Thunderf00t does one good thing

He’s blundering about, wailing and whining, because he used a clip from another YouTuber without attribution, and she wrote him asking for a link or a mention, as she deserves, and he had a temper tantrum. Instead of just adding an acknowledgment for her contribution, he made a whole ‘nother video which is entirely about belittling and abusing her. No surprise there, I guess.

So what was the good thing? He made me aware of this YouTube channel, Draw Curiosity, which is mostly science stuff, and it’s excellent! I’ve subscribed, and maybe if more of us do, ol’ Phil may have accomplished one worthwhile thing with his ranty, petty noise machine.

If we’re screwed, we’re gonna set the world on fire and drag everyone down with us

Here we go: arbitrary provocation.

President Donald Trump has announced that the US formally recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will begin the process of moving its embassy to the city, breaking with decades of US policy.

“I have determined that it is time to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Trump said in a televised speech on Wednesday.

It’s a start

I’m not going to praise Time magazine, since they’re just another tool of the conservative establishment, but they did make a wise choice in their selection for their Person of the Year cover, “The Silence-Breakers”, all the women who have started a wave of change against a culture of harassment.

Donald Trump gets several mentions in the article, and they aren’t flattering. He must be fuming. Frame it and put that on the wall of your golf courses, Donnie boy. I hope these women are part of the reaction that tears you down.

I hope this recognition is a small part of a change that’s beginning — just beginning. There’s a long way to go. I’m just reminded of how disgracefully our social media has been shaped to be a tool enabling harassers to thrive: how Facebook is openly discriminating against women who protest, while I know of a great many men on Twitter who are notorious abusers, and still are given a platform. Like Donald Trump.

The first of 3 nights of grading

I’m collecting lab final exams and final lab reports from each of 3 labs, one nasty big pile a day. Then at night I take them home with a pocket full of red pens and slash away until my eyes melt and drool out of their sockets.

To get in the mood, I like to have a little background noise while I’m working — I’m one of those people who can’t focus without a little static, and I get too easily distracted by the ravening beasts in my head if it’s silent. But it can’t be too engaging. So I’ve queued up a set of streaming movies that are going to be terrible and ignorable, but are appropriate for the season. The theme for the next three nights is…Christmas Horror (it’s a genre, for real: look it up on Amazon video). My work this evening, and tomorrow, and the day after, will be accompanied by screams, ugly crunching/ripping sounds, and abominable dialog.

I find the students’ work usually comes off better in comparison, so it’s all to their advantage.

If you have suggestions for awful movies to play while grading, let me know. Remember the criteria: it’s got to be so bad that I won’t actually be distracted by it, but it has to also fill the silence.

WHY?

Trump plans to announce tomorrow that the US embassy to Israel is being moved to Jerusalem.

Donald Trump appeared on the verge of formally recognising Jerusalem as the “capital of Israel”, in a move that would upend decades of US presidential diplomacy and could trigger unrest across the Middle East.

WHY? No country on Earth has their embassy in Jerusalem. It’s recognized as very delicate bit of diplomacy — all the Islamic nations, including both Iran and Saudi Arabia, are united in their condemnation of such a move, and it would be nothing but a pointless provocation.

Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, called the planned relocation “a very reckless and dangerous act from the side of the US president”.

Speaking from Ramallah, he told Al Jazeera that such a move would not “take into consideration what it means to 1.6 billion Muslims, to 2.2 billion Christians, and to 360 million Arabs”.

“It will create a very serious reaction and destabilise the region – and definitely destabilise the situation in Palestine itself,” he added.

“If President Trump proceeds with moving the embassy, he will be killing completely any future American role in any future peace process.”

It gains us nothing to move the embassy, but it will inflame the region and trigger more violence.

It’s almost as if he’s looking for a magic switch he could flip to generate international incidents to distract from the corruption and criminality he’s fomenting at home.

Quit playing the fool, guys — you’re hurting our reputation

Oh, god. Could you make it any more about you? Men are wondering if hugging women is still OK.

“Have we gotten to the point now where men can’t say, ‘That’s a nice dress’ or ‘Did you do something with your hair?’” says the veteran sales associate for a Los Angeles company. “The potential problem is you can’t even feel safe saying, ‘Good morning’ anymore.”

The sexual misconduct allegations that have brought down powerful men in Hollywood, media, politics and business are sending a shiver through the workplace. Men are wondering if it’s still OK to hug a female colleague or ask about her weekend. And some are asking themselves if they ever, perhaps even inadvertently, crossed the line.

You can still comment on women’s appearance in a complimentary way, if you’re also the kind of guy who says “That’s a nice shirt” to your male co-workers. You can comment on their hairstyle, if you also say the same sort of thing about other men.

“Good morning” is always safe, you dumbass.

Hugging is also safe, if you ask permission first, and if you don’t use it as an excuse to send your hands on a scouting mission to various prominences in the landscape. Again, I have to wonder, though, how often hugging is an important part of your interactions with other men.

Also, if you have to ask yourselves if you’ve crossed a line, then yes, you have crossed a line.

I’m really getting annoyed with these men who are playing dumb and incapable of understanding simple social cues and rules of behavior. We men aren’t that stupid, and no one is fooled — even you aren’t that dim. Apparently, though, the cost of appearing stupid is the price you’re willing to pay for an excuse to clumsily fondle women against their will.

“You don’t feel save saying ‘good morning’ anymore.” Sheesh. You really are willing to play the imbecile for a cheap feel.

Why does the city of Charlotte hate women?

Oh, look. It’s a row of scrota marching to demand the right to fill your uterus.

Over a thousand sanctimonious assholes marched around an abortion clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina, shouting and waving signs and doing their best to intimidate and suppress women’s access to health care. Despite the noisy zealots, though, the clinic remained open.

Clinic staff considered it a victory that it remained open despite the thousands of anti-choice activists, the large police presence, the large sound systems not just at the clinic but also a quarter of a mile up the drive, and the buses shuttling LLC attendees from parking lots to the rally site and back again. But there is little doubt that as many as 20 patients were unable to access an abortion that day simply because they were too confused, too overwhelmed, or too scared to navigate the sea of barricades, officers, and teal-shirted anti-abortion activists—even if those activists were primarily doing nothing but silently walking and praying.

“We have no-shows and drive-bys that happen on a normal day, with 10 to 15 protesters,” said Anders, the clinic escort organizer. “They circle around a few times and drive away, and I’m sure it was a patient who didn’t want to come in, who was intimidated and didn’t want to talk to these street preachers. Today, I can’t imagine.”

“Access is being impeded by groups who come down these small side streets and swarm these clinics, putting them under siege, which blocks access for patients and also confuses patients who don’t know if that clinic is open,” said Jen Ferris, Progress North Carolina, a progressive liberal policies action group out of Raleigh that is working with the clinic. “People should be able to access clinics without fear of harassment.”

Can we get something clear here? This is not free speech. It’s abusing the right to peaceably assemble to instead blockade and impede someone else’s rights. And a big part of the problem is the goddamn city of Charlotte, which refuses to recognize the tyrannical character of the shrieking protesters’ transparent assault on the liberty of others.

Ferris suggests that one thing the city should do to ensure patients don’t face similar situations is to stop issuing parade permits like the one it issued today. “Today they gave a permit for 5,000 people to come down this small street,” she said. “You can see traffic is backing up. They could stop issuing sound permits. You can hear this inside the clinic and there is no reason a patient needs to hear religion shouted at them while they sit inside a clinic.” Rewire has previously reported on noise levels outside of the clinic and the inadequate response of city officials in addressing them.

The city of Charlotte is aiding and abetting anti-woman offenses against humanity. I guess that’s fine with the city administration, so clearly, they need to go.

How do you fight madness?

That’s a serious question. The United States of America has become a seething nest of snakes; we talk about getting out the vote and campaigning and making reasonable, evidence-based arguments, but here’s an example of what we’re confronted with. Alex Jones, everyone, ranting about lesbians:


That’s the liberals. They want to get you in a dungeon. They want to strap you down and take a buzz saw and cut the top of your head off like a pumpkin and pull it off and get a little spoon and go, looking in the mirror, ‘I’m gonna eat your brain now!’
…
‘I’m gonna eat your cerebral cortex last! I’ve got power! I love Satan! And I’m gonna suck you dry and I’m gonna torture you to death. And you’re gonna follow my liberal orders!’

It’s not just Alex Jones, either. It’s people who think Hillary Clinton ran a child sex slave ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor. It’s Nazis. It’s people who think Republicans will work for the good of the country. It’s Donald Trump. It’s a whole system that makes it lucrative to be an extremist nutbag, and that amplifies the voices of the loons unfiltered.

No apocalyptic novel I know of ever predicted that the US would be destroyed by a dangerous and contagious insanity, but here we are. Future historians are going to look back on us and wonder about the causes of this catastrophic collapse.

I’m not going anywhere

It’s been an annoyingly bland, warm winter so far, but it looks like that’s about to change.

… WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CST TONIGHT… * WHAT… SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW CAUSING LOW VISIBILITIES AND SLIPPERY ROADS MAKING TRAVEL DANGEROUS. TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 1 TO 4 INCHES ARE EXPECTED. * WHERE… PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AND WEST CENTRAL MINNESOTA. * WHEN… FROM NOON TODAY TO MIDNIGHT CST TONIGHT. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS… WINDS GUSTING AS HIGH AS 55 MPH WILL CAUSE AREAS OF BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS… A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL, KEEP AN EXTRA FLASHLIGHT, FOOD AND WATER IN YOUR VEHICLE IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY. THE LATEST ROAD CONDITIONS FOR MINNESOTA CAN BE FOUND AT 511MN.ORG AND FOR WISCONSIN AT 511WI.GOV, OR BY CALLING 5 1 1 IN EITHER STATE.

… POWERFUL STORM TO BRING STRONG WIND AND SOME SNOW MONDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING… .SNOW ACCUMULATION FROM 2 TO 4 INCHES IS EXPECTED ACROSS WESTERN MINNESOTA ACCOMPANIED BY WINDS GUSTING TO 50 MPH MONDAY AFTERNOON AND EVENING. THE COMBINATION OF FALLING SNOW AND A VERY STRONG NORTHWEST WIND WILL CREATE LOW VISIBILITIES WITH NEAR BLIZZARD CONDITIONS ACROSS WEST CENTRAL MINNESOTA, WHERE A WINTER STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FROM NOON UNTIL MIDNIGHT MONDAY NIGHT. TO THE EAST, A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT FOR MUCH OF CENTRAL MINNESOTA FROM 3 PM MONDAY UNTIL MIDNIGHT WHERE THE COMBINATION OF 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW AND STRONG NORTHWEST WIND WILL CAUSE REDUCED VISIBILITY AND AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW. THE PRECIPITATION WILL FALL IN THE FORM OF RAIN INITIALLY, THEN CHANGE OVER TO SNOW AS TEMPERATURES FALL MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT AS A COLD FRONT MOVES FROM WEST TO EAST ACROSS THE STATE. NORTHWEST WINDS WILL BECOME STRONG IN THE WAKE OF THE FRONT. IF YOU TRAVEL, MAKE SURE TO LET SOMEONE KNOW YOUR TRAVEL PLANS AND HAVE A CHARGED PHONE WITH YOU.

Here are my travel plans: I’m staying home. I hope my students who commute are going to be sensible about all this — I know my classes are the highlight of your existence, but I’m not going to penalize anyone for staying home in this mess, even if you are going to miss another exciting lecture/discussion today.

Music as an educational inspiration

An inner-city school in England was in trouble: funding problems, complaining parents, unhappy teachers. They reversed their situation, however.

  • The school is in the top 10% nationally for pupil progress in reading, writing and maths.
  • 74% of its kids met the nation’s reading standard, higher than the national average of 53%.
  • 74% of its pupils achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared to a national average of 53%.
  • Feversham students are 7.1 points above the national average for reading and 3.4 for writing.
  • Feversham students are 6.5 points above the national average for math.
  • The school’s results for disadvantaged pupils are well above average.

All it took was ‘one weird trick’: they incorporated 6 hours of music into the curriculum every week.

The school bases its method on the Kodály approach, which involves teaching children to learn, subconsciously at first, through playing musical games. Children learn rhythm, hand signs and movement, for example, in a way that will help their reading, writing and maths. Idrees says teachers have found that asking children to memorise passages of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, for example, improves reading and writing.

I don’t think music is the one magical element that makes this work, but it’s part of the recipe. Kids have to learn that applying oneself with discipline has rewards, and music is a good tool for that; I think also that the missing ingredient in education is inspiration and enthusiasm. Kids have to want to learn, and restricting the curriculum to some tiny few fragments of the range of human interest is a sure way to lock people out from learning that lesson.

In my own case, I was lucky: I was brought up with an enthusiasm for reading. Maybe soaking up trashy science fiction and fantasy novels wasn’t a direct path to educational success, but it did give me the skills I needed to do well in English and math and science. The local high school in Morris is not exactly exceptional, but one of the things that stood out about it when my kids were attending was their theater program — my son Connlann was very gung-ho about performing, and my nerdy daughter Skatje was focused on theater tech. It makes a difference when going to school to have something that makes you enthusiastic about participating. (The school made major cuts in the theater program about the time my kids graduated — a classic short-sighted bit of stupidity. I’m sure that their thinking was that since performing arts weren’t on the standardized exams, who needs it?)

I’m seeing it all the time in higher ed, too. In times of short budgets, who needs philosophy or foreign languages? Cut those disciplines so you can give more money to the STEM fields, where the money and the future lies. They never seem to realize that students are human beings with diverse interests, and our job is to expose them to the breadth of human knowledge, so they can choose how to apply themselves. Force-feeding our students through a funnel of one domain isn’t going to succeed; they’ll learn more with a smorgasbord that allows them to voluntarily stuff themselves with wisdom.