“did chris evans actually jump that high to grab onto that helicopter in civil war?”
friendly reminder that chris vaulted with ease over chris pratt after just telling him less than a minute before that he would be able to clear him if he only put his head down.
I want a Celebrity Obstacle Course show where all the pretty people can show off their hard stunt work for us and also occasionally eat it, because they need to be humbled sometimes. The judges would be career stunt people, to give them visibility, because they work even harder. Shirts optional.
You wouldn’t even finish the phrase “Celebrity Ninja Warrior” before Chris would start jumping up and doing yelling “Me! Me! Pick me!”
is it time for frank cho and milo manara to die or what
That’s basically a naked woman I’m YELLING
What a pervert. What the FUCK does he not know how clothes work? What the hypothetical fuck is she wearing then if we can see all that?
It’s like how bath towels in comics miraculously wrap completely around breasts. Or how even when injured and dead on the ground women in comics have to be twisted into “sexy” poses. Or how women in comics walk like they’re in high heels even barefoot.
It’s the only way men know how to draw women, because to them female characters are only there to be sexy. They only think of “women” as exploitative costumes and camera angles, high heels and titillation. Sex objects to ogle, plot objects to further male heroes’ narratives and drama, not heroes to cheer for.
I’m sorry, I was labouring under the impression that this was the crowd that thought women should wear what they want..?
And that applies to fictional women who are depicted by men how? You can’t apply agency in the plot to something metatextual when it comes to fictional characters.
Come on, let’s not pretend this is a male exclusive thing.
We’re going to have this argument are we? Not to mention you’re deviating from the original point that attributing agency to fictional characters’ clothing is asinine.
What you have here are images of power, and do you really believe these characters are designed with titillating heterosexual women and bisexual and homosexual men in mind? Because I don’t think you do.
This is why the Hawkeye Initiative exists. Take common female poses in comics, put a man in the role, and see how “empowering” and “strong” it actually looks:
Also:
He got the painting for fighting against ‘censorship.’ Note that they handed him a gross design of a female being objectified, because at the end of the day, that is all they really want, to be allowed to objectify women. They don’t care about censorship in general it is about their ability to sexualise and degrade women without consequence.
You can see her butthole for chrissakes
I think the best imagery I’ve seen to explain the difference between what men think male objectification is vs what women actually want to see is the Hugh Jackman magazine covers.
Hugh Jackman on a men’s magazine. He’s shirtless and buff and angry. He’s imposing and aggressive. This is a male power fantasy, it’s what men want to be and aspire to - intense masculinity.
Hugh Jackman on a women’s magazine. He looks like a dad. He looks like he’s going to bake me a quiche and sit and watch Game of Thrones with me. He looks like he gives really good hugs.
Men think women want big hulking naked men in loin cloths which is why they always quote He-Man as male objectification - without realizing that He Man is naked and buff in a loin cloth because MEN WANT HIM TO BE. More women would be happy to see him in a pink apron cutting vegetables and singing off-key to 70s rock.
Men want objects. Women want PEOPLE.
This is the first time I have EVER seen this false equivalence articulated so well. Thank you.
I remember being in comic creator forums and the guys telling each other to literally trace screenshots of porn to learn to draw women. 🙄
Now, being a pornographer and all-around Naked Girl™ myself, I obviously have no problem with porn. In fact, my love of erotic work is a huge part of why I dislike porn being used for comic book references.
Porn is only effective when everything is not porn. If everything is porn, it stops being thrilling.
Also, most of these artists are men profiting off the sexual objectification of women. There’s no participation of any actual women who see any benefit of this. People knock strip clubs, but they’re full of women deciding to be there, and leaving with money in their pockets. Real life human sex workers have way more agency than comic book women drawn by men.
Also, a lot of these artists wouldn’t say they’re making porn. They try to shirk the stigma of being a pornographer by claiming this is just a regular way to draw women. And it’s not just the individuals, it’s the companies hiring them. Marvel isn’t saying they’re making smut books. They get to stay Good and Pure. And if they just owned up to making porn, and committed to it, it could be so great! One thing I know making smutty comics is audiences love reading smut where the characters have a lot of history and backstory to them, and superhero comics have decades of character development. An actual canon line of comics where we get to see Spiderman fuck would possibly kill some fans with the number of orgasms they’d have.
A Republican state lawmaker from Missouri filmed himself beheading a live chicken to make a video that he says is making a “point” about abortion. Per the Huffington Post, Missouri Rep. Mike Moon begins the video holding a knife in one hand while grabbing the neck of a strung-up chicken ...
Story from one of my happy mutant acquaintances... http://mikedolancreative.com/?q=content/on-abortion There are millions of people with stories just like K and mine. Remember us. Understand the choices we’ve made. Don’t take those choices from us.
Ice Cube: You know, uh, but you be buckin up against that line a little bit. You know, you got a lot of black jokes, you know what I’m saying, you do
Bill: [stammers] Well- in- against racists. Not-
Ice Cube: Ahh… ehhh……
Bill: Yes.
Ice Cube: Sometimes you sound like a redneck trucker up here. [audience laughs]
Bill: No I don’t
Ice Cube: Yes you do
Bill: Now that I-
Ice Cube: Yes you do
Bill: No I don’t. That I gotta push back on.
Ice Cube: Alright, that’s my opinion.
Bill: Okay, it is
Ice Cube: My thing is-
Bill: I’ve never heard that opinion before but-
Ice Cube: My thing is this. And you know, I’m cool with you, I like your show. To be honest. Um, I just wanna know two questions. What made you think… That it was cool to say that?
Bill: You know,
Ice Cube: -That’s one question
Bill: [stammers] I-I-I just explained, there was no thought put into it. Obviously- I was telling Dr.Dison- Comedians, [snaps] they react. And it was wrong, and I apologized, and you know, more than that I can’t do.
Ice Cube: I accept your apology. But- [audience applause] I still think we need to get to the root of the psyche. Cause I think it’s a lot of guys out there who cross the line cause they a little too familiar- or they think they too familiar. Or it’s guys, that you know, might have a black girlfriend or two That made ‘em some koolaid now and then, and they think they can cross the line. And they can’t.
You know, it’s a word that has been used against us, it’s like a knife, man. And you can use it as a weapon or you can use it as a tool. It’s been used as a weapon against us. By white people. And we not gonna let that happen again. [audience applause] By nobody. Because it’s not cool. Now, I know you heard- it’s in the lexicon, everybody talk it. But, that’s our word now. That’s our word now. And you can’t have it back.
I love my wife's eye doc... No appointments, we just stop by on a Saturday morning and we are usually finished with him in less time than friends spend in the waiting room for their doc... He got in trouble for not marking up frames to the price that certain brands wanted -- he just did a nominal % for everything. He was a professor at USC (california) -- he always says that he just wants to help people and make a decent living. The other good thing is that he is in China Town, so I get a nice dim sum lunch afterwards.
you wanna know something that’s just, a shameful capitalist hellscape??
fucking EYEGLASSES.
my eyeglass prescription has not changed in over 10 years so a.) i do not need an eye exam every year and b.) the way eye clinics treat you when you try to get a copy of your prescription (to which you are legally entitled if you live in the US) is anywhere on the scale from downright horrible to actually criminal
it seems to be universal that America’s Best is particularly awful about this. I buy from there once in a while because I haven’t found anywhere with a better price (yes, you really can get 2 complete pairs of single-vision eyeglasses + eye exam for $70 if you pick from their narrow selection of frames at that price point and don’t let them convince you that you have to upgrade your lenses or coating). when i asked for a copy of my prescription the associate checking me out told me they weren’t allowed to give it to me. when i told her that was an FTC violation she rolled her eyes and scrawled it sloppily on a scrap piece of receipt paper, to where it was completely illegible, and then wrote VOID all over it so it was unreadable. from reading online reviews, this seems to be how they handle it when people insist on a copy of their prescription. one review said they eventually allowed her to see the printout of her prescription, but wouldn’t hand it to her and would cover the relevant information with their hands. they refuse to give your PD, which you need to order properly fitting glasses online.
and every clinic will guilt-trip you for buying your glasses online, and imply that this is somehow detrimental to your health. like, glasses are an absolute necessity for so many people, how can you justify forcing someone to pay hundreds of dollars a pair when you can get them for ten bucks from a site like zennioptical
anyway, y’all, it’s against the law for an eye clinic to withhold your prescription, according to the FTC they’re actually required to GIVE you a copy whether you ask for it or not, but they will fuck you on your PD. I’ve heard of people getting their PD measured by saying they need it for a Google Cardboard or something, and the clinics are a lot more chill about it if they don’t think you’re using it to buy glasses elsewhere. but it still shouldn’t be such a goddamn ordeal to get your PERSONAL MEDICAL INFORMATION from A DOCTOR.
I suppose it’s worth mentioning here that when I worked at a discount eyeglass retailer that my boss let slip that the markup on a pair of glasses at our store ranged from 4000% to 10000%, and we were by far the cheapest place in the region selling the same product. The raw material purchased wholesale costs about a couple bucks per pair going up to $5-8 if there were a lot of coatings, and well, they certainly weren’t paying as much for our labor. In turn, they sold for as much as several hundred dollars. Working there gave me a visceral understanding of commodity fetishism.
And that’s not even getting into the Rx stuff that OP mentions. My store was generally pretty easygoing about making new copies of prescriptions but it was absolute hell getting perfectly valid, new prescriptions faxed over to us from the hospitals. The hoops they made you jump through to discourage people from purchasing elsewhere and to go back to the place they got their prescription, at even absurdly higher markup. It’s a completely faked industry from top to bottom.
Until recently the past 9 years of my life I’ve worn glasses online off of Zenni Optical. Each pair cost me anywhere from $8 to $30 so I usually buy like 4 pairs at a time to make sure I line at least a couple and have some options for outfits. I’ve always gotten pretty decent pairs from Zenni. Some have lasted only a year, others have last 3 or 4 years. But considering the price it’s worth it. All I had to do was dupe the receptionist at the eye doctor to give me my prescription and PUPIL DISTANCE (this is important when ordering glasses online). If you can get the pupil distance, you can measure it at home but you’ll need a friend, a ruler, and to remeasure a couple times. I would 100% recommend Zenni glasses even though they’re on the cheap side, they’re so affordable and there are so many frames that it’s worth it. I’ve literally had over 15 pairs and probably only spent $150 over 9 years on glasses from them.
So, after thinking about this over night, I’ve decided to share something that happened at the WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL yesterday afternoon in NYC that changed me. Or rather made me step into who I am in a larger way.
As some on my feed have seen, I was live-feeding the beginning of the panel discussion on FB. That panel was made up of some of the greatest and most famous minds in the world in Inflationary Cosmology, String Theory, Cosmology and Physics based Philosophy. The panel was made up of 5 men and 1 woman. And the moderator was a science writer and journalist for The New Yorker.
In the first hour of the panel discussion you can see clearly, if watching the video, that Veronika Hubeny, the only woman on the panel is barely given any opportunity to speak. And the Moderator, Jim Holt even acknowledges this.
In the last 20-30 minutes of the 90 minute discussion Jim Holt finally pushes the conversation to Hubeny’s field of expertise, string theory, and this is what ensued:
He asked her to describe her two theories of string theory that seem to contradict one another.
And THEN, without letting her answer, proceeded to answer for her and describe HER theories in detail without letting her speak for herself.
We could clearly see that she was trying to speak up. But he continued to talk over her and dominate the space for several minutes.
I should say that this panel was taking place in a large auditorium as it is an extremely high-profile and always sold-out event. And the panel discussion was being live-streamed across the world and they say that millions of people watch these videos after they are made public. (Which they already are).
So at this point, after seeing very clearly that she was not going to be given space to speak and in fact having her own theories described to the audience by the moderator, I am in full outrage. My body is actually beginning to shake. The sexism is beyond blatant. It is happening on stage and NO ONE, not a single other physicist or panelist is stepping in to say anything about it. And I can hear other audience members around me, both men and women becoming more and more agitated with what is happening. Jim Holt, even at one point, asks Veronica a question and she laughs because he has been answering his own questions about her work…and he makes fun of her for ‘giggling’.
So at some point while he is Still talking about Her theories, I just can’t handle it any longer.
With my hands shaking,
I finally say from my seat in the 2nd row of the audience, as clearly, directly and loudly as possible;
“Let. Her. Speak. Please!”
The moderator stops.
They all stop.
The auditorium drops into silence.
You could hear a pin drop.
And then the audience explodes with applause and screams.
Jim Holt eventually sat back, only after saying I was heckling him And he let her speak. And of course, she was brilliant.
———————–
So, the panel discussion ends.
My hands are still shaking. I’m still upset by the incredible sexism that has been demonstrated this afternoon. But I also realize that I just spoke up in an auditorium full of people that are listening to people that are considered gods in the international science world. I was just overwhelmed by it all
We get up to leave.
And then it happens.
Person after person come up to me. Both men and women.
The first woman, right behind me, reaches over and embraces me and says, “Oh my god. what you said was the most important thing that was said all day. Thank you. Thank you.”
And then people start filing out of their aisles and wind their way over to me:
“Was that you? Thank you so much for speaking up. Thank you.”
“Was that you? Oh god, what he was doing was horrific. Thank you. I wanted to do something but didn’t know how”
“Was that you? I wish I had the courage to say something, thank you! Thank you so much”
“Was that you? You said what everyone here was thinking. Look I had even been writing in my notebook what you eventually said (shows me his notebook with ‘let her speak’ written over and over.) But you said it. You said it. Thank you.”
“Was that you? Thank you! I felt so powerless to do anything.”
And on.
So we were all thinking this.
—- So I walked out. And my friend who was sitting about 8 rows behind me, came up to me with a huge grin and said “That was you, wasn’t it? Of course it was. YES!!!!! I will be telling this story for years.”
And the whole time, my hands are still shaking. And I’m felling light-headed. And I just want to scream out into the lobby “WHY IS THIS SEXISM STILL HAPPENING? WHY, does someone like me, with No status in that room, have to be so extraordinarily bold and speak up? And why was it so frightening to do so?”
And I’m thinking. “God, please god let this be an opening for those that were here today and the tens of thousands that watched the live-streaming of the panel yesterday and the hundreds of thousands that will watch the video this year- to speak up when we see this happening. And please let me not be afraid to do this again …and again …and again” Because it was scary.
I guess that my high school, cow pie high, used to have dairy judging contests back in the 50's... They used some chemical that gives the sour milk smell to create various samples. Well, they still had a giant jar of that stuff when I was in school in the 80's and one day somebody put that shit on a rag and wiped it all over the building. They shut the school down about an hour later and sent us all home.
While he's not technically the world's first milk sommelier — that award goes to Napoleon Dynamite — Bas de Groot does savor the complexities of cow's milk much in the...
another weird thing about beer is that it has weird masculinity connections to it. “ya i’ll get a beer, i don’t want none of them girly drinks” Jimothy, you’re drinking wheat juice with a 5% alcohol content and my mixed, fruity, “girly” drink is 40% alcohol and tastes great
O.KAY *CRACKS KNUCKLES* I AM ABOUT TO GIVE YOU AN EDUCATION
BEER IS TRADITIONALLY A WOMAN’S DRINK, IT IS THE MOST FEMALE OF ALL OF THE DRINKS. FOR THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF YEARS, BEER WAS MADE AT HOME BY WOMEN, TO BE CONSUMED BY WOMEN AND CHILDREN–IT WAS ACTUALLY A SOURCE OF NUTRIENTS FOR MANY HOUSEHOLDS. WOMEN CREATED THE CRAFT OF BEER, AND FOR MOST OF HUMAN HISTORY THAT IS WHO YOU’D BUY IT FROM: MANY WOMEN MADE ADDITIONAL INCOME BY BREWING AND SELLING BEER FROM HOME. IT WASN’T UNTIL THE ERA OF INDUSTRIALIZATION THAT BEER BEGAN TO BE BREWED IN FACTORIES. AND ONCE BEER WAS BEING BREWED ON A LARGE SCALE, IT MADE TO START MARKETING IT TO ALL THE MALE FACTORY WORKERS WHO SUDDENLY HAD EXTRA INCOME. HENCE AN AGGRESSIVE MARKETING CAMPAIGN TO RE-BRAND BEER, A DRINK INTRINSICALLY TIED WITH WOMEN’S HISTORY, AS A ‘MASCULINE’ BEVERAGE.
EVEN BETTER, FEMALE BREWSTERS WERE THE ORIGINAL WICKED OLD WITCH. THE TROPES WE COMMONLY ASSOCIATE WITH STEREOTYPICAL WITCHES ARE ACTUALLY BASED ON THE TRADITIONAL BREWSTER. CAULDRONS & HOT STEAMING POTIONS = BEER BREWING. THE WITCH’S HAT: BELIEVE IT OR NOT POINTY HATS WERE ACTUALLY WORN BY BREWSTERS WHEN SELLING THEIR PRODUCT AT MARKETS: THE ENORMOUS HEADGEAR HELPED THEM STAND OUT, AND CLEARLY TOLD EVERYONE ‘YO MOTHERFUCKA GET YOUR BEER HERE’.
CATS AS FAMILIARS: CATS WERE COMMONLY USED TO PREVENT RODENTS FROM GETTING INTO THE WHEAT. EVEN THE BROOMSTICK IS RELATED TO BEER: A BUNDLE OF TWIGS RESEMBLING A BROOM WAS USED AS AD FOR ALEHOUSES
so basically, beer is the ultimate woman’s and witch’s drink
REBLOG ME
fuck u guys, i didn’t spend 20 min fact checking for 3 notes
I don’t get as worked up about dumb stuff as I did when I was younger, because who has the energy. I would have been SO mad about RompHims, like, three years ago. Now? You’re gonna need to try harder.
There are still a few mostly insignificant debates for which I maintain a reserve of righteous conviction, though. For instance, and I will go to my grave insisting upon this one: s’mores should be made with chocolate frosting instead of Hershey’s bars.
The reasoning for using chocolate frosting in a s’more should be immediately obvious to you. You should be like, duhhhhhh, omg. But JUST in case you’re not, here’s why:
The crunchiest part of a s’more should be the graham cracker.
The inside of a s’more should be gelatinous and melty.
Hershey’s bars do not melt unless they’re very, very warm.
Hershey’s bars do not adhere to the graham cracker, and barely adhere to the marshmallow.
Chocolate frosting will adhere to both the graham cracker and the roasted marshmallow(s). (I also happen to think s’mores should be made with two marshmallows, not one.)
Hershey’s chocolate is very bad.
Chocolate frosting is very good. (I like a Duncan Hines Home-Style Classic Chocolate, but you are free to experiment here.)
I believe I learned this trick at a summer day camp circa ’95 or ’96, and I have embraced it as Biblical truth ever since. I have tasted the difference. You think you don’t care all that much about s’mores right now. But that is because you haven’t had one with chocolate frosting yet.
Hershey’s bars fall out of a s’more. Hershey’s bars melt on your fingers, not on your s’more. You’re gonna buy a big pack of them for your next bonfire and then your friends will eat 1.3 bars, and the rest will convalesce in your pantry for the next four years. The only time you’ll eat Hershey’s chocolate bars on their own is if you have your period and there’s nothing else in the house and you are desperate.
Chocolate frosting can be applied to the graham cracker with a knife, just so. I only put it on one of the crackers, but if you want to put it on both, go right ahead. I think that’s a great idea.
Chocolate frosting is also multipurpose: it can be used on cupcakes and cakes, or on top of a spoonful of peanut butter, for the dessert maniac on the go. It’ll keep well in the fridge for ages, so that when you want a s’more on November 12, it’s ready for duty. What I like to do in the off-season is: frost half a graham cracker, leave the other naked, and shove two marshmallows onto a fork. Then I twirl them around over a burner on low. It’s not quite as good that way as roasted over a real fire, but it’s very, very close.
Everything that is showing up in my feed — no matter how sad it makes me — is for my ultimate good.
I wake up this morning with hope in my heart and new followers in my notifications.
I am at peace with my past status updates that received a less than expected number of likes.
I am thankful to be alive. I am enchanted by the warmth of the sun, the smell of the breeze, and the size of my data plan.
Everything that is showing up in my feed — no matter how sad it makes me — is for my ultimate good.
I am too big of a gift to this world to not tweet my ceaseless inner monologue on an hourly basis.
Although today is filled with tribulations, tomorrow a B-list celebrity will regram me, and I will be truly happy.
I forgive those who have hurt me in the past and peacefully unfollow them, only to later refollow them and stalk their profile. I wonder what Megan is doing, like, right now?
My capacity to overcome obstacles is vast; my potential to realize my dreams is infinite; my ability to ineffectually complain about my minor disappointments on Facebook is limitless.
I have no right to compare myself to others, unless I have an accurate picture of their lives from following them for at least six weeks on Snapchat.
I will find the perfect job for me. I will connect with people on LinkedIn who seem vaguely important until a great job floats my way. Then I’ll update my job title so that that Megan sees it and regrets breaking up with such a great, ambitious guy like me.
I possess the self-control needed to avoid posting insensitive remarks about terrorist attacks that would lead to a career-ending public shaming on Twitter.
A flood of compassion washes away my negativity and replaces it with encouraging comments on (but not contributions to) other people’s annoying Kickstarter campaigns.
My Corgi, Jeeves, is resplendent. As my status updates clearly show, no dog more cutely wears a human hat, vest, or holiday costume. I think I’ll tag Megan in my next Jeeves post and hope she notices. She totally loved that dog.
I will share my greatness, my unique talents, with the world. I will share my dank memes.
There are so many new experiences waiting for me today, so many passing distractions to help me ignore the reality of death.
I will not waste my life asking “what if…?” I will live it to the fullest, vicariously in my newsfeed. Hey, who’s that guy with Megan!? Oh, that’s just Curtis, her coworker. My heart stopped there for a minute!
I communicate my romantic needs clearly and calmly. They are right there for my partner to read on my microfiction Tumblr.
I receive more Facebook invitations to karaoke jams, improv shows, and backyard barbecues than I could ever want. I am so desired and loved. Hmm — it looks like Megan is a “maybe” for Steve’s birthday. I guess I could stop by for the whole thing, just in case.
I stand up for myself and my beliefs by insulting total strangers in the comment threads of controversial posts. Also, who the fuck is Mike Cunningham and why does he think I’m mansplaining what mirror neurons are?
As I contemplate how my photo feed has been updated over time to include new travel locations and people I’ve had sex with, I feel immense gratitude for the positive forces that surround me. Oh, and did I mention this? Megan and I are hanging out again!
I am blessed with a camera-friendly romantic partner, an implausibly perfect life, and friends that were pulled straight from a Tequila ad. See, look at them. Look, look, look, look, look.
That each institution shall strive to remain neutral, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day, and may not take action, as an institution, on the public policy controversies of the day in such a way as to require students or faculty to publically[sic] express a given view of social policy.
It’s weird. It’s kind of the reverse of the “teach the controversy” tactic creationists have taken in the past — now conservatives (this is a Republican bill) are demanding that criticisms be silenced, because they’re discovering that college campuses tend to get rather ferocious in those criticisms. It’s really about sheltering conservative positions from debate.
In an introduction to the legislation on its website, the Goldwater Institute paints the recent flurry of protests against conservative speakers on college campuses as a clear and present danger to democracy.
“As both a deeply held commitment and a living tradition, freedom of speech is dying on our college campuses, and is increasingly imperiled in society at large,” it reads.
The spread of campus free speech legislation across the country will open a national debate that will influence the broader culture, it predicts.
As evidence of the peril in Wisconsin, lawmakers supporting the bill pointed repeatedly to the November 2016 appearance of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro at UW-Madison. Students opposed to Shapiro’s mocking of a push for “safe spaces” on campus interrupted his talk, shouting him down for about 20 minutes. Police then escorted protesters out and Shapiro resumed his talk.
Vos, who has complained about the dearth of conservative guest speakers on UW campuses, said that without a law requiring the university to remain neutral, chancellors can block speakers whose views they don’t see as legitimate.
Wait. So Shapiro got to speak, but because many students used their right to speak freely to vocally oppose him, Republican congressmen want to shut down the students’ free speech in the name of free speech. Got it.
A few obvious concerns have been raised. Here’s one:
Rep. Terese Berceau, a Madison Democrat, was quizzing Rep. Jesse Kremer, her Republican colleague from Kewaskum, at a hearing for his proposed Campus Free Speech Act before the state Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities recently.
Berceau wondered what would happen under the bill — which requires University of Wisconsin System institutions to be neutral on “controversies of the day” — if a student in a geology class argued the Biblical theory that the earth is only 6,000 years old.
“Is it okay for the professor to tell them they’re wrong?” Berceau asked during the lengthy session on May 11.
The earth is 6,000 years old, Kremer offered. That’s a fact.
Who gets to decide what is controversial? The age of the earth is actually not a controversial fact at all, and no, it’s far older than 6,000 years. Does this bill demand that the geologists and biologists and physicists on the UW campuses are not allowed to disagree with Kremer? That the students aren’t allowed to argue with their professors? I’m also not sure how this is going to work. Is the UW going to have to hire political officers to monitor and police speech on campus, to be sure that no faculty representative expresses an opinion not approved by the Koch brothers? Oh. Actually, this is in the bill.
Yet Kremer immediately speculated that students who felt intimidated from expressing their opinions in class could bring their complaints to the Council on Free Expression, an oversight board created in the bill. So the law could potentially cover things that happen in the classroom, he suggested.
This doesn’t sound like any kind of free speech as I understand it. I see the Republicans retain their superpower of hyper-ironic naming: the Council on Free Expression is going to make sure your professors don’t say anything a conservative might disagree with!
And what about genuinely controversial issues?
“The bill gags the university,” said Matt Rothschild, executive director of the advocacy group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. In his argument, Rothschild referenced political controversy over stem cell research, something UW-Madison lobbied vigorously to protect from prohibitive legislation in 2015.
“So the university stem cell researchers, and the deans of the departments where they work, would not be allowed to take a position on the importance of stem cell research to cure diseases?” Rothschild asked. Would the chancellor be prohibited from weighing in on such issues as student debt or whether higher education should be free of charge, he queried in his written testimony.
“You are saying that UW institutions should remain neutral on the question of Darwin and natural selection versus creationism,” Rothschild said. “This is ludicrous and hidebound.”
Or how about this “controversy”?
Probably the biggest debate is global warming, Vos said. A lot of people think it’s settled science and an awful lot of people think it isn’t. I think both sides should be brought to campus and let students decide.
Here we go again. “Both sides”. Sometimes the two sides are “truth” and “lies”. I think it’s part of a university’s mission to always favor “truth”.
For instance, if a speaker shows up to say The earth is 6,000 years old. That’s a fact., I think it’s perfectly fair for a thousand students to show up and shout him down and tell him that he’s an idiot who shouldn’t be holding public office. But I guess Representative Kremer just wants to legislate a safe space for himself.
While he's not technically the world's first milk sommelier — that award goes to Napoleon Dynamite — Bas de Groot does savor the complexities of cow's milk much in the...
