Links - 4th May 2019 (1)

Japanese Twitter community shocked to learn that train timetables are made with Microsoft Excel

Progressive professors want a blacklist of Quillette writers - "Dr. Katja Thieme, a professor of English at the University of British Columbia, took to Twitter recently to enact her own unique brand of McCarthyism. “YES. If you are an academic and you publish in Quillette, we see you. We fucking see you. And we are looking right at you.” This was in response to the following tweet by a Denison University History professor who stated, “And any member of our field who publishes with Quillette should lose all credibility.” One of Thieme’s followers then followed up with the astonishing suggestion that there should be a literal blacklist of academics who have written for the magazine. “It would be nice to have a list of Canadian academics who have published in that shitrag.” Using social pressure to stigmatize is a hallmark of witch hunts throughout history, and this tactic hides in plain sight on social media. But one wonders what the point is of declaring a publication dedicated to free speech and open discourse off limits? It appears that this mob is fearful of what could be gained by engaging in an honest exploration of ideas. What’s frightening about the ease with which these comments are made is that I highly doubt any of these educators have actually read Quillette.It has become fashionable to spout nonsense such as Quillette is “racist,” or Quillette is “white supremacist.” When asked to provide evidence, accusers often claim that they do not have to provide evidence, or they just never respond... There are actual white supremacists out there. But these are not the people Sears and his followers spend their time attacking. Instead, they spend most of their day attacking their own townsfolk who have varied and unsettled opinions of how to achieve the good life... The prolonged Twitter spat between Thieme and Sears’ following and the readers and writers of Quillette ended with a chorus of academics pledging to keep writing for Quillette or deciding to write for Quillette for the first time as a result of the attempted blacklisting...
'These people are the reason why the academy is failing & why so many of us choose to leave.'"

The real college-admissions scam is the university system itself. - "None of this could have happened if higher education had not itself become a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense. Students often learn virtually nothing during their college years, as University of California, Irvine, education school dean Richard Arum writes in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. They may even lose that pittance of knowledge with which they entered college. Seniors at Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley scored lower in an undemanding test of American history than they did as freshmen, according to a 2007 study commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. College is only desultorily about knowledge acquisition, at least outside of the STEM fields (and even those fields are under assault from identity politics)... What the pay-to-play admissions scam does not demonstrate, however, is that “legacy” admissions are somehow more corrupt than race-based affirmative-action admission policies—which seems to be the primary lesson that left-wing commentators and politicians are taking from the scandal—or that meritocracy is a “myth” that has now been debunked. Racial preferences are a far more significant deviation from academic meritocracy than legacy preferences, which are not even implicated in the current scandal. An underreported but salient detail in the Singer scam is that he “falsified students’ ethnicities,” according to the New York Times, because “some families and students perceive their racial backgrounds can hurt or aid their chances of getting in to schools that consider race in their admissions decisions.” This is not a mere perception; it is the truth. The claim that blacks are disadvantaged in college admissions, especially compared with legacies, is false... the 30 legacies admitted were also more academically qualified, with an average SAT score of 1,389, 33 points higher than the class average. By contrast, nearly 60 percent of all black and Hispanic applicants were admitted. Though the Times did not report their average SAT scores, it is a virtual certainty, given unbroken national patterns, that they were roughly a standard deviation below the class average... [there is] emotional malaise inflicted on racial-preference beneficiaries more generally by academic mismatch. It is not surprising that a standard item in the diversity demands regularly generated by “underrepresented minority” students is for a beefed-up mental-health bureaucracy... America’s education problem is not that too few students are going to college, but that too many are. One easy solution to the college-debt crisis would be to stop encouraging so many people to go to college in the first place"

Oslo stabbing: Pupil attacks teacher with knife and fork from school canteen in Norway capital - "A pupil has injured a teacher and three other staff members with a knife and fork taken from a school kitchen in the Norwegian capital Oslo, police said.The boy – who studied at the school – was arrested after reports he attacked staff with a knife. The motive was not immediately clear... A survey for Norway’s educational association last year found around one in five teachers had experienced violence over the previous 12 months"
Reading between the lines...

Tibetans told to put Buddha aside and worship at altar of Xi Jinping | World | The Sunday Times - "Chinese communist officials have ordered Tibetans to replace altars to prominent Buddhist figures in their homes with images of President Xi Jinping... In other displays of religious repression, monks have been threatened with punishment for holding Tibetan language classes in monasteries; parts of ancient temples have been converted into tourist facilities as Beijing promotes Buddhism as a money-earner; and the authorities have issued a database of “verified” reincarnated lamas for worshippers... Officials have made clear that they intend to seek to impose the next Dalai Lama, who by tradition is a reincarnation found as a child.They have already pursued this policy in the case of the Panchen Lama, the second holiest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, who has not been seen since 1995 when he was six. He will turn 30 in April in his presumed Beijing detention. China has named its own Panchen, the son of party officials."

Larissa Nolan: Man up, Hollywood, and stop making boys into wimps | Ireland | The Sunday Times - "The other day I praised my son for being “manly”. He’d handled a situation with a maturity beyond his nine years, showing honour, courage and responsibility. It seemed a fitting compliment. Yet he looked shocked. “I don’t want to be that,” he told me. “That’s a bad thing.” I reminded him of his school motto, right there on the crest of his uniform: “Viriliter Age”, meaning act manly. It was sad, as a mother, to have to reassure a boy his innate being is, in fact, a good trait. Not something to feel ashamed of, or guilty about.That any child should feel bad about their gender identity is particularly rotten in a supposedly progressive society. Yet it wasn’t wholly a surprise, considering the cultural brainwashing from a radical left agenda that is being force-fed to younger generations in the form of cinema. It seems impossible to go to a kids’ movie nowadays without being lectured on Hollywood’s twin pillars of liberalism: political correctness and identity politics. I just want to bring them out for an afternoon of innocence and pleasure, not ideology and propaganda. Instead it’s like being at mass.Worryingly, the constant message being transmitted is one of emasculation. Boys are inept imbeciles who require eye-rolling, risk-taking, can-do girls to come to their rescue. They’re to be ridiculed, chastised and denigrated. Males are weak, females are cool and powerful — in every film... Hollywood is telling us there is no place in society for masculinity. What might this do to boys’ mental health, and self-esteem, at a time when we pride ourselves on such concerns? I can’t decide which outcome is worse: that our boys grow up to be self-loathing male feminists, or react with resentment.What kind of sexist attitude does it engender in young girls when all their heroines are hard-bitten female leaders who, for all their independence and achievements, are obsessed with men and competing against them? Women in the movies get everything their own way. That’s not equality.It has left me questioning whether it is irresponsible to bring children to what should be “family-friendly” cinema while this plague is infecting screens."
Where the war on "toxic masculinity" leads us

Opinion | Japanese attractions are refusing entry to tourists, and it’s easy to see why - "The English-language version of national newspaper The Asahi recently reported that a “no-foreigners policy” was spreading as “a growing number of tourism facilities in Japan are refusing to accept non-Japanese group travellers because of the bad manners and abhorrent actions of some visitors from abroad”. Nanzoin temple, in Fukuoka prefecture, is one such destination. Its priests have been complaining that an influx of tourists from cruise ships calling into Fukuoka has altered the atmosphere of the temple, famed for its 41-metre-long bronze reclining Buddha, with travellers splashing around in a waterfall within the grounds, blaring music from portable speakers and even climbing onto rooftops. By 2016, their transcendental patience had worn so thin that the priests asked a local tourism website to delete information on the temple. Visitors today will find signs in 12 languages telling non-Japanese groups that they are not welcome, according to The Asahi, although solo tourists are still allowed in, as they are believed to be better behaved. In Kumamoto prefecture, the Yatsushiro shrine has suffered a similar fate, having been overrun with day-tripping cruise passengers, while an izakaya owner in the overcrowded city of Kyoto admitted that he would lie about his establishment being fully booked when groups of five or more foreigners showed up. “I want Kyoto to stop staging promotional campaigns targeting foreign sightseers”... The Cinque Terreare a string of five fishing villages on the picturesque Italian Riviera, a Unesco World Heritage Site and a tourist honeypot, drawing the crowds to Instagram the houses’ colourful facades and hike the clifftop trails. But only those appropriately shod. Anyone attempting to take to the walkways this summer in flip-flops could face a fine of up to €2,500 (US$2,810).English-language digital news site The Local Italy reported that rescuers were fed up of having to go to the aid of ill-prepared visitors who had become stranded on the mountainous paths."
Imagine if a white country did this

Airline meals: eight of the best and three of the worst, according to a very frequent flyer

Peppa Pig criticised for using the word 'fireman' in episode - "People have criticised the children's TV show Peppa Pig after it referred to firefighters as 'firemen' in an episode called The Fire Engine. London Fire Brigade (LFB) posted a message on social media saying: "Come on @peppapig, we've not been firemen for 30 years."Using out of date stereotypical gender specific wording prevents young girls from becoming firefighters.""
It starts with 'inclusive language', and we are told those with concerns are paranoid far right conservatives. Then the police arrest you for 'misgendering'

Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years - ""I'd always thought gays were regular people, just like you and me, and that the stereotype of homosexuals as hedonistic, sex-crazed deviants was just a destructive myth," said mother of four Hannah Jarrett, 41, mortified at the sight of 17 tanned and oiled boys cavorting in jock straps to a throbbing techno beat on a float shaped like an enormous phallus. "Boy, oh, boy, was I wrong."... the event confirmed the worst fears of thousands of non-gay spectators, cementing in their minds a debauched and distorted image of gay life straight out of the most virulent right-wing hate literature... "I knew it. I said we needed 100 dancers on the 'Show Us Your Ass' float, but everybody insisted that 50 would be enough," said Lady Labia, spokesperson for LAGALABATATA. "Next year, we're really going to give those breeders something to look at.""