What Harvey Weinstein tells us about the liberal world | Thomas Frank | Opinion | The Guardian

What Harvey Weinstein tells us about the liberal world | Thomas Frank | Opinion | The Guardian
"Let us now consider the peculiar politics of Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie producer.
Today Weinstein is in the headlines for an astonishing array of alleged sexual harassment and assaults, but once upon a time he was renowned for something quite different: his generous patronage of liberal politicians and progressive causes.
This leading impresario of awful was an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He was a strong critic of racism, sexism and censorship.
He hosted sumptuous parties to raise money for the fight against Aids.
In 2004 he was a prominent supporter of a women’s group called “Mothers Opposing Bush”.
And in the aftermath of the terrorist attack against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, he stood up boldly for freedom of the press.
Taking to the pages of Variety, Weinstein announced that “No one can ever defeat the ability of great artists to show us our world.”
To call this man a hypocrite is to state the obvious.
This champion of women is now accused of sexual harassment on an epic scale. 
This defender of the press was excellent at manipulating it and on one memorable occasion is said to have physically roughed up a reporter asking tough questions.
...Countless people who should have known better are proclaiming their surprise at Harvey Weinstein’s alleged abuses.
But in truth, their blindness is even more sweeping than that.
They are lost these days in a hall of moral mirrors, weeping tears of admiration for their own virtue and good taste."

Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege

Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege:

• Gutierrez worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege because "emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi" give the impression that math "was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans."
• She also worries that evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts.

"A math education professor at the University of Illinois argued in a newly published book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites.
Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a new anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.
“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?”   
“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. 
...Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans."
Math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white..."

#1 This day 1966-----Question Mark & The Mysterians - 96 Tears

Computer software perpetuates 'systemic racism,' prof finds

Computer software perpetuates 'systemic racism,' prof finds
"According to Education Professor Noah Golden, software can be harmful because it can reduce students and schools to numbers that can be used to justify policy positions.
Golden previously wrote in 2014 that data can be used to discount students' “identities” and “cultural practices.”
A Chapman University professor recently argued that computer software helps perpetuate “systems of privilege and oppression” against minority children.
Noah Golden, an education professor, published an article last Friday on the role of technology in education, lamenting that computer software is often used in the “testing and classification” of minority students.
“Software plays a central role in maintaining separate and unequal educational opportunities for marginalized youth,” Golden said, explaining that this is especially concerning in public schools.
Software, used during an era of high stakes testing, “converts lived realities, learner strengths, and communal needs into a number, cluster grouping, or other data points,” which can “produce or reproduce systems of privilege and oppression...”

You ought to know!

Doug Jones Headed Soros-Funded Project to Transform Federal Prosecutors into Social Justice Warriors

Doug Jones Headed Soros-Funded Project to Transform Federal Prosecutors into Social Justice Warriors:

"Among other things, Jones’ project called on federal prosecutors to reduce or avoid sentences for drug offenders, make decisions about seeking jail time on individual cases based upon federal incarceration levels and use their pulpits to “spread change” and work with outside “community organizations” to root out the “causes of violence.”
One section of the report seeks to put U.S. Attorneys in the role of social justice warriors "

Memory Lane-----PIERS MORGAN still dread Hillary Clinton in the White House | Daily Mail Online

PIERS MORGAN still dread Hillary Clinton in the White House | Daily Mail Online:
"Hillary looks unstoppable but there are still 20 reasons I dread the day she walks into the White House (and free sex from Madonna is just one of them)
By Piers Morgan for MailOnline-PUBLISHED: 15:48 EDT, 21 October 2016 | UPDATED: 17:27 EDT, 21 October 2016
"Hillary Clinton is now red-hot favourite to become the first female President of the United States.
Virtually every poll has her with a commanding lead over Donald Trump.
Of course, it’s not over yet.
Misery: Hillary has held many high powered positions in government over the years but performed none of them particularly well +6
Misery: Hillary has held many high powered positions in government over the years but performed none of them particularly well
The polls might be as hopelessly wrong as they were about Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination.
(The world’s No1 electoral prediction expert Nate Silver gave the tycoon a 2% chance of achieving that target..)
There might well be a large number of people in the bowels of Middle America preparing to vote for him whilst pretending not to when asked.
...Here are 20 reasons why I think Hillary Rodham Clinton would make a terrible President.
1) I don’t trust her. The email scandal just about summed up her complete inability to tell the truth. An expert lawyer who became Secretary of State with multiple BlackBerries but didn’t have a clue how emails or servers work or what constitutes classified material? Oh pur-lease, Madam Pinocchio, do you think we’re all completely stupid?
2) She’s greedy. I mean properly, outrageously, snout-in-the-trough avaricious. A woman who for decades has exploited her political status to fill her boots with tens of millions of dollars, fuelled by $200k-a-pop speeches from her Wall Street chums like Goldman Sachs..."
Much more in this year old column!

AM Fruitcake

History for October 24

History for October 24 - On-This-Day.com
Sarah J. Hale 1788 - She wrote the poem "Mary Had A Little Lamb.",
Moss Hart 1904 - Playwright, Bob Kane 1915 - Comic book artist, creator of Batman
 

F. Murray Abraham 1939 - Actor, Kevin Kline 1947 - Actor, Kweisi Mfume 1948 - President of NAACP


1632 - Scientist Anthony van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, Holland. He created the first microscope lenses that were powerful enough to observe single-celled animals.



1648 - The Holy Roman Empire was effectively destroyed by the Peace of Westphalia that brought an end to the Thirty Years War.


1836 - Alonzo D. Phillips received a patent for the phosphorous friction safety match.


1929 - In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged starting the stock-market crash that began the Great Depression. 

1939 - Nylon stockings were sold to the public for the first time in Wilmington, DE.


1948 - The term "cold war" was used for the first time. It was in a speech by Bernard Baruch before the Senate War Investigating Committee.


1962 - During the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. military forces went on the highest alert in the postwar era in preparation for a possible full-scale war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. blockade of Cuba officially began on this day.


2003 - In London, the last commercial supersonic Concorde flight landed.