So according to that Title IX Compliance Officer, since people in wheelchairs can't engage in combat the rest of us can't either. Fingers crossed she never becomes our Secretary of Defense!
I can give a current example at a major West Coast medical school. We have an impressive series of locally created educational videos. Some are close captioned, and some cannot be for a variety of reasons. We now have a student (1 of 150) in the class that has trouble hearing. Because we cannot close caption it all, we have been instructed, in the name of "equity" to make sure that 149 students are deprived of seeing these videos and thus being forever less able to care for their patients so that this one person "does not feel bad". This is idiocy of the nth degree. And permutations of this happen continuously. The whole point is to make sure that graduating doctors know the minimum amount possible so that they are all equally stupid...I wish I were exaggerating.
If I were you, I would not see any doctor under 40. Heed my words.
Brilliant article, as usual. I don’t want equity. I want my surgeon to be absolutely brilliant as a specialist, my accountant to excel far beyond me at arithmetic and tax law and the bridges I drive over to be designed by exceptional engineers. The list goes on. I am not exceptional at anything, it bothered me once and I went to uni for ‘lesser’ degrees than these brainiacs did, but I have not the stress they have. I make art but cannot sing, so I create in one area and enjoy the creation by contemporaries in the other. This total mentally and emotionally retarded insanity is blindingly and deafeningly crippling in an increasingly black and white fashion. Soon, no man, woman or child will be able to walk tall across tribal lands for long. Unless....we listen to the Lorax.
"Life has to be made equally awful for everybody" A point made by Mrs. Thatcher that becomes more relevant every day. Hard to escape the conclusion that rather than pulling those up that need assistance, we should all be pulled down to the lowest level of achievement possible so as not to make those with serious issues feel left out. And in the process never give those that need help the help needed to raise them out of their dire situations. "You will own nothing and be happy". Undoubtedly through the miracles of modern chemistry.
While reading about the Stanford stuff I was reminded of the story "Harrison Bergeron" By Kurt Vonnegut where the agents of the US Handicapper General make sure that everyone is "equal."
"Okay you petty tyrants and narcissists, guess what: not everything is about race."
Douglas Murray has a saying about the latter part where noble anointed ones insist they can decipher something race-related in nearly any discourse while the rest of normal society goes on with their lives and whatnot - "If you can hear the whistle, you surely must be the dog"
I lived 22 years 10 min from stanford until recently.... the universities are getting crazier and crazier ... the worst is that the people in the academic bay area bubble do not realize it. Even those who were pretty rational a few years ago... think that speech control is needed as not insult anybody.
Moreover, as a naturalized US citizen, (yes I'm an immigrant to the USA, which I cannot say per this stanford document) it strikes me that the comments for not using these "insulting" words are very shallow, these stanford bureaucrats writers have no idea what is outside the bubble. It is almost like they think everything is circulating around USA or Stanford. It more shows their "biases" as the center of the universe. Where I'm from and many other places, people use same words and they did not colonize any other countries and ghetto does not only refer to a "people of color neighborhood", they are white straight males in ghettos too.
One of the things that I've learned recently is that many people don't actually read the studies that they cite. The mainstream media is full of these reporters who focus on a rush to report which means that they tend to copy the language of a study verbatim, rather than interpreting it themselves.
So this relies on an abstract-only, or even worse title-only read of a study. Then, many people end up citing the heavily flawed reporting of the study, rather than the study itself, and we now run into several degrees of separation resulting in plenty of people misreading or misinterpreting a study.
This has been one of my problems with COVID given that many of the studies are outright available to most people, and yet people still refer to mainstream outlets or just the abstract.
Part of me hoped that many people would be more interested in science and spend time reading the studies coming out, and many people fortunately have. However, it doesn't seem like it's to the level one would expect, and so many people may conduct a superficial reading of studies.
With that being said, I wonder if you and Bret have read this study trying to correlate traffic accidents and vaccination status:
There's plenty wrong with this study, including the fact that traffic accidents include riders as well as pedestrians who were in accidents. They also allude to the fact that younger people tended to be unvaccinated, and that younger drivers tend to show more reckless behavior. So rather than consider younger age being a better contributing factor to accidents, apparently it's because the "vaccine hesitant" are more reckless and take more risks.
Yea, I love the reduction in tolerance for the intolerant.
I loved "Also, stop being asses, all of you, and no, I’m not going to apologize to donkeys for saying that, either" . Great quip.
Speaking of "the real world". Do you know much about Mules?
A friend spent a couple of years finding a pair of Mammoth Jacks to pull his wagons and sleigh. Then before too long they were replaced by a pair of Belgians. I asked, "Why the change?". He responded, "Why would you keep an animal on the farm that can hold a grudge for 20 years?"
Real world stuff. To the best of my knowledge, Mules (nor horses, nor donkeys) don't care much about pronouns, or nonbinaryness.
So according to that Title IX Compliance Officer, since people in wheelchairs can't engage in combat the rest of us can't either. Fingers crossed she never becomes our Secretary of Defense!
I can give a current example at a major West Coast medical school. We have an impressive series of locally created educational videos. Some are close captioned, and some cannot be for a variety of reasons. We now have a student (1 of 150) in the class that has trouble hearing. Because we cannot close caption it all, we have been instructed, in the name of "equity" to make sure that 149 students are deprived of seeing these videos and thus being forever less able to care for their patients so that this one person "does not feel bad". This is idiocy of the nth degree. And permutations of this happen continuously. The whole point is to make sure that graduating doctors know the minimum amount possible so that they are all equally stupid...I wish I were exaggerating.
If I were you, I would not see any doctor under 40. Heed my words.
Brilliant article, as usual. I don’t want equity. I want my surgeon to be absolutely brilliant as a specialist, my accountant to excel far beyond me at arithmetic and tax law and the bridges I drive over to be designed by exceptional engineers. The list goes on. I am not exceptional at anything, it bothered me once and I went to uni for ‘lesser’ degrees than these brainiacs did, but I have not the stress they have. I make art but cannot sing, so I create in one area and enjoy the creation by contemporaries in the other. This total mentally and emotionally retarded insanity is blindingly and deafeningly crippling in an increasingly black and white fashion. Soon, no man, woman or child will be able to walk tall across tribal lands for long. Unless....we listen to the Lorax.
"Life has to be made equally awful for everybody" A point made by Mrs. Thatcher that becomes more relevant every day. Hard to escape the conclusion that rather than pulling those up that need assistance, we should all be pulled down to the lowest level of achievement possible so as not to make those with serious issues feel left out. And in the process never give those that need help the help needed to raise them out of their dire situations. "You will own nothing and be happy". Undoubtedly through the miracles of modern chemistry.
While reading about the Stanford stuff I was reminded of the story "Harrison Bergeron" By Kurt Vonnegut where the agents of the US Handicapper General make sure that everyone is "equal."
"Okay you petty tyrants and narcissists, guess what: not everything is about race."
Douglas Murray has a saying about the latter part where noble anointed ones insist they can decipher something race-related in nearly any discourse while the rest of normal society goes on with their lives and whatnot - "If you can hear the whistle, you surely must be the dog"
Oh man, such a good article, and that ending paragraph--so awesome!! Thank you, Heather!!!
Your closing paragraph is gorgeous and brings tears to my eyes. This is life! Let's squeeze all the joy, love, and awe from it that we can!
The ones who have fallen for the crazy story evidenced by all these painful linguistic gymnastics? May they snap the fuck out of it soon.
Peace, and happy winter solstice!
I lived 22 years 10 min from stanford until recently.... the universities are getting crazier and crazier ... the worst is that the people in the academic bay area bubble do not realize it. Even those who were pretty rational a few years ago... think that speech control is needed as not insult anybody.
Moreover, as a naturalized US citizen, (yes I'm an immigrant to the USA, which I cannot say per this stanford document) it strikes me that the comments for not using these "insulting" words are very shallow, these stanford bureaucrats writers have no idea what is outside the bubble. It is almost like they think everything is circulating around USA or Stanford. It more shows their "biases" as the center of the universe. Where I'm from and many other places, people use same words and they did not colonize any other countries and ghetto does not only refer to a "people of color neighborhood", they are white straight males in ghettos too.
The whole document is posted on dropbox, as it is pasword protected on stanford site. Here is the link. Heather you can verify that thi sis the one. https://www.dropbox.com/s/eusu60iqd5z38db/Elimination%20of%20Harmful%20Language%20Initiative%20IT%20Community.pdf?dl=0
The need to control everything to the point of comfortable is out of control
One of the things that I've learned recently is that many people don't actually read the studies that they cite. The mainstream media is full of these reporters who focus on a rush to report which means that they tend to copy the language of a study verbatim, rather than interpreting it themselves.
So this relies on an abstract-only, or even worse title-only read of a study. Then, many people end up citing the heavily flawed reporting of the study, rather than the study itself, and we now run into several degrees of separation resulting in plenty of people misreading or misinterpreting a study.
This has been one of my problems with COVID given that many of the studies are outright available to most people, and yet people still refer to mainstream outlets or just the abstract.
Part of me hoped that many people would be more interested in science and spend time reading the studies coming out, and many people fortunately have. However, it doesn't seem like it's to the level one would expect, and so many people may conduct a superficial reading of studies.
With that being said, I wonder if you and Bret have read this study trying to correlate traffic accidents and vaccination status:
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(22)00822-1/fulltext#%20
There's plenty wrong with this study, including the fact that traffic accidents include riders as well as pedestrians who were in accidents. They also allude to the fact that younger people tended to be unvaccinated, and that younger drivers tend to show more reckless behavior. So rather than consider younger age being a better contributing factor to accidents, apparently it's because the "vaccine hesitant" are more reckless and take more risks.
Yea, I love the reduction in tolerance for the intolerant.
I loved "Also, stop being asses, all of you, and no, I’m not going to apologize to donkeys for saying that, either" . Great quip.
Speaking of "the real world". Do you know much about Mules?
A friend spent a couple of years finding a pair of Mammoth Jacks to pull his wagons and sleigh. Then before too long they were replaced by a pair of Belgians. I asked, "Why the change?". He responded, "Why would you keep an animal on the farm that can hold a grudge for 20 years?"
Real world stuff. To the best of my knowledge, Mules (nor horses, nor donkeys) don't care much about pronouns, or nonbinaryness.