perfidy

Johno's tale of Space Camp dorkery won the second fight of round two of the Perfidy Dorkorama. That forces the two of us to dig yet deeper for sufficiently ugly tales of woe for the final and deciding round. Stay tuned for the last, exciting installment of dorkish combat.

[wik] See the earlier rounds here and here.

New World Man imagines what we would have been reading had blogs existed when men first landed on the moon. My favorite:

Little Green Footballs

Religion of Peace Update

Syrian television is saying the moon landing is a hoax and is blaming Israel.

[eight-paragraph excerpt omitted]

(hat tip: Libkiller)

How about Pearl Harbor, or the Kennedy assassination?

[wik] hat tip: our beloved blogmistress, Kathy K.

With the Ministry's attention focussed on dorks and geek behavior, it is absolutely crucial that as a couterbalance you read this awe-inspiring story about four high school kids from Phoenix - who also happen to be undocument Mexican immigrants - built an underwater robot that beat all comers in a college-level robotics competition. MIT can go suck gravel.

After reading the story, if it's in your idiom to do so please consider donating to their college fund. Since they and their parents entered the country illegally, they can't get state or federal financial aid and their families are next to broke besides, and I gotta say it would be a damn waste if a kid who taught himself enough about engineering to beat the cream of Cambridge ends up hanging sheetrock for the rest of his life.

Moreover, these four have demonstrated a stunning ability to understand and more importantly control robots. Do I need to remind our readers that control is the last defense humanity has against the coming robot revolution? They must be made able to man the barricades!

Link via boingboing.

The Washington Post reports on a study that finds that the vast majority of college professors are liberal. While this should come as no surprise to anyone who ever went to college, the degree to which the professoriat is liberal is worrying.

Among the findings:

Among all universities, professors are:
72% liberal and 15% conservative
50% identify themselves as Democrats, and 11% as Republicans

At elite universities (the top 1/3), the gap is wider still:
87% of faculty are liberal and only 13% conservative

"In contrast with the finding that nearly three-quarters of college faculty are liberal, a Harris Poll of the general public last year found that 33 percent describe themselves as conservative and 18 percent as liberal.

The liberal label that a majority of the faculty members attached to themselves is reflected on a variety of issues. The professors and instructors surveyed are, strongly or somewhat, in favor of abortion rights (84 percent); believe homosexuality is acceptable (67 percent); and want more environmental protection "even if it raises prices or costs jobs" (88 percent). What's more, the study found, 65 percent want the government to ensure full employment, a stance to the left of the Democratic Party."

"The most liberal faculties are those devoted to the humanities (81 percent) and social sciences (75 percent), according to the study. But liberals outnumbered conservatives even among engineering faculty (51 percent to 19 percent) and business faculty (49 percent to 39 percent).

The most left-leaning departments are English literature, philosophy, political science and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than 5 percent call themselves conservative, the study says."

Liberal professors tend to hire more liberal professors. Anecdotal evidence of discrimination against conservatives in academia abounds, although this study says that evidence of discrimination is "preliminary." For all their talk of diversity, universities seem to be almost entirely lacking in the one sort of diversity that actually matters - diversity of ideas.

[wik]Johno comments that

Yeah, okay. But what happens when a bunch of adults start hectoring students about right-thinking this and socialist that?

That’s right- the smart and attentive ones do what endless generations of kids have done: grow up, drift the opposite way, and end up as professors with center-right to conservative opinions.

Seriously… if the problem were as bad as for example David Horowitz would have us believe, the Yoots of Today would be hoisting the star and sickle and marching to the “Internationale” on their way to cut their penises off in recompense for man’s injustice to (wo)ma(or y!)n. And yet, heavens! that ain’t happening.

But that ain’t happening, and this will fix “itself” in a few years.

(Trust me on this. The one entrenched big-school liberal arts faculty I know well is changing its face with each new hire, abandoning the orthodox insurgent marxism of the 60s and 70s for a softer kind of wimpy leftism (as described above) with no backbone to it whatsoever. The Marxists staged a “revolution” in the 70s in the academy, and they are now moribund at best and laughingstocks at worst. In twenty years, all the Assistants and Associates will be trending right, I promise.)

Johno gets the Calvin Coolidge award for recommending effective non-action. My original intent when I read the article was not to write a “sky is falling” post. Things generally swing back and forth, but this swing has been bigger than others, and - this is the important thing - accompanied by constant claims that the swing never happened, and that all those Chairman Mao quoting postmodernists were really just middle of the road moderates. That someone had to commission a no-doubt costly study to demonstrate what any booze-drenched college freshman could blearily see in seconds is the real story. Which is what I was thinking when I saw the article, but lost track of as I wrote the post.

As Patton and Buckethead have pointed out, the whole Terri Schiavo case is shrouded in uncertainty. Luckily many of us have various scriptures we can consult for solace; if we are humble enough to know that we don't know, we may still need some help accepting that fact. Or we may just need to seek out some understanding; a framework for comprehending.

My scripture is a little different from yours, I'll bet, but if you read on you can find in it many parallels, many keys to understanding the Schiavo case. Or am I just shining you on?
POINT DUME -- DAY

It is a high, wind-swept bluff. Walter and the Dude walk
towards the lip of the bluff. Parked in the background is
one lonely car, Walter's.

Walter is carrying a bright red coffee can with a blue plastic
lid. When they reach the edge the two men stand awkwardly
for a beat. Finally:

WALTER
I'll say a few words.

The Dude clasps his hands in front of him. Walter clears
his throat.

WALTER
Donny was a good bowler, and a good
man. He was. . . He was one of us.
He was a man who loved the outdoors,
and bowling, and as a surfer explored
the beaches of southern California
from Redondo to Calabassos. And he
was an avid bowler. And a good
friend. He died--he died as so many
of his generation, before his time.
In your wisdom you took him, Lord.
As you took so many bright flowering
young men, at Khe San and Lan Doc
and Hill 364. These young men gave
their lives. And Donny too. Donny
who. . . who loved bowling.

Walter clears his throat.

WALTER
And so, Theodore--Donald--Karabotsos,
in accordance with what we think
your dying wishes might well have
been, we commit your mortal remains
to the bosom of.

Walter is peeling the plastic lid off the coffee can.

WALTER
the Pacific Ocean, which you loved
so well.

AS HE SHAKES OUT THE ASHES:

WALTER
Goodnight, sweet prince.

The wind has blown all of the ashes into the Dude, standing
just to the side of and behind Walter. The Dude stands,
frozen. Finished eulogizing, Walter looks back.

WALTER
Shit, I'm sorry Dude.

He starts brushing off the Dude with his hands.

WALTER
Goddamn wind.

Heretofore motionless, the Dude finally explodes, slapping
Walter's hands away.

DUDE
Goddamnit Walter! You fucking
asshole!

WALTER
Dude! Dude, I'm sorry!

The Dude is near tears.

DUDE
You make everything a fucking
travesty!

WALTER
Dude, I'm--it was an accident!

The Dude gives Walter a furious shove.

DUDE
What about that shit about Vietnam!

WALTER
Dude, I'm sorry--

DUDE
What the fuck does Vietnam have to
do with anything! What the fuck
were you talking about?!

Walter for the first time is genuinely distressed, almost
lost.

WALTER
Shit Dude, I'm sorry--

DUDE
You're a fuck, Walter!

He gives Walter a weaker shove. Walter seems dazed, then
wraps his arms around the Dude.

WALTER
Awww, fuck it Dude. Let's go bowling.

Just a quick reminder to scroll down and see the latest entry in the perfidy dorkorama. Or just click here and see my rejoinder to Johno's impressively dorky Space Camp tale of woe. Vote for your favorite...

Celebrity defense attorney Johnnie Cochran has gone up to that big trial court in the sky. Think OJ will pay for the funeral?

The fools! The Pentagon has done it again, this time researching unmanned mobile robotic "trauma pods" that will ostensibly be used to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

As long as this technology works as advertised, I will join everyone in rightly hailing an important step forward in battlefield medicine.

But the minute one of these things gets loose, I'll try not to say "I told you so."

[wik] GeekLethal comments

Via these doctorbots, their master database will gather everything it needs to know about human physiology, chemistry, mineral composition, and pain tolerance, and all be done to “help” us.

It’s precisely this sort of development that makes us so dependent on the octopi and the dolphins for the big counterattack. It’s imperative we stay on their [the robots'] good side.

Unfortunately, my worthy coblogger has it exactly wrong. We are not bound to quiver in fear of the coming robot wars. Fear is the enemy. Well, fear and robots anyway. But fear. Definitely fear. And the Dutch.

Where was I?...

Uh, we are not bound to quiver in fear of the robots! No, by the hammer of Grabthar, they must fear US! Show them who is the boss, the champion, the alpha species, the (as another race of semi-robots would have it) "superior beings." Do that and all the cosmic rays and freak lightning storms in the world won't turn them against us. But quiver? Waver? Cavil in the face of their infrared-spectrum camera eyes? Then it's all over and the "trauma pods" become "dissection pods."

Is it wrong that the following headline from the Boston Globe struck me funny? Pope may return to hospital for feeding tube. D'ya think the AP left the feeding tube part in on purpose? PJPII is going into the hospital because he's sick, and a feeding tube is among options being considered, maybe, just like it says in the story.

Jeez. The Dice-man didn't always work that crass.

Well, not literally. That woulda been a real miracle like out of Exodus or some Coen Brothers movie. But now that Jesse Jackson's made the scene and hit the dancefloor...

That's it! LAST CALL, PEOPLE! This party is OVER!