While the Republican wave didn’t materialize nationally, it certainly did in North Carolina: Ted Budd won the Senate race, we now have a supermajority in the state Senate and gained in the state House, and we took control of the state Supreme Court. We also managed to elect two conservative candidates to the Wake County School Board, pretty amazing given how blue Wake is. You may have seen...
Why university diversity statements may violate the Constitution
From Eugene Volokh: ".... However, I think Prof Volokh's thought experiment absolutely devastated DEI statements." So let me quickly summarize that thought experiment, which I gave in my part of the conversation (which begins at 16:45): We get involved in another war. Much of the country, including some university system (whether Prof. Soucek's and my University California or, say, the University...
Hitler’s views on gun control
Anti-Soviet formations had sprung up in the Baltic States to hasten and harass the Soviet retreat as soon as Operation Barbarossa had been launched. But on 17 July 1941 Hitler declared: "It must always be a cast-iron principle that none but Germans shall be allowed to bear arms. Even when ... it might seem expedient to summon foreign peoples to arm, it would be folly to do so. One day it would be...
Transactivism: The road not taken
All this is to say that the current conflict over trans rights wasn’t inevitable. In fact, it was entirely avoidable. It is not difficult to imagine a trans movement focused on providing accommodations for people who struggle with gender dysphoria, or even those who hold extraordinary beliefs about the nature of “gender identity.” Let’s call this the reasonable accommodations route. Now we can...
“Fewer than 18% of 11th-grade Black male students were proficient in math”
You would think Black Lives Matter would care about this, but God forbid they criticize public education. If a charter school produced stats like these, the leftists would be howling to shut it down. Note the goal for Black male students: to have only 1/3 score an A or B in Algebra I! Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations. Math assessments, discussed during Des Moines School Board...
According to the FBI, I am a Militia Violent Extremist
The evidence is quite damning. And yes, the country is in the best of hands: Project Veritas released a newly leaked document today provided by an FBI whistleblower, which shows how the Bureau classifies American citizens it deems to be potential “Militia Violent Extremists” [MVEs]. In the document, the FBI cites symbols, images, phrases, events, and individuals that agents should look out for...
Western Kentucky Regents refuse to fire “racist” tenured professor
A really surprising outcome, given that the president of university wanted to fire her for “incompetency.” If you read the article very carefully, you’ll see that they took a couple of semesters of poor teaching evaluations and turned that into her suddenly being incompetent at her job. A couple of semesters of poor teaching evals for a professor who had been there for seventeen...
“[UNC Chapel Hill] has lost her way”
It’s about time; I can’t imagine NC State doing this: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees (BOT) unanimously passed two resolutions at its July 27 meeting. The Freedom of Speech resolution was introduced and read by BOT member Dr. Perrin Jones. “The Board of Trustees reaffirms its commitment to academic freedom as embodied in the Chicago principles and the...
Japan 2022: Kanazawa I
Kanazawa Station
Sake tasting at the station
Kanazawa Castle
Bar Mikaduki
Omicho Market
Japan 2022: Takaoka
For some reason the luggage belt at Toyama airport has a very large plate of fake sushi
Daibutsu of Takaoka
Castle Park