This is old classic, and I just came across it again in a link provided by a commenter. I'll let Jonah Goldberg explain:

The greatest exposé of postmodern asininity appeared, in 1996, in the pages of a respected postmodern magazine called Social Text. The editors of Social Text, as part of their long campaign against facts-without-quotation-marks, dedicated an entire issue to the problem of "science." For obvious reasons, PoMos hate science more than dogs hate vacuum cleaners, and they bark at it about as much. You see, scientists work on precisely the opposite assumptions as PoMos; they actually think that facts exist outside of clever word games. You can say all you like that physics is phallocentric, but it's not going to change the rules of thermodynamics. This really pisses off PoMos, because scientists keep making really cool gadgets that work while, to date, Duke's English department hasn't been able to make an airplane run on metaphors or to illuminate a football stadium with the adverbs from James Joyce's Dubliners.

Anyway, a physicist named Alan Sokal decided to have some fun and submit a paper to Social Text entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." After a zillion pages of jargon, it concluded that "physical 'reality,' no less than social 'reality,' is at bottom a social and linguistic construct." The editors loved the piece and published it. At which point, Sokal admitted it was a parody and he was just kidding. A few PoMos insisted it didn't matter if Sokal was joking, because he was right anyway. But most of them were angry enough to spit hermeneutic nails.

Anyway, the hoax is more talked about than actually read, because it's a good hoax, which means it reads pretty straight, except for the fact that when you think about it he's talking about perfect nonsense. But superficially, he seems to be making a pretty good case. You can't really blame the unscientific know-nothings at Social Text for being taken in.

The actual paper is here.

Perhaps he gives the game away a little early, here proposing that the constant pi is not a constant at all, but depends upon the observer and his "non-centeredness," or something:

In mathematical terms, Derrida's observation relates to the invariance of the Einstein field equation [omitted] under nonlinear space-time diffeomorphisms (self-mappings of the space-time manifold which are infinitely differentiable but not necessarily analytic). The key point is that this invariance group ``acts transitively'': this means that any space-time point, if it exists at all, can be transformed into any other. In this way the infinite-dimensional invariance group erodes the distinction between observer and observed; the pi of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity; and the putative observer becomes fatally de-centered, disconnected from any epistemic link to a space-time point that can no longer be defined by geometry alone.

He writes later:

The teaching of science and mathematics must be purged of its authoritarian and elitist characteristics...

Which doesn't sound funny, until you check out footnote 95 that's appended to it:

For an example in the context of the Sandinista revolution, see Sokal (1987).

Of course. The Sandinista revolution. How could he have spoofed the genre without getting around to that at some point?

And what the hell could the Sandanista revolution possibly say about purging the teaching of science and math of its authoritarian, elitist characteristics? Who the hell knows. The reference -- Sokal (1987) -- seems a likely hoax itself, a reference to a previous article Sokal never in fact wrote.

A later footnote states:

. As with the feminist critique, the multiculturalist perspective has been ridiculed by right-wing critics, with a condescension that in some cases borders on racism.

His rousing conclusion:

Finally, the content of any science is profoundly constrained by the language within which its discourses are formulated; and mainstream Western physical science has, since Galileo, been formulated in the language of mathematics. But whose mathematics? The question is a fundamental one, for, as Aronowitz has observed, ``neither logic nor mathematics escapes the `contamination' of the social.''

Here the footnote begins: "For a vicious right-wing attack on this proposition, see Gross and Levitt..."

And as feminist thinkers have repeatedly pointed out, in the present culture this contamination is overwhelmingly capitalist, patriarchal and militaristic: ``mathematics is portrayed as a woman whose nature desires to be the conquered Other.'' Thus, a liberatory science cannot be complete without a profound revision of the canon of mathematics. As yet no such emancipatory mathematics exists, and we can only speculate upon its eventual content. We can see hints of it in the multidimensional and nonlinear logic of fuzzy systems theory; but this approach is still heavily marked by its origins in the crisis of late-capitalist production relations. Catastrophe theory, with its dialectical emphases on smoothness/discontinuity and metamorphosis/unfolding, will indubitably play a major role in the future mathematics; but much theoretical work remains to be done before this approach can become a concrete tool of progressive political praxis. Finally, chaos theory -- which provides our deepest insights into the ubiquitous yet mysterious phenomenon of nonlinearity -- will be central to all future mathematics. And yet, these images of the future mathematics must remain but the haziest glimmer: for, alongside these three young branches in the tree of science, there will arise new trunks and branches -- entire new theoretical frameworks -- of which we, with our present ideological blinders, cannot yet even conceive.

Again, the whole thing reads pretty straight -- and dense, and dull, its lifeblood restricted by dangerous buildups of leftist cant -- but if it were more transparently fraudulent, the hoax never would have worked.

I kind of enjoyed multiple references to "vicious right wing critics," and the shout-outs to Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh in the footnotes.

Ba-ba-booey to y'all.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (44)
Post contains 1007 words, total size 7 kb.

And another pig was reportedly born recently with two mouths as well.

You know why?

Global Warming, that's why. All this heat, you see, causes our DNA to denature and create all sorts of monsters.

JackStraw again.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (28)
Post contains 53 words, total size 1 kb.

Old opinion: Embarrassingly not funny

New opinion, now that "The Boys" rang me up: kind of funny, if sporadically so and just in a smile sort of way, and really no worse than the jackass clapper shows Real Time, Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Weekend Update

Good for Joel Surnow.

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (7)
Post contains 66 words, total size 1 kb.

In this old post about stuff I hate, I noted my disgust at the "Magical Retard" and "Magical Negro" movies:

I can also do without this film genre, a smaller one to be sure, but almost as fucking annoying as the last [the "Magical Retard" genre].

Who was it that first fucking thought this up? Who conceived the genre of "Magical Negroes Stepping Out of the Darkness To Help Troubled White Boys Understand and Conquer Their Own Fears and Flaws"?

For a progressive and liberal industry like Hollywood, this is a condescending kind of movie, isn't it? Do black folks really sit around dreaming of helping rich and handsome Matt Damon succeed in life? For God's sake, I can't even get an extra biscuit at KFC.

When Will Smith rings my door-buzzer to explain to me how I can finally make some crazy blog-money, I'll believe the conceit of this genre. Until then, fuck these stupid-ass movies too.

Radio, from two years back, was both a Magical Retard and a Magical Negro movie. Cuba Gooding Junior played a Magical Negro Retard who helped Ed Harris regain his love of life and of football... or something. I don't know. I didn't fucking see the stupid shit.

And neither did you. Kudos to you for that.

The Onion's AV Club finally catches up with my genius to list the Top Thirteen Magical Negro Movies of All Time.

They missed a few. Most glaringly, they missed the Magical Retard/Magical Negro cross-over film Radio, but then, so did everyone else.

They also missed the Nicholas Cage disaster Family Man which featured that guy from the Spike Lee commercials as a quite-literally magical Negro, an angel in fact, who appears first as a homeless hustler-turned-crazed-gunman, but, after Nicholas Cage shows him kindness (and who wouldn't show kindness towards someone waving a gat in your face?), gives Cage the gift of Magical Negro Wisdom by showing him an alternate life in which he gets to tap Tea Leoni's ass every day.

Cage learns many lessons, including the lesson that Tea Leoni's knockers look damn good even through pebbled shower-door glass, but also more important lessons, like that it's really, really fun to have sex with Tea Leoni.

Now that, truly, is one Magical Negro.

I await their article on the Magical Retard genre.

Slublog again.

The Sarah Silverman Show, which is really pretty damn funny (kept meaning to say so, now there's just one episode left) parodied the Magical Negro conceit in the first aired episode, and the last one will also feature a Magical Negro -- God, as it turns out, who is of course black.

Determined to offend pretty much everyone, the episode will feature her hooking up with God.

He takes notice of her after she offers this beautiful prayer in the form of a song ("And I wish the retarded were... re-smarted...") and offers to grant her any of the wishes she's named -- world peace, freedom from disease, transcendant love, etc.

She chooses to go back to an embarrassing moment and avoid pooping her pants.

Steven King: Repeat Magical Negro Offender: As Jack Straw says, however, you have to keep in mind there are only about six negroes in Maine. So pretty much every time he meets one it's a nearly magical experience.

Thanks to Slublog for that.

Slublog also notes that King is a repeat offender on the Magical Retard front as well. Like Dudditz, from that movie where aliens crawl up your ass and make you fart violently. Thirty minutes of foreshadowing, not the kind where you see shadows moving in the darkness, but where you see dudes crapping their guts out in a poorly-ventilated shack.

He pretty much ran out of legitimate horror concepts right after (or right before, if you ask me) It, didn't he?

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (83)
Post contains 649 words, total size 4 kb.

Now, as a general rule, I don't read the Washington Post's "Style" section.

It is, as Ann Coulter might say, the natural habitat of the John Edwards's of the world after all.

But I did see this little vignette(what the hell...when in Rome, as it were) this morning. And it made me warm and fuzzy inside.

Here it is for your amusement, as it appears, in part, in the "The Reliable Source" section, under the banner "Hey Isn't That..."

Karen Hughes and Hadassah Lieberman lunching together yesterday at the Four Seasons, which we like to imagine was the White House's secret back-channel attempt to get Sen. Joe Lieberman to switch parties, but may well have been perfectly innocent.

Heh. Eat it, nutroots.

Posted by: Jack M. at 08:27 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 128 words, total size 1 kb.

Dead, killed by a sniper's bullet, in a ludicrous story-arc called "Civil War" intended to echo (and, of course, critique) life in Bu$h's Amerikkka under the Patriot Act.

He won't be missed. Comic book guys I know say that Marvel has seized on the character as a conveniently star-spangled propagandist for the left, putting faintly absurd anachronistic slogans from the 60's New Left in the mouth of a WWII-era patriot.

So really they killed him five years ago. Now they'll just give the desecrated corpse his proper burial.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Marvel -- The House of (Bad) Ideas.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (59)
Post contains 116 words, total size 1 kb.

...but kept behind glass for safety reasons, to protect visitors to the Anglican chapel from harmful levels of "Jesus Rays."

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (14)
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

It has come to this.

For 35 Australian dollars (about 27 U.S. dollars), customers of Sydney-based Easy Being Green can offset a year's worth of carbon emissions linked to their dogs, from trips to the vet to, yes, breaking wind.

Making your cat carbon neutral for a year costs U.S.$6, while U.S.$16 offsets two years of flatulence from that special someone.

The Church of Gaia is now selling indulgences for farting.

But it's not a cult or anything.

Well, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (the dangerous, toxic atmospheric pollutant formerly known as "air").

So... how much is this guy spending to protect the environment from his lethally fat ass?

The answer had better not be "zero." Because this fat sack of fat is putting my grandchildren's lives at risk everytime he asks for steak sauce.

Meat is murder. Al Gore's thunderous hamhocks doubly so.

And very uncool for Al to invest in "green energy" companies which just happen to have the benefit of sheltering his green money from taxation.

Green Dildos? In Canada, "green sex" is now the rage. Supposedly. Frankly, I kind of doubt that sex itself has ever been the rage among Canadians, but whatever.

You've heard of green cars, green tourism and green weddings. Now Canadians should ready themselves for green sex.

For those who like to make love to the soundtrack of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Greenpeace has released a list of strategies for "getting it on for the good of the planet," suggesting "you can be a bomb in bed without nuking the planet." TreeHugger, an online magazine edited by Ontario's Michael Graham Richard, has just published a guide on "how to green your sex life." The famed adult store Good Vibrations announced last week they would no longer sell sex toys containing phthalates, controversial chemical plasticizers believed by some to be hazardous to humans and the environment alike.

And throughout Canada and the U.S., people who want to pleasure the planet can now buy everything from bamboo bed sheets to organic lubricant and "eco-undies."

"Green living is getting sexy," says Jacob Gordon, author of TreeHugger.com's recent green guide for the bedroom.

Yeah. Sure sounds like it. There's nothing sexier, really, than regulating your breathing patterns during sex so as to reduce hazard carbon dioxide output.

Why, sometimes I even tie a nylon rope around my neck while I'm having sex to partially asphyxiate myself during orgasm. Oh, wait, I saw that on a TV crime show. Which TV crime show? All of them, I'm pretty sure.

...

"It feels like people are just waking up to the fact the planet is suffering under our uses of it," says Rebecca Denk, business manager for the adult toy store Babeland. The U.S. company, which sells to Canadians via Babeland.com, just introduced an "Eco-Sexy Kit" featuring a phthalate-free vibrator, soy massage candle, a natural lubricant with no animal-testing or derivatives, and condoms.

"We have to look at every piece of our lives, including our sexuality, and ask: How is this healthy for me, and how is this healthy for the planet?" says Denk.

Just sounds like another excuse for women to avoid giving head.

Other ways of "greenwashing" the bedroom, as outlined by TreeHugger and Greenpeace, include turning out the lights, not buying PVC or vinyl accoutrements...

PVC? Pipe? Are these people having sex or trying to irrigate their abdominal cavities?

...ensuring S&M paddles are made from sustainably harvested timber, using organic massage oils, showering together, using bamboo bed sheets (they come from a rapidly renewable resource and are said to be "super sexy"), and wearing lingerie made with renewable fibres such as hemp (Enamore), bamboo (Butta) and other organic goodness (GreenKnickers, Buenostyle, Peau Ethique).

Gordon notes there's even an eco-friendly adult website dedicated to naked vegetarians, appropriately called Veg Porn.

Eh, don't bother going there. I checked it out and it's just a bunch of pictures of steaks, chops, and meatballs.

Think Globally, Fuck Locally.

The world has gone insane. And yes -- I do believe this is the left's way to avoid taking terrorism seriously.

After all -- the polar bears. The polar bears!

Thanks to Slublog, who right now is walking around with phthalate-free butt-plug.

Bonus: Al Gore Effect Strikes Again. A snow advisory issued on day of "global warming" hearings.

God.

Hates.

Al.

Gore.

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (71)
Post contains 738 words, total size 6 kb.

Awful, just awful video with worse sound of this, um, notorious "debate" at the 1968 DNC.

Just so you know what you're listening for -- Vidal fillibusters for a while, Buckley says that little hooligans encouraging enemy troops to kill American soldiers and Marines (sound familiar?) ought to be ostracized, at which point Vidal calls him a "pro-war crypto-Nazi" (sound familiar?) and Buckley says "Don't call me a crypto-Nazi, you little queer, I'll punch you in your goddamned head."

JackStraw suggests this belies the claim that American discourse has never been more incivil. Well, perhaps... but this was a particularly angry period, and if we've merely returned to 1968's level of civility, it's small comfort.

BTW, Buckley should have punched the little queer in the goddamned head.

Posted by: Ace at 06:28 AM | Comments (40)
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.

Sort of. I mean, he reviews it, but it's historian's review, not really a movie critic's.

Does he like it? He seems to like it some, but there was a definite lack of genuine cinematic admiration there. (Telling me it's better than Alexander is like tellling me it's better than a genital hernia.) Maybe he just doesn't think in those terms.

But overall, yeah, he likes it:

Why—beside the blood-spattering violence and often one-dimensional characterizations—will some critics not like this, despite the above caveats?

Ultimately the film takes a moral stance, Herodotean in nature: there is a difference, an unapologetic difference between free citizens who fight for eleutheria and imperial subjects who give obeisance. We are not left with the usual postmodern quandary 'who are the good guys' in a battle in which the lust for violence plagues both sides. In the end, the defending Spartans are better, not perfect, just better than the invading Persians, and that proves good enough in the end. And to suggest that ambiguously these days has perhaps become a revolutionary thing in itself.

Posted by: Ace at 05:43 AM | Comments (23)
Post contains 189 words, total size 1 kb.