Loose Ends (195)

I didn’t think any other politician (except perhaps John Fetterman) could make Joe Biden sound like a MENSA member, but behold Canada’s Justin Trudeau, at a recent parliamentary hearing: “Using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worrisome”

Guess what’s racist now? Fossils.

The rise of scientific racism in palaeoanthropology

A forensic anthropologist unmasks insidious interpretations of fossil finds.

. . . The delays in recognizing how racism damages and paralyses science remind us how much stamina is required to become anti-racist. White privilege and presumed superiority in all matters of importance have been the norm for so long that it has become a fundamental construct of Western societies. To counter this deeply embedded narrative . . . requires courage, especially when you have been a beneficiary of these prejudicial practices. To recognize, expose and call out the racism in science is not easy, particularly in the hallowed halls of academia.

Gosh, I never pondered how much courage it must take to denounce racism on a college campus these days. Who knew.

Chaser—the only places/things where we haven’t detected racism are the places we haven’t been to yet, but the scientific community is ready!

Astrobiologists concerned about imperialistic consequences of galactic exploration

[B]ecause some subset of these and other questions considered by those in his field are going to have societal implications, they are also going to lead to some amount of activism.

Rooted in DEI ideology and an anti-colonialist framework, much of this activism is carried out in the popular press among well-credentialed academics who emphasize the supposed need to rethink the language of their fields and make vocal exhortations to decolonize space.

“[S]pace exploration is…an extension of our imperial and colonial histories,” said science historian and U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory fellow Rebecca Charbonneau in an August 2022 interview with Scientific American.

Time to nuke academia from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. Ripley-Hicks 2024!

Good to see team USA didn’t run up the score in its metric football match with England yesterday.

Instapundit reminds us of The Simpson’s take on the subject:

Yup:

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