URLs du Jour

2020-10-15

  • I don't always laugh out loud at online cartoons, but this one I did. Our Eye Candy du Jour is from xkcd: Dialect Quiz.

    [Dialect Quiz]

    Mouseover: "Do you make a distinction between shallots, scallops, and scallions? If you use all three words, do they all have different meanings, all the same, or are two the same and one different?"


  • Some find this amusing, I can't manage to do so: Webster's Redefined 'Sexual Preference' After Amy Coney Barrett Used It To Match Leftist Talking Points.

    The online version of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary changed the definition of “sexual preference” on the same day that senators scolded Judge Amy Coney Barrett for her use of the word during day two of her confirmation hearings.

    When questioned by Democratic senators on the judiciary committee on Obergefell v. Hodges, which decreed a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, Sens. Mazie Hirono and Cory Booker reprimanded Barrett for using the term “sexual preference,” claiming that is was outdated and offensive.

    Left as a comment on one of the National Review pieces about this: "You went full Orwell, Merriam-Webster, never go full Orwell."

    As for the "leftist talking points", Patterico has examples of this herd of independent minds. Bottom line:

    Anyway, this faux-outrage is about as stupid as Lindsey Graham trying to make a joke about segregation. Just stop. People really should take more time to think, and then carefully consider whether opening their big yap is in anyone’s best interest but their own.

    Note: the outrage here at Pun Salad is the real thing.


  • Ann Althouse puts paid to The notion that Twitter's the place to go to see what's happening. That's been, as she says, destroyed by Twitter itself, in its effort to suppress the New York Post's stories about Hunter Biden. She provides a number of reactions, including…

    I continue to think that Twitter, Facebook, et. al. should be free from government interference. If they want to set themselves up as a bubble where no contrary thoughts from the Real World™ are allowed to intrude, that's—literally—their business.

    But I think they are shooting themselves in the tootsies.


  • At NH Journal, Michael Graham questions whether our state's senior senator is as brave as she pretends: Would Shaheen Really Stand Up to Schumer Over Court Packing?.

    During a press call on Monday, GOP U.S. Senate candidate Corky Messner accused incumbent Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of being dishonest about her position on court packing. He also accused her of being more loyal to the national Democratic Party than to the people for New Hampshire.

    Over the weekend, Shaheen said: “I don’t support packing the court, although I have to say I think that’s exactly what [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have done.”

    Asked by NHJournal if Shaheen was right that by filling court vacancies, McConnell and Trump are “packing the court,” as Shaheen claimed, Messner, an attorney, gave a lawyerly answer:

    “It’s common knowledge that court-packing is the idea that you add to the number of justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court. That is to say, there are currently nine justices on the Supreme Court and court-packing is when you would increase the number of justices,” Messner said.

    “The latest Democrat talking point that President Trump and the Republican Senate, by confirming Amy Coney Barrett, would be some kind of court-packing is pure propaganda. It’s trying to take the issue of court-packing and turn it on its head.”

    Corky, I'm pretty sure, is going to lose handily.


  • And the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has yet another example of higher-ed hijinx: Richard Taylor, thought criminal.

    Last week, FIRE sent an urgent letter to St. John’s University, calling on them to rescind a finding that professor and graduate student Richard Taylor had violated the school’s “Bias, Discrimination, and Harassment” policy by asking a question in an introductory history class. The class was on the biological impact of transatlantic trade, and the question, in the last slide of his presentation: “Do the positives justify the negatives?” 

    You might well be wondering how asking that question could create a bias incident. I’m not sure, because the school hasn’t explained its reasoning. But if I had to guess, I assume the trail of breadcrumbs goes something like this: Enslaved people were treated like commodities in transatlantic trade; therefore, a thought exercise debating the outcomes of historical choices amounts to asking students to justify the practice of slavery. And because that topic is painful, the question re-traumatizes the descendants of the victims of slavery. 

    The message is clear: don't ask provocative questions in class, unless pre-approved by your ideological masters.