the Revision Division

CRANMER: Is the Church of England ashamed to preach Christ crucified?

The Church of England is experimenting with a new baptism liturgy . . .

What on earth is wrong with ‘Christ crucified’? Does the phrase no longer resonate in the minds of the un-churched? Is it not a matter of general historical knowledge that Jesus died on as cross? Is it not generally known that this is what the Church believes? It must be the ultimate irony in liturgical development that the Church of England becomes ashamed of the exhortation not to be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified.

“THE ADMINISTRATION must now deal with this latest threat to the nation’s health care law: these ladies, the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

PEER REVIEW: Last Refuge of the (Uninformed) Troll.

The leaked Second Order Draft of IPCC AR5 laid bare the failure of the models to predict the earth’s temperature going forward in time.  In fact, if one threw out all but the best 5% of the model results…they would still be wrong, and obviously so.  They all run hotter than reality.  Exposed for the world to see that the models (and hence the science upon which they are based) had so utterly failed, the IPCC responded by including older models they had previously declared obsolete as now being part of the current literature:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/04/no-matter-how-the-cmip5-ipcc-ar5-models-are-presented-they-still-look-bad/

Even with those older and supposedly obsolete models included, the models look to be complete failures.  In other words, confronted with the data showing that thousands are dying from bloodletting, the IPCC is resurrecting old studies showing that three or four patients recovered once in an old study from a long time ago.  They are point blank asking you to believe that planets reverse direction in orbit quite of their own volition.  They’ve contrived a theory that you can’t see in the dark because the rays from your eyes must interact with light to work.

As ridiculous as that may seem, for the IPCC, it is (literally) even worse than that.  For this we have the foremost climate scientists on the planet to thank.

MARK PERRY: Higher education data on college degrees for the Class of 2012 confirm a huge and persistent gender [sic] degree gap.

Milestone: For the first time ever, women in 2012 earned more than one million bachelor’s degrees (1,025,729). In contrast, men earned only 765,317 bachelor’s degrees in 2012 (see above).

Q: Now that women completely dominate higher education and have earned more college degrees than men all levels for the last 7 years, is there still really a need for more than 500 colleges and universities in the US to have “Women’s Centers?”

BOOK REVIEW: H.L. Mencken’s In Defense of Women. Quoting Mencken: “Now that women have the political power to obtain their just rights, they will begin to lose their old power to obtain special privileges by sentimental appeals. Men, facing them squarely, will consider them anew, not as romantic political and social invalids, to be coddled and caressed, but as free competitors in a harsh world. When that reconsideration gets under way there will be a general overhauling of the relations between the sexes, and some of the fair ones, I suspect, will begin to wonder why they didn’t let well enough alone.”

CORRUPTION: 100 Arrests Expected in Massive NYC Cop/Firefighter Social Security Scam. “A former Long Island prosecutor, a pension consultant, and two others turned themselves in to authorities after law enforcement uncovered a complex system in which firefighters and law enforcement officials were coached to behave a certain way to cause doctors to falsely diagnose them with diseases and disabilities. Those doing the coaching – in some cases, doctors themselves – would receive money for their services from the bundle received by ‘patients.’ Many claimed such illnesses, according to CNN, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, as the scam has spanned more than two decades. The money they received for their fraudulent illnesses was from, in many cases, the same pool of money that would have gone to help 9/11 first responders.”

UK: Criminalizing “Emotional Blackmail”. “‘Domestic abuse involving “emotional blackmail” – but no violence – could become a criminal offense carrying a heavy jail term under tough new measures published for the first time.’ While the cross-party group of Members of Parliament who are introducing the bill do not speak for the Cameron administration, notes David Barrett in the Telegraph, they have a track record of some success at getting their ideas on domestic abuse enacted into legislation.”

ROBERT OSCAR LOPEZ: Life on GLAAD’s Blacklist.

In case you don’t know the full extent of GLAAD’s fascism, let me tell you what GLAAD did to me.

I won’t hyperlink this, but if you go to GLAAD’s website and seek out their “commentator accountability project,” you will find my name. This is GLAAD’s blacklist. Within hours of GLAAD’s publication of my addition to the list, which amounts to an excommunication from polite society, an e-mail was sent to the president of my university, along with dozens of other high officials in California, with the announcement: ROBERT OSCAR LOPEZ PLACED ON GLAAD WATCH LIST.

The e-mail stated clearly that as a result of my being placed on this list, I would never get a direct interview in the United States. (Whoever “they” are, they made good on the threat, because when I was brought onto Al Jazeera, they made sure that I was the only one critical of gay adoption, versus two hosts and two other panelists who were for it, and the host cut my microphone.) . . .

Prior to GLAAD’s blacklisting, I had received calls from people at universities discussing their interest in having me come to campus and give speeches. Three were working with me to set up dates. Since GLAAD’s blacklisting, none. Those who had discussed this with me said point-blank that their superiors did not want to create controversy. . . .

Americans have been blocked from hearing from me, Dawn Stefanowicz, Jean-Dominique Bunel, “Janna,” Manuel Half, Rivka Edelman, and the blogger known as “the Bigot” — just some of the many people I’ve come to know over the last year and a half, who have the human stories to dispel the myth that all is well with “gay families.” This scares the crap out of people at GLAAD. It scares the crap out of them that I’m a professor and fluent enough in the way research works to know that the “consensus” on same-sex parenting is a fraud. It scares the crap out of them that I have a scholarly record in African-American Studies and queer readings of Thoreau and Whitman, so they can’t write me off as a wacko, unwashed homophobe.

WHOOPS: Fear of “Blaming Victims” Perpetuates Bullying.

The field of psychology has been steadily adopting a legal paradigm of interpersonal problems. In this model, one side is determined to be the victim who is innocent and not required to change, and the other side is the abuser or bully who is guilty and must do the changing. . . .

As a result, psychology has gradually been transforming itself from a branch of science that searches for truth into a branch of law enforcement fighting for the rights of victims against abusers and bullies. One basic tenet of this law enforcement approach is that “one must never blame a victim.” . . .

In order to solve my problem I need to take responsibility for it. But how can I possibly take responsibility if I have no way of knowing what I am doing wrong? So when I work with people, I show them through role-playing how their current efforts to solve the problem are ineffective or counterproductive, and I teach them how to  solve their problem almost effortlessly, without anyone’s help and without getting anyone in trouble. But today, with our legalistic approach to psychology, many people think that since I am teaching victims how to solve their problems by themselves, I am blaming them. . . .

The truth is, if people are repeatedly picking on me, the only person who can reliably get them to stop is me. But as long as I rely on others to stop them, I don’t possess a solution. And as long as society continues trying to eradicate bullies rather than teaching people the wisdom to be immune to them, the bullying “epidemic” will continue.

Earlier: Are anti-bullying programs backfiring?

CITIZENS, GET BENT: Culturally/ethnically appropriate childcare encouraged by federal training and microenterprise loans.

I have two complaints about this story, ‘Would-be business owners move one step closer to dream.‘

First, the next time you hear some open borders advocates saying immigrants create more new businesses, please remember that the immigrants get special loan deals and government-funded training to become “entrepreneurs.”   You can bet there is no program like this one for some poor American women living in a mobile home community who might like to set up a daycare for their kind of people.

Then secondly, if we expect refugees to become integrated (oops! assimilated) wouldn’t the kids be better off in daycare (if they needed daycare) where people speak English and do activities that most Americans do instead of in ethnically and culturally segregated daycare centers?  Don’t get me wrong, if people want to stay segregated, I’m o.k. with that, it is a free country, I just don’t think federal taxpayer dollars should be used to facilitate segregation.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Facial Hair Sexy?

STUDY: Marijuana Does Not Cause Schizophrenia. “Marijuana may not cause schizophrenia, but it might be that people who are prone to developing schizophrenia are more likely to use marijuana. This would explain the link that’s been found in the studies.”

That said, “This study can’t tell us anything about the interaction between the genetic predisposition to develop schizophrenia and marijuana use. Many researchers still believe that marijuana use may be a factor in the onset of schizophrenia in those who are at risk. Certainly, there is plenty of other evidence out there that marijuana is not the totally safe drug that many teenagers perceive it to be.”

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: Adoption in Black and White.

A study published by the academic journal Child Welfare found that 43 percent of the caseworkers responsible for the longest-waiting black children in New York State expressed hostility toward transracial adoption. Federal law prohibits the use of racial criteria in adoption placement, but ethnic considerations have seeped into the system . . . Professor Judy Fenster of Adelphi University finds that black social workers are particularly inimical to the prospect of cross-racial adoption. It seems that the matchmakers at the heart of the adoption system are part of the problem.

Transracial adoption is a volcanically touchy issue — the National Association of Black Social Workers has deployed weapons-grade rhetoric characterizing the practice as “cultural genocide.” That ideology has had predictable consequences: Black children spend more time in foster care than others, and in general have less luck in finding permanent adoptive homes. . . .

In one case, a white couple who had hoped to adopt a severely disabled black girl in 1994 were disqualified on political grounds — specifically that they expressed a desire to raise their children to be “colorblind” — and on racial grounds, specifically that they lived in Alaska, which was judged to be superabundantly Caucasian. The couple had raised other severely disabled children of various ethnic backgrounds but they were rejected in favor of a single woman who expressed the “correct” racial attitudes — and who ended up declining to adopt the child, precisely because of her disabilities. The girl in question suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and from Russell-Silver Syndrome, a form of dwarfism associated with, among other things, gastrointestinal difficulties, a triangular face, and asymmetrical body growth. It is difficult to imagine that her most pressing challenge in life was going to be the relative scarcity of black neighbors in Fairbanks.

TIM CARNEY: Industry, not environmentalists, killed traditional bulbs.

This wasn’t a case of an industry getting on board with an inevitable regulation in order to tweak it. The lighting industry was the main reason the legislation was moving. As the New York Times reported in 2011, “Philips formed a coalition with environmental groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council to push for higher standards.”

Industry support for the regulations struck lawmakers and journalists as a ringing endorsement of the regulations. Republican Congressmen Fred Upton, who has since flip-flopped and attacked the regulations, cosponsored the light bulb provision in 2007. His excuse, according to conservatives I spoke to: It couldn’t be that bad if the industry supported it.

Liberals used this very argument to ridicule Republicans’ 2011 efforts to repeal the law. Democratic congressman Steny Hoyer defended the rule by saying, “The standards are supported by the lightbulb industry.”

Joe Romm at the Center for American Progress pinned repeal efforts on the “extremist Tea Party wing of the party, which opposes all government standards, even ones that the lightbulb industry itself wants.”

That “even” signifies that the industry’s support indicates consensus. Instead, it signifies how consumers lose.

BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY ISN’T TAUGHT IN J-SCHOOL: Someone Please Help New York Times With Econ 101.

RETRACTION WATCH: Indian engineer publishes fake paper, exposes “science” conference.

A technology entrepreneur from Pune named Navin Kabra has pulled back the sheets on a local conference, the International Conference on Recent Innovations in Engineering, Science & Technology, by submitting two bogus manuscripts for presentation — both of which were accepted. . . .

In an echo of the recent case of punking from Serbia, the  published paper includes significant passages from “My Cousin Vinny.”

Follow-up from Kabra: Fake Paper Update: My Paper has now been disqualified. “I am pretty sad that I am disqualified from attending upcoming IRAJ conferences. The next one in Pune, happening just one week from now, is International Conference Academics on Computer Science and Information Technology. But, this time, I hope the organizers read the accepted papers more carefully.”

CANADA: TDSB [Toronto District School Board] Superintendents Approve Of Using Cross-Dressing Books In Elementary School Classrooms.

THE WEAKNESS OF PEER REVIEW.

Lately, there have been increasing numbers of online, unofficial – what might be called vigilante – investigations into published scientific work. . . .

All they’re doing is reading papers – carefully. In an ideal world, this is what all readers would be doing – paying close attention, not taking anything on faith, checking the sources. And all writers dream of readers giving their work their full and undivided attention.

What needs to be explained is why most of us don’t do this most of the time. And that’s just when it comes to everyday readers. When it comes to publishers, editors, and peer-reviewers, shouldn’t we be questioning their motives in allowing these problematic papers to be accepted? . . .

It’s not so easy to excuse the lack of vigilance among many peer reviewers and editors. Their job is to scrutinize submitted papers. Every paper accepted despite containing evidence of mischief is a testament to an editor and peer-reviewer(s) who were asleep on watch.

Their duties are hardly onerous – it doesn’t take much effort to run papers through a plagiarism checker, take a good look at the figures for evidence of manipulation, and so forth. It would take a matter of minutes to detect such misconduct. After all, it generally takes vigilantes mere minutes to uncover them, once they’re on the case.

“Peer review” has too much peer and not enough review.

RELIGION OF PIECES: “Why should we follow those Christian commandments, when Allah urges us to fight those kafirs? Why shouldn’t we leave their children orphans?”

WARREN MEYER: A Milestone to Celebrate: I Have Closed All My Businesses in Ventura County, California. “It took years in Ventura County to make even the simplest modifications to the campground we ran.  For example, it took 7 separate permits from the County (each requiring a substantial payment) just to remove a wooden deck that the County inspector had condemned.  In order to allow us to temporarily park a small concession trailer in the parking lot, we had to (among other steps) take a soil sample of the dirt under the asphalt of the parking lot.   It took 3 years to permit a simply 500 gallon fuel tank with CARB and the County equivilent.   The entire campground desperately needed a major renovation but the smallest change would have triggered millions of dollars of new facility requirements from the County that we simply could not afford.”

STUDY: SOMETIMES, PEOPLE LIE ON SURVEYS. Do ‘jokesters’ distort research on gay youth?

A controversial new study argues that a host of research on gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers could be based on faulty data because of confused teens and “jokesters” who later said they were straight.

The report focuses on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey that followed a nationally representative group of tens of thousands of teens into adulthood. Add Health, as it is known, is considered one of the most important sources of data on the lives of young people, including those who are gay, lesbian and bisexual. . . .

Earlier research on the Add Health survey found some signs of dishonesty, the study noted. For instance, hundreds of teens said they had an artificial hand, arm, leg or foot, yet few reported the same thing when interviewed at home. The new study found “inconsistent” boys and girls were more delinquent and more likely to say they weren’t honest when they filled out the survey. . . .

The existence of “inconsistent” teens isn’t new to social science researchers. “It’s not that we saw something that no one else had seen,” Savin-Williams added. “But they kept using the data. … People should have said, ‘Hold on here. Who are these kids?’”

BOOK REVIEW: Embracing media myths — and the ‘golden age’ fallacy.

The “golden age” approach to media history — the notion that there really was a time when journalism and its practitioners were virtuous and inspiring — is flawed in at least three ways: It treats the past as little more than nostalgia; it elevates once-prominent journalists to heroic status, and it encourages the embrace of media-driven myths.

Such shortcomings are evident in portions of The Outrage Industry, a new book that deplores the crude, offensive, and over-the-top commentary on some talk radio and cable news programs these days.

CAN’T COMPETE? SAY YOU’RE A WOMAN. Transgender [sic] Golfer Bobbi Lancaster Hopes LPGA Dream Inspires Others.

BILL VALLICELLA offers advice to academics: It Pays to Publish, but Don’t Pay to Publish. “Besides, it is not that difficult to publish for free in good outlets. If I can do it, so can you. Here is my PhilPapers page which lists some of my publications. My passion for philosophy far outstrips my ability at it, but if you have a modicum of ability you can publish in decent places. When I quit my tenured post and went maverick, I feared that no one would touch my work. But I found that lack of an institutional affiliation did not bar me from very good journals.”

SAY YOU’RE A HOMOSEXUAL, GET ASYLUM: Villanova law students help one of the first gay Russians receive asylum, more on the way. Meanwhile, a German homeschooling family seeking asylum faces deportation. So, everyone who says that he’s a homosexual has a right to express pro-homosexual propaganda, an act that is illegal in Russia, but no one has a right to teach his own child, an act that is illegal in Germany. And the former right is so important that it merits asylum.

GAVIN MCINNES: 2013: The Most Racist Year Ever. “It’s racist to criticize the president, so in a year where his approval sank to an all-time low, it’s clear our prejudice has climbed to an all-time high. (It has nothing to do with the part where he lied about Obamacare and spent more time building a defective website than Roosevelt spent defeating the Nazis.) Here are 20 more racist things that prove 2013 was nothing more than a giant Klan rally.”

KIDS ON DRUGS: Reflections on “The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder”.

There is no place for the use of amphetamines in psychiatry or medicine, never mind for children. Call it by any other name, it is still “speed”. It was discredited in the 1980’s after an earlier period of abuse as an anti-depressant and diet pill. . . .

But then a strange thing happened. A new medical-psychiatric genetic brain disease got invented: ADHD. And what was the treatment of choice? You guessed it. Suddenly, speed was safe again, non-addictive, no side effects, and it didn’t generate psychoses anymore. Its sordid history went right back into amnesia.

AUSTIN RUSE: The New Homophiles: A Closer Look.

Here is the question they grapple with. What is a young man to do who senses in himself an attraction, however that is defined, for other men. His life is further complicated by the fact that he believes in God and in His Church.

There are many roads he can take. He can reject his religious beliefs and dive headlong into the gay life style. He can try reparative therapy and become heterosexual. He can stay Christian but reinterpret scripture so he can have sexual relations with men. He can reject his gay identity and work privately with others in living chastity according to the Church. Or he can dedicate his life to apostolic celibacy, understanding his sexual orientation as a gift, and try to change church teaching that would not approve of gay sex but allow greater acceptance of men and women attracted to the same sex.

Much of this kind of debate takes place at the Gay Christian Network (GCN) where many of the New Homophiles first met and started deepening their understanding and honing their arguments.

ARE CATHOLICS PERMITTED TO SUPPORT INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY? Walter Block, the Austrians, and the Catholics. Ryan McMaken remarks [in bracketed, bold text] on an article in U.S. Catholic magazine:

Many of these economic conservatives hold a variety of views, and they usually reject precise — and often loaded — labels like “libertarian” or even “capitalist.” They prefer to be known by the principles they largely share: free markets, minimal government oversight of business and the environment, reduced social welfare programs, and lower taxes for everyone, including the wealthy. [Lower taxes even for the wealthy. You see how crazed and extreme, these “Austrian” people are.]

While in practice those principles often run counter to official church [sic] positions, [Nope. None of this debate centers around any official Church positions at all. The divinity of Christ is an official Church teaching. The correct level of coercive poverty “relief” to be administered by modern nation-states is not.] these free-market advocates say they are in fact true to Catholic teaching [it’s arguable]; they are simply trying to achieve the same goals through different means. Those means, they add, also regard technical issues that are judgment calls for believers, not matters of faith.

JUDICIAL WATCH Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2013.

DOG BITES MAN: Girl Scouts Promote ‘Incredible’ Wendy Davis on ‘Women of Year’ List.

DAVID HENDERSON: Some People Won’t Like the Results? Let’s Quit Measuring Them.

STEVE SAILER: “Business Strategy 101: find yourself a defensible piece of monopoly power, and defend it.” In this case, labor unions in the entertainment industry.

WARREN MEYER: Government Regulation and Incumbent Business Protection. He presents a rather blatant example from France, and then adds, “This is the interesting political ground where the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tea Party have a lot of overlap.  That is why the Chamber of Commerce, which represents all these incumbent businesses, is working with both parties to keep the cozy corporatists in power against challenges from the Left and Right.”

CLAYTON CRAMER on adultery laws in early America. There’s an interesting discussion in the comments.

MICHAEL PALIN: Making jokes about Islam is dangerous.

During his Monty Python days he poked fun at everyone from the Establishment to Christianity. But thanks to the threat of ‘heavily armed’ fanatics, Michael Palin has admitted there is one comedy taboo he is too scared to break- Islam. The 70-year-old said religious sensitivities have increased so much since his comedy days it would now be impossible to make 1979 film Life of Brian – which satirised the life of Jesus – let alone laugh at Muslims.

He said: ‘Religion is more difficult to talk about. I don’t think we could do Life of Brian any more. A parody of Islam would be even harder. We all saw what happened to Salman Rushdie and none of us want to get into all that. It’s a pity but that’s the way it is. There are people out there without a sense of humour and they’re heavily armed.’

UK: Defamation Act 2013 aims to improve libel laws.

THE ONION: Local Church Full Of Brainwashed Idiots Feeds Town’s Poor Every Week.

CONNECTICUT: State Requiring Health Insurers To Cover Gender [sic] Transition.

The Connecticut Insurance Department is directing all health insurance companies operating in the state to provide coverage of mental health counseling, hormone therapy, surgery and other treatments related to a patient’s gender [sic] transition.

Joining a handful of other states, the department issued a bulletin to insurance companies last week which seeks to ensure that “individuals with gender [sic] dysphoria … are not denied access to medically necessary care because of the individual’s gender [sic] identity or gender [sic] expression.” . . .

The insurance department based its position on two state statutes: A 2011 law prohibiting discrimination based on gender [sic] identity and expression, and laws requiring coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders. Gender [sic] dysphoria — also known as gender [sic] identity disorder — is listed in the latest revised edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and qualifies for coverage, the insurance department stated in its bulletin, which was issued Dec. 19.

THE MIDAS TOUCH: Preemies receive long-lasting cognitive and emotional benefits from being held.

ANTHONY WEBER: Worldviews and Culture: YA Entertainment in 2013.

In an effort to make the literary sea a bit smaller for those like me who want to know what’s shaping the next generation, I  have begun posting reviews of entertainment that impacts a primarily young adult audience. I generally choose books,  films and TV shows that make top ten lists or are headed to the big screen. I avoid the teen romance genre – but those books aren’t being turned into blockbuster movies, are they? Dystopias, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and superheroes seem to be where all the action is right now. I, for one, am not complaining.

My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at the worldview. Why do these stories resonate? What messages are being absorbed? How can we take the narratives that are shaping our culture and connect them to the greatest story of all?

ART CARDEN: Should We Forgive Student Loan Debt? (“We” meaning the government.) The answer is no.

HUNTER BAKER: The Minimum Wage, Family Values, and the Noted Christian Academic.

During a recent visit to Twitter, I happened across a post from a noted Christian academic. He had composed the kind of pithy remark which is tailor-made to launch a hundred admiring retweets. Paraphrasing slightly, it was something like this:  “Conservatives, don’t talk to me about family values if you doesn’t endorse a minimum wage increase.”

The problem is that there is no necessary connection between family values and increasing the minimum wage. First off, there is a vigorous, unsettled debate over the effectiveness of the minimum wage. . . . It would be entirely possible for a proponent of family values to rationally conclude that the minimum wage is counterproductive . . .

Second, the noted Christian thinker did not consider that there are fundamental questions about things like minimum wage laws. What is a minimum wage law? It is a demand, underwritten by the threat and/or use of government force, that employers pay no less than a stated amount for an hour of work. It is entirely possible to think that such a power should not be wielded by the government of a free people and still be a caring person. The retailer Hobby Lobby, for example, is well-known for paying substantially more than the minimum wage in its stores. The owners of that corporation are devout Christians. Would this academic suggest that the owners of Hobby Lobby be deficient in their family values if they paid their employees well above the minimum wage while opposing such an exercise of power by the government?

PROFILE OF AN APOLOGIST: What motivates William Lane Craig and why is he so effective?

THE DECLINE OF THE ALL-MALE CLUB: Men Without Women: Is There A Male Friendship Crisis?

The disappearance began in 1970 when the National Organization for Women decided that the pinnacle of equality was drinking on a floor covered in sawdust. They sued to force the doors open at McSorley’s Old Ale House, a New York City icon that existed for 116 years as an all-male establishment, and won. The battle culminated in 1987 when the Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right to equality trumped freedom of association and forced the Rotary Club to accept women. Only thirteen cities in the United States have more than four all-male clubs and, with social organizations nearly extinct, feminists have set their sights on the most masculine and tightly-knit club of all: the infantry. . . .

We congregate once a week at an undisclosed cigar bar, the last bastion of male territory (you can guess the sex of the person leading the charge against these establishments). The night begins with the same regulars, but every once in a while a woman joins us. The nature of conversation changes the second she arrives. The jokes become tamer, the social observations bland, and bar etiquette—paying cash for small tabs, never forcing a waiter to line-item drinks and food for a dozen people, not discarding $15 cigars after three puffs—goes out the window. The proverbial sawdust on the floor turns to egg shells: We’ve banished male attendees for less, but no one knows how to say no to a woman.

“That’s right, I’m crashing guy’s night,” a female friend gleefully announced when she arrived several months ago. As the marathon meeting wore on, her countenance ranged from unwilling dental patient to suicidal dentist. She soldiered on, relating at every turn of the conversation how much she was learning by “crashing guy’s night.” She left, the sighs of relief visible in the haze.

“I don’t understand why you’d put yourself in a situation you know doesn’t make you happy for the sake of preventing someone else’s good time,” a friend later said. “I feel like women just like ruining our things. It makes me miserable.”

EVERYONE must express the correct opinions, or else. “The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev is being persecuted and threatened with the loss of contracts not because he has said anything offensive about homosexuals or because he has ever been found to discriminate against them, but because he has not become a homosexual activist. He has not used his position in the musical world to campaign against Russia’s laws banning homosexualist propaganda.”

MICHAEL FLYNN on presentist dismissals of classic SF literature:

Simply because a female character does not conform to today’s stereotypes does not mean that the portrayal is ipso facto sexist.  In reader discussions of Game of Thrones, the character Arya, a young girl, is often praised as “kickass,” while her sister Sansa is disparaged for being a wuss. But when one thinks on it more, Arya is praised and Sansa dispraised precisely in proportion as they behave like boys.  A freer thinker than some might wonder whether it is sexist to thus privilege masculinist behavior. . . .

Classic SF was not relentlessly “sexist, racist, homophobic, or antisemitic.” The most that can be said is that [its characters] were not always depicted according to modern sensibilities. What some people cringe at today was actually cutting edge progressive at the time. “Omnilingual” portrayed a woman scientist on Mars, competing with other scientists to be the first to crack the Martian language, but no one in the story makes any issue over her being female, either to praise or condemn. It’s just a fact. But Late Modern readers are likely to obsess over the women in the expedition being referred to as “girls.” As in fact my mother referred to herself and her cronies: it was just the way of speaking in the 1950s, and did not have the same connotations to the people at that time as academics now suppose by parsing the term. (There is that emphasis on words, again.)  Everyone in “Omnilingual” is smoking and drinking cocktails, too.  In a way, that seems even more jarring to Late Modern puritans.

He writes in the comments about an author using mythological creatures in her work:

Did she ensure that she used mythological creatures from an assortment of non-Western mythoi?

If she did not do so, she is guilty of Euro-centrism.
If she did, she is guilty of “appropriating” indigenous cultures.

It’s a win-win situation for the guilt industry.

MATT BRIGGS on gender [sic] as a construct. “Do we need to point out the central tenet of gender[sic]-as-construct is faulty? After all, how do we know boys act like boys? I mean, how do we know these young people are acting like boys unless we know that this is how boys and not girls act? It is because we have characterized and classified the behaviors of mini-humans with outies in every culture and time and said, ‘This is how boys act’ and then forced boys to act according to this catalog? But then how do we know to ‘construct’ the behavior of an outie except by noting he is an outie? It’s easy to get lost in this tangle.”

BREAKING NEWS FROM 2005: Wow, Thomas Friedman is A Total Joke.

BE DECISIVE; BE CONFIDENT: The Myth of the Egalitarian Marriage.

Consider this scenario:

A married couple along with their two children are driving home from a weekend trip. As they round the corner their home comes into view. There are firetrucks and flashing lights. They simultaneously realize that their house has burned to the ground. One spouse emotionally melts down; turns to the other spouse; and with tears in their eyes and panic in their voice screams: “Oh my God! What are we going to do? Tell me, what are we going to do?”

Which spouse had the emotional meltdown?

Or to put it another way, which spouse has the option of emotionally melting down in this situation: the husband or the wife? The wife. Now, this doesn’t mean she must break down emotionally, but because she is a woman she has that option. It is accepted by society (including modern feminist society) that women have this option.

Men (married or single) do not have this option when a crisis occurs. They are expected to remain stoically calm, controlled, and clear headed. A husband who failed to do so in the above scenario would not only be called unmanly by even the most feminist of wives, but would be criticized for failing to support his wife emotionally (the wife that exercised her option of melting down emotionally; the option he never had). When a crisis strikes, egalitarian[ism] gets quickly forgotten.