An interesting story on the state of the art. It’s still terrible.
I think he’s too pessimistic, though, and ignores the technology that will probably create the breakthrough: 3-D printing.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Young People And Porn
For the record, I do think this is a real problem. As I’ve noted in the past, I’ve often wondered if the teen birth rate is down simply because boys who learn about sex from porn are too dumb to ejaculate into the woman’s vagina.
The Hugo Awards
Some thoughts on taking back SFF from the SJWs, from Brad Thorgersen, and Sarah Hoyt:
I lived in fear, unable to associate normally or make friends with anyone. It was like being spied on all the time and knowing the worst construction would be put on my actions and words, even if the actions and words were not political, even if I just forgot what the week’s hate and the week’s cause was.
I got tired. I got really tired. I know authors who walked away after one or two books because they simply couldn’t take it anymore. I know others – gentle souls – who didn’t realize they’d been blacklisted on suspicion of being – dropped voice – conservative. This was particularly true of Libertarians (and libertarians) who never thought of themselves (I still don’t) as “conservatives” and couldn’t understand it when I tried to explain it.
All this was justified, you see, because in the minds of the establishment and establishment hangers on, conservatives are creatures shown as “right wing” on movies and tv (none of whose writers would know a true conservative, much less a libertarian if one bit them in the fleshy part of the *ss [and libertarians might.] They give conservatives (which again is everyone to the right of Lenin) informed attributes never found in the real creature: conservatives, in their crazy little heads, are people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, ultra-religious in a medieval fashion or a crazy-evangelical (there are some, but not many) one.
This kind of thing isn’t the only reason I haven’t been reading much in the past few years, but it doesn’t help.
[Afternoon update]
Michael Z. Williamson: “I am not a ‘real fan’.“
Climate Change
Here’s the original piece, on why the propaganda effort is (fortunately) failing.
Jews And Terrorism
Let them defend themselves. As Glenn notes, the proper response of the Jews in the thirties, rather than handing in their guns, would have been no-limit open hunting season on Nazis.
Meanwhile, the Senate is trying to rein in all of the anti-Second-Amendment actions of the administration (and some states). They should just abolish the ATF.
[Update a couple minutes later]
As always, easing restrictions on guns didn’t increase bloodshed in Illinois, either. These gun grabbers are always wrong, but they never learn.
Lefty Lunacy On Space Settlement
I had a lot of fun trolling the social justice warriors on Twitter yesterday, as a result of this.
Not sure what prompted it, but perhaps it was Linda Billings’ latest anti-capitalist space drivel.
Dean Ornish
How many thousands of people has his junk science killed?
The Infantilization Of College Students
Even the Left is getting frightened of the brown-shirted monster they’ve created. I find it interesting that this professor has such a lack of self awareness:
Personally, liberal students scare the shit out of me. I know how to get conservative students to question their beliefs and confront awful truths, and I know that, should one of these conservative students make a facebook page calling me a communist or else seek to formally protest my liberal lies, the university would have my back. I would not get fired for pissing off a Republican, so long as I did so respectfully, and so long as it happened in the course of legitimate classroom instruction.
The same cannot be said of liberal students. All it takes is one slip—not even an outright challenging of their beliefs, but even momentarily exposing them to any uncomfortable thought or imagery—and that’s it, your classroom is triggering, you are insensitive, kids are bringing mattresses to your office hours and there’s a twitter petition out demanding you chop off your hand in repentance.
He keeps using that word “liberal.” I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.
[Update early afternoon]
The wrong time to coddle:
Between the infantilizing of campus culture and the growing global harshness, something has to give and—hint, hint—it won’t be the real world. The worst thing about the current climate of PC stupidity and mandatory cocooning on campus isn’t the ugly repression it entails. The destruction of free speech and free debate in the institutions that ought to be the citadels of intellectual liberty is a terrible thing and a horrible betrayal of everything universities are supposed to be about. But there is yet a worse consequence: the catastrophic dumbing down and weakening of a younger generation that is becoming too fragile and precious to exist in the current world—much less to fight the real evils and dangers that are growing.
These are the great-grandchildren of The Greatest Generation, corrupted by that generation’s children in the academy and public schools. How we have fallen.
Government Funding And The Free-Speech Clause
A clarification, for questions in comments from a previous post.
More Free Speech Problems
Though, actually, it sounds like this kid is kind of a nutcase.
[Friday-morning update]
This seems related somehow:
These little Junior Anti-Sex League members combine thuggishness and fragility in a particularly obnoxious way. They should be sent home until they are mature enough for college. And America. And no parent should pay tuition to a school that takes this sort of hysterical behavior seriously.
Higher ed (as well as public ed) is an effing mess.
[Bumped]