This, from Scott Adams, is a few days old, but worth posting. I’ll confess to thinking that he’d never be nominated, and if he was he’d never be elected, but since then, I’ve had no firm opinions on what would happen next. And of course, his advice goes in spades for media, but they won’t take it.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
The Warlock Hunt
Claire Berlinski (who we almost got to have coffee with in Paris a year ago), on #MeToo and if it’s gone too far:
If you are reading this, it means I have found an outlet that has not just fired an editor for sexual harassment. This article circulated from publication to publication, like old-fashioned samizdat, and was rejected repeatedly with a sotto voce, “Don’t tell anyone. I agree with you. But no.” Friends have urged me not to publish it under my own name, vividly describing the mob that will tear me from limb to limb and leave the dingoes to pick over my flesh. It says something, doesn’t it, that I’ve been more hesitant to speak about this than I’ve been of getting on the wrong side of the mafia, al-Qaeda, or the Kremlin?
But speak I must. It now takes only one accusation to destroy a man’s life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crime—like any other serious crime—requires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort.
…In recent weeks, I’ve acquired new powers. I have cast my mind over the ways I could use them. I could now, on a whim, destroy the career of an Oxford don who at a drunken Christmas party danced with me, grabbed a handful of my bum, and slurred, “I’ve been dying to do this to Berlinski all term!” That is precisely what happened. I am telling the truth. I will be believed—as I should be.
But here is the thing. I did not freeze, nor was I terrified. I was amused and flattered and thought little of it. I knew full well he’d been dying to do that. Our tutorials—which took place one-on-one, with no chaperones—were livelier intellectually for that sublimated undercurrent. He was an Oxford don and so had power over me, sensu strictu. I was a 20-year-old undergraduate. But I also had power over him—power sufficient to cause a venerable don to make a perfect fool of himself at a Christmas party. Unsurprisingly, I loved having that power. But now I have too much power. I have the power to destroy someone whose tutorials were invaluable to me and shaped my entire intellectual life much for the better. This is a power I do not want and should not have.
Yup. Read the whole thing.
[Update a while later]
The wandering eye is just part of the human anatomy.
Yup. We can control our behavior and fidelity, but it’s really hard not to look.
Plus, the up side of office flirtation.
And so far, so good for Claire.
So strange. Everyone likes it. I'd braced myself to hide under the bed, barricade the doors, and tell anyone who called I'd never even heard of this "Berlinski" woman. https://t.co/GkYA0jaKad
— Claire Berlinski (@ClaireBerlinski) December 7, 2017
[Monday-morning update]
Are women really victims?
Feminists of my mother’s generation resisted furiously the claims that women were too timid, too fragile, too neurotic and too easily upset to function in the public sphere. They won this battle. Sisters began doing it for themselves. Women took their places alongside men in boardrooms and political arenas, on lecture hall podiums and in operating theatres, in courts of law and in armies.
This is currently under threat from a cultural shift within feminism which has shifted the aim from female empowerment to status-by-victimhood. It threatens to undo the progress made for women, valorise fragility, discourage resilience, weaponise victimhood and fatally undermine gender relations. It’s not good for women to be treated as fragile victims rather than competent actors in the public sphere. It’s not good for either sex for men to become afraid that talking to women, complimenting women, criticising women, flirting with women or touching women in friendly greeting could destroy their careers and reputations.
You don’t say. One of the women who tells their story is my friend Amy Alkon.
[Update a few minutes later]
Judith Curry relates her own experiences in the context of the climate debate:
If you see ‘misogyny’ everywhere (even from other females!), then perhaps you need to step back and reflect. What is being objected to is not your gender but your behavior: your attempt to gain fame and build a career based on ‘victim’ status, your unfounded attacks on serious and responsible scientists in your field, and your irrational statements and general intolerance of anyone who is not in your ‘club’. This negative reaction to your behavior is not sexual harassment (or any kind of harassment) or discrimination.
.
Climate science has developed a perverse incentive structure that seems to reward this kind of unethical, bullying behavior — and I’m seeing more and more female scientists taking full advantage of this.
Unfortunately true. There are a lot of women in space and tech that I follow on Twitter, but I avoid getting into political discussions with them.
[Tuesday-afternoon update]
Sarah Hoyt: The sexual-harassment frenzy is madness, and must stop.
[Bumped]
[Wednesday-morning update]
Can we be honest about women?
[Bumped again]
Artemis
A description of Andy Weir’s lunar settlement.
Car Safety
How much it’s changed in sixty years.
My grandmother hated to wear a seat belt; she was afraid it would trap her in the car in a crash. I always felt unsafe without one.
Space Futures
A new collection. I’m working on a piece with this theme for The New Atlantis, I guess I should read it.
“Rape Culture”
Almost a decade ago, I wrote a post on my long-standing theory about why Hollywood depicts businesspeople as evil:
…it only makes sense that if your only employment experience with business, big or otherwise, is working for the entertainment industry or the ad business, you’re not going to have much appreciation for how a real business, where you have to actually develop and manufacture things that people go out and willingly buy, and has to be run by people with a talent for business (not murder and skullduggery), actually works. It’s actually quite similar to the reason that life in the military is rarely depicted accurately. They have no real-life experience.
This morning, Glenn made a related observation on the current pervruption in media and politics:
…it’s easy to see why lefties think “rape culture” is everywhere. In their world and institutions, it is.
It’s also part of general projection of the Left.
Fascism
…came to America “wrapped in a rainbow flag and wearing a pussyhat.” And, (as Glenn points out) calls itself “anti-fascism.”
And this, folks, is how we got Trump, who is insufficiently ideological to be a fascist.
Royal Weddings
Our excitement about them is a betrayal of the American Revolution.
There’s been a lot of betrayal of the American Revolution in the past century, thanks to “progressives.” But unfortunately, it’s probably a human trait to want some sort of royalty, which is why we have (had, I hope?) e.g., the Kennedy dynasty. And we still have Princess Chelsea to worry about.
Dating Tips
My neighbor Kurt Schlichter has some for prominent Democrats:
Having needs is nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve taken on an awesome responsibility being a Democrat leader – you’re constantly struggling to hold up the burden imposed upon you by the support and acclaim of the D.C. establishment and the media. You have a right to extracurricular activities; why, liberal women will tell you themselves that the mere fact that you are quite willing to kill babies by the millions entitles you to all sorts of fringe benefits!
But hey, there are a lot of uptight people out there whose bourgeois notions of “right” and “wrong” really don’t account for the unique pressures and special requirements you face as a liberal icon lookin’ for some lovin’. So, you need to take precautions to ensure that people don’t get the right idea about what you are doing.
Wrong idea. I mean, wrong idea.
First, you’ll want to exclusively seek out liberal women. Don’t make Bill Clinton’s mistake and target women who aren’t reliable progressives. Pinko gals generally know how to play ball and won’t start some sort of fuss that will end up derailing your really important work towards the Democrat Party’s ultimate goal of turning America into Venezuela II: The Starvening.
I don’t think I need to say to read the whole thing.
[Update a few minutes later]
I made the mistake of reading the comments. The person over there describing a fetus as “a parasitic clump of cells” that are like “a cancer” is my nominee for Mother of the Year.
Like Parents, Like Children
An interesting article on the degree to which your parents’ professions influence your own. These two were sort of outliers, though, in the sense that there is much less demand for the “services” than there is “talent” for it:
Some fields are particularly dynastic, like Hollywood acting or politics.
You don’t say. I’d go beyond “dynastic,” and say nepotistic.
I have a theory that one of the reasons that Hollywood types tend to be “liberal” is guilt over the knowledge that, though there can be a lot of perseverance involved, their success was largely due to dumb luck, or choosing the right parents, and that there are many other people who were just as, or more capable and/or attractive than them. On the politics side, I hope we’ve finally broken the Kennedy, Bush and Clinton dynasties, but the threat of George P. and Chelsea are still out there.
[Early-afternoon update]
Sorry about the missing link; I had a long dentist appointment this morning right after I posted that. Fixed now.