1 You'll never find me out!!!111!!

2

Mike Adams is a great writer and really funny.  All snark all the time.  A lighthouse of hope down there at UNC-W.  From his writings, Wilmington rivals Chapel Hill for leftist loons (not waterfowl...).

Strong advocate of gun rights, too.

3 jib, newsletter, etc., Jack

4

1 Don't you know?  That's the "new discourse and rhetoric" -- practiced by all the cool kids and profs.  Very Derridian...very Foucaultesque...post-post-post modern if you will.

They should have turned Kent State into a military base back in the day, just as a lesson -- oh, was that hateful?  My bad.

5 "Arab Homosexuality/Lesbianism and the Politics of Naming."

Isn't that the conference where the one Imam admitted that Islam requires the killing of gays?  I'm not positive but I recall that it was in North Carolina. 

6

Jack

If you like that type of humor, you will like this, but you may have already seen this on the internets.

 

http://tinyurl.com/6lfd2q

7

We probably just need to end the concept of tenure forever. Really.

Absolutely. I have always wanted to hunt down these tenured "academics". They are worse than any tyrant in Washington.

8 "Arab Homosexuality/Lesbianism and the Politics of Naming."

I smell NEH funding.  It's all gravy, boys!

9 It's all gravy, boys! Eeeeewwwwwwww!!!11!!

10 Kent Read, Kent Write, Kent State - oh my favorite college chant - GO BGSU

11 9  That really wasn't necessary this early...or ever.

12 Ben, Thanks! I hadn't seen that. And for what it's worth, I think that Spider was totally worth $233. But only upon the death of the artist. Does anyone know if he's sick?

13 Anyone watching Fox? This little a-hole Syracuse co-ed bitching about the JP Morgan CEO is speaking at graduation. The issue? His suit costs more than their tuition. She doesn't want someone who represents that speaking at her graduation. What a little twit. I hope she can find a poor person to employ her.

14 The issue? His suit costs more than their tuition.

Increase her tuition.

15 "...The politics of naming"
OK, I'll bite -- what is naming?
And please don't tell me if it some new perversion higher than a three on the pervo scale  [teabagging is a three, dolphin sex is a seven, vaseline covered mice is at least a nine] as I have already hit my pervo-news quota for the week.

16 Adams has a long history with Pino, who has been caught posting on terrorism-affiliated websites (which is apparently OK with the State of Ohio).  I think some of it ended up in his last book.

17 Hey, we pay taxes, too, Pal!!

18 Mike Adams hits the pinhead just right. Great stuff! And Jack I agree ,The Lazlo Letters was one of the snarkyest things I ever read. Good times, good times...

19 JP Morgan CEO should show up with a pair of brass balls hanging on a string. http://tinyurl.com/ytvfr5

20 "Vaseline covered mice."

Obviously a crucial part of wresting a realm of freedom from the realm of necessity.

Naming = describing something in terms that do not meet the approval of the Global PC Language Committee

21 This little a-hole Syracuse co-ed bitching about the JP Morgan CEO is speaking at graduation.

She should have graduated on time--last year's speaker was Joe Botox, bashing Vietnam vets.

22

We looked into this matter, and there were no red flags here.

23 Kent State football players who made it to the NFL

including one Hall of Famer:

Lambert, Jack (1974 - 1984) HOF Pittsburgh Steelers

24 This is what 40 years of leftwing bowel belching commie fuckfaced professors have created.  Students smothered in this radical horseshit agenda starting at K-12 and continuing into our higher learning institutions.  I'll say one thing for the demobarfs, they plan well, and are patient.  If you have a full generation of liberal thinking zombies, and basically all of the media...you got the country by the fucking balls. 

25 Lets put together a short list of acceptable schools to send our kids, I will take the easy ones: USMA USN USAF VMI Citadel Hillsdale USCGA US Merchant Marine Academy Yeshiva Bob Jones Regents any others?

26

OK I get most of the memes around here except the jib/newsletter one.

Put me some effing knowlege (please)

27 Kodachrome gives us those nice bright colors, but Kodak doesn't make it any more.

28

17 Vaseline covered mice?  You all are beginning to scare me with all this animal sex knowledge.

"Naming" is a bit of a progressive, humanities based term based (you guessed it) in Derrida/Foucault/fellow travelers and sychopants.  The concept is that things do not have inherent meaning/truth and thus "become" what they are "named" -- at least for however long and wherever a certain "name" is used for them.

That's a very simplistic description -- but 1)this is part of the root of all this moral equivalency/multiculti/pc bs; 2)it's been the big thing in humanities departments for about a generation, and has completely taken over the research and criticism discourse in those departments -- the concept isn't even argued anymore (at least by 99% of the faculty and graduate student body).

29 #28: The jib/newsletter thing is a cuter way of saying "I totally agree".  Versions of it are common all over the Internet.

30 27 Got news for you: this stuff has found its way into those fine institutions as well.  While they are a bit better than the rest of the herd the sad fact is: there is no safe place from idiocracy -- best recourse: have a personal library and have your kids read it themselves; discuss; warn them about the dangers of actually displaying actual knowledge in public and especially within the hallowed halls of learning; warn them about institutional brainwashing as well.

31

We probably just need to end the concept of tenure forever

*wipes tear from eye from laughter*

That would be like Congress approving term limits for themselves.

A more likely scenario--your Cubbies winning the World Series!

 

32 Vaseline covered mice? You all are beginning to scare me with all this animal sex knowledge. We demand that you cease mocking us! It's not easy being the love that can't come up for air.

33

Lets put together a short list of acceptable schools to send our kids, I will take the easy ones: USMA USN USAF VMI Citadel Hillsdale USCGA US Merchant Marine Academy Yeshiva Bob Jones Regents any others?

I always urge the undecided and "undeclared" young skulls full of mush go to a community college first.

Even if there is a communist prof or two in them (and usually, if anything, the opposite is the case, as anti-communist teachers cannot get tenure and end up teaching there), you save yourself a pile of money, political crap, and general trouble.

You can always transfer to Big Name University later, once you are certain it serves your purpose.

Institutions like Chapman or the University of Phoenix, franchised diploma mills, also have the right idea. Just learn a trade and avoid the crap.

34

Me and Julio down by the school yard...

35

So, you know, if Townhall needs a Classic Rock editor to make sure that things like this don't spill through the cracks, I'm an e-mail away.

Du-hu-hu-hu-huuude! If you get that gig and need some help on the 80s Metal end of things, I'm just an e-mail away from you!

(By the way, I don't mind when people get my handle wrong and call me Firehouse. But if you get "Don't Treat Me Bad" stuck in your head, it's your own fault.)

36

It looks like Eric Cantor is going to endorse Rubio tomorrow.

Maybe he'll have some sway with the Florida Jewish Community, because Cantor is a jew.

jew

jew

jew

Signed,

Democratic National Committe

37 34  Oh, I wasn't mocking. Cringing away in horror and disgust, maybe; shuddering with revulsion and perhaps gagging with a bit of puke mouth, perhaps, but no, no mocking.

38 I like the cut of his jib.

39 OK, I assumed the mice thing was well publicized, now that I think about it I heard it on Red Eye and had something to do with a raid on a farm. This scared me. As I lay in bed I thought "what is this world coming to?"

But now i find out that the left has been holding seminars or this semantical PC equivalence crap and this scares me more.

40 Unknown Jane - at some of those institutions, whatever lefty drivel seeps into the classroom - gets kneaded out at night. Having had to recite Kipling and the detail order of battle for obscure civil war clashes while doing pushups in a sea of cockroaches, I can assure you that the student body has little tolerance for the lefty mind crimes. The influence of blogs and talk radio has also had a significant effect - they unsure that the lefty profs are not the only sources of information.

41 Kent State has been a joke for years.  Before the shootings it was little more than a glorified teachers' college, which I admit I attended for two years..  By the way, I was there the day before and that morning of the shootings.  Our old buddies in the SDS and Weather Underground had been around instigating trouble.  There is no doubt in my mind at least, that they were the cause of the whole mess.    FYI It will be 40 years ago this May 4th, yeah I'm that old.  And here's a factoid for ya...the site is on the National Register of Historic Places. 

42

The mouse thing was talked about on an ONT I think or maybe one of the long open threads last week. It's from a farm in North Washington state where a guy was just arrested for providing a happy place for those into sex with animals.

I wonder if this Pino guy ever visited.

43 I wonder how Dr Pino would have dealt with Jack Lambret : http://tinyurl.com/y2hlm2u

44

For those of you who haven't been in a college in 10 years, let me tell you how f'ing crazy they have become. All the best teachers are between the age of 60-80.  They are the old guard, people who actually wanted to instill some knowledge into their students.

They are being replaced  by a group of quasi retarts in their 30s. You've seen these people before in your local coffee shop. They are the type that put a ton of effort into their appearence, but do so in a manner which makes it seem as though they didn't.  They are very shallow and poor teachers. I had a Comparative Politics class in which we watched The Dr. Seuss Turtle Stacking cartoon and then had a discussion on it for an entire class. We had to read garbage by Franz Fannon and Jean Paul Satre, but nothing by Milton Freidman, John Locke, etc.  There were two papers to bet written a semester. TWO. And I am not talking about 50 pages papers, I am talking about 5-6 page papers.

Also, we watched "Battle of Algiers", for those of you not familiar with that film it is about Ali La Pointe who is the leader of a terrorist(or freedom fighter assuming freedom means freedom to follow islam) during the battle of Algeria. Obviously it portrays the French is a bad light and the Terrorists as the heroes.

Needless to say the discussion after the movie was entirely about how great the terrorists were, which was humorous considering the teacher was the type of person who wouldn't survive 5 minutes under sharia law. Also the discussion excluded any talk about the civil war that came after the French withdrew.

If you send your kid to college, make sure they major in math or science.

45 Posted by: Jean at April 20, 2010 11:09 AM (h0rZ/)


I would think that any of the Senior Military Colleges would be acceptable, such as VMI and the Citadel. The other four SMCs are:

Norwich
Texas A&M
Virginia Tech
North Georgia College & State University

Although from the wiki, it looks like Virginia Tech and N Georgia are transitioning away from the SMC standard.

46

Thanks, Jack M. I haven't read Adams for years. He's a really sharp, funny guy.

47
Hasn't "There's hippie blood in the soil here" lost it's charm with the libtards yet?  I mean,  other than that,  you got dick.  And apparently those are very much on the small side.  Unless you're a lesbian strapping on your latest internet purchase.

48 Kent State is a great school.

49 My second daughter is about to graduate from Kent next month at the very top of her pre-med class with a major in bio-chem and chemistry. Is finishing prepping her paper to be published. Has worked as an undergrad in the bio-chem research lab for the last 3 years during the school semesters and during summer break. Has been working for both the chemistry and math departments in tutoring other students. Has been volunteering at a local hospital on the weekends. Has consistently won the chemistry award for all four years she has attended Kent State, in addition to other awards. Has been contacted over her 4 years by professors to assist them when they have trouble solving math problems. Has been active as a Young Republican, and a member of a couple Medical Student organizations that do charity work during the school year. Is currently 'seeing' one of her younger (former) bio-chem professors.  Will be attending Toledo Medical School next semester after having acceptance from 6 medical schools.     I'll ask her about this shit, but I have a feeling she might not have noticed it too much ... she's been a bit distracted actually sitting her pretty little slender, 5'7" model-worthy ass in her seat, cracking her books, disproving the 'beautiful dumb blonde' theory, and actually getting a fucking education worthy of the tuition we've footed and the 4 years of her life she's dedicated.     As to that day at Kent State years ago, you're only told what happened that day in those moments/hours. Never the days leading up to that day where anarchy tried to take over the city and the campus by causing as much trouble, violence and damage/destruction to the city, private property, and the campus as possible until the Governor had to call in the National Guard.   This is my second daughter to graduate from KSU (The first with her degree as an RN has since returned to continue for the next degree). It's a great school in and of itself, if you're actually looking for an education.  But it is a hive for leftists and other assholes who seem to believe they're 'safe' there.  Prof. Adams has been after "Prof." Pino for a few yrs now, and I hope he gets him.

50 Posted by: Ben at April 20, 2010 11:32 AM (wuv1c)

Federal money out of higher education now.

I posted same position on Gabe's gay Christian court post yesterday.
Federal, money is a poison to everything civil that it touches.

51 You are completely wrong about Kent State.  Why, we have the finest erotic goat studies program in the U.S.!

52 27 Lets put together a short list of acceptable schools to send our kids, I will take the easy ones: USMA USN USAF VMI Citadel Hillsdale USCGA US Merchant Marine Academy Yeshiva Bob Jones Regents any others? Posted by: Jean at April 20, 2010 11:09 AM

Cal Maritime Academy (as long as you're well-armed), Washington and Lee, Pepperdine, * Pacific University (Fresno Pacific, Hawaii Pacific, Azusa Pacific, Seattle Pacific, Alaska Pacific)

53 By the way, I was there the day before and that morning of the shootings.  Our old buddies in the SDS and Weather Underground had been around instigating trouble.  There is no doubt in my mind at least, that they were the cause of the whole mess.

I remember an article in an old, um, men's magazine. They had a picture of the mob at Kent State, and in front of the mob, between them and the NG, was a guy dressed just like the mob, his arm out-stretched and either pointing, or aiming a hand gun at the NG. The caption indicated it was the only known photo of the CIA agent who instigated the whole event.

*sigh* Idiots.

The real lesson of Kent State is that if you feel you need to fire on a mob, aim at the waists of the second rank. That way your rounds won't hit anyone behind the mob.

54 Also, we watched "Battle of Algiers"


I had to watch Brando mumble his way through Pontecorvo's "Burn". Terrible movie, totally incoherent. The professor was pissed that the discussion of the film's politics quickly turned into a bitch session about the quality of the film.

55 They should have napalmed that institution back in 1970. The only victims of that massacre were the innocent Guardsmen who were provoked into defending themselves.

56

One a somewhat-related note, I am sure I am not alone in wondering what the hell the Academy has done to the writing skills of entire generations of young people. Instead of writing a simple two-page essay entitled "It's Morally Wrong To Call Gay People Bad Names", we are instead treated to 1000-page turgidities entitled "The Hermeneutics of Gender and Sexual Identity: Feminist Perspectives on Patriarchal Semiotics". The title is only a vanguard of the impenetrable prose within.

Academics labor for years crafting these unreadable shit-balls. They gather at conferences to discuss them, and invent new even-more-impenetrable jargon to put in them. University presses obligingly turn out twenty or thirty copies of whatever doorstop is in fashion that week, of which maybe half will ultimately actually be read by anyone (and the readers are probably students who were required to buy the book for a course the writer is teaching).

And yet, the same people who craft these flaccid heaps of compost are quite often fans of the poison-pen letter and the outraged "letter to the editor" screed. I've often thought that if they brought the same passion and outrage to their field of study that they do to their hatred of conservatives, their books might sell better.

My advice to grad students the world over: please, please, for God's sake, burn your shitty unreadable thesis and get a job doing something productive.

 

57

42 I'm well aware of the standard thought at military institutions -- but the fact that this pap is even introduced at all says something (and not challenged -- it wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't challenged within the classroom by the instructor/prof).

All the pushups in the world won't do a damn thing to counter that little niggling scrap of info...you don't slap a bandaid over a puncture wound without cleaning it with antiseptic first, no?

58

I'll ask her about this shit, but I have a feeling she might not have noticed it too much ...

I admire her ability. When I was at Berkeley, you couldn't NOT notice--it was everywhere, all the time.

59 Hey, we had to watch the Battle of Algiers, and read War of the Flea -- of course it was in a class taught by someone who worked with the Foreign Legion (Dr Porch) -- so the perspective was a bit different.

60 For those of you who haven't been in a college in 10 years, let me tell you how f'ing crazy they have become.

I taught a textile lab for two semesters in 2000-2001.  When they added two-digit numbers together wrong, I wasn't allowed to grade their math...when they didn't bring their materials to class I had to find stuff for them to work with...wasn't allowed to turn away or take off points on assignments turned in weeks late...wasn't allowed to kick them out for spending half the lab on their cell phone...maybe half the class was there on any given night.

The six-week project worth a third of their grade was to cut 20 photos/descriptions of textile items out of catalogs, paste them into a scrapbook, write a paragraph about the information provided (which was pretty much re-writing the catalog info into sentence form), and at the end write a page "analyzing" how well the catalog gave consumers technical information.  I wasn't allowed to take off points for spelling/grammar no matter how egregious...it took me an hour to figure out what this one chick meant by "fashion conches consumer" because in my head I was pronouncing it correctly and not phonetically.

Then at the end of the semester, we added up all the grades and "found" points to make sure everyone had a B, because you needed a B to go on to other classes required for the Textiles and Clothing majors.

(The professor I worked for is, interestingly, now head of the fashion dept. at Kent State now.  Found that on the intertubes over the weekend when I was looking up something wholly unrelated.)

61

Posted by: Drillanwr at April 20, 2010 11:38 AM

Sounds like you can be very proud.  Just curious as to why the pre-med choice was KSU not OSU or CWR?

62

What Ben said (although you have to take a certain number of courses in the humanities).

I wish it wasn't so -- but it has gotten that bad (and no, you can't really call yourself educated unless you have some working knowledge at all levels -- which means humanities, math, and hard science).  They have a way of working themselves into each other anyway (hello? global climate change science?) -- so no, you can't just dump humanities outof the equation (therefore, it needs to be rescued...somehow).

63

One a somewhat-related note, I am sure I am not alone in wondering what the hell the Academy has done to the writing skills of entire generations of young people. Instead of writing a simple two-page essay entitled "It's Morally Wrong To Call Gay People Bad Names", we are instead treated to 1000-page turgidities entitled "The Hermeneutics of Gender and Sexual Identity: Feminist Perspectives on Patriarchal Semiotics". The title is only a vanguard of the impenetrable prose within.

Read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" for an explanation. Essentially, the list of things they're allowed to write about have been horrendously limited, so in they've been reduced to ever more baroque ways of saying the same things. And since overly complex writing more often than not masks poorly-considered ideas and weakly-educated minds, the problem gets worse and worse and worse.

If you could boil the papers down to plain English, it would be interesting to see how many degrees in "straight white men suck" are awarded each year. Probably in the hundreds.

64 KSU also offers a Flower Arranging degree program.

(However, due to the recent unpleasantness we must now insist that students use vases instead of rifle barrels.)

65 unknown jane - no antiseptic, use spit. The best thing that has happened to academia is the internet -- it has opened up a pandora's box of opinion that professors used to be able to control. Students can easily get alternatives today. One advantage of the military schools is a separate chain of command - if a professor/department is going way left, the students and military side can make a direct, organized complaint to the senior management. At most schools, the academics rule is absolute.

66 64  Posted by: Drillanwr at April 20, 2010 11:38 AM

Sounds like you can be very proud.  Just curious as to why the pre-med choice was KSU not OSU or CWR?

Posted by: Deanna

 

She didn't want OSU, was accepted @ CWR, but our 'pockets' weren't deep enough.

 

67 KSU also offers a Flower Arranging degree program.

(However, due to the recent unpleasantness we must now insist that students use vases instead of rifle barrels.)

Posted by: Gov James A. Rhodes

And a wonderful ceramics degree as well.

67 My advice to grad students the world over: please, please, for God's sake, burn your shitty unreadable thesis and get a job doing something productive.

I didn't even bother to write it; I dropped out and got a real job.

Drillanwr makes a good point, though--the utility of a college education, at least as far as positive contributions to society post-graduation, depends a lot on what you choose to study.

68 The caption indicated it was the only known photo of the CIA agent who instigated the whole event.

*sigh* Idiots.

The real lesson of Kent State is that if you feel you need to fire on a mob, aim at the waists of the second rank. That way your rounds won't hit anyone behind the mob.

Posted by: Rob Crawford at April 20, 2010 11:42 AM

Yeah I heard that conspiracy theory before and I don't buy it.  The SDS and WU had been active there for some time. My guess is that's who's in the pic.   People who were there when it went down told me they saw some of these slimes around, mostly off to the side and to the rear, and heard them inciting.  But nothing ever came of it, too hard to prove anything.  And that was the true beginning of the extreme Liberal bias in the media, that and the 1968 Dem convention.

69

59 Heh, I got told that my thesis on immigrant literature and the making of America through language was "refreshingly working class, as though you paralleled the authors' proletarian backgrounds within your writing style"...yeah, whatever.  Like it actually got me a good paying job (although it was fun to research the topic).

You know why grad students write that way?  To make good grades; you know why profs write that way? To get invited to symposiums, collegiums...parties.  Only reason (except for that scary few who actually think or like to think using those words/phrases).

70

"Posted by: Drillanwr at April 20, 2010 11:38 AM (GkYyh) "

 

What is her bra size?

71

Christendom, Ave Maria, Stubenville, University of Dallas

 

However, I came out of my libtard university far far more conservative than I went in. My father found it quite remarkable and I had few assoications with conservatives that I knew at the time. I went in understanding what they would try  to do and actually found the whole thing comical. At a recent mini-reunion I found that many of my friends (the guys anyway) were uber-conservatives. I felt better about the whole thing now, like I didn't betray myself by going there.

72 unknown jane, additionally any pro-muslim crap that a lefty wants to air at the USMA, VMI, or the Citadel is going to be aired in front of a significant number of prior enlisted combat vets who have counted quite a bit of muslim coup and are planning on doing more of soon - so it is unlikely to go unchallenged. Man-love Thursdays, goat sex, the way they treat women, etc aren't just internet rumors to those guys.

73

68 Jean, give me a few months to set up a syllabus and a month to polish my spiel (essentially, summer semester to prep), and I could have your standard military academy student worshipping at the altar of Lenin and Marx -- and not know they were doing it.  That's not a brag -- that's just how well a savvy prof can cover their tracks, if they really want to (most are too stupidly arrogant to even consider it, fortunately, but some are not -- they are the dangerous ones).

Kinda like my thesis -- it was actually a treatise against multiculturalism as it is supported now, but throw in the proper dog bell phrases, on a subject everyone expects to be far, far left...it gets a pass, sometimes a pass with flying colors.

74 Man-love Thursdays put TGIF into a whole new perspective.

75

HeatherRadish:

I remain convinced that a college education is one of the biggest con-jobs this nation has ever pulled on its citizens. Every parent is incessantly told that little Johnnie or Janie must go to college to be successful, regardless of whether little Johnnie or Janie is mentally capable of (or constitutionally amenable to) getting a college degree. Colleges must keep the money-river growing, so the only alternative to flunking out half the studenty-body ever semester is to dumb down the institution. So now a bachelor's degree is roughly equivalent to what a high-school diploma used to be worth. (Except that pops and mimsie had to lay out fifty to a hundred grand for it.)

Men are opting out of college in greater numbers, leading to much hand-wringing about the gender imbalance in colleges. It's not suprising, though, when you see how feminized* the Academy has become. All you have to do is look at the decline of the engineering and hard sciences disciplines to see what's been happening over the past three decades.

*Which is not to say, my dear Moronettes, that women cannot excel at the hard sciences and engineering. Simply that they do so in proportionally smaller numbers than men do for reasons that would take too long to explain here.

 

76 73  "Posted by: Drillanwr at April 20, 2010 11:38 AM (GkYyh) "

 What is her bra size?

Posted by: Hamilton Burger

 

Last Victoria's Secret shopping trip I believe it was 34C..  Why, you want to borrow something?

77 unknown jane - but could hide it from the other profs like in the example above (Dr. Douglas Porch) or from a bunch of internet savages like this place if the kid posts a question or comment.

78

78 A lot of it has to do with the counseling that goes on.  They recruit people into majors in almost the same way as they recruit sports.

**from someone who started out as a pre-med/pre-vet major and got lured by the siren call of easy grades for essentially pretty easy work...and now I'm paying for it, haha! (no regrets though, not totally, I had some very good profs who taught me perhaps a little too well to succeed as a humanities instructor in this day and age)

79 God bless our National Guard and their large rifles.

80 80 Pino isn't exactly hiding it.

81 79 73  "Posted by: Drillanwr at April 20, 2010 11:38 AM (GkYyh) "

 What is her bra size?

Posted by: Hamilton Burger

 

Last Victoria's Secret shopping trip I believe it was 34C..  Why, you want to borrow something?

No, I don't need a bra yet.  Maybe in a couple years if I don't go on a diet.

82

BTW, here's my 2010 KSU Graduate  http://tinyurl.com/yyvpk7a

 

 

83 1)this is part of the root of all this moral equivalency/multiculti/pc bs; 2)it's been the big thing in humanities departments for about a generation, and has completely taken over the research and criticism discourse in those departments

Have I said "Kill the Humanities"?  I think I have.

I wish it wasn't so -- but it has gotten that bad (and no, you can't really call yourself educated unless you have some working knowledge at all levels -- which means humanities, math, and hard science).

You can pick up more humanities reading a moron blog than you can pick up in an entire 4-year curriculum of overglorified book clubs.  Besides, humanities has a place -- high school.  You don't need more high school after high school and you don't need to get a Ph.D. in high school.

It might in theory be better for the humanities to receive some sort of makeover and be rescued, but it would be better to simply eliminate the humanities and social sciences in their entirety than the situation we have today.

You can throw the baby out with the bathwater if the baby has already drowned.

There is no tether on the humanities.  They are simply allowed to drift into whatever port full of pseudointellectual tripe that they like.  In fact, the whole exercise in the humanities is to try to find language to dress up the trivial and pathetically simple ideas they have in order to make them sound profound.  Think about what science and math do, they take some complicated natural phenomenon and attempt to simplify it so that it can be understood.

This is the exact opposite of the humanities and social sciences which takes simple ideas and dress them up to sound more complicated.  That's what "naming" means to me.

Look at the "smart" crowd that worships Obama, what is their standard for intellect?  It's all superficial, it's his (creepily sociopathic) cool, his (haughty) speech patterns, the magnificent crease of his pantleg -- all of it is the trappings of the elite of the academy, but there are no intellectual achievements whatsoever, except for the (first) book which no one is really pretending anymore was wholly written by him.  Even then, it's a memoir of a man who was (then) under 40 and included a few clever turns of phrase, but was in some ways quite incoherent.

84 unknown jane - I could write that syllabus for you. Lots of economic determinism in conflict between nations, toss in a bunch of war games that over emphasize production, some Nudge/Freakonomics crap. As long as you only used marxist derivatives and no source material, it might fly. When I was there, we had some very specific stuff on the fallacies of marxism - but then we were planning on killing large numbers of commies in fulda gap - that class may have dropped.

85 Men are opting out of college in greater numbers, leading to much hand-wringing about the gender imbalance in colleges.

Yeah, they are concerned deeply with the gender imbalance -- in math and engineering.

86

There's nothin' like Hippie Hunting.

(Lazlo Letters + Eleventy!!!!!)

87 Are men opting out of college to get technical certificates in software development, communications (wires not ads), and networking? I see alot of resumes with 2yrs of community college and three or four core certifications.

88 I teach at Kent State. We're not all moonbat lefties. Some are, but aside from this Pino character, Kent is probably no worse than other universities. I even know some conservative and/or non-lefty professors.

89 Obviously, Pino wanted to sign off with a courteous "Chinga tu madre!" but figured that someone named Mike S. Adams wasn't bilingual or multiculti  -- hence, the English translation.

90 Kent State has been a joke for years.  Before the shootings it was little more than a glorified teachers' college, which I admit I attended for two years..  By the way, I was there the day before and that morning of the shootings.  Our old buddies in the SDS and Weather Underground had been around instigating trouble.  There is no doubt in my mind at least, that they were the cause of the whole mess.    FYI It will be 40 years ago this May 4th, yeah I'm that old.  And here's a factoid for ya...the site is on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Posted by: Deanna at April 20, 2010 11:26 AM (ZzV20)

I met one of the people that was in the trial; he caught a stray pellet in his psoriasis laden scalp and milked that for as much as he could.  I'm sure he was there cutting class and trying to pick up stray cooter because, although he was an ok guy personally if you didn't have to depend on him for anything, he was pretty much an irresponsible fuckup who infuriated at least one friend of mine by trying to snake his girlfriend.  I was glad I lost touch with him because he'd show up for all the bullshit anniversaries of the event and would be quoted by the douches in the local fishwrap making an ass out of himself.  I think the event was the defining moment of his life which struck me as incredibly pathetic.  He died a few years ago and surprisingly the world barely noticed.

91

How about "50 Ways I did your Mother?!?"

_{"I did her from the back, Jack.}

_{Bent her over the Plant Stand.}

_{Didn't need to be coy, Roy.  She even thanked, me!"}

92 91 I teach at Kent State. We're not all moonbat lefties. Some are, but aside from this Pino character, Kent is probably no worse than other universities. I even know some conservative and/or non-lefty professors.

In many fields the bulk of the professors tend not to be political because they can't vote -- noncitizens.

93

I'm thinking a P-shop of the iconic coed mourning over the hippie is in order. 

Anyone think she looks like Rachel Corrie (fully inflated)? 

94

In many fields the bulk of the professors tend not to be political because they can't vote -- noncitizens.

I had a Chinese TA for neuroanatomy--she had a bit of a problem pronouncing "corpus callosum."

95 This guy has been in trouble for at least two years and he still has a job.

96

the iconic coed mourning over the hippie is in order. 

We need to party with that guy!

97

"However, I came out of my libtard university far far more conservative than I went in."

As did I, and I suppose there can be something to the "A Boy Named Sue" method of getting through political indoctrination. But I still think I could have spent my time and money more wisely.

98

Every parent is incessantly told that little Johnnie or Janie must go to college to be successful

Yeh, I'm not buying it as much as I used to...but if employers demand one, I'm not sure you can just go without.

99 I know a little more about this than the typical Ace moron- my father was a Guard commander at KSU's sister institution back when that shooting happened; actually, my alma mater/hometown at OU was considered FAR more likely to have that happen than KSU.  In fact, OU hippies burned down several buildings during the VN years, including 2 ROTC units. 

Most of my profs, and even the parents of my peers, were teachers during those years.  Most of them were fairly accepting of people who had differing opinions.  Nowadays, not so much from faculty.  In fact, OU/KSU and BGU have become so far leftist Berkley seems Libertarian. 

What I had to endure growing up in these cesspools is legend; not one other kid had a father in uniform or FROM a uniformed background.  And watching what went on ever fall and spring with the riots was troubling, to say the least.  The only thing missing these days is a draft and a bunch of lefty protests.  I watched my hometown nearly burn down every year.  Street riots back then were pretty bad. 

I'll never forget it.  My fortunes, when they come, will certainly not go to my alma mater.  They don't deserve it.  They actually avoid alumnus who don't agree with their views.  So screw 'em.

Wolf

100 *Which is not to say, my dear Moronettes, that women cannot excel at the hard sciences and engineering. Simply that they do so in proportionally smaller numbers than men do for reasons that would take too long to explain here.

Interestingly, all opposition to my interest in science/technology in high school and college came from women a) with zero math proficiency and b) graduated high school after the second-wave feminist movement was in full swing but chose to live the life their mothers were limited to.  My grandmother and her friends thought it was awesome I was studying the same stuff as their grandsons.

Although now that I'm a middle-aged bitter shell of a spinster, ridiculed and ostracized daily but a society that rewards high school dropouts with five children by seven deadbeat/imprisoned fathers, I'm starting to think I should have gone with "dental hygiene certificate at the community college and serious husband hunt" instead of "engineering degree."   At least I can afford decent alcohol.  Heh.

101

Two very good books in this line are Roger Kimballs The Rape of the Masters and VDH's Who Killed Homer? And both of these books are ten or fifteen years old now; I'm sure the situation has only deteriorated since.

Are men opting out of college to get technical certificates in software development, communications (wires not ads), and networking?

Could be, though a lot of men are simply opting out altogether. This recession has been called a "man-cession" for a reason: it has fallen very hard on males because they tend to predominate in the trades and engineering sectors. The unemployment rate among males is a few points higher than females, but this disparity is greater than those percentages suggest because there are fewer social supports for men and more stigma attached to being unemployed for long periods of time.

Yeh, I'm not buying it as much as I used to...but if employers demand one, I'm not sure you can just go without.

I think a kid would do just as well (maybe better) to go to a good trade school or apprenticeship program (depending on the field), or just hit the local community college for the first two years and see if they're capable of finishing. No reason to piss away all that money until you find out if the kid has any aptitude for college-level schooling. The money would probably be better-spent on a welding school, barber college, or a technical school like DeVry.

 

102

I'll never forget it.  My fortunes, when they come, will certainly not go to my alma mater.  They don't deserve it.  They actually avoid alumnus who don't agree with their views.  So screw 'em.

For a time, I was filling the "Business(?) Reply Mail" envelopes from Berkeley with either (1) Rightist political junk mail I received, or (2) pea gravel, and mailing them back.

103 I  only have an Associates of Applied Science to stack against you engineering degree so could you help me out with the 5 kids to 7 fathers.  This is advanced math that I didn't have to take.

104

86  Sugar, we are going to disagree (sort of) from now until the end of the universe I'm sure (in fact, the demons will probably have us torture each other with the same arguement in that eternal lake of fire thing). 

The humanities overlap the sciences -- and it should be (was in a few departments) vice versa -- you can't have one without the other.  And there is a bit more to humanities than what you can learn in high school. [Actually, I believe we in the humanities are supposed to uphold the Socratic method and the concept of teaching people how to "think", specifically, outside the box...something mathematics, with its absolutes, can be limiting in as far as that's concerned; there is supposed to be a balance: that has been pitched out the window, but pitching in the exact opposite direction doesn't necessarily make for a good choice.]

Besides, you are allowing political motivations to color your opinions and response.  Just because the humanities are full of lefty moonbats right now, does not make the entity in and of itself bad (unless you've allowed some of that lefty, Derrida/Foucaultian ideology to infect you, and you are allowing yourself to politically "name" the humanities as "x" when that is the standard meme accepted by general society...uh oh...).

105 so could you help me out with the 5 kids to 7 fathers.

Have you ever seen the Maury Povich show?

106

87  What can be done to promote marxism can be done with the religion of rest in peace...just different material, same methods.

Or to riff off scripture: never say "never"; even the very elect can be fooled.

107 Maury Povich, um no. I spend all my free time here.

108 11 Kent Read, Kent Write, Kent State    Posted by: BGFalcon at April 20, 2010 10:54 AM (3BFaB)   Hear, hear!

109

I had a Chinese TA for neuroanatomy--she had a bit of a problem pronouncing "corpus callosum."

I'll match that with a Polish math prof saying "perpendicular". I still think he wouldn't have been that hard to understand were it not for the semesters of Indian-accented profs.

110 The humanities overlap the sciences

Only the wussy ones.

something mathematics, with its absolutes, can be limiting in as far as that's concerned

There is what is.  Everything else is not.  Mathematics is proof, not the computations you learn in high school, proof.  Starting from definitions and axioms and reasoning toward a non-contradictory conclusion.

That is learning how to think.  Literally.

The course "introduction to proof" at most universities has almost no prerequisites.  You start from first principles: Counting, prime numbers, etc.  No calculus.

Just because the humanities are full of lefty moonbats right now, does not make the entity in and of itself bad

Then let them start from scratch.  I know what the academy is now, politics aside.  Even if right wingers were in control of the travesty that is the humanities but the low standards and intellectual drift were in place, it would be better to kill it all.  Right now, the humanities and social sciences are Willy Loman -- worth more dead than alive.

111 Are men opting out of college to get technical certificates in software development, communications (wires not ads), and networking? I see alot of resumes with 2yrs of community college and three or four core certifications.

Posted by: Jean at April 20, 2010 12:18 PM

One of my kids did just that.  Got a tech 2 year degree while working for a small local company, then moved on to a larger one before he finished.  He's in the hardware end of telecom.  He's gotten lots of free certification and training from the companies he's worked for and they've offered to help pay for his finishing out his 4 year.  But they all have told him the same thing, it won't really help unless he wants to go into mangement.  He's a supervisor at the tech end  now and at 29 makes $70,000 plus OT, bonuses, benefits, perks, etc.  He wouldn't take management anyway, he loves the hands on stuff.  He gets at least one offer every few months, but so far nothing beats where he's at for now.

112

unknown jane:

Re the humanities discussion. I was an Anguish Major myself in Ye Olden Tyme, but make my living writing software, so maybe I can bring some perspective to the argument. I will agree that "humanities" are a vital part of civilized life, and if colleges were doing their proper jobs, they would be an essential part of any higher educational program.

However, nearly all Western colleges these days are not doing a proper job, and the study of the humanities has largely been given over to politically-correct and currently-fashionable nonsense like "gender studies" and "feminist perspectives in literature" and other such rot. Any Literature degree you can get that does not include a thorough study of old dead guys - Willy the Shake, Chaucer, de Quincey, Miguel de Cervantes, those guys -- is not worth the paper it's printed on. Further to that, how many students are required to take Greek or Latin these days? How many even read The Iliad or The Odyssey or The Aeneid? These are foundational documents of Western culture (as is the KJV Bible, I may say!).

If a graduate has read Eve Ensler's tribute to her cooch but has not read Moby Dick or Great Expectations, then he or she wuz robbed and should sue the college for malpractice.

(It's worth noting that the word college is derived from the Latin collegium, which denoted certain persons bound together by law or in common interest. "Colleague" and "collegial" carry these meanings forward. The Greek Akademia is even incorrect, because it denoted a spirit of inquiry and dedication to ideals that is almost wholly missing from modern universities.)

 

113 jane - it is the mechanism of tenure (insulation from reality) and deterministic funding from a collective source (government and foundations) that ensures higher education is inherently left. The invisible hand quickly kills off certificate programs in Netware or carburetor maintenance as the job market makes those skills. If higher education was subsidized blindly, but from need - I think you could see a change. On a practical level this would look like an employer tax credit that allowed the employers to selectively pay-off portions - by specific credit hour - of employees current or incurred education costs. The current program lets employers pay for new education; but have no influence on the package incurred before hiring.

114

There is what is.  Everything else is not.  Mathematics is proof, not the computations you learn in high school, proof.  Starting from definitions and axioms and reasoning toward a non-contradictory conclusion.

That is learning how to think.  Literally.

Does the name "Bertrand Russell" ring a bell? Being a top notch mathematician does not make you immune from being a political or philosophical fool. 

115 as the job market makes those skills .

116 as the job market makes those skills irrelevant. The editor doesn't like certain symbols.

117 Does the name "Bertrand Russell" ring a bell? Being a top notch mathematician does not make you immune from being a political or philosophical fool.

Oh, there is no question, but in fact the humanities teaches you what to think not how to think.  It's structured that way. The content's the thing in the humanities.  How do you teach literature without actual literature?  But you can teach profound mathematics with nothing more than what the ancient Greeks knew.

Math doesn't prevent imbecilic thinking, it just doesn't allow such thinking to take place within mathematics.

118

I'm told by reliable sources that even music is not immune to these ridiculous ideologically-motivated depredations. Most of the best players in the Classical canon now come from overseas, mainly Asia. Europeans and Americans are too busy farting around with Bulgarian folk melodies and "Modern Jazz as Protest Music".

But then, this has been happening for a long, long time -- the revolt against the "old" musical school began way back in the 1920's. 12-tone music, serial music, atonality, and even more ridiculous "found music" nonsense has all flowed from the academy in recent decades. (I sat through an excruciating "concert" where one guy basically sat perfectly still for minutes at a time, and then tapped a glass rod against a metal cylinder. The local bohemians went ape over it as Art of the very highest order. I wanted to punch the guy in the face.)

 

119

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall at various faculty conclaves where Mike Adams is a prof. The guy writes a regular column, very conservative, pretty in your face, and he never misses a chance to jab at liberals in academe, or at liberal students (even his own liberal students).

Some libdolt recently threatened to kill him, and Adams e-mailed back asking the twit something along the lines of asking which gun he wanted to be blown away by when he came after Adams. They can't love him there, and I can't imagine how he managed to navigate the political minefields.

120

so could you help me out with the 5 kids to 7 fathers.

Have you ever seen the Maury Povich show?

Posted by: HeatherRadish at April 20, 2010 12:57 PM (mR7mk)

Maury Povich? He's a lightweight compared to me. Was he ever the mayor of Cincinatti? Huh? Ya- that's what I thought.

121
Flowers don't stop bullets.  Should have learned that in physics.  This skool sucks.

122

#86: This is the exact opposite of the humanities and social sciences which takes simple ideas and dress them up to sound more complicated. That's what "naming" means to me.

How existentially nomenclaturist of you, AmishDude.

123 So, is the skanky dolphin sex guy going to apply for a teaching position there?

124 What the hell. Maybe they could just hire the slutty dolphin, since some of these liberal nutjobs think animals are equal to humans anyway.

125

Jeff Goldstein over at Protein Wisdom has written quite a lot about this topic, BTW. If you're interested in it, you could do worse than head over there are explore the archives.

 

126 (I sat through an excruciating "concert" where one guy basically sat perfectly still for minutes at a time, and then tapped a glass rod against a metal cylinder. The local bohemians went ape over it as Art of the very highest order. I wanted to punch the guy in the face.)

To me, one of the most interesting tidbits out of the Venona archives was that in the 20s and 30s the Soviets blew a lot of money towards promoting "modern art" of the type you describe in the West.  Apparently the plan was that it would cause mass depression and we'd be easy pickings for the Red Army.  Of course, what actually happened is hipster douches declared it amazing and everyone else ignored it.

127

113 Oh, so, seeing how mathematics is proof (your words), then, by the finite and absolute reasoning that you trumpet as the strong point of math (by which it should be placed upon a pedastal and humanities killed because the humanities are imperfect and math is perfect...) -- then by that reasoning, uhm, where would all the work in relativity and quantum physics be (after all, there are many things about relativity and quantum mechanics that we do not necessarily have proofs for; we don't really know if they are truth, as we have no hard evidence, which is what you seem to suggest is the very thing that makes math so perfect and humanities so bad -- lack of hard evidenciary proof).

Everything evolves on the supposition of the "what if"...never on the absolutes that we have hard evidence for at the present. no?

128 Oh, but please keep going with the diatribe: in so doing you are proving that you have been indoctrinated in the lefty meme of "naming" and equivalent meaning vs. truth far better than me. lol!

129

115  Preach it Monty -- that is indeed the problem, but the thing itself is not the problem; correctly done, it's part of the answer -- throw it away completely and you merely trade one form of dogma for another.

I am afraid that the humanities will never get back on its feet, and it concerns me greatly.  One of my areas of expertise was in the publication and editing of texts and how these could be manipulated as to meaning was a very significant area of study -- once an area of learning becomes "unpopular" then the books that were used start going out of print (economic forces), people stop reading them, the knowledge eventually becomes lost.  In other words, "what happened to Homer?" indeed.  We are on the verge of that very thing right now -- and due to the quickening that comes with technology, those changes happen more rapidly.  How many more generations until nobody has any knowledge of Locke, Hobbes, Emerson, Shakespeare even?  What happens to our society/civilization when those things are gone, and what replaces it?

And then Amish Dude, what good will advanced mathematics be, in a society that does not have any knowledge of the ideas of freedom, self-reliance, chivalry if you will?  Do you think it will be a better place after all?

130

Everything evolves on the supposition of the "what if"...never on the absolutes that we have hard evidence for at the present. no?

This thread is probably dead by now, but...

Aaaah...the old "relativist vs absolutist" argument again?

It reminds me of the old joke about how a mathematician and an engineer will answer the same question: the mathematician will answer, "Exactly", while the engineer will answer, "Close enough". Pure mathematics is exact, but it is also a formalism, not a (complete) description of Nature. (Which is why Newtonian mechanics explains the large-scale structure of the Universe quite well, while quantum mechanics explains the subatomic Universe quite well...but the models are incompatible with each other.) Mother Nature seems to require a certain "fudge factor" in all things.

Mathematics is indeed the language of reality, and it demands a level of precision and clarity that many relativists are simply incapable of. But mathematics is the broth, not the meal; Nature is an emergent property that is more than the sum of its parts. I am a religious man and so believe that God is the tie that binds and the Prime Mover of all that is or will be; but even atheists must surely admit that much of what Nature shows us is simply beyond our ken.

For example: if we are reasonably correct in understanding the natures and proportions of mass in the observable universe, then about 80% of the universe's mass is...made of stuff we can't categorize. "Dark matter", in other words -- not the usual atomic particles or antiparticles, but something else entirely that we cannot accurately describe. Another example: "string theory" is  a beautiful mathematical explanation of how to unify the Newtonian and quantum universes. The problem? It cannot be proved even in principle. However beautiful mathematically it is, it is just as religious a belief as my own in God. Mathematical truth must not (and often does not) conform to how the Universe operates.

Nature is mysterious. Mathematics gives us some deep insights into the old girl, but she keeps many secrets from us.

 

131

If I can bloviate a bit more to what is probably a dead thread:

I had a teacher a long time back who demonstrated the fungibility of even simple math. 2+2=4 I was taught. But two of what plus two of what equals four of what? If we are relying on abstract counters as placeholders, we need not concern ourselves; the equation is perfect.

But in the grubby world of everyday things, our counters are not perfect and so neither is the equation. No matter what I use as my counter/placeholder (a penny, a rock, an ingot of steel) it can be subdivided. Thus my counter is not inherently a singleton; it is only that by convention and convenience for the task at hand. 2+2 might equal as much as 100, if I render my counters down small enough.

 

132

Jonn over at Thisainthell.us posted this on my facebook after I posted that I just paid my kid's matriculation fee to Kent.

I'm going to go cry now.

 

133 Here is the Simpsons clip in question...

http://tinyurl.com/y3n2e7d

134 Damned HTML witchcraft!

http://tinyurl.com/y3n2e7d

135 While I am deeply appreciative of Adams' usage of the Simon & Garfunkle [sic] song "A Simple Desultory Philippic" in the title of his piece, had I written it I would have chosen that other Simon classic "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard."

Looks like he already used that title in a column three years ago.