Q&A with Mark Schierbecker

Skepticon has released a video of the interview to, I presume, shut down all the stupid claims by people who weren’t there.

It didn’t work. This is the kind of response I’m seeing on Twitter now.


@RealSkepticon Wow. Watched the video and the participants at Skepticon should be ashamed by their behavior.

I was there for the first half of the talk. I’ve now watched the whole video. Skepticon has absolutely nothing to apologize to Schierbecker about: they gave him and his publicist a time slot at the last minute, they allotted him 25 minutes and he went on for an hour and 15 minutes instead, and the audience was calm, made reasonable points, and asked difficult questions. And now their videographer worked extra hard to make the whole talk available on YouTube!

It seems the racists on Twitter want Skepticon to apologize for questioning a white man.

A new fantasy “award”

LovecraftPrize1crop

Since the World Fantasy Awards announced that they will no longer give out ugly statuettes of HP Lovecraft, the racist fantasy writers are feeling a bit miffed. Fortunately for them, Counter-Current Publishing has announced that they will be giving out a new fantasy award to white authors who honor the principles of National Socialism, named after HP.

As the Left continues to hollow out and destroy institutions, corrupt minds and culture, and denigrate white greatness in art, science, statecraft, and the culture at large, Counter-Currents and other New Right organizations will construct new institutions and honors to carry forward the greatness of European man.

White Greatness! The Greatness of European Man! Let us all bow before the amazingly confident bigotry of White Men everywhere.

Misstep at #Skepticon

It got ugly for a while. There was a last minute addition to today’s schedule: a “panel” to discuss the recent events in Missouri, specifically the university resignations in the face of endemic racism, and the efforts by students to exclude journalists from a meeting place on campus. Good idea, I thought: we’re in Missouri, this is a major topic, it is entirely appropriate to discuss the problems in racism and in the efforts to oppose racism.

Only it turned out to be very badly handled. The event was simply an “interview” with a white photojournalist/student, Mark Schierbecker, who was the one who captured that viral video of the students and a faculty member blocking another photojournalist from taking pictures, getting questioned by Danielle Muscato.

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“Political correctness”: new old name for the same old shackles

I’ve seen the video of the professor in Missouri, demanding that the aggressive reporter be thrown out of a circle of students. And I have mixed feelings about it. So many people are reflexively aghast, and shouting about “freedom of the press!”, but I’m wondering if we’re going to have any limitations on freedom of the press.

[Read more…]

Good news and bad news from the University of Missouri

The bad news: horribly racist incidents.

…at issue is the school administration’s handling of several racist incidents that occurred this fall. In September, Peyton Head, a senior and the president of Missouri Students Association, said he was called racial slurs as he walked near campus.

“I really just want to know why my simple existence is such a threat to society,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

That incident was followed by one on October 5 when members of the Legion of Black Collegians were called the N-word while rehearsing for homecoming festivities. Three weeks later, on October 24, a swastika was drawn with human feces at a university residence hall.

The good news: students and faculty reacted vigorously. Boy, did they react. Students protested; one went on a hunger strike. The student athletes refused to perform until action was taken, and the coach actually supported them, and said they were excused from practice. Faculty supported a strike and student walkout.

Somebody is finally taking the issue seriously.

And the really amazing news: it all worked, and university president Tim Wolfe has resigned. So it only takes a couple of months of strong protests and a threat to the football season to achieve victory.

The University of Iowa has some serious dissatisfaction with their recently appointed president. Maybe they need to get the support of the football team to get rid of the rascal.

No more Howard

The winners of the World Fantasy Award for 2015 have just been announced, so if you’re looking for interesting reading, there you go.

wfaaward

The winners are given that hideous statuette to the right, a bust of HP Lovecraft. Now we’re all winners, because it has just been announced that the caricature of the goggle-eyed racist will not be handed out in the future — winners in 2016 will get something that they won’t tuck out of sight and turn towards the wall (and here’s another take on the controversy over HP).

I’ve been a big fan of the Cthulhu mythos, but I agree with this change — if it were a statuette of Cthulhu, I would approve, but a statuette of HP Lovecraft the man is honoring the wrong thing, not the creation, but the horrible complicated twisted creator.

How can you question the virtue of the police?

Look at the wonderful example the chief of police of Austin has set, in the case of a jaywalker manhandled by the police.

She was lucky. So, so lucky. If they hadn’t been such good police officers, they would have raped her. For jaywalking.

I am so filled with confidence in the Austin police. They won’t rape jaywalkers! Does anyone have any cookies we can send to them?

Minnesota nice

I tell you, there are wretched hateful people everywhere, even in the Empire of Nice that we call Minnesota. A woman of apparently, from her name, German extraction (“Burchard-Risch” — how totally un-American) got so irate at a woman speaking Swahili (“Asma Jama”. Is that less American than “Burchard-Risch”? Shouldn’t only people with good Lakota names like “Winona” or “Wasechun Tashunka” have the right to complain?*) in an Applebee’s that she got up and smashed a glass beer mug across her face, lacerating her horribly.

Asma Jama was there with her children having an ordinary conversation, when Burchard-Risch irrationally lost her temper at hearing a conversation that she had no part in, in a language she didn’t understand, and thought that was sufficient to cuss out the Jama family, throw a drink at them, and then violently strike her. Unbelievable. How can people have that degree of xenophobia? I wonder if Burchard-Risch is a Trump supporter.

There is now a fundraiser to cover Jama’s medical expenses. Be warned: front and center at that link is a photo of Jama’s seriously cut up face.

*Except, of course, that the Lakota culture of courtesy would mean they wouldn’t get up to smack around someone for the crime of speaking that foreign tongue, English. Or excuse me, American.