Why do you hate Oreo’s???!!!???

You married a Yankee?  What a nightmare! 

Some people just need tomahawking.

This whole thing is just killing me.  If my role didn’t forbid it, I’d be rolling around on the floor laughing.

First, I read that sidebar in the Chronicle of Higher Education a couple weeks ago, and cringed. There is a reason that academia has become a realm outside reality, and a place where lunacy flows with the fountains. The five Ph.D. candidates profiled will be teaching the next set of Black Studies majors; read the abstracts and what they have to say about their dissertations (I dare you to manage that alone without wincing), then imagine what they’re going to teach.

Does it bear the slightest scrutiny?

No, it does not.

But – and here’s the key – were I to take on this particular sacred cow, I’d be sure to read the dissertations, have extensive quotes, and I’d do it in a longish article, the sort of thing that The Chronicle Review publishes.

I’m sure Naomi Shaefer Riley only meant to provoke some debate, but she’s in academia. She ought to have known better. You’re only allowed to be snarky and skewer pretensions if you’re doing it from the left!

 I’m inclined to think she didn’t consider it relevant. Have you read the comments to her original blog p0st? They accuse her of everything but bestiality.

The deliberate lowering of standards and expectations for black students by self-indulgent white academia is a millstone around the necks of all black students.  Whether it’s social promotion in the public schools, the fostering of nonsensical, unsupported and insular syllabi in “African-American Studies” tracks, or the general lowering of standards in admissions and final results in mainstream tracks and professions  (example, the NYFD requires white applicants to get a 98% on the entrance exam, and 85% for black students), even genuinely diligent and accomplished black students and trainees have to deal with the suspicion they might be one of the ones who “got over” through lowered  standards.

This is an ironically amusing annoyance to Ms. Riley.  It’s a daily tragedy for black students around the country.

 Marylanders, like West Virginians, Kentuckians, and Oklahomans, can often “pass.”

Kissinger once remarked about academic controversies being so intense because there is so little at stake.  Once you accept “Black Studies,” “Gender Studies,” “Transgender Studies,” etc., as academic disciplines, there simply is no rational basis to deny anything its place.

Of course, these tenure-seeking parasites always protect each others’ turfs from those asking impertinent questions like, “What the heck are you talking about?”

Reason #5902 why the federal government should have no role in education.  Without heavy subsidy from taxpayers, no institution of “higher learning” could afford to squander resources on such nonsense, and the world would be a better place for it.

Deleted my link. I’m with you on throwing Lowry under the bus.

Incidentally, Rich Lowry is a coward.

Paleface speak with knife tongue [can figure out how to use fork].

It’s worth going there for Mark Steyn and Andrew McCarthy.

 That would be a good start but its the tip of the iceberg of what needs to be done to reform education in this country. I liked Newt precisely because he’s the only politician who ever spoke up strongly on this issue, and he didn’t do it on some obscure late night talk show or some opinion column ninety nine percent of the people would have never read, he did this on Meet The Press. He went into the whole problem with tenure, leftist control of the education system, etc.

QM: Only Saint Mrs. Other McCain knows for sure.

The moon base thing sounds a bit ambitious, and I’d much rather continue the privatization of space that’s happening now than have yet another federal takeover.

But there’s always “right wing social engineering,” NY23, commercials with Pelosi…

If you can link a moonbase to some urgent national security concern…but you can’t.

The private sector has been getting more and more involved in space. That’s not to say that I don’t think the Air Force should pursue orbital supremacy as a mission.

I don’t know what path the private sector will take in space, but launching satellites is a damn good place to start, and there’s plenty going on there right now.

A group of billionaires has announced an interest in mining asteroids, which is a very different prospect than joy riding. I doubt they’ll succeed, but the point is that they’re interested in trying, and their need to make a profit will give them more incentive to figure out the technology than any amount of government fiat.