On February 1 Sean Plunket re-played the audio of Don Brash’s 2004 Orewa speech at The Platform. To listen to the entire speech, go here. Alternatively, the full text of the speech is reproduced below. Today Don reflects: “It’s very long – really far too long for a Rotary Club speech. I should have taken…
Why try to stop that evolution? Brian Easton writes – In 1956, historian Ruth Ross presented her investigations of the treaty signed at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 to a seminar concluding, ‘The [Māori and Pakeha] signatories of 1840 were uncertain and divided in their understanding of [Te Tiriti’s] meaning; who can say now what […]
In today’s academic environment, there often seems a race to racialize common practices or terminology. Publications clamor for such articles and discovering another hidden racist element in society can bring academic accolades. However, others have already staked out many such areas such as mathematics, astrophysics, statistics, meritocracy, climate change, dieting, tipping, skiing, chess, and organized pantries. Most recently, the American Psychological Association declared that merit-based hiring may […]
Last Sunday, the Sunday Star-Times recalled on its front page the “fiery debate” triggered by my speech to the Orewa Rotary Club just 20 years earlier. Articles by several authors in the same paper brought the debate up-to-date and warned of the dangers of ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, which the National Party’s coalition agreement with…
One of the strange omissions from the coalition agreements which marked the establishment of the new Government was any reference to the Maori electorates. Perhaps in one sense the omission was not strange: there had been little or no discussion about those electorates during the election campaign, either by those parties which might have…
Breaking nooz, and from the Harvard Crimson. The revelations of plagiarism, and accusations of withholding/manipulating data, apparently rendered her ineffective as President. And her status as Harvard’s first black woman President didn’t save her. I heard rumors that she refused to resign, and had procured a lawyer and would sue, but those apparently weren’t true. […]
It’s likely that most or all of today’s posts will be about the antisemitism in America and the world, a form of hatred revealed and exacerbated by the war between Israel and Hamas. There are no other worthy items to post about, so if you’re tired of the war, or of discussions about Jews, just […]
I guess today’s theme is bigotry. I had no idea that Frank Sinatra was an outspoken opponent of bigotry, particularly anti-Semitism. In fact, there’s a Wikipedia article called “Frank Sinatra and Jewish activism“. Here’s an excerpt: Frank Sinatra was a strong supporter and activist for Jewish causes in the United States and Israel. According to Santopietro, Sinatra was a […]
On his Substack site “After Babel,” social psychologist Jon Haidt, most of you know of, explains the rapid rise of antisemitism on American campuses. The piece is long and a bit repetitious, but well worth reading of a Christmas Eve. Click to read: I’ll just summarize his thesis and give some quotes. First, the problem: […]
The Atlantic‘s Conor Fridersdorf is a breath of fresh air among liberal woke media. He is in fact a liberal, but not a “progressive”, and in the new article below he reports one mathematician’s observations of how DEI has insinuated itself into academics, creating not only viewpoint homogeneity, but authoritarianism. Like my colleague Anna Krylov, […]
Casey Costello provided a welcome change of perspective in her maiden speech. . . . I talk of my tūpuna, and of my whānau not to qualify for some credentials to be recognised as Māori. I know who I am and my strength comes from who has gone before and who are with me now. […]
You can read Chuck Schumer’s recent op-ed in the NYT, “What American Jews fear most,“, or you can watch his 40-minute speech on the topic given in the Senate (video below). I recommend listening to the speech, of which the op-ed is a short distillation. Alternatively, read the transcript, which you can find here. Schumer […]
… because it appears to refer to a certain type of person and behavior that their ideological purity tells them that they couldn’t be. They’re not the sorts of people who talk about ‘jewing down’ or believe in the inferiority of races and therefore, even while they’re smashing Jewish store windows and attacking a Holocaust […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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