Quotulatiousness

August 16, 2018

Mainstreaming misandry

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Somehow the notion that it’s totally okay — even praiseworthy — to preach hatred of men has re-entered the mainstream and, worse, is being taken seriously by people who should know much, much better:

“You can’t hate all men can you? Actually I can,” writes Suzanne Moore, a British feminist, in the New Statesman in 2016. “As a class, I hate men.” Men are not a class but this doesn’t deter Moore from continuing her peroration. “I think any intelligent woman hates men,” she continues. She even comes up with a hash tag in the hope that this blanket condemnation will catch on – #yesallmen.

Meanwhile, in ‘The Cut’ section of the New York magazine, a member of the public writing in complains to the ‘agony aunt’ – the journalist Heather Havrilesky – that she “hates men” and is in danger of becoming a “cranky old bitch”. Heather suggests in reply that she simply embrace her inner bitch. “Most men are terrible,” she says. “Most men are shit.”

In addition, two articles on Medium – not quite as mainstream as New York magazine, the Washington Post, and the New Statesman, but certainly not fringe – echo the theme. Turns out, it’s not only (self-defined) man-hating women who have turned towards hate as a response to gender inequality. So have some men – like Anthony James Williams who writes in Medium that, “Women don’t have to like us, and history shows us that they have a right to hate us.”

In the charmingly titled ‘When You Can’t Throw All Men Into The Ocean And Start Over, What CAN You Do? Ijeoma Oluo – the mother of two boys, God help them – writes,

    This society is doing everything it can to create rapists, to enable rapists, and to protect rapists. This society is broken, abusive, patriarchal (and white supremacist, ableist, hetero-cisnormative) trash. This entire patriarchal society is responsible for every single sexual assault that occurs.

If reading such hatred is exhausting, actually generating it must be even more so. I suspect hate is a young person’s game (although Danuta Walkers and Moore are not exactly spring chickens). It is tempting to shrug off this new misandry as just silly and something of a sideshow, but it’s possible that it represents a real strand of rising consciousness. If that is the case, it is not merely silly – it is dangerous. I have occasionally indulged in group hatred – ISIS in their racist, faithist, head-hacking, innocent-slaughtering prime, the Conservative Party in the 1980s, anyone involved in Prog Rock – but it’s not a very healthy principle to base your life around.

What does it mean to hate an otherwise random and unrelated group of people, as opposed to a specific individual? We can all enjoy hating, say, Nazis, pedophiles, and ISIS executioners beheading an aid worker. Hate can be reassuring, which is why it is so seductive. But when one is hating Nazis, one is hating people who subscribe to an ideology, an idea. Pedophiles and ISIS executioners are historically smaller groups, but they are also defined by a particular idea – sexual attraction to children and the cult of death. At some level, they’ve made a choice. No one is born a Nazi or an Islamist murderer, and even if Pedophilia is genetically influenced, that doesn’t absolve its perpetrators of guilt. However, hating men is not hating an idea or an abhorrent form of behaviour. It is hating half the world’s population, rich and poor, kind and cruel, black and white, gay and straight, just because they happen to have a Y chromosome.

To hate such a disparate group seems – is – demented. However, there is a prism through which it makes perfect sense, the prism constructed by the odd and contradictory fusion of neo-Marxism and post-modernism.

August 4, 2018

Violence against women

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Joanna Williams on the problem that well-established, well-paid, financially secure women — at least the professional feminists fitting those criteria — are having to work very hard to maintain their air of victimhood:

Being a feminist must be hard work. Perhaps you’ve got a newspaper column to fill with your hot take on the latest sexist outrage. Or perhaps you have a university sexual-harassment policy to write. Or a government minister to consult about a proposed new law. Or a hefty budget to administer. You’ve got the salary, a platform for your views, and the capacity to influence what happens in almost every institution in the country. And yet the entire basis for you being in this fortunate position, for walking the corridors of power, is your powerlessness. The bind for today’s professional feminist is the more power and influence she gains, the harder she needs to work to show that women are still oppressed.

[…]

As feminists increasingly take positions of power, tackling violence against women drives their agenda. The World Health Organisation tells us that violence against women ‘is a major public-health problem’. The United Nations tells us it is ‘a grave violation of human rights’. The British government describes violence ‘against women and girls’ as a serious crime that has ‘a huge impact on our economy, health services, and the criminal-justice system’.

Of course, violence against women and girls deserves to be taken seriously and perpetrators should be severely punished. But the lives of women in poverty-stricken and wartorn countries are very different to those of women in England. Likewise, adult women have far more agency and control over their lives than girls. Conflating the experiences of women all around the world, and of adult women with children, allows professional feminists to claim suffering by proxy.

At the same time, the definition of violence seems to broaden by the day. The internationally agreed definition of violence against women and girls is: ‘Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women [or girls], including threats of such acts.’ In the UK and the US, violence encompasses sexual harassment – which includes winking, whistling and looking at someone for too long. Amnesty International describes women’s experiences of ‘violence and abuse on Twitter’. In 2017, the organisers of a women’s strike against President Trump described ‘the violence of the market, of debt, of capitalist property relations, and of the state; the violence of discriminatory policies against lesbian, trans and queer women’.

This is not violence as a physical act, but violence as metaphor. No wonder it is experienced everywhere. The World Health Organisation describes violence against women as an ‘epidemic’. We are told that over a third of girls have been sexually harassed at school and that more than a third of women have experienced sexual harassment at work. But then we also learn that two women are killed each week by a current or former partner. And here, immediately, is the problem with violence as metaphor. Real violence becomes relativised. When winking and nasty tweets are described as acts of violence, the word is no longer enough to describe acts of physical brutality and murder. Violence has become nothing more than a badge permitting membership of an inclusive feminist club, and this does little to support women who really are in need of help.

August 3, 2018

Australian women and the military

Filed under: Australia, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Like many other western nations, the Australian government has mandated higher quotas for women in the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), and it’s the military’s job to make it work:

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is comprised of the three military services: the Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army, and the Royal Australian Air Force, all of which have been subject to increasing criticism in recent years for being dominated by straight white men. This, it is alleged, makes them, ipso facto, a petri dish for ‘toxic masculinity.’ That allegation has been lent apparent weight by the reporting of multiple gender-related scandals including the ADFA sex scandal, Jedi Council, various hazing rituals, death symbols, and HMAS Success, to name a few.

Some of this criticism has been so strident that past and present military leaders have had no choice but to commission reports and inquiries into standards and practices within the ADF, and to implement various culture change initiatives including Pathway to Change, New Generation Navy, Adaptive Army, and New Horizon. All of these initiatives place significant emphasis on greater integration of women into the respective services but offer limited reasoning other than catch-phrases like ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘modernising.’

All three services are now working toward a target of female representation by 2023. The Navy and Air Force are working toward 25 percent, and the Army is working toward 15 percent. The progress toward these targets, among other commentary on gender issues in the ADF, is detailed in the annual “Women in the ADF” report.

[…]

Concerns with preferential treatment do not end at the recruitment process. Fitness standards for service personnel also differ according to gender, as well as service and age. This means equally-aged men and women in each service are expected to attain different standards of fitness. This, in itself, represents a challenge since both genders complete fitness tests together and are therefore directly exposed to this double-standard from their first day of service. In spite of this policy, many servicewomen elect to continue their fitness assessment to the same level as their male colleagues which is one small contribution to reducing the cultural divide.

The rejection of preferential treatment in the ADF is not just isolated to annual fitness tests. In fact, the 2012 “Review into the Treatment of Women in the Australian Defence Force” led by then-Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick includes the following passage:

    ADF women strongly believe that when they are singled out, it makes it harder for them to fit in. Highly resistant to any initiative being directed solely at them, ADF women view identical—not differential—treatment as the path to delivering equality. This is most likely in part to avoid the backlash that inevitably trails any treatment perceived as ‘preferential’…

Despite acknowledging this, many of Broderick’s recommendations included gender-specific initiatives that risk being perceived as further preferential treatment, driving a greater wedge between male and female ADF personnel. Perhaps the most troubling recommendation is the targeted recruitment and transfer of women to male-dominated professions that have less female uptake. In practise, this risks techniques akin to coaxing in the recruitment process if these roles are not the preferred choice of female candidates.

July 19, 2018

QotD: Ladies first

Filed under: Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

You men must learn your place in the progressive pecking order.

“On television interviews, on platforms and political meetings, at any presentations — if there’s no woman speaker, then the event does not take place,” says Professor Haiven. By which she means, such gatherings should not be permitted. She’s quite emphatic on this point. Professor Haiven is also keen on punishing people who say things of which she doesn’t approve, and which she casually conflates with acts of violence. And this great thinker can denounce the evils of an alleged male “monopoly” in an environment where women outnumber men by quite some margin, and while sitting on a panel with no male participants, and with no-one willing to argue a substantively different view.

David Thompson, “Reheated (48)”, DavidThompson, 2016-09-27.

July 17, 2018

Women to be eligible to join British army Gurkha units in 2020

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The BBC reports on a recently announced change in Gurkha recruiting:

Screencap of the Royal Gurkha Rifles page at the British Army website

The Gurkhas will recruit women for the first time from 2020, and the selection process will be the same as for men.

Women hoping to join will have to pass gruelling physical tests – including racing 3.1 miles (5km) uphill carrying 55lb (25kg) of sand in a wicker basket.

Gurkhas, who are Nepalese, have been part of the Army for more than 200 years.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said it was “right” women were given the chance to serve in “this elite group”.

The change in direction comes three years after Nepal – traditionally a male-dominated society – elected its first female president, Bidhya Devi Bhandari.

To be considered for the selection process, applicants must weigh more than 50kg (7.9 stone), be taller than 158cm (5ft 1in) and “be able to complete eight underarm heaves”, the Army website says.

The recruitment process takes place in Pokhara, central Nepal. Successful applicants are then flown to Catterick, North Yorkshire, for a 10-week training programme.

[…]

At its peak, during World War Two, 112,000 men were in the Gurkhas. More than 230,000 fought across both world wars, but their numbers have fallen dramatically since.

Currently, there are about 3,000 Gurkhas – most are in the infantry but some are engineers, logisticians or signals specialists.

The regiment, whose motto is “Better to die than be a coward,” still carry into battle their traditional weapon – an 18-inch (46cm) long curved knife known as a kukri.

A Kukri (Top) with the traditional Karda (middle) and Chakmak (bottom). The Karda and Chakmak are used as a utility knife and a sharpening tool respectively
Via Wikimedia Commons.

July 16, 2018

Dublin theatres get a bit more egalitarian

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Theodore Dalrymple on how the recent decision by the major theatres in Dublin to actively ensure that women are properly represented in the plays they put on:

The exterior of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland (Irish: Amharclann Náisiúnta na hÉireann)
Photo by Flickr user bjaglin via Wikimedia Commons.

Henceforth, apparently, the major theaters of Dublin are, as a matter of principle, to commission at least half their new plays from women. At least half of the characters in the plays, and the directors too, will be women. One can only applaud this commitment to equality and social inclusion.

However, without wanting to carp, it seems to me that the gesture does not go nearly far enough. What about the fat, for example? As we know, a high proportion of the population is now fat, and quite a number are grossly obese. Yet how often do you see plays written by the fat, acted by the fat, directed by the fat, and of interest to the fat? The theatrical professions as a whole are pervaded by slim-ism, but there is no intrinsic connection between being slim and literary or acting ability. There is abundant evidence of widespread prejudice against the fat, and it is surely time that this was overcome. My own view is that at least 10 percent of playwrights, actors, and directors ought to suffer from type 2 diabetes.

And then, of course, there is the matter of intelligence. The average IQ of the population is 100, and such is the normal distribution of intelligence that there are as many people of below-average intelligence as above it. Yet how often do you see a play written or directed by those with an IQ of, say, 80? It is true that a play may appear to have been written or directed by someone with an IQ of 80 or below, but in this case appearances are deceptive. A high IQ is perfectly compatible with all kinds of foolishness or worse, after all; but this does not affect the basic argument from social justice. It is about time that people of low IQ be given their chance in the theater.

July 8, 2018

Western Approaches – the bunker from which they won the war

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published on 17 Jun 2018

The command bunker ‘Western Approaches’ is now a museum in Liverpool. I was invited to take a look before it re-opened.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige

The Museum’s website: http://www.liverpoolwarmuseum.co.uk

Many thanks to Richard MacDonald for inviting me and showing me around (you saw him plugging the big fuse in).

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

June 29, 2018

Justin Trudeau’s emotional thinking style resonates with female voters

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Brandon Kirby on, among other things, why Justin Trudeau polls consistently higher with women than with men:

Justin Trudeau and family during India visit
Image via NDTV, originally tweeted by @vijayrupanibjp

Justin Trudeau gave one of his worst interviews during the campaign with a Maritime reporter, Steve Murphy.

Murphy continually asked him for the numbers on his spending promises, to which Trudeau had none to give. Eventually he went on the offensive against Murphy and suggested that Murphy approached politics with a calculator while Trudeau can speak to Canadians. People who think in terms of STEM find this remarkably absurd.

It’s problematic that if the numbers don’t add up in Trudeau’s budgets, he won’t be helping Canadians at all. Wages will remain stagnant while power bills go up, grocery bills go up, and our tax bills will go up.

Trudeau is on the record claiming that he will grow the economy from the heart outward, but as the calculator dictates, his plans have serious economic consequences and the rhetoric that appears caring is actually destructive.

Rational thinkers find the empty rhetoric of growing the economy from the heart outward, while simultaneously making life harder on the poor and middle class, highly offensive.

Feminists have supplied us with the premise that on average, women don’t think in terms of STEM. Economics as a science requires an appraisal that is thoroughly calloused at times, which people who don’t appreciate STEM will find highly offensive.

The end result is that if women don’t think in terms of calloused rationalism, they won’t find libertarianism at all appealing.

If it were the case that only Canadian women were permitted to vote, Trudeau would win a majority government easily. If only Canadian men were to vote, Trudeau would be swiftly defeated.

George W. Bush was the most unpopular president in the U.S. during my lifetime, and yet his approval ratings are polled higher for Americans than Trudeau’s are among Canadian men.

There’s a discrepancy between men and women but that doesn’t imply individualism is wrong.

[…]

We do need to encourage women to adopt the calloused STEM approach. $99 per case of water isn’t how most women think, but unlike the opposing view it has the virtue of actually being getting water to people; going beyond stage-one-thinking – it’s actually compassionate.

June 28, 2018

Mary Seacole – II: Mother Seacole in the Crimea – Extra History

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Extra Credits
Published on 16 Jan 2016

Unable to find any official sponsors, Mary Seacole decided to send herself to the Crimea. She recruited her husband’s cousin, a fellow business person, and the two of them set off for the war zone. Unlike London, where she’d met a chilly reception, Mary’s help was welcomed by the overworked doctors and suffering soldiers. She built a new version of her British Hotel and invited officers to dine or shop there, using their money to buy medical supplies and creature comforts for the poorer soldiers. She had set herself up next to the army camp, and during battles she helped provide emergency care. But when at last the city of Sevastopol fell, Mary’s medical services were no longer in much demand. She enjoyed a few months of prosperity as the soldiers celebrated their newfound time off, but in March of 1856, a treaty was signed and troops began returning home. Many of them left unpaid debts, and Mary could no longer sell her supplies, so she and her business partner were forced to return home to London and declare bankruptcy. When that news got out, the soldiers she’d cared for rallied to her aid, donating money to help pay her debts. Although Mary tried to continue serving soldiers in warzones, the government never recognized her and in the end, only her homeland of Jamaica remembered her contributions after her death. In the 2000s, her story came back to light in the United Kingdom and she was recognized in 2004 as the Greatest Black Briton.

June 27, 2018

Mary Seacole – I: A Bold Front to Fortune – Extra History

Filed under: Britain, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Extra Credits
Published on 9 Jan 2016

Mary Seacole treated soldiers during the Crimean War – but she took a long path to get there. She grew up in Jamaica, the daughter of a local hotel owner and a Scottish soldier. She admired her doctress mother and wanted to be like her, but she also yearned to travel and see the world. In 1821 she accepted a relative’s invitation to visit London, and turned herself from a tourist to a businesswoman by importing Jamaican food preserves. She traveled with her business for several years before returning home to Jamaica, where she married a white man named Edwin Seacole and started a general store. Their venture failed, and disaster struck: fire destroyed most of Kingstown, and both Mary’s husband and her mother died in 1843. Mary survived and rebuilt the hotel, but she set out to start a new life in Panama and was immediately greeted by a cholera epidemic. She helped contain it, and earned a reputation that helped her start her own business across the street from her half-brother’s. When word reached her that the Crimean War back in Europe needed nurses, she left her business behind and went to sign up. Both the War Office and Florence Nightingale’s expedition rejected her, but Mary determined to find her own way there.

June 22, 2018

What the well-dressed politician shouldn’t be wearing

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ann Althouse reacts to a New York Times article on what clothes “say” about the wearer:

I clicked on that title because I thought it was going to say that it’s a mistake for female candidates to wear pants (in any form) rather than a skirt/dress (of some kind). But the article lumped skirted suits and pantsuits together.

To my eye, women in pants look less dressed up than a man in a standard business suit, and I don’t think women should put themselves at that disadvantage, especially since pantsuits look sloppier on a woman’s body than a business suit on a man’s body.

I don’t mean to insult women by saying that, but women’s bodies are (generally) shaped differently than men’s and women’s pants are (generally) fitted differently from men’s suit pants. Men’s suit pants do not hug the legs or crotch, so they completely deflect attention away from the lower body. Men’s suits bring us right up to the shoulders — the idealized shoulders — and and then, via shirt and tie, aim us straight at the face.

Women’s pantsuits are more fitted in the leg and use color in a way that draws the eye downward, and they often do things with the jacket — such as making it very long — to cover up what’s happening down there in the legs. But then the jacket is distracting.

In the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s jackets were flat-out weird, with perplexing patch pockets. In fact, I don’t like Vanessa Friedman’s reference to the “Elizabeth Warren/Hillary Clinton/Kirsten Gillibrand mold,” because Warren and Gillibrand wear very low-key things and Hillary Clinton launched into clothes that we struggled to understand, that got compared to loungewear or sci-fi costumery.

I don’t really know what the best answer is. It depends on the individual. But you’re asking to be trusted with responsibility, not to be enjoyed as a pop star or fashion maven. You don’t want to look as though you’re seeking power for purpose of expressing your individuality.

June 19, 2018

Women Working: What’s the Pill Got to Do With It?

Filed under: Economics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 29 Nov 2016

At the turn of the century, it was rare for a woman to get a college degree or join, and stay in, the workforce. One trailblazer was Katherine McCormick. She was the second woman ever to graduate from MIT, a suffragist, advocate for women’s education, and later philanthropist. McCormick was also a staunch supporter of birth control, going so far as to smuggle contraceptives into the United States at a time when they were illegal or highly regulated.

In the 1950s, the birth control pill was extremely controversial. Funding for its development had been pulled. McCormick stepped in and, over time, contributed nearly $23 million (in today’s dollars) of her own money to research efforts. Her financial involvement was instrumental in achieving FDA approval and widespread acceptance of “the pill.”

But what does the the pill have to do with female education or women working? For the very first time, women were in control over if and when they would have children.

Since the mid-1960s, shortly after the pill was approved as a contraceptive in the United States, female education and labor force participation rates have skyrocketed. With the ability to control when they will have children, women are able to better plan for their academic and professional future. We may take it for granted today, but half a century ago, the pill changed the game for working women.

June 7, 2018

Faith Moore explains how to avoid sexually objectifying women

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s apparently very simple and straightforward, once you double-check the feminist cheat sheet:

Apparently feminism has become so confusing that even feminists don’t know what’s feminist anymore. But Everyday feminists apparently do — and they’ve provided us with a handy cheat sheet so we don’t accidentally objectify someone who was trying to be empowered, or empower someone who was trying to be objectified.

The way to tell the difference, according to Everyday Feminism, is to figure out who has the power. “If the person being ‘looked at,’ or sexualized, has the power in the situation, then they are sexually empowered.” Here’s an example: “if someone puts on ‘sexy’ clothing and goes out in public or takes a selfie and shares it, they have the power because they chose themselves to put on those clothes.”

Oh, okay, I get it. So, if a woman chooses to put on “sexy” clothes and go out in public then all the catcalls and inappropriate comments and unwanted marriage proposals are empowering because she chose to put on those clothes. Oh, and also if she takes a “sexy” selfie and posts it on Instagram, all the comments about how she’s a “slut” and a “whore” and should “put her clothes on” are also empowering because she chose to share that photo. (I’m learning so much!)

But wait! Apparently beauty standards “compel” some people to wear sexy clothing “because they believe that they won’t be beautiful” otherwise. And there are even some people who feel they must not wear sexy clothing “because they are shamed if they do.”

So even if you think you put on those clothes of your own free will, it’s possible that society was actually hiding in your closet handing you things to put on (which is creepy) and that’s why you dressed all sexy (or not sexy). Which means that even though you thought you were empowered, it turns out you’re actually being objectified. And if you choose not to dress in the way you wanted to dress because society tells you that society was telling you it was wrong, then you’re empowered because you’re doing what someone else told you not to do about what someone else told you to do. (This makes total sense. I’m such a good feminist!)

But what about people who don’t dress “sexy”? Don’t worry, they can be objectified too. “Even a person who is ‘modestly’ dressed can objectified if the ‘looking’ person makes a non-sexual situation sexual without the ‘looked at’ person’s consent.” Oh good, for a minute there I thought “modestly dressed” people were being excluded from objectification and was worried because I know exclusion is wrong and we shouldn’t do it. Phew! Glad that even people who don’t want to be objectified still can be.

June 6, 2018

QotD: When the “Right Stuff” becomes “old school”

Filed under: History, Quotations, Space, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Consider the popular conception of firefighters: brave, selfless, strong enough to haul an incapacitated person from a burning building.

A few years ago, at a conference, I learned that many women were failing to qualify as firefighters, because they were coming up short on the strength test. What was so interesting, though, was that in practice, it turns out that one of the most important skills a firefighter needs is not so much the strength to drag an unconscious person from a building, but, far more commonly, the ability to coax someone who’s in danger and is terrified to come with them. Apparently, many women turn out to be far more persuasive than men – highlighting the importance of selection based on real-world skills, rather than legacy stereotypes.

Space flight offers another striking example of this phenomenon. In the context of a recent Tech Tonics podcast interview with Dorit Donoviel, director of the Biomedical Innovations Laboratory at the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, I had told Dr. Donoviel about my lifelong interest in astronomy and space, about launching Estes rockets and my love of the National Air and Space Museum and above all, about my affection for the heroism captured in the movie The Right Stuff, an all-time favorite.

In response, she laughed, and told me how “old school” that thinking was. When the space program started out, she explained, there was an exceptional degree of risk involved, and astronauts tended to be selected from the ranks of fighter pilots – because, in her words, they had “the skill sets and the cojones.” But today, she said, things are different – in large measure because the “space program is a lot safer than it used to be.”

Consequently, Donoviel explained, “Today what we’re looking for is less of the sort of alpha-male pilots, and more of the sort of scientists and engineers, geologists and earth scientists, folks who can work together in a cohesive manner in a team.”

Moreover, she added, the astronaut of the future needs to be able to endure long periods of boredom and the prolonged lack of stimulation – in many ways, the opposite of high-adrenaline “seat-of-the-pants flying” that in some ways characterized the early astronaut missions.

In space travel, as in firefighting, our notion of what constitutes the right skill set has evolved appreciably.

David Shaywitz, “Evolving Notions Of The Right Stuff — In Spaceflight And In Medicine”, Forbes, 2016-09-20.

June 2, 2018

The Robinson Affair (that the British establishment would like to “disappear”)

Filed under: Britain, Law, Media, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

If you haven’t been paying attention to the British media, you might not have heard about Tommy Robinson and his crusade to expose the “Asian grooming gangs” that have been left almost undisturbed by the British police, prosecutors and (until very recently indeed) the media:

The controversy around him continued. In March, Robinson was suspended from Twitter, where he had almost half a million followers. The social-media site (which merrily allows terrorist groups like Lashkar e-Taiba to keep accounts) decided that Robinson should be suspended for tweeting out a statistic about Muslim rape gangs that itself originated from the Muslim-run Quilliam foundation. And it is on this matter that the latest episode in the Robinson drama started — and has now drawn worldwide attention.

Ten years ago, when the EDL was founded, the U.K. was even less willing than it is now to confront the issue of what are euphemistically described as “Asian grooming gangs” (euphemistic because no Chinese or Koreans are involved and what is happening is not grooming but mass rape). At the time, only a couple of such cases had been recognized. Ten years on, every month brings news of another town in which gangs of men (almost always of Pakistani origin) have been found to have raped young, often underage, white girls. The facts of this reality — which, it cannot be denied, sounds like something from the fantasies of the most lurid racist — have now been confirmed multiple times by judges during sentencing and also by the most mainstream investigative journalists in the country.

But the whole subject is so ugly and uncomfortable that very few people care to linger over it. Robinson is an exception. For him — as he said in a 2011 interview with the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman — the “grooming gangs” issue isn’t something that afflicts some far-off towns but people in the working-class communities that he knows. And while there are journalists (notably the Times’ Andrew Norfolk) who have spent considerable time and energy bringing this appalling phenomenon to light, most of British society has turned away in a combination of embarrassment, disgust, and uncertainty about how to even talk about this. Anyone who thinks Britain is much further along with dealing with the taboo of “grooming gangs” should remember that only last year the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, had to leave the shadow cabinet because she accurately identified the phenomenon.

Which brings me to last Friday. That was when Robinson was filming outside Leeds Crown Court, where the latest grooming-gang case was going on. I have to be slightly careful here, because although National Review is based in the U.S., I am not, and there are reporting restrictions on the ongoing case. Anyhow, Robinson was outside the court and appeared (from the full livestream) to be filming the accused and accosting them with questions on their way in. He also appeared to exercise some caution, trying to ensure he was not on court property.

But clearly he did not exercise enough caution, a strange fact given that last year Robinson had been found guilty of “contempt of court” for filming outside another rape-gang trial, one involving four Muslim men at Canterbury Crown Court. On that occasion Robinson was given a three-month prison sentence [PDF], which was suspended for a period of 18 months. Which meant he would be free so long as he did not repeat the offense.

Although Robinson appeared to be careful at Leeds Crown Court last Friday, to dance along the line of exactly what he could or could not livestream outside an ongoing trial with a suspended sentence hanging over his head was extraordinarily unwise. What happened next went around the world: The police turned up in a van and swiftly arrested Robinson for “breach of the peace.” Within hours Robinson had been put before one Judge Geoffrey Marson, who in under five minutes tried, convicted, and sentenced Robinson to 13 months. He was immediately taken to prison.

From that moment it was not just Robinson but the U.K. that entered a minefield of legal problems. In addition to the usual reporting restrictions on the ongoing trial, a reporting ban was put on any mention of Robinson’s arrest, swift trial, and conviction, meaning that for days people in the blogosphere and the international media got free rein to claim that Tommy Robinson had been arrested for no reason, that his arrest was a demonstration of a totalitarian state cracking down on free speech, and even (and this one is remarkably clueless as well as careless) that the recent appointment to the position of home secretary of Sajid Javid — who was born to Muslim parents — is the direct cause of Robinson’s recent arrest.

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