the admins and students at NYU may have taught the rest of academia a potent lesson in how the real world works. 

Yo, New Theme, Yo.

It's different. Earthy. Crude. In an elegant sort of way.

Update: and it has birbs. 

Xe Puts the Lotion on Xir Skin...

... or else xe gets the hose again.

On screen: He says freedom, they say hate. The pronoun fight is back

Jame Gumb: gender-neutral pronoun pioneer

Ever wonder whether the the whole gender ambiguity issue, with its special pronouns and men in the ladies room, is really less about advocating for the rights and respect of a tiny minority of people, and more about annoying, manipulating and humiliating normal people? Jordon Peterson certainly has: 

Peterson has continued to state publicly he won’t use non-gendered pronouns — especially ones that have been created like “ze” and “zir” — which he said “compel the use of a particular kind of ideological language.”

“For me, personally, that’s the sticking point,” Peterson told the Star in a December interview in his west-end home. “I think that’s dangerous language. I don’t trust the people who formulated it. And I’m not going to be their mouthpiece because I know what they’re like.

“They’re power-mad people who use compassion as a disguise.”

(Emphasis mine)

Let's do some math to see what the picture really is, because the media and leftists (redundancy alert) would have you think the victims are everywhere. An internet search will yield more surveys and studies on the topic than you can digest, but after a dozen or so, the numbers start to converge. I won't link to all of them, but this one is pretty typical. 

Approximately 95% of Americans are straight, which means that 1) they believe in binary male/female gender 2) identify their gender with their genitalia and 3) are sexually attracted to people with the opposite genitalia. I'll call these people "normal", because, well, they are. A characteristic shared by 95% of ANY population is considered the norm in any reasonable context. 

Figures for homosexuals vary depending on methods and how they count bisexuals, but 4% looks like a good average. Overwhelmingly, gay and lesbian people match straight people in characteristics 1 and 2. They differ in the third, as they are attracted to people who have the same genitalia. Gay men, for instance, have male parts, consider themselves to be men, and like men.

For those keeping score, the ratio of binary to non-binary gender folks is 99-0 so far.

Surveys vary on the transgender population, but for this exercise, we'll round it to .5%, and assume that the whole of that group is genuinely gender dysphoric. These people are as gender-binary as straight people, because they are convinced that 1) there's only male and female and 2) they were born in the body of the wrong one. They came out wearing the wrong team's uniform, as it were. My own exposure to to transgender people is that they want nothing more than to be thought of and addressed as the gender they identify with. So, for example, no male to female transsexual would dream of going into a female bathroom or locker room and exposing themselves as a biological male, or wish to be addressed as anything other than "her" or "she".

For the record, in case anyone thinks I'm transphobic: I believe this condition is real, rare and often tragic. I wish every transgender person success in their transition, and peace and happiness at every stage of their journey.

We're now at 99.5% of the population who believe there's male and female, and know what side they're on. When you have that kind of consensus, society doesn't really have a problem. So why are we being told there is one? What's special about the last .5%?

The other half of a percent is made up of

• Asexuals
• Gender-queer (whatever the hell that means)
• Gender fluid (make up your minds) 
• Pains in the ass
• Drama queens
• Rounding error

Note: some overlap between categories. 

This .5% are the ones jerking the rest of us around. Their voices are amplified somewhat by the LGBT folks, who see them as fellow travelers, and side with them because normal folks haven't always treated any of them with respect. But if pressed on the issue, they'd probably admit they don't agree with the non-binary folks on most issues.

But the real problem is with progressives, who see this as yet another way to piss off the normals, and exercise power over them. Their goal is to make everyone speak and think total lies as though they were the truth, because that's the ultimate power to have over anyone. They're halfway there if they can force you to address people as "xe" or "zir" and threaten your freedom and livelihood if you don't. If you have that power, you can force them to do anything. Orwell knew, and tried to warn us: 

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother”

And that's what it's all about. Jordon Peterson is smart enough to recognize it and ornery enough to call it out for the bullshit that it is. The thing is, that bullshit is on the heel of the boot that would stamp on your face forever. Don't let it.

Working From Home (Mostly) Kicks Ass

On screen: 5 varieties of remote working in companies

I went up to my office cubicle yesterday to retrieve a personal monitor I had there, and decided to bring a bunch of my other stuff home with me. I'll get the rest over the coming week or two. It's time to move out. I don't work there anymore. My trips to the actual office have gotten so infrequent that they've become non-existent. There's no sense in pretending I have a workplace there. I've been a de facto remote worker for a long time. Might as well make it official. 

My real office

Note - working from home is not like this: 

 

Or this:  

 

It's more like this:

I started working from home about four years ago, after a medical incident. It didn't take long to realize that I should have been doing it long before. If there's one thing good about what happened to me, it's that it blunted all management resistance to me doing it for an extended period, and after a year of success at it, there simply wasn't any management resistance at all.

I had proposed it to my managers as a part-time thing a couple of years before, but they rejected it. They said that they wanted us to be visible to the customer. My mistake was asking permission: there were plenty of people who never came in, working remotely discreetly. Ironically, my principle customer contact had her office about 100 feet from my desk, and we never saw each other. She was always busy with her door closed, and instant messenger and phone worked out fine for our interactions. So every day I would drive to the office, spend all day facing my my computer screen, talking to my client and team over conference calls and instant messenger. Why not do that from somewhere more convenient?

It makes sense. I'm a software architect and Agile team coach. I'm in OKC. My team is remote, much of it in India. My closest US associates are in the New York area. My HR manager is in New Jersey, my operational manager is in North Carolina, and my client is in Florida (with a small group left here in OKC). In the linked article, our team is closest to "4 - a world wide remote team spread across numerous time zones". And, as it turns out, the customer's own changes to their office locations means that all of my US team works from home offices now.

My arrangement obviously won't work for every job, particularly those in retail, trades or manufacturing. Still, in an internet world, there are many jobs that do fit this model really well, and more employers need to investigate it. Here's an example of why:

To get a good job, knowledge workers still have to live in even larger cities where pollution, over-population, traffic, and cost of living are all increasingly (de)pressing issues. The rising cost of living — particularly for housing — in urban centers like New York, Beijing, London, and San Francisco mean that many people can’t afford a good quality of life. To add insult to injury, it’s not uncommon to spend over 2 hours a day just traveling to and from work. In an article called A 2:15 Alarm, 2 Trains and a Bus Get Her to Work by 7 AM, the New York Times chronicled the brutal commute of one San Francisco office worker who could no longer afford to live anywhere near her workplace.

And an added benefit:

As remote-first work becomes more and more common, people like Enric can choose to stay in their hometowns without giving up access to fulfilling, stable jobs. In that way, remote work has the potential to keep dollars and young people in communities and countries that have been left behind in the information age. A more equal geographic distribution of wealth would have widespread political, economic, and social impacts that we can only begin to imagine.

I can live anywhere I want, as long as a decent airport is within driving distance. And that means big savings from living in a lower cost-of-living location, as well as the little stuff: Working from home can save you thousands of dollars every year

A lot of businesses and managers are uncomfortable with remote work, but I believe this is the direction that the knowledge workforce is heading, and they need to adapt. I suspect we'll see a lot of corporate downsizing in office space, as they realize how expensive it is to maintain a matrix-like environment to house teams that really don't need to be there. I know that I don't want to go back.

I'll close with some personal observations on remote work:

1. I've never put in so many hours as I have in the last four years.
2. Some people may like to work in pajamas or gym clothes, but I hate it. I try to get cleaned up and dressed as early as possible, before the workday gets really going.
3. Establishing boundaries on your work hours can be tough, and I haven't mastered it yet (nor have my managers). Being connected and having your workspace RIGHT THERE is a terrible temptation for all parties. 
4. Even worse is when you stay connected on your iOS devices as well. I have to force myself to leave e-mails unanswered at bedtime, and remind myself that just because someone on my team has decided to work after 10 PM, it doesn't mean that I have to also. 
5. But it's nice to be able to pick when you want to work. I do some things in the evening because I know I'll be less interrupted then. 
6. Early morning conference calls are a fact of life with offshore teams. It's nice to eliminate the commute before or after them. 
7. By the way - that time you save by not commuting? You're probably working during that time.
8. You also can use time during the day for personal obligations when needed, because you can stay connected, or make the time up later.
9. It's nice to be able to pick up your laptop or tablet and head elsewhere, and know you can stay available if you need to. Staying on the job does not mean staying in one place. 
10. I have no guilt in taking a DOOM or web-surfing break in the middle of the afternoon, because I frequently get pulled into something that keeps me at my desk until 7 or 8 in the evening. They'll get their hours. 
11. Your time is your own, but you have to manage it - or it'll manage you. 
12. Having a home office makes you more willing to invest in nice gear, like an ultrawide monitor or high-end desktop speakers. I wouldn't buy anything like that and leave it at the office.
13. Remote connection, screen sharing and conference tools are actually better than gathering everyone around a screen in person. 
14. Conference calls can be unproductive, though, because you can't tell if people are engaged or not. 
15. Webcams are overrated. But it's sometimes nice to be able to see people's faces. Teams have to work this sort of thing out. 
16. Face-to-face interaction is still critical, which is why I like to be at my client's site every month or two. But that's usually enough: once the relationship is established and nourished in person occasionally, things work out just fine over the phone and teleconference. You don't need to see your team or customer every day.
17. Agile is a challenge in this environment, because a lot of the team communication protocols are intended for small groups working face to face. 
18. Introverted people are probably more suited to this arrangement. It would drive some people crazy, so it isn't for everyone. 
19. Those times when you are giving a web presentation to a bunch of important people on the client side? That's when the dog is absolutely, positively, going to wet his pants if you don't get up and deal with him right that freaking second.

Expulsion is How Adults Would Handle This...

On screen: Organized Heckling at CUNY School of Law of Prof. Josh Blackman Talk on Free Speech

... but adults in leadership positions at our universities are in short supply:

The protest, I think, shows a narrow-mindedness on the students' part, and an unwillingness to listen to substantive argument. But the heckling, which seems like an organized attempt to keep Blackman from speaking, is something much worse -- something that universities ought to punish, and that I would think many universities would indeed punish, at least in other situations. (The protesters' standing on the same stage as the speaker, I think, would also not be tolerated for other events; leaving the podium to the speaker and other invited panel members is, I think, the standard content-neutral practice in such cases.)

Heckling and de-platforming anyone you disagree with is the height of immaturity and ignorance. The students taking part in this activity need to be expelled after (maybe) one warning.

It's a shame the adults in academia are barely more grown up than the students.

Update: same day, second article:  Black conservative shouted down for speaking ‘against own people’

In one case, after questioning Owens on his views of police brutality and the school-to-prison pipeline, both of which are issues Owens deals with in his work with the One Heart Project, the audience member proceeded to ask him “what was your name again?”
“Burgess Owens,” he replied, to which the student commented that she “thought it was Tom,” in reference to Uncle Tom, before storming out of the auditorium while Owens quipped that “there goes our biggest problem.”

“The minute you start calling names, you’ve already stopped the debate,” he continued. “You’re not looking for answers. You’re looking for ways of insulting, and that’s not how Americans do it.”

The next questioner proceeded to aggressively rip the microphone from the moderator’s hands, shouting at him while he attempted to hold on to it. 

“I had the mic. You took the mic away from me. I’m talking. I’m asking a question,” the student complained as other demonstrators loudly backed him up.

He then proceeded to condemn Student Affairs for going “two-for-two” on bringing “xenophobic” people to campus who apparently speak against their own beliefs, saying that in addition to Owens, a Muslim woman came to campus and spoke “against her Islamic beliefs.”

When the moderator attempted to interrupt the student’s rant, the audience began shouting him down, with one woman screaming “let him finish!”

Owens attempted to address the audience member, but was repeatedly interrupted as the student protested that the mic was taken away from him. 

Such charming people. Employers should definitely hire them.

Not in My Back Yard, Hell No

On screen:  How about housing some homeless in your backyard?

Since the good people of California don't seem to have a problem with them camping on the sidewalk and shitting in the streets, I can't see that they would have any issues with this:

But this is California and more specifically, Los Angeles. So, local government is moving ahead with a plan to move some of the county’s exploding homeless populations off the streets and — wait for it — into your backyard.

The idea is to build little homes or large huts, depending on your scale, in the backyard of willing homeowners. A kind of YIMBY — Yes In My Backyard.

According to the county’s pilot program, rents to homeowners would be covered by government low-income housing vouchers with homeless tenants contributing 30 percent of their income, assuming they have some. If they don’t, well, who are you to question the wisdom of well-intentioned government spending more of your money to fix an intractable problem?

 How big of a mess is this? This big:

They’re already launching design competitions and exploring low-cost construction materials and financing options. LA voters previously okayed taxing themselves $4.6 billion (as in $4,600,000,000) to build homeless housing.

While the newest proposed solution is very la-la-land, the county’s homeless predicament is very real — an estimated 58,000 people living on the streets, in cars, tents and lean-to’s. Downtown residents walk out of their high-priced condos to wade through garbage, cardboard beds and human waste.

For a while some mayors placed portable toilets downtown, but they were removed after becoming sites for stand-up prostitution.

Emphasis mine. Also, Eww eww eww....

Hey, look, I don't have a solution for this, aside from reinstating a mental hospital system and rounding them up (most of them are druggies or crazy). Personally, I'll take a hard pass on the homeless hut in the back yard. Apparently most Angelinos feel the same:

To gauge interest in the idea, the county reached out to 500 homeowners. Less than one-in-five expressed interest. County officials pronounced that overwhelming. So, as you can see, the program is moving ahead, whether it’s realistic or not.

California always sets an example for the country. Whether it's a good example is open to debate. 

Invasion by Invitation

On screen: The Insanity of Open Borders

Bruce Bawer’s on to something here:

But facts are facts. Look through the State Department reports on the hundred or so poorest countries in the world and read a few at random, and you'll soon recognize that inviting their citizens to move next door to you is to put out the welcome mat for people to whom the world is a far different place than it is to you: a place marked by murderous hatreds between tribal and religious groups; a place where virtually every economic transaction involves some kind of corruption; a place where men take for granted their right to brutally abuse their wives and children; a place where due process is unheard of, where police officers and soldiers can beat, torture, and even kill with impunity, and where judges know nothing of justice; a place where sanitation and medical care are primitive; and a place where the rare soul who refuses to cheat and steal on a daily basis is not viewed as a paragon of virtue but as a fool.

Now, people can be easily removed from such cultures, but they cannot easily be liberated from what those cultures have done to them. Some people living under tyranny and barbarism genuinely long for honest employment and for freedom, and have skills and work ethics that would be of value to any country; surely a reliable way should be found to identify such persons and give them a new life. But most people from such places are hard-wired with that tyranny and barbarism, and take it with them wherever they go.

Everybody wants to come to America. But if we let them, it won’t be America any more. A nation is its people. If you replace Americans with someone else, we become something else. An invasion does not require soldiers in military formation.

Say it with me again: Culture Matters.

And as a reminder, remember this:

Speaking of New Year's Eve: recall what happened in Cologne and other cities on New Year's Eve 2015-16, when thousands of ethnic German women were sexually assaulted by foreigners – most of them part of the nearly one million-strong flood of so-called refugees whom Angela Merkel had allowed into the country during the previous year. In these New Year's Eve incidents, civilization, of which such large-scale, peaceful celebratory events form an integral part, was instantly reduced to savagery.

The Germans have lost their fucking minds, along with most of Europe. We’d best keep our wits about us before the shit-for-brains “open borders” advocates allow it to happen here.

Back to my Blog (or, are you as creeped out by Facebook as I am lately?)

On screen

Does this make you feel any better? Worse? I personally feel like I've been suckered. 

Maybe it's time to start blogging again and cut back on Facebook. Maybe it's time to spare my Facebook friends my strong opinions on current events and history, and go find some cat videos to post instead. Maybe it's time that I stop sharing my opinions for them to send to advertisers, and Lord knows who else.

Maybe it's time to delete the Facebook apps from my mobile devices, because I don't know what the hell they're doing behind my back. Limiting my Facebook access to a safe browser with tracking, ad and script blocking (when needed) is the only way I feel (somewhat) comfortable getting on Facebook at all these days. I know that they scraped my iOS address book a while back, when people from my office and client started showing up in my suggested friends list. I wonder what else they have on file?

I'm heading over to this room, and I'll post links to here on Facebook in case anyone wants to follow me over and listen in. But be warned:

• This is my private forum. I write about what I want. 
• I do not self-censor here. 
• When appropriate, sentence enhancers will be used liberally. A language warning is in effect at all times. 
• You will not find political correctness here.

 

The solution, should anything here harsh your mellow, is to stay far away, and ignore me when I link to this site in Facebook or Twitter. We'll all be happier.

Of course, this site belongs to Google, so out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the saying goes.