Tag: Regrettable Acts

Warning Sign

Business

When I first saw this little foray into feminism, I was amused:

People who yearn to become entrepreneurs may find guidance at the new Feminist Business School, an online program that aims to help women launch businesses founded upon the theory of “feminine entrepreneurship” and “body-loving business practices.”

But it gets better:

The only faculty member of this school appears to be [its founder] Armbrust, who does not appear to have any direct business experience, but did take a few business classes at Portland Community College. She concedes that her program will not teach any direct business skills, such as bookkeeping or legal knowledge, but suggests that she may offer such a course in the future.

Now when you’ve all stopped that cis-male giggling (and you Lady Readers are included in this), there is one positive aspect to this unutterably stupid venture: if any manager sees a graduate of this “business school” in an employment interview, the warning bells should go off, because if the applicant should be hired, the company can look forward to not only an incompetent employee but to endless complaints and whining about patriarchal hegemony or whatever they call ordinary business practices these days.

So this “Professor” Armbrust has done us all a great favor; her students, not so much.

And Evergreen State “College” should be proud of themselves: they’ve made their institution an even bigger laughing-stock than before, if that’s even possible. Here’s their mission statement:

Evergreen emphasizes collaborative, interdisciplinary learning across significant differences. Our academic community engages students in defining and thinking critically about their learning. Evergreen supports and benefits from local and global commitment to social justice, diversity, environmental stewardship and service in the public interest.

Translated: you won’t get an education here, just liberal indoctrination. Enroll at your own risk.

Airline Bullshit

Two-Minute Hate

When I first saw British Airways’ little pre-flight safety announcement, I was amused: a bunch of well-known Brit actors and comedians demonstrating safety procedures, all under the guise of being auditioned for the job of making the announcements.

Then I stopped laughing, because what this really was was a commercial for some poxy charity drive (video autoplay alert), whereby passengers empty their pockets of loose change, said proceeds going to feed the Pore & Starvin Chilluns of the world.

Now I have lots of sympathy for said Chilluns, because I am not without a soul. I have no sympathy for the so-called “charities” who collect this aid money because they are a bunch of thieving bastards who siphon off percentages of the funds before passing the moolah on to agencies who purport to help the P&S Chilluns, but whose efforts really perpetuate the conditions of poverty by making these people dependent on continuous aid.

I have even less sympathy — actually, tolerance — for organizations like British Airways who facilitate this bullshit. Why?

Because I’m sick to death of paying extra money (over and above the already-inflated airline ticket fees) for stuff that we used to get for free: things such as “extra baggage” fees (for a second suitcase) and seat selection fees (!!!) just because when you go online to check in for your flight, you either put up with the seat you were originally given, or, if you want to change your seat, you have to pay a fucking “change fee” when the change comes entirely cost-free to the airline. (I’m not even going to talk about how “better” seats also command a “seating premium fee” and how you’re bombarded with the ceaseless suggestions to upgrade to a marginally-better “class” of seat for only $320 (!!!!!).)

And a big thank you to Donald Fucking Trump and his Administration for allowing the airlines to hide their thievery (annoying autoplay alert). You bastards.

So here’s a little thought for British Airways and all the other little flyboys like American, United, Delta and whoever: fuck you. If you want me to donate money to your charities, you can start by leaving me more money to donate, and get rid of your fucking highway robbery fees. Otherwise, I’ll stick with the shitty seat you give me (last time: 42D, the very last row in the plane), and you can get stuffed. You and your fucking charity partners.

Afterthought: I know, why do I fly? Because driving across the Atlantic Ocean is problematic. Domestically, I drive wherever I can instead of flying because I hate the fucking airlines. Likewise the poxy TSA and their security theater because [20,000-word anti-TSA rant deleted].

No More Reason Needed

Business, Food & Drink, Politics

If ever you want to know why Britain’s leaving the EU (“Brexit”) is not only a Good Thing, but absolutely vital, here’s proof:

A change in European Union rules could see doner kebabs banned across the continent, infuriating takeaways and fast-food lovers.
The European Union’s legislature is moving to ban the phosphates used in the slabs of meat at the heart of the popular street snack that originated in Turkey.
Up-in-arms kebab vendors in Germany have skewered the idea.
EU lawmakers are citing health concerns based on studies that linked phosphates to cardiovascular disease.

Just so we’re all clear what’s being discussed here, this is what these tools want to ban:

Lamb Shwarma happens to be one of my favorite “fast foods”; and nobody tell my kids about this or else there’ll be murders (as they say Over Here). Along with pizza and crêpes, doner was one of their staple street foods when we traveled together in Euroland: cheap, filling and delicious; and if these disappeared from Europe, it would be a major disincentive to go there. I’m not kidding.

And if the above pic has made yer mouth start to water, I’m sorry (not really).

 

 

Foolishness

Men & Women, Two-Minute Hate

Under “Feminist Harpy” in the dictionary, you’ll find this picture:

Why? Because of this insane demand:

Mother demands her son’s school take Sleeping Beauty off the curriculum because the princess doesn’t give consent to be kissed and woken up by prince
Sarah Hall, from Northumberland Park, North Shields, claimed the fairytale promotes an ‘inappropriate sexual’ message to young children.
She argued the story is irresponsible because it teaches children it is acceptable to kiss women while they are asleep.
The mother of two said: ‘I think it’s a specific issue in the Sleeping Beauty story about sexual behaviour and consent.
‘It’s about saying is this still relevant, is it appropriate?’
Ms Hall is worried about what message the tale, which features a Prince waking up a Princess by kissing her, sends to impressionable youngsters.

Neither Prince Charming nor Sleeping Beauty were available for comment — because they’re fucking fictional characters.

Not Science

Lies and Untruths, Numbers & Statistics

An Initial Association Test (IAT) purports to signal whether the testee (I nearly wrote something else) displays an inherent bias against something or someone. It’s called “science” (mostly by the charlatans who dreamt it up) but it isn’t, as the redoubtable Heather MacDonald writes in City Journal:

There is hardly an aspect of IAT doctrine that is not now under methodological challenge.
Any social-psychological instrument must pass two tests to be considered accurate: reliability and validity. A psychological instrument is reliable if the same test subject, taking the test at different times, achieves roughly the same score each time. But IAT bias scores have a lower rate of consistency than is deemed acceptable for use in the real world—a subject could be rated with a high degree of implicit bias on one taking of the IAT and a low or moderate degree the next time around. A recent estimate puts the reliability of the race IAT at half of what is considered usable. No evidence exists, in other words, that the IAT reliably measures anything stable in the test-taker.

And it gets better:

But the fiercest disputes concern the IAT’s validity. A psychological instrument is deemed “valid” if it actually measures what it claims to be measuring—in this case, implicit bias and, by extension, discriminatory behavior. If the IAT were valid, a high implicit-bias score would predict discriminatory behavior, as Greenwald and Banaji asserted from the start. It turns out, however, that IAT scores have almost no connection to what ludicrously counts as “discriminatory behavior” in IAT research—trivial nuances of body language during a mock interview in a college psychology laboratory, say, or a hypothetical choice to donate to children in Colombian, rather than South African, slums. Oceans of ink have been spilled debating the statistical strength of the correlation between IAT scores and lab-induced “discriminatory behavior” on the part of college students paid to take the test. The actual content of those “discriminatory behaviors” gets mentioned only in passing, if at all, and no one notes how remote those behaviors are from the discrimination that we should be worried about.

In other words, the stats don’t add up, and the subject of the test (racial bias) cannot be established beyond cooking the numbers and faulty projection.

Sound like global warming theory.

If you read the whole piece — it’s long, like all City Journal articles — what will strike you the most (as it did me) was not the bullshit of the IAT, but the degree to which the IAT has become embedded in government and the corporate world.

This is yet another reason why I could never find employment in today’s business world: not only would I refuse to take the test, but I’d also pour scorn on the whole process, loudly. Exit Kim, on Day One at Global MegaCorp, Inc. And I wouldn’t even get a chance to be fired for complimenting some harpy on her outfit, or for carrying my 1911 into the office.

But I digress.

Once again, as with global warming “science”, this whole IAT thing smacks of people having a theory (people are prejudiced / the Earth is over-heating because of SUVs), then creating the pseudo-science underpinning to support and prove the theory. So it’s complete bullshit, just like Glueball Wormening. (Of course, the appearance of “Harvard” in the credentials of one of the IAT’s developers should have been a warning to everyone.)

I should also remind everyone that Heather MacDonald is a statistician, not just a journalist. Hers is the scientific method; what those other two tools are doing is selling snake oil.