Archive for December 2nd, 2006
Thanks to Patterico, I saw this steaming load from the LA Times:
[A] new report from UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center . . . concludes that 69% of available acting roles are designed for white males, either explicitly or by unspoken consensus
Stop right there. No point in reading the rest, because we know this “report” is a pile of bovine manure. Let’s revisit that quotation:
[A] new report from UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center . . . concludes that 69% of available acting roles are designed for white males, either explicitly or by unspoken consensus
How, exactly, does one conclude how many roles are designed for white males (or frogs, for that matter) by unspoken consensus? Answer: One cannot conclude any such thing, if the decision is made by unspoken consensus. In other words, this is crap. Pure nonsense. Propaganda masquerading as “research.”
In a rare move, the LA Times printed a correction:
An article in Thursday’s Calendar Weekend about a report on race and gender in movie casting calls stated that 69% of roles were set aside for white men. It should have said the roles were set aside for white actors, including women.
It’s still a load of excrement. Then, of course, as Patterico states:
White Americans form 74.7% of the population in the country. If the movie industry is reserving 69% of the roles for whites, when whites are 74.7% of the population, it’s quite possible that the set-aside (if there really is one) actually harms white actors.
Indeed. And:
I’ll be away from the computer for a while, as I’m off to apply for an acting role. I need to get turned down for one before I can file my lawsuit.
Hey, there’s an idea …
For the moment, let’s put aside the ethical questions of cheating. Let’s also forget for the moment the irony of cheating on an exam in an ethics course. Thanks to University Diaries, I saw this NYT article, and want to focus on the institutional angle. Just in case you missed it, here is what happened:
Cheating is not unheard of on university campuses. But cheating on an open-book, take-home exam in a pass-fail course seems odd, and all the more so in a course about ethics.
Yet Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism is looking into whether students may have cheated on the final exam in just such a course, “Critical Issues in Journalism.†According to the school’s Web site, the course “explores the social role of journalism and the journalist from legal, historical, ethical, and economic perspectives,†with a focus on ethics.
Nicholas Lemann, dean of the journalism school, said that students had to sign on to a Columbia Web site to gain access to the exam, and that once they did, had 90 minutes to write a couple of essays. But he was unwilling to detail how the cheating might have occurred.
Okay. So we have a graduate course in journalistic ethics, and students cheat on the exam. That’s what everybody else in the blogosphere is zooming in on. But I kept reading:
“We have encountered a serious problem with the final exam, and will not register a passing grade in the course for anyone who does not attend,†David A. Klatell, vice dean at the school, wrote in an e-mail message, which was forwarded to a reporter by a student. Mr. Klatell did not respond to several telephone and e-mail requests for comment.
Mr. Lemann said that he was surprised that students might have been concerned about how they scored on the pass-fail exam, and that exams and grades at the school were rare.
There is something very wrong here. First, recall that this is a graduate course — not only a graduate course, but a required course for all graduate students in the journalism school. When a faculty member gives a pass/fail exam in a course, he sends a very clear message that he does not take either the exam or the course seriously, even if that is not the message he intends to convey. That’s how the students hear it. So we have a faculty member giving a pass/fail exam in a required, graduate course in Columbia’s graduate journalism program.
Autonomy is not absolute at the university, not even for the most highly regarded, most powerful faculty. I wondered how the faculty member was allowed by his department to get away with offering a pass/fail exam, until I read this:
“We are not a very grade-intensive institution,†he said. “Our school is run on a pass-fail basis.â€
And there we have not only the answer to my question above, but the tumor itself. The whole school — a graduate program — is pass/fail.
You may be thinking, “So what?” But when a university (or a school, college, or department within a university) designates a course as pass/fail, it is making a statement about the academic worth of the course: Namely, that it is academically worthless. This department is sending that message about itself to its students, that its courses (and its degrees) are academically worthless. And this is very, very wrong.
Understand, I’m not defending the students who cheated. Cheating is reprehensible. However, if the school itself sends the clear message that it doesn’t take the course seriously, and that is courses and its degrees are academically worthless, why in the world would we expect the students to take the course or the exam seriously? Why not cheat, if it’s a worthless course and the school doesn’t take it seriously?
I find this disturbing.
I just rediscovered this John Derbyshire article (it was published in 2000), and it deserves mention. Still Useful, and Idiotic: The Left Remains Itself. Derbyshire concludes:
There are, of course, plenty of other Michael Moores and Douglas Monteros. Every time I turn on my TV, every time I pick up a newspaper, I see a new one. It’s like a Night of the Living Dead—lefties coming up out of the ground and lurching off across the landscape looking for a Maximum Leader, a Great Helmsman, a Little Father of the People to slobber over. With the centenary of Lenin’s revolution looming on the far horizon, and after all the horrors of our age — mountains of corpses, oceans of lies — these fools are still with us. Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy. Won’t they ever learn? No, their stupidity is impenetrable. They will never learn.
Because no, it doesn’t belong up your anus, Emily. She goes on and on with a long list of ridiculous “criticisms” of Lost, directed toward me in the comments thread. Let’s deal with them one by one.
I already said I can write most of that stuff off. Did you actually read anything I wrote or just skimmed over the word “absurd” and jump into the comments? I’m not stupid. I am actually capable of computing the premise and storyline of a network television show. I know there’s a “Dharma Project.”
Apparently, you’re not capable of making a point without being a snarky bitch, eh, babes? Yes, I read it. I didn’t reply to most of it because it was bullshit. But now that you’ve decided to be a snarky bitch, I will.
Don’t bite, babe. I bite back. Hard.
That apparently has a complete line of their own food and bottled beverages. That is STUPID and absurd. Why would they go through that much trouble?
Well, I don’t know. That’s the point — which you seem to be too fucking stupid to get — we don’t know. Why that’s so difficult for you to understand, I’m not sure. And speaking of difficult to understand, you apparently are too fucking stupid to distinguish between a label and a product line. Hint: Most of those house labels are not separate product lines, babe. Go back to elementary school.
It’s not just the scenarios, but the human reaction. I understand parents can get desperate when their children have been taken from them, but I’d like to think they’d stop just short of shooting innocent people to death. As much as I was glad to see Ana Lucia bite the big one, Micheal’s little killing spree was STUPID.
Stupid how? It’s one of the few things he’s done that made sense. (I can’t believe I’m defending one of the two characters on the show I dislike the most.) He wanted Walt back. That’s what he had to do. Sorry, you can’t just say “That was STUPID!” without explaining why you thought it was stupid. Logical? Probably not. Understandable? Wholly.
Not, mind, that I wasn’t a bit pissed off by it. Ana Lucia was just starting to become an intriguing character — something Michael has never been — and they killed her off. I would have preferred to see him dead. But then we would have lost the whole “get Walt back” storyline.
And then to have Jack and Sayid go on their little suicidal death march after they KNOW something is up is STUPID.
You weren’t paying attention. They didn’t know. Jack (the other of my two least favorite characters) was skeptical. But even if they did know — which they did not — there’s something to be said for going anyway, and attempting to turn the situation to your advantage. Hell, at least they weren’t playing victim, like the Survivors are doing full-time now.
The fact that they did it after they had a friggin’ BOAT at their disposal launches the scenario into the ultra-retarded.
I fail to see what the boat had to do with anything. They were operating on the idea that Michael was betraying them (though no, they did not know it when they started out). They went to try to turn it to their advantage. The only way to have done that, since they had no idea where the Others were, was to follow Michael’s directions.
The boat is irrelevant.
And if these “others” are so smart, why would they have Michael bring the fat guy as the one they sent back to the survivors with a message? In a situation where everyone pretty much understands and expects to be going into a battle situation, a person the size of Hurley is nothing less than a liability. That was STUPID.
Well, there’s a question — and we’re back to that point you’re too fucking stupid to get: We. Don’t. Know. Apparently, you also haven’t grasped another point that’s been obvious since the first season: There’s something crucial about every one of the Survivors. Hurley? The numbers.
They wanted Hurley specifically for a reason. We don’t know the reason. That doesn’t mean it’s stupid. It means we don’t know the reason.
The “others” are totally native, can trod through the jungle without leaving behind any sign and follow the survivors anywhere they go undetected, but they never once noticed that Desmond had a BOAT parked off the shore for three bloody years?
Except that we know the Others don’t live on the island, and it’s unclear how much time they actually spend on the island. Or have you stopped watching?
Why in the world would Henry Gale put himself at Jack’s mercy anyway, especially without any kind of assurances? You’d think they’d have a gun on the guy at the least or some kind of leverage so he wouldn’t pull exactly what he did.
What choice did he have? Jack has all the power in the scenario, no matter what they do. Gale is going to die if Jack doesn’t operate and remove the tumor. They can put a whole SWAT team on Jack while he operates, but it doesn’t change anything. Jack’s action was futile anyway, though he doesn’t know that, because he doesn’t know they’re on another island.
And why would he do that after Juliette, aka the most annoyingly condescending television character of all time, told him she wanted Henry dead anyway? Why would she care if Jack let the guy bleed to death?
You’re assuming that she was being honest with Jack about letting him die on the table. I don’t see how we can assume honesty on the part of any of the Others — particularly her (and at least we agree in our evaluation of that character). We she actually asking Jack to let Gale die on the table? Or was she posing some kind of test, with Gale’s knowledge?
We. Don’t. Know.
And what’s up with adding that Paolo and other chick to the show totally random-like? There are enough damn characters on the show already.
As I said, I suspect they’re red-shirted ensigns to be.
STUPID - Henry Gale is fatally ill with a spinal tumor, yet he waits for two months to snatch the spinal surgeon? He takes everyone else but him in the meantime? That doesn’t make any sense.
First, he didn’t take everybody else. Second, we know the Others are in contact with the outside world. If I were Gale, my first option would be to find somebody in the outside world, somebody I could trust, to do it — and certainly not take Jack, whom I could not trust, to do it. Seems pretty logical to me.
I don’t even know where to start on Kate’s backstory, except to say that the island must truly have healing powers enough to cure her mental retardation. Let’s see, first she takes out an insurance policy on a house and blows it up shortly after. Uh-huh. Nobody’s going to ask any questions there.
Not only did they ask questions, but put out a warrant on her. And burning up the house had nothing to do with insurance, or did you miss the whole abuse thing?
And I think we can agree that Kate’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
And what’s up with every friggin’ person on that island being a murderer anyway?
You’re assuming they weren’t on that plane for a reason — that they just happened to be on it. That’s not an assumption you can make on this show — in fact, it’s a pretty stupid thing to assume, given that nearly all of the Survivors have had either direct or indirect contact with one another before getting on the plane.
The romance between Shannon and Sayid - which was, by the way, conceived of on the suggestion from the actor Naveen Andrews that it would “shock middle America.” Screw that turdball. Middle America can handle inter-racial couples just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Here’s a clue, babe: The actor and the show are two different things. What oddball ideas some Brit actor may or may not have hasn’t a damn thing to do with the show.
It would be one thing if it were just the two of them getting on with the nookie, but it was played out like they were in this great love affair. Right. The intense Iraqi soldier on the way to find the love of his life before the crash is going to just blow that off and fall deeply in love with the airhead bimbo that is so bithcy and selfish that it’s obvious from the very first show that she was only written in to be killed off without upsetting the audience too much? The whole thing felt contrived and ABSURD.
Shrug. Don’t care. I can’t think of one relationship on television — you do realize that this is a television show and not reality, right? — that hasn’t seemed contrived to some extent. So? Who cares?
You’re making unjustified assumptions and expecting far too much for television. Take that telephone pole out of your ass and enjoy it, or stop watching it. See, nobody gives a damn whether you like it or not. The show is a phenomenon either way.
[You’re the last person who should be complaining about condescending remarks, considering that your whole post dripped condescension from beginning to end. That’s why you got it back. In spades. And will any time you do it. Capiche? ed.]
