Lionel Shriver removed as judge of literary competition for questioning a diversity algorithm

June 13, 2018 • 11:30 am

Four days ago I reported on a piece author Lionel Shriver published in the Spectator: a criticism of UK Penguin/Random House’s (PRH) striving for diversity in its authors and employees in the form of a questionnaire. The piece, called “When Diversity Means Uniformity,” accused PRH of being “drunk on virtue”, and pointing out two problems with this quest for diversity (granted, the questionnaire was bizarre):

I see two issues here. First: diversity, both the word and the concept, has crimped. It serves a strict, narrow agenda that has little or nothing to do with the productive dynamism of living and working alongside people with widely different upbringings and beliefs. Only particular and, if you will, privileged backgrounds count. Which is why Apple’s African-American diversity tsar, Denise Young Smith, got hammered last October after submitting, ‘There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.’ She hadn’t bowed to the newly shackled definition of the word, which has now been effectively removed from the language as a general-purpose noun.

Second: dazzled by this very highest of social goods, many of our institutions have ceased to understand what they are for. Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’être as the acquisition and dissemination of good books. Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision. Thus from now until 2025, literary excellence will be secondary to ticking all those ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual preference and crap-education boxes. We can safely infer from that email that if an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling. Good luck with that business model. Publishers may eschew standards, but readers will still have some.

I wouldn’t have written it exactly that way, partciularly the antepenultimate sentence. But it’s a fair point, and worthy of discussion. Are we striving for equal representation or equal opportunity? That is the most important question that progressive liberals need to answer for themselves, along with “does unequal representation mean unequal opportunity?”

Well, there are always professional consequences to bucking the tropes of Control Leftism, and Shriver is about to pay one—not that it’s going to hurt her much. Mslexia, a British magazine aimed at women authors, is holding a short story competition for women from any country with a £5,000 top prize. Shriver was going to be a judge.

Not any longer:

Translation: Mslexia has to have a safe space for authors, and by questioning a “proportional representation” view of diversity, Shriver has violated that. So she’s out.

Somehow I suspect that the strong-minded Ms. Shriver won’t mind; in fact, she’ll probably write a snarky piece about it. But this just goes to show how those who are Ideologically Impure get punished. Shriver is now is a non person, or rather a person who doesn’t create a “safe space for all women writers.”

Of course Mslexia can choose whomever they want as a judge. But removing Shriver as a judge isn’t going to improve the quality of the entries and winners; Shriver, I suspect, would judge submissions on their merit. Why would she not? No, this is, pure and simple, a form of virtue signaling by Mslexia.  It’s not as if some women weren’t going to submit their stories because they’d be judged by Shriver.

h/t: BJ

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Qur’anic exegesis

June 13, 2018 • 9:45 am

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “help“, came with a brief message:

Book-chucking is now a trope.

Thanks to Hassan Radwan for the inspiration. You can follow him here: @abdulazizbulbul/

So far I haven’t been able to find the inspiration offered by Radwan, except for an article at the Clarion Project that describes his view, as an “agnostic Muslim”, that the Qur’an shouldn’t be taken literally (Ceiling Cat help him!). A quote:

But as long as we don’t tackle the belief that the Quran is the infallible words of God then no matter how many problems are solved or inequalities righted there will always be another group seeking to impose the word of God against reason and conscience.

This is why when you defeat one group another even more desperate rises from their ashes. The idea that the Quran is fallible will of course come as a terrible shock to most Muslims brought up as we are to believe the Quran is the perfect and infallible word of God, but I firmly believe that once we Muslims get passed [sic] this shock and emotional reaction and begin to reflect more rationally we will see that in fact this is the only way to save the real soul of Islam from the extremists who are in fact the ones destroying it.

In actual fact the Qur’an never uses words like infallible, perfect nor miraculous. The reason this belief seems to have gained ground is because of the challenge the Quran makes to “bring something like it.” Though being unable to imitate something doesn’t of course mean it is either perfect or infallible. The Quran does say it is from God, but then again what I’m saying doesn’t contradict that. I accept the Quran was inspired by God. It’s just not verbatim his actual speech.

Given that, then the inspiration for the strip becomes clearer:

Indian chess star pulls out of Asian chess championship, refusing to wear a hijab

June 13, 2018 • 8:45 am

Our hero of the week is Soumya Swaminathan, a woman grandmaster chess champion from India (she’s 29). She was also the former World Girls’ Junior Chess Champion. Now she’s deliberately hurt her career in the cause of women’s rights—and her own rights—by pulling out the Indian National Team that will play at the Asian Nations Cup to be held in Iran from July 26 to August 4. Iran, of course, requires women to wear hijabs in public, something that isn’t just tolerated by many Western feminists and Control Leftists, but positively extolled. They rarely mention the many women who, under compulsion, wear the garment when they don’t want to, which of course is the point of the My Stealthy Freedom and White Wednesdays movements in Iran. I expect Swaminathan mentions the burkha because she’d have to cover her whole body if she went outside.

Here’s Swaminathan’s statement from her Facebook page (click on screenshot to go to the post):

 

This is not voluntary veiling, but compulsory veiling, and, as in the cases listed below, unconscionable for several reasons. First, compulsory veiling is a violation of women’s rights, mandating how to dress—and doing that so they don’t excite the lust of men. Second, it’s forcing people of all faiths, or no faith, to adopt a faith-based dress code. Finally, playing world-class competitive chess is a grueling act, and you should be absolutely comfortable in your clothes. A cloth over your head isn’t exactly conducive to that.

I always admire people who give up professional advancement if that conflicts with their principles, and she is one of them. Kudos to her, and I wish her weil.

As the Times of India reports,

Soumya said that when she first gave the nod to be a part of the Indian team, the host country was to be Bangladesh and the dates were different. “But once the new dates and new venue came up, I excused myself,” she added. When asked if the All India Chess Federation (AICF) should have protested against the decision to allot the tournament to Iran, Pune girl Soumya told TOI: “I can’t expect everyone to be of the same opinion as me. It’s subjective issue.”

However, in her Facebook message, Soumya blasted the officialdom. “I am very disappointed to see that player’s rights and welfare are given little importance while allotting and/or organising official championships,” she wrote.

Among other chess players, Ukraine’s Muzhychuk sisters, Anna and Mariya, have been vocal about human rights and gender equality and have refused to play premier tournaments in Saudi Arabia. The champion team from the Iran event will qualify for the World Team Chess Championship. Iran is also scheduled to host the open Asian Team championship concurrently.

Bharat Singh Chauhan, All India Chess Federation honorary secretary, did not respond to requests for comment.

. . . . Soumya’s Facebook post received hundreds of comments, majority of them appreciating her brave stance.

American chess player Nazi Paikidze also refused to play the knockout World Championship in Tehran, Iran, last year over the same issue.

Here’s an interview with Swaminathan on WION, India’s global news network. She speaks as she writes, with dignity but with firmness.

h/t: Grania

Readers’ wildlife photos

June 13, 2018 • 7:45 am

Reader Tom Carrolan sent two sets of raptor images in April and May. I’ll put the second one up first: about the Norther Harrier. His captions are indented:

The Northern Harrier (Circus hudsonius) is a taxonomic issue. Recently divided from the European Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus). 

From All About Birds: “Northern Harriers are fairly common, but their populations are declining. The North American Breeding Bird Survey records a steady decline of over 1% per year from 1966 to 2014, resulting in a cumulative loss of 47%, with Canadian populations declining more than U.S. populations.” They nest on the ground in freshwater and brackish marshes.

Males often have more than one nest active within their territory. At my outer Cape Cod hawk migration site, established in 1984 (Pilgrim Heights within the National Seashore), the male had three females on three nests. He defended the females from interlopers and delivered food two all his mates and offspring. One or two is common, with five nests and females, max.

For North America, here are some images of this bird, where most birders would just like to see the adult male, known as the Gray Ghost.

Heres an adult male, a composite, with a full crop, apparently having eaten within the last couple of hours! Observing this bulge is not uncommon for migrating hawks, but there are a few species for which this is uncommon: Harrier, Osprey/Bald Eagle, and others that eat soft food. That’s soft vertebrates (amphibians), inverts, fish. This bird has chowed down on something with hard volume, like a mammal… maybe an early chipmunk (7 April 2013).
From my DigiBanding Project with Braddock Bay Raptor Research north of Rochester NY, here are a couple of immature Harriers. Both are shown in the project-required images: front and back with one wing extended.

First here’s a young female with the dark iris beginning to turn to adult yellow. Young females have a dark iris. The central tail feathers have molted to post juvenile type. All our hawk tails molt from the central feathers outward. (18 April 2003)
Right out of the nest, young males have a yellow iris. (26 April 2003):
All three of these images show juvenile orange tint. In the last Summer and beyond, birds of the year have this color, but it fades through the Winter. Another young female with a dark iris. (13 April 2003)
Here’s a recently hatched Harrier showing the juvenile orange breast coloration that will fade toward the next year. Also a full crop (2 September 2011):
Adult female Harriers have a well-streaked breast, and with age, will have grayer and grayer wings resembling the adult male. The adult female yellow iris is visible on the right. (07 March 2018 and 3 April 2015):
Every birder longs to see adult male Harriers. Here are a couple more. Males have a bright yellow iris color at all ages. (9 January 2012):
27 March 2018:
Late in the Spring migration, all manner of molt can be observed. Molt usual is timed to start on the home grounds. Here’s a late adult male Harrier, molting its first primary feathers enroute. (19 June 2010).
And last, here’s a young male Harrier, yellow iris, being pursued by a Red-winged Blackbird. In migration. The blackbird actually hit the hawk a couple of times. (13 March 2011):

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 13, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s a hump day: Wednesday, June 13, 2018, and it’s “National Cupcake Lover’s Day“, but the placement of the apostrophe implies that there is only one cupcake lover, and this is his/her day. Either ditch the apostrophe or put it after the “s”!

It is one of those days when I arrive at work having no idea what I’ll write about on this site. Posting may be light, but, like Maru, I do my best.

The biggest news after the Trump/Kim Jon-un debacle is the ascent of a 20-odd story building in St. Paul, Minnesota by an errant raccoon. It took the creature nearly a day to make it to the top, and much of the climbing was on sheer vertical walls. Mr. Procyon lotor rested on ledges from time to time, and was still ascending when I went to bed.  And then there were reports that it was trying to climb down. I thought it was a goner for sure! But it’s okay! The report from the link below:

A raccoon who scaled the UBS tower in Minnesota with death-defying nerve has made it safely to the top of the building after close to 20 nail-biting hours for internet viewers worldwide.

The animal was originally spotted on the roof of a nearby office block and was safely removed by maintenance workers. But rather than find safety elsewhere, it jumped over to the UBS tower, one of the largest skyscrapers in the city, where it scaled the building all day – moving up, down and sometimes sideways.

MPR News, the local public radio station, helped break the story and since then the world has been following the plight of the raccoon on the hashtag #MPRraccoon.

Matthew was also gripped by this story, but I’m happy to report that as of this morning, the creature made it to the top (see below), and is being rescued, hopefully given food and water immediately, and then relocated to a place without skyscrapers. You can read the full story at the Guardian.

Now this is free climbing!:

UPDATE: The raccoon has been trapped and will be located to a less dangerous place!:

This is one of those days when not much happened in the world. On June 13, 1525, Martin Luther, defying the Catholic rule that priests and nuns must be celibate, married Katharina von Bora. She had been a nun, had six children with Luther (two died young) and also raised four orphans. As Wikipedia notes, “The marriage of Katharina von Bora to Martin Luther was extremely important to the development of the Protestant Church, specifically in regards to its stance on marriage and the roles each spouse should concern themselves with.”  On this day in 1966, over four centuries later, the U.S. Supreme court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that suspects could not be questioned until they’d been informed of their rights. Exactly one year later, Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to be the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Four years after that, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers. Leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, they went a long way to turning America against the Vietnam War, by showing that the U.S. government had lied systematically to the public. Finally, exactly 18 years ago, the first North Korea-South Korea summit took place, with Kim Dae-jung, President of South Korea, meeting Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. I doubt anything came out of it; perhaps there were some family visits allowed.

Notables born on June 13 include James Clerk Maxwell (1831), W. B. Yeats (1865), Paavo “Flying Finn” Nurmi (1897), Luis Walter Alvarez (1911; Nobel Laureate in Physics), Ben Johnson (1918; it’s his 100th birthday), and John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928; Nobel Laureate).

In honor of Johnson’s birthday, here’s my favorite scene of his, which I’ve put up before. It’s from my very favorite American movie, “The Last Picture Show“. Johnson, playing Sam the Lion, a tiny Texas oil town’s small-time entrepreneur (he owns the pool hall, movie theater, and cafe), tells his young friend Sonny (played by Timothy Bottoms), about his young but intense love for a married woman.  It’s very sad but so realistic and true. (The woman was Ellen Burstyn, playing Lois Farrow, who was unhappily married to an oilman).

This may be my most favorite scene in all American movies:

Only two people of note died on this day: Martin Buber in 1965 and Benny Goodman in 1986.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes a reference that I asked Malgorzata to explain, “About ‘Neither Marx nor Jesus’: there is a book by a French philosopher, Jean-Francois Revel, ‘Ni Marx ni Jesus’, which was translated into quite a few languages. In English the title was ‘Without Marx or Jesus’, but in Swedish, ‘Neither… nor. . .” It was better for this dialogue to use the translation done by a Swedish translator..”

BARE NECESSITIES

Hili: Neither Marx nor Jesus.
A: What then?
Hili: Mice.
In Polish:
Hili: Ani Marks, ani Jezus.
Ja: A co?
Hili: Myszy.

And up in Winnipeg, Gus is straining at the leash. He got it tangled around a pot and became frustrated after unsuccessfully trying to get free.

 

Reader Barry notes that although this tiger looks as if it were going for a kill, the “kill” isn’t what it seems:

https://twitter.com/Koksalakn/status/1004341027426226176

From Grania, “He jump”. Indeed he does!

https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/1006703222919188483

Matthew sent a few biology tweets. Be sure to watch the transformation:

I’m sure I’ve posted this before, but the camouflage is stunning:

A bee with light-blue legs, apparently from Thailand:

A lovely day on Mars!

And a plethora of fireflies:

Ignore the troll attack and look at the hilarious Muybridge cat photos!

Duck parade! The chicken is at the bottom of the class.

Lagniappe: if you need a present for someone, reader Pliny the in Between offers The Official Trump Chess Set:

 

Trump screws up in Singapore

June 12, 2018 • 6:41 pm

Of course Trump wasn’t going to get Kim Jong-un to give up his nukes; that was never on the table. There is a lot of talk of how Trump gave away the farm (no more joint U.S./South Korean military exercises) and got precious little in return, while the DPRK got a propaganda triumph. Still, that doesn’t really change much, although it makes Trump look ridiculous and weak. But we knew that anyway. No, the biggest screwup he made was coddling the world’s worst dictator and, according to the New York Times, making statements like this:

Trump praised Kim in the news conference and, astonishingly, even adopted North Korean positions as his own, saying that the United States military exercises in the region are “provocative.” That’s a standard North Korean propaganda line. Likewise, Trump acknowledged that human rights in North Korea constituted a “rough situation,” but quickly added that “it’s rough in a lot of places, by the way.” (Note that a 2014 United Nations report stated that North Korean human rights violations do “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”)

Incredibly, Trump told Voice of America that he had this message for the North Korean people: “I think you have somebody that has a great feeling for them. He wants to do right by them and we got along really well.”

That’s just palaver, of course, but it’s a craven and disgusting series of statements. Kim Jong-un wants to do right by the North Korean people? Who is Trump kidding? Dear Leader wants to crush them under his boot, and is responsible for starving most of them and killing many of them.

Call me naive, but I still cherish the American ideal of fostering freedom and liberty throughout the world. When you laud the world’s worst dictator in a way like this, the ideal is gone—at least until Trump is gone.

“It’s rough in a lot of places, by the way.”  Ceiling Cat help us.

Tom Nichols on the Big Summit

June 12, 2018 • 12:45 pm

I’ve been appalled at how ham-handedly Trump has handled the Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un, and how casually he seems to take it. On again, off again. . . “I can size him up in 10 seconds”, “I know everything I need to know”, and so on. Trump doesn’t have near the knowledge or savvy to handle this, and though I haven’t followed what’s going on, Tom Nichols is boasting on Twitter how prescient he was. (Nichols is a professor at the Naval War College and at Harvard’s extension school, an expert on the Soviet Union, author of seven books, and, according to Wikipedia, “a five-time undefeated Jeopardy! champion.”)

Well, I looked up his piece on USA Today, published on March 9. Click on the screenshot to go there:

And here are Nichols’s predictions from that piece:

Given North Korea’s track record, here is what is more likely to happen. Kim and Trump will meet, and Kim’s regime will reap hours of footage of an American president shaking the hand of the “supreme leader” that will run forever in North Korea and go viral around the world. Kim will play the gracious host and agree to everything, knowing that this kind of flattery will trigger a torrent of praise from Trump and perhaps even elicit reckless talk about lifting sanctions. (The North Koreans will surely have done their homework on the president’s psyche, which is on display all day, every day, on social media.)

After the summit, Pyongyang will then dig in on further negotiations. When those talks fail, Kim will blame Trump, leaving the president bewildered and angry. Trump will go back to his insulting ways, which will pave the way for Kim to exit any preliminary agreements. The whole business will fall apart, and North Korea will look like the sure winner: the co-equal of a U.S. president who has been humbled in front of America’s allies and embarrassed in front of its enemies. The unveiling of a functional, nuclear-armed North Korean ICBM will follow.

I hope I’m wrong. Talking to the North Koreans is certainly a far better idea than war. Trump and Kim could surprise us all and begin the process of removing nuclear weapons from North Korea. But it’s far too early to think about any calls to Oslo just yet.

Well, Trump has already been humbled and embarrassed before the entire world. As for the propaganda victory, the North Koreans already are subject to a constant barrage of anti-American propaganda and pro-Dear-Leader sentiments. What difference will it make to the world if they see Trump shaking hands with Kim Jong-un and become extra proud of Dear Leader? None that I can see: the people will still be slaves. And the rest of the world, including China, isn’t suddenly going to start admiring Kim Jong-un more because he took advantage of a moron. Really, what is this propaganda victory supposed to consist of?

My own prediction: nothing will change except for perhaps a draw-down of U.S. forces in South Korea. But that won’t change anything, either, as we still have missiles on subs around the peninsula, and ICBMs pointed at Pyongyang. Neither South Korea nor the DPRK will be any more secure. As for the sanctions, we’d be fools to drop our support for them.