More crushing necessary

Get a load of this crap by Terry Eagleton in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. "In praise of Marx":

There is a sense in which the whole of Marx's writing boils down to several embarrassing questions: Why is it that the capitalist West has accumulated more resources than human history has ever witnessed, yet appears powerless to overcome poverty, starvation, exploitation, and inequality? What are the mechanisms by which affluence for a minority seems to breed hardship and indignity for the many? Why does private wealth seem to go hand in hand with public squalor? Is it, as the good-hearted liberal reformist suggests, that we have simply not got around to mopping up these pockets of human misery, but shall do so in the fullness of time? Or is it more plausible to maintain that there is something in the nature of capitalism itself which generates deprivation and inequality, as surely as Charlie Sheen generates gossip?

Gad. Read the comments. Commies abound.

(via Althouse)

Tending toward evil

Talking to a friend of mine a little ago and he was bitching about being the primary (or nearly so) caregiver for his poor withered mither (he's a good son, despite his smell). After letting him vent for a while I suggested (in jest, I necessarily add) that he reenact that scene from Kiss of Death. You know the one:



Well, a few minutes later my phone rings. My friend. "Hey," I say, perspicantically. No response, except for this sound, familiar, yet unidentifiable: Bumpety-bumpety squeak, bumpety-bumpety squeak, bumpetybumpetybumpetysqueaksqueaksqueeeeeaaaaaak boink-boink-boink.

Crash. All this time I'm yelling "Xanthippe? Xanthippe! XANTHIPPE!!! (not his real name (except the exclamation marks)), and--nothing. I was worried. But as it turns out it was all a (to be continued, he lied.)

Abstract(s) of the Week!

Ethics & the Environment

Greta Gaard

Reproductive Technology, or Reproductive Justice?: An Ecofeminist, Environmental Justice Perspective on the Rhetoric of Choice

Abstract:

This essay develops an ecofeminist, environmental justice perspective on the shortcomings of “choice” rhetoric in the politics of women’s reproductive self-determination, specifically around fertility-enhancing technologies. These new reproductive technologies (NRTs) medicalize and thus depoliticize the contemporary phenomenon of decreased fertility in first-world industrialized societies, personalizing and privatizing both the problem and the solution when the root of this phenomenon may be more usefully addressed as a problem of PCBs, POPs, and other toxic by-products of industrialized culture that are degrading our personal and environmental health. The NRTs’ rhetoric of choice is implicitly antifeminist: it blames the victim by attributing rising infertility rates to middle-class women who delay childbearing while struggling to launch careers; it conceals information about adverse health effects and solicits egg donation and gestation services from women disadvantaged by economic status, nation, and age; and it offers no choice at all for the millions of female animals—chicks, cows, turkeys, pigs, and others—whose fertility is regularly manipulated and whose offspring are commodified as products for industrialized animal food production. An intersectional analysis shifts the discourse away from reproductive choice to a framework of ecological, feminist, and reproductive justice.

Configurations ("The official publication of the Society for Literature and Science")

Robert Yarber

The Cloud of Unknowing

Abstract:

The author presents a case of self-organizing daimonic mythopoiesis. The spiritual tourist, entheogenic experimenter, and the painter enfold a matrix of inter-developed "sorties" into the allotropic differentials of the autopoietic process. Fieldwork in Mandi, Himashal Pradesh, India provides an introduction to the virtualities of the peripersonal as it manifests in a "darshan" or self-showing of the goddess where the velocity of the psychopomp's body approaches pure phase-space. The immersive space of the peripersonal is further revealed in the author's absorption within the wire-frame virtualities of currently available three-dimensional modeling programs. Parallel work is conducted through experimentation with Animita muscaria, a traditional entheogen revered in various cultures. Possibly the ancient Soma of the Vedic scriptures, the mushroom provides occasion for somatic dissociation within which phenomenological data is gathered. Use is made of the phenomenological method of introspection, which more literally becomes a driving inward of the homuncular eye along a trajectory of the cine-somatic gaze through an introjected, intra-corporeal immersive scene. In the conclusion, this ancient "gaze of the clinic" is deemed useful to current research, as corporeality and the politics of peripersonal space enter new technological and juridical frames of reference in relation to agency, identity, and the state.

Conference on World Affairs, CU's annual "intellectual Olympics," opens

Note how mature I am in not calling it "CU's Intellectual 'Special' Olympics."

Actually it's not maturity, it's just been said over and over, and this year, as past years, shows why. The Gamera:

Flags representing countries from around the globe now line CU's Norlin Quadrangle, and the annual procession of panelists and dignitaries made its parade through the Boulder campus Monday morning.

Eager attendees have marked up their schedules, choosing panels on marriage equality, nuclear weapons, 2012 presidential candidates and ... Tinker Bell's cleavage and body enhancement.

The Gamera asks predictably ponderous and right-thinking keynote speaker Elizabeth Coleman, president of Bennington College, "What things matter in America today?"

EC: The challenges facing this country are enormous. They are unmet. We are watching. They are urgent. We are failing desperately to educate vast quantities of our young people. The challenges of health, this most civilized highly developed country is failing miserably to provide a minimum reasonable level of health to this society. Issues of the environment, particularly global warning, have the likely potential of undermining human civilization all together.

There are, of course, a number of panels on Global Warming among less-silly offerings like--well, here's the schedule; pick out your own less-silly offerings. The Camera has a story on NASA AGW scientist Peter Hildebrand, who spoke yesterday on "Climate change and wildfires in the west." Guess what he thinks:

"The whole Rocky Mountain area has been drying out," said Peter Hildebrand, director of the Earth Sciences Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "You put that information into a conceptual (fire) model, and it shows that fire incidents are going to increase as climate warms up. And that's what's been happening." . . .

Is there anything models can't predict? Other climate change panels include "Species extinction is no big deal" (probably sarcasm, huh? Hildebrand is on that panel, too); "Climate change: Past the point of no return" (ditto); "It's the economy: Whatever happened to global warming?" (yep); and "Can science feed the growing global population (Hildebrand, where are y--oh, there you are).

All right, since D-blog readers are by definition too lazy to click on links, I'll list a few other panels: "American optimism: Dead or alive?" (dead); "Peace by peaceful means"; "Why jazz matters" (boop-diddle-bop); "The wild, wild web: We are all outlaws online" (bang); "Socially responsible careers: Doing well by doing good"; "Near-sighted Americans: Misperceptions of the other"; "Death to the death penalty"; and "Life outside Facebook" (I'll take the death penalty). And that's only Monday and Tuesday!

Skimming the "participant prosopography" (yes, I had to look it up), there are actually two or three sorta conservatives among the scores of "progressive" participants, including WSJ columnist John Fund and NRO writer Michael G. Franc. Never forget: They're risking their lives for us.

The most paneled panelist is probably conference stalwart and former Dead Kennedy Jello Biafra. Let's see, he's on: "Sex: Good for you is good for me"; "What the left can learn from the right"; Katy, Gaga, Ke$ha: The new feminist role models"; "Dynamic Duo: A partisan rant"; "What's wrong with American sports"; and "Anarchy in the USA." I probably missed a couple. Always wondered what flavor Jello Biafra is. Probably dirt.

Anyway, sorry I have to miss it. Gotta wash my hair. Yes, all week. Scabies, don't you know.

Head tourism official: Ward Churchill

The Telegraph:

Liverpool is famed for many things – including The Beatles and its football team. But few would associate the city with one of the most famous political speeches in history.

Yet tourism officials in the city have published the extraordinary claim that Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech was written at a city centre hotel.

The allegation has been made in a guide to a major art event entitled "Liverpool Discovers", commissioned by amongst others, the city council.

A map in the guide shows how more than 20 locations where famous people were born along with places associated with celebrities and events in their lives.

The guide proclaims: "Martin Luther King visited his supporters in Liverpool three times, and the first draft of his famous 'I have a dream' speech is alleged to be written on Adelphi Hotel headed notepaper."

Even less well-known, Four Bears made his "the whites gave us smallpox bankies" speech in Liverpool, according to the gaffers down at the pub. Back to MLK:

[The speech's] links, if any, to Liverpool, have for nearly half a century been kept under wraps, and experts were quick yesterday to suggest that is where they should remain.

Dr King's biographer, Godfrey Hodgson said that the suggestion does not fit the facts. . . .

Prof John Belcham, a Liverpool University history lecturer who wrote an 800-year history of Liverpool in 2008, confirmed that he was unaware of any connection between Dr King and the city.

That, however, has not stopped tourism officials in publishing the rumour, and yesterday they were unrepentant. They said that the claim came from a public consultation and there was nothing to suggest it was untrue.

A spokesman for Liverpool Discovers said: "All of the facts we have came from a public consultation where we asked people to submit what they knew about Liverpool. . . .

"As you will appreciate it is sometimes difficult to prove historical facts, and we have run the map by local historians to best verify what appeared.

And they said, "What are you on about, son?" The spokesman steals arguments from the global warmists, too:

"Although biographers such as those associated with Martin Luther King may not be aware of such a fact, with all due respect to them, that in itself does not prove it to be untrue.

The Beatles got their start in Denver.

"Many cities reference stories about their history that cannot be absolutely proven –and in this case the word 'alleged' informs the reader that the fact is not set in stone."

It has though left tourist guides in the city somewhat out on a limb. One said: “We are getting people asking us to tell them more about this remarkable event and why there is no plaque at the hotel to commemorate it.

"We have to say it is some kind of urban legend that has been printed in error. It's very embarrassing."

Send her to finishing school

Fake team-rape victim Crystal Mangum has been arrested again, according to Durham-in-Wonderland and a local TV station, this time for "stabbing her boyfriend in the chest." Didn't kill him, just "seriously injured" him. First she tried to send a bunch of innocent lacrosse players to jail for 30 years. No go. Then she tried to burn down her house with her kids in it. Couldn't manage it. Now she goes a more direct route. Still no prize, but she's getting closer. Allegedly.

Colorado weather

Yesterday, 80 degrees and sluggy:



Today:

False headline

Telegraph front page tease: "King's teeth removed from auction." The story itself is more truthfully headlined: "Royal family requests x-rays be withdrawn from auction."

Rats. I'd have had one implanted right in front. Beat that, gold-toothed rappers! Of course, how would anybody know, unless George's tooth was conspicuously larger or more rotten than my other front tooth. I'd have to carry a certificate of authenticity around with me. Never mind.

There was this little nugget: "Experts who have viewed them said that the king's teeth were not the cause for his famous speech impediment that his [sic] subject of the hit film The King's Speech." . . .

Stephen Hancocks, the editor-in-chief of the British Dental Journal, examined the X-rays of King George VI's teeth.

He said: "The X-rays indicate that the King had good teeth for a man of his age.

"There is some evidence of bone loss which may be due to gum disease, possibly linked to smoking, as he was known to be a heavy smoker."

Update: Poetry Corner--of Death! Telegraph again:

Sergio Lapa, 36, was initially awarded second place in a poetry competition in the prisoner's magazine Inside Time.

The prisoner, who is awaiting trial at HMP Norwich on a charge of attempted murder, entered a poem called In Bed in his attempt to win the £25 prize in the March edition of the magazine.

But he was caught out when at least eight prisoners spotted the poem was an exact copy of Philip Larkin's poem Talking In Bed.

How many prisoners in the U.S. would have spotted it? That's right: none. I weep for our country.

Mr Lapa is now facing a barrage of abuse by prisoners at HMP Norwich.

A prison source said lags took poetry 'very seriously' and were furious when poems were ripped off. . . .

"There is a very moral code in prison when it comes to poetry and this guy is feeling the heat at the moment – there are a lot of angry people around."

A spokesman for Inside Time confirmed it had received 'many letters' about the poem. He added: "Do not plagiarise other people’s work, as you WILL be found out."

The poem by Larkin lost out in the competition to a contribution titled Relating from a prisoner called Brian Darby, of HMP Maidstone.

Thursday Night at the Radio!

Never been a big fan, but here's a pretty funny Fred Allen. He rags on Jack Benny, tries to sell an act with Charlie McCarthy, and talks to the usual line-up of goofs, including Mrs. Nussbaum ("Emperor Shapirohito") about the end-of-the-war housing shortage. This one's called, shockingly, "Teaming up with Charlie McCarthy" (7 October 1945).

Dragnet! This one's called, entirely non-salaciously, "The Big Pair" (21 September 1950).

The Johnny Cash Show. An August, 1954 recording from a Memphis radio station, when Cash was 22. Apparently it was supposed to be a continuing show, but this is the only one I could find. The sound's a little hollow, but Cash sounds good--at least on the songs. He's cutely klutzy with the between-songs stuff (he repeatedly asks people to send in requests--"If we don't know 'em, we'll learn 'em") and a little tongue-tied reading the commercials for Home Equipment Company.

He could have been a chapter in Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals"

First couple of grafs of a review in the WSJ of Great Soul, a new biography of Gandhi by Joseph Lelyveld:

Joseph Lelyveld has written a ­generally admiring book about ­Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet "Great Soul" also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive ­intellectual, professing his love for ­mankind as a concept while actually ­despising people as individuals.

For all his lifelong campaign for Swaraj ("self-rule"), India could have achieved it many years earlier if ­Gandhi had not continually abandoned his civil-disobedience campaigns just as they were beginning to be successful. With 300 million Indians ruled over by 0.1% of that number of Britons, the subcontinent could have ended the Raj with barely a shrug if it had been politically united. Yet Gandhi's uncanny ability to irritate and frustrate the leader of India's 90 million Muslims, Muhammad Ali Jinnah (whom he called "a maniac"), wrecked any hope of early independence. He equally alienated B.R. Ambedkar, who spoke for the country's 55 million Untouchables (the lowest caste of Hindus, whose very touch was thought to defile the four higher classes). Ambedkar pronounced Gandhi "devious and untrustworthy." Between 1900 and 1922, Gandhi ­suspended his efforts no fewer than three times, leaving in the lurch more than 15,000 supporters who had gone to jail for the cause.

Read whole thing. Long past time the little creep was taken down a peg or two.

Fine company

For the last week the wind has been absolutely howling around here. Shingle-rippling. Trashcan-rolling. The D-blog is beginning to feel like Lillian Gish in The Wind.

Many people say the D-blog also looks like Lillian Gish in The Wind (maybe they said Night of the Hunter), but I don't agree. The other day I had to get my picture taken for a new license, and when I saw it I was reminded of somebody. Who was it? Clooney? Maybe in my younger days. Pitt? Well, I have his nose (available on e-Bay), but that's about it.

Then I realized. I don't look like anyone in particular, I just look like a perfect candidate for the blog Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Hope they have local chapters like the VFW or something.

Update: And just because I can (can't I?), Lillian and Robert Mitchum doing their famous duet.



Update II: "I"-value of this post: ten in four paragraphs. Practically Obamanian.

Biggest news ever! (category: communists)

What is with the Telegraph and their non-stories about ancient commie misdeeds? Yesterday it was the blockbuster news that the Soviets had covered up Yuri Gagarin's missed landing after his space flight (he landed 200 miles from the target area, apparently).

Today it's the equally huge news that Soviet spy Kim Philby "turned to drink" after defecting to Russia in 1963:

Kim Philby, the British double agents [sic], tried to drink himself to death in Russia after losing faith in communism, his last wife has claimed.

Rufina Pukhova, a Russian-Polish woman who married Philby after he defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, said he had also been depressed by his failings in the years leading up to his death.

She told a Russian newspaper that Cambridge-educated Philby, who died in 1988, would drink two glasses of cognac a night before asking her to hide the bottle as his drinking threatened to get out of hand.

And that's the story. Two glasses of cognac. Hell, I used to drink that (well, a pint of Mr. B--same difference) before I brushed my tooth in the morning.

Mrs Pukhova, now 78, told Moskovsky Komsomolets: "His alcoholism was suicide ... he once even said that it was the easiest way to bring life to an end.

"If he continued drinking, he got inebriated quickly and changed in front of your eyes."

Why, I've never heard the like.

Philby was viewed [sic] as a traitor in Britain after his work as a double agent for the KGB was made public, but was welcomed as a hero in Russia – a reputation that remains to this day. . . .

Mrs Pukhova said: "Kim believed in a just society and devoted his whole life to communism [she must be a drunk, too]. And here he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. He said, 'Why do old people live so badly here? After all, they won the war'."

Despite living in exile, Philby retained one connection to Britain – the cup of English tea he would drink with milk from a fine porcelain cup at 5pm as a daily ritual, The Guardian reported.

Awwww. Speaking of the Grauniad, some raisin-brain columnist conducted an "interview of sorts" with a couple of the Blac Bloc-ers who tore up shops (which is not violence, remember) during the budget-cut protests in London the other day. Actually what he did was print some questions the Bloc-heads posed to themselves and then answered. Hard-hitting. One q & a:

Don't you think the violence has invalidated your message?

Our only collective points were the promotion of a confrontational attitude and the use of symbolic direct action to show that direct action in the wider society was both valid and possible, and that there is a radical movement in this country that's going to put up a fight. We made these points. Anyway, you cannot be "violent" to property. The police chose to attack and arrest people in their defence of property, and got themselves hurt in the attempt. If they had acted rationally, and decided a cracked window was not worth a protester's cracked skull, they would have been fine.

Glenn Spagnuolo, eat your shriveled, black little heart out.

Tough luck, Ward: no feathers for fake Indians

Reuters:

The U.S. government is allowed to bar non-Native Americans from using eagle feathers for religious purposes, even for rituals that imitate or borrow from Indian culture, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Native Americans alone should benefit from a special exemption carved out for government-recognized Indian tribes in a federal law that generally prohibits possession of eagle feathers.

The opinion reversed a lower court that sided with a man in Utah who was not member of a registered Indian tribe and claimed that he been wrongfully prosecuted for incorporating eagle feathers into his own religious rituals. . . .

The ruling stemmed from a Utah criminal case involving Samuel Ray Wilgus, who was found with dozens of bald eagle and golden eagle feathers in his vehicle when he was pulled over by Utah police in 1998.

Wilgus, who is not an enrolled member of an Indian tribe recognized by the federal government, was convicted of illegally possessing the feathers.

Wonder if Wart still has that eagle feather he had on the stand with him during his testimony at the trial of his suit against CU? Search warrant, toute de suite!

New angry studies department opposed

At some place called Kennesaw (GA) State University. The Marietta Daily Journal:

The creation of a new department at Kennesaw State University that would house various racial, gender and environmental programs has come under fire from one longtime KSU professor who sees it as a hive for radical indoctrination.

In the next month or so, KSU Interim Provost Dr. Ken Harmon will determine whether to greenlight a new department within KSU's College of Humanities and Social Sciences called The Department of Cultural and Regional Studies.

That department would have seven academic programs under its banner: African and African Diaspora Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, Environmental Studies, Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, Peace Studies and American Studies.

Funny how they stuck Environmental Studies in with the other junk.

So, who's going to stop this madness? What we need is a hero, preferably named Melvyn.

"This is being put together by a bunch of activists," said Dr. Melvyn Fein, a tenured professor of sociology at KSU.

"These folks do not have degrees in what they pretend to teach. To call it neo-Marxist is being very modest. These are activists who are going to use this to try and indoctrinate instead of teach."

Melvyn! (Sigh.)

But Arlethia Perry-Johnson [boo, hiss], KSU's vice president for external affairs, said the seven programs that would make up the new department already exist at KSU, and the proposal is to simply consolidate them into one department.

Bringing together professors who teach similar subject matter creates synergies and aides [sic] in communication, she said.

Synergies. I'm sold.

For example, at present, part of the Environmental Studies program is housed in KSU's College of Humanities and part of it is housed in KSU's College of Science and Mathematics, because students take courses offered by both colleges to shape their degree, based on whether their focus is more policy or science oriented, she said.

Perry-Johnson said the proposal for the new department has been created by the coordinators of each of the seven programs in question. They are: [blah, blah, blah]; and Thomas M. Pynn, assistant professor of philosophy, (peace studies).

,Peace studies, eh?

Pynn recently introduced KSU President Dan Papp at an event where he described "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx as "a call to conscience." . . .

,Yep, peace studies.

Fein accused the professors in question of trying to push through subject matter in the proposed new department that they have failed to get approved in existing departments.

Once the new department is created, Fein said it would intrude on courses taught in other departments, by claiming to have a stake in them.

"It's going to be detrimental to the reputation of the university as a serious school," Fein said. There's a reason why programs such as women's studies are on the decline nationwide, he said.

Are they? The only school I could find even proposing to close its women's studies program is UNLV, which is trying to close 32 other degree programs as well.

"Departments are closing around the country because students have learned, among other things, that if they want to get a job they shouldn't major in them. If your major is in women's studies, any employer who hires you is crazy. You're hiring a lawsuit, for heaven's sake," Fein said.

Among the subjects offered under the Gender and Women's Studies program, according to KSU's website, are Gender in Popular Culture, Transnational Feminisms, Black Feminisms, and "Queer Theory and Sexuality."

The latter describes itself as "an interdisciplinary course that considers the global emergence and significance of theories and practices that 1) refute and destabilize the notion of an essential, normative sexuality and gender, and 2) suggest that sexuality is fluid and varied and is constructed by social, political, and economic factors."

Sexuality is fluid. Yuck. Sounds like it's a done deal, though:

Faculty from the departments impacted voted 33-4 in January to authorize the initiation of discussing such a proposal. A New York University consultant, Dr. Mary Louise Pratt, came to KSU in January to give advice for the program. She was paid $3,309 for her work.

Faculty then voted, 49-6 in favor of creating the program in a referendum from March 21 to 23. . . .

Another tidbit

So to speak, from John Dower's book Embracing Defeat, about the American occupation of Japan after WWII:


The caption reads, "A Japanese nurse is sentenced to imprisonment at a trial of accused "B/C" war criminals convened in Yokohama. She was found guilty of having participated in eating the liver of [a prisoner of war] executed at Kyushu University, where vivisections were performed on POWs."

Questions and reflections:

Participated? Was it like a tea ceremony, or did people just gather around saying things like, "Hey, give me a hunk" and "Don't hog it, horrid nurse-person"?

If she was a "B/C" war criminal, can you imagine what the "A" war criminals were like? (Very, very bad.)

This sort of thing will become only more common under Obamacare.

Kyushu University, the Harvard of the Japanese Empire.

"Hey, who brought the Chianti?"

Too soon?

Update: No idea why the pics from this and the preceding post keep disappearing. I've replaced each about four times apiece, but I quit.

Catching up with: Peter Kirstein!

Been years since I visited the blog of America's dumbest professor. So, what's he been up to? Veteran Kirstein-watchers will know he was guaranteed to go bonkers over the nuclear reactor mess in Japan, and so he has, using a pic of an atom-bomb survivor to illustrate the horrors of nuclear power generation:


Kirstein caption: "Welcome to our nuclear world with the immoral, diabolical fissioning of the uranium or plutonium nucleus."

Okay, that's probably enough catching up with Kirstein, though if you're bent that way there's mega shit-boatloads of verbiage to go with the pictorial obtuseness.

Same difference

The Grauniad and Independent have "Environment" sections; the Mail and Telegraph have "Royal Wedding" sections. I'm going back to bed.

Abstract(s) of the Week!

Women hardest hit: Canadian Journal of Women and the Law Nathalie J. Chalifour: A Feminist Perspective on Carbon Taxes

Effective domestic policies are urgently needed to address climate change. A great deal of energy is devoted to selecting and designing the optimal policy instruments, with questions of environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency dominating the debate. However, it is equally important to consider how those policies will impact upon different segments of society and to ensure that they are designed in a way that is fair and does not further entrench systemic inequalities. This article approaches this social justice issue by examining carbon taxes from a feminist perspective, specifically considering how carbon taxes impact upon women. The article proposes the gender analysis of environmental taxes framework, which goes beyond the evaluation of distributional impacts to consider non-income impacts, implications of related mitigation, and revenue-use policies as well as the outcome of the measure. Applying the framework to British Columbia's carbon tax and Québec's redevance annuelle reveals that women may bear a disproportionate burden of the increased prices created by carbon taxes. The article also demonstrates that policies designed to mitigate the impact of carbon taxes on low-income households do not address income disparities between women and men, nor do they take into account the socio-economic status of women. The author concludes with recommendations for developing carbon pricing policies that avoid perpetuating existing systemic inequalities between women and men and that might even help to overcome these inequalities.

Collaborative Anthropologies Stuart Kirsch: Experiments in Engaged Anthropology

Engaged anthropology. Anthropology as advocacy. Ethnography-as-activism. Collaborative anthropology. Militant anthropology. Public anthropology. Despite their differences, all of these projects share a commitment to mobilizing anthropology for constructive interventions into politics. Prior understandings of anthropology as objective science might be seen as giving way to new concerns about social justice. However, the notion of science is also undergoing a transformation in which science and society are increasingly intertwined (Nowotny et al. 2001). Scientific funding agencies increasingly require projects to include mechanisms for making research results available to the public and sometimes request identification of the project's social benefits. Science is no longer seen as estranged from social problems, which both expands and normalizes the relationship between research and its potential applications. Within anthropology this has resulted in the proliferation of new conceptual categories and practices, which might be described as a series of experiments in how to make anthropology . . .

Completely worthless?

Update: Thought this was so obvious it didn't need mentioning, but with D-blog readers, who knows? Anyway, note the similarities between anthropology as presented here and climate "science."

You miserable puppy!

Billy Bob, arrogant supermodel (circa 2006):



Billy Bob, sulking convalescent (today):



He had these disgusting growths on his leg that got so big they had to be surgerized. They were really gross. Little girls screamed when they saw them. And one of the masses was growing at like an inch an hour. Just before it was cut out, it kind of looked like this.

Confidential to Pirate Ballerina: No, that is not a peg-paw.

Earth Hour continues to approacheth

The Post, in an obvious dereliction of duty, has still not seen fit to mention the advent of Earth Hour tomorrow. Pravda, on the other hand, ever forward-looking, is teasing a story on its front page. The Post sucks. But not for that reason. Actually the Pravda story is only a few grafs of boilerplate from the World Wildlife Fund, as are the two stories it links to, one from China's Xinhua ("The Earth Hour event . . . was first started in Sydney of Australia in 2007 . . ."). But check out the first comment on the Pravda story. Apparently there are AoSHQ morons in Russia. Update: As has become another Australian tradition, noted greenie Tim Blair asks his readers what they'll be doing to observe Earth Hour. Update II: Slow to this, but: J'accuse! As Watts quotes Wikipedia (wha!) on the exclusion of outliers in a reply to a pooh-pooher downthread:

Deletion of outlier data is a controversial practice frowned on by many scientists and science instructors; while mathematical criteria provide an objective and quantitative method for data rejection, they do not make the practice more scientifically or methodologically sound, especially in small sets or where a normal distribution cannot be assumed. Rejection of outliers is more acceptable in areas of practice where the underlying model of the process being measured and the usual distribution of measurement error are confidently known. An outlier resulting from an instrument reading error may be excluded but it is desirable that the reading is at least verified. In regression problems, an alternative approach may be to only exclude points which exhibit a large degree of influence on the parameters, using a measure such as Cook's distance.[11]If a data point (or points) is excluded from the data analysis, this should be clearly stated on any subsequent report.

Put more simply: The Team (again) committed fraud. I'm gonna show this to the girl scouts tomorrow.

Update III (3/27/11): Toronto Sun: "Earth Hour may be losing steam as novelty wears off"

TORONTO — More Canadian municipalities are pledging to power down Saturday for Earth Hour, but an expert says interest in the event may already be fizzling.

Earth Hour has "done a great job of capturing the imagination of an awful lot of people around the world" to raise awareness of climate change issues, said Mark Sarner, who specializes in marketing for non-profits.

But "just more of the same gets old fast," he said Friday, noting most marketing campaigns will fade after a few years without something new to draw the public's attention.

"If I think back to last year's Earth Hour, I don't think it was as big a deal because, you know, novelty normalizes and this is no longer a novelty," he said.