First you struggle, then you get coopted by religion, and then you die

I just learned that the Art Institute of Seattle has closed. This is bad news — I knew people who went there and others who aspired to go there. It seemed like a good place, and the closure is doing deep harm to people.

The Art Institute of Seattle will close abruptly on Friday, leaving about 650 students in the lurch — without classes, professors, or possibly diplomas.

The Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC), a state regulation agency, announced the end of the school’s 73-year tenure on Wednesday, just over two weeks before the winter quarter was supposed to end.

These are students who’d sunk tens of thousands of dollars into their education, who are probably still carrying daunting amounts of debt, and who’ve now been told they pissed away years of their youth and all of their investment and will get nothing for their trouble. How could this happen? How can the government stand aside and let this happen? This was an accredited institution which, one would think, was an assurance of quality.

One clue is in a few key words in this summary:

The Art Institutes, a group of art colleges nationwide, has struggled with financial troubles for years; the company that owned them went bankrupt in 2017 and Dream Center Foundation, a faith-based nonprofit, bought the schools. Court filings show that since the purchase, the schools have grappled with financial issues.

Oh, here’s another clue: A College Chain Crumbles, and Millions in Student Loan Cash Disappears. Somebody skimmed off a lot of cash in this deal, not just from the Art Institute, but a whole mess of struggling colleges that were snapped up by a religious entity.

The affected schools — Argosy University, South University and the Art Institutes — have about 26,000 students in programs spanning associate degrees in dental hygiene and doctoral programs in law and psychology. Fourteen campuses, mostly Art Institute locations, have a new owner after a hastily arranged transfer involving private equity executives. More than 40 others are under the control of a court-appointed receiver who has accused school officials of trying to keep the doors open by taking millions of dollars earmarked for students.

26,000 students? This is unconscionable. The first problem is that these colleges were bought out by Pentacostal evangelical Christians with no experience in running an educational institution.

Dream Center is connected to Angelus Temple, which was founded by Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist once portrayed by Faye Dunaway in a TV movie, “The Disappearance of Aimee.” It is affiliated with the Foursquare Church, an evangelical denomination with outposts in 146 countries.

Buying a chain of schools “aligns perfectly with our mission, which views education as a primary means of life transformation,” Randall Barton, the foundation’s managing director, said when Dream Center announced its plan.

But Dream Center had never run colleges. It hired a team including Brent Richardson, who worked on the conversion of Grand Canyon University to a nonprofit as its chairman, to lead the schools’ corporate parent, Dream Center Education Holdings. He stepped down in January.

Alarms were ringing from the moment the takeover was proposed. Dream Center’s effort to buy the failing ITT Technical Institutes schools had fallen apart after resistance from the Obama administration. When it asked to buy Education Management’s schools, consumer groups, members of Congress and some regional accreditors raised concerns.

The second problem is more secular: the gang of idiots currently running the country, who are engaged in a thrilling give-away of our assets to line their own pockets.

Led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Education Department has reversed an Obama-era crackdown on troubled vocational and career schools and allowed new and less experienced entrants into the field.

“The industry was on its heels, but they’ve been given new life by the department under DeVos,” said Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending.

Ms. DeVos, who invested in companies with ties to for-profit colleges before taking office, has made it an agency priority to unfetter for-profit schools by eliminating restrictions on them. She also allowed several for-profit schools to evade even those loosened rules by converting to nonprofits.

That’s what Dream Center wanted to do when it asked to buy the remains of Education Management Corporation.

Schools are just plunder to these people. One has to wonder, though, how the church’s “mission” would have been implemented in these secular schools, if they hadn’t run them straight into the ground.

The storm is over!

And our local walkway is clear (thanks, Ted!).

Unfortunately, the university has not caught up. The snowplows have dammed it all in and the sidewalks are a foot deep with snow, as I discovered when I tried to walk in to feed the spiders. Nope, not gonna happen today. They’ve been cut off from a loving, caring world and are trapped alone in their incubators. I know they are just resting patiently and bravely, waiting for rescue, while scheming about how they’re going to capture and kill the next living thing they see.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

I was loafing about yesterday, and one of the things I saw was a torrent of nice comments about the fact that I’m getting even older — so many that I’m acknowledging them all now with one broad spectrum thank you. Thanks!

Here’s what I did to celebrate: carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and caramel ice cream. I’d share, but you can’t get here now through all the drifting snow from our last snowstorm.

Strumia’s disgrace continues to be public

Alessandro Strumia was in the news earlier this fall — he’s the physicist who gave a workshop at CERN to declare that the humanities suck and that women were inherently less capable of doing physics than men. It was so bad that CERN struck the recording of his talk from their archives. We still have a copy of his slides.

By the way, there is a difference between a lecture and a workshop, and he seems to have failed to comprehend that, too.

Well, now CERN has also decided to cut Strumia altogether. His appointment as a guest professor has not been extended. Cue men wailing that he has been oppressed and discriminated against.

His excuses are terrible.

“Some people hated hearing about higher male variance: this idea comes from Darwin, like other offensive ideas that got observational support,” he told BBC News.

“Science is not about being offended when facts challenge ideas held as sacred”.

Darwin isn’t sacred, either. He published sexist claims that he did not support with evidence — they were reflections of the cultural biases of Victorian England. Darwin didn’t create Holy Writ, you can’t simply pretend that Darwin said it, therefore it’s true. Does Strumia also think pangenesis was correct, and that whales evolved from swimming bears?

He added that he believed that he had not been fairly treated.

“For months, Cern kept ‘investigating’ if my 30-minute talk might have violated Cern rules [requiring an] ‘obligation to exercise reserve and tact in expressing personal opinions and communication to the public’,” Prof Strumia said.

“In such a case, they would have opened some procedure, where I would have been able [to defend] myself. This never happened.”

Last September, Professor Strumia stated that “physics was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation” at a presentation at the Cern the workshop.

If I were attending a workshop at CERN, I’d be expecting practical, interactive discussions about matters of utility in physics. He made a tactless, opinionated rant grounded in factual falsehoods while simultaneously dismissing the relevance of academic disciplines in the subject he was discussing. Not much investigation was necessary — he was so blatantly wrong that recordings were removed in embarrassment.

I’m going to take a wild guess here that administrators took notice of the harm he was doing to CERN, and also noticed that he was on a temporary contract that was going to expire in March, and decided that it was more sensible to wait on taking any action until his renewal was evaluated. In addition, there was a thorough rebuttal of his claims by his peers. He can whine all he wants that he wasn’t given an opportunity to defend himself, but his arguments were indefensible, and he demonstrated repeatedly that his “defense” was to bluster angrily and double down on his misogyny. Good riddance.

Strumia still has his professorial appointment at the University of Pisa…although the ethical committee at that university is investigating him, too.

My wife is a harsh taskmistress

We have another big snowstorm blowing through, so she’s getting worried. She decides that this morning “we” need to drag out the roof rake and scrape off the heavier accumulations.

“But I’ve got a heart condition,” I said. Usually that’s enough.

Nope. Needs to be done.

I broke out the newest excuse: “But my vestibular instability!”

Didn’t work. She said she’d watch me through the window in case I staggered and fell into a crevasse.

So that’s how I ended up slowly circumnavigating around the house through thigh- and waist-deep snow drifts, wielding a 6- or 7-meter aluminum pole with a metal rake at the end, making snow thump down off the roof, only falling face-first twice, and eventually sinking into a mountain of snow to freeze to death and lie there entombed in ice until the spring. The blog will be on indefinite hiatus.

It’s peaceful in here. Quiet. No computers, no phones. All appetites suspended. Try it, you might like it.

Kree, Skrulls, Flerken, and Marvel — and a fine time was had by all

I had a hot date last night: dinner at the Stone’s Throw Cafe, followed by a short walk to the Morris Theater (everything is nearby in a small town), where we watched Captain Marvel. there was a good crowd there. Another virtue of small town living is that even when the new blockbuster comes to town, it’s no problem getting in — show up ten minutes before, maybe there’ll be a short line, but you’ll slide right through and get a good seat. We parked ourselves way up front, maybe the third row or so.

And then we saw the show.

No spoilers, don’t worry.

First, a criticism: the beginning was very non-linear, jumping about rather confusingly in the Vers/Carol Danvers story. For a while I was wondering if this was going to be a time-travel story, which would annoy me a lot, but then about a third of the way through it all clicked and Marvel’s origins suddenly fell into place. If you’re not familiar with Captain Marvel lore, as I wasn’t, bear with it, it will eventually all make sense.

But then, I’m used to disjointed comic book stories. In my youth, when I was really into comic books, I couldn’t often afford to buy them off the rack, and instead would go down to the local Goodwill store where they’d have a pile of old comic books they mainly wanted to get rid of, so they’d sell them at 20 for a dollar (I was so annoyed when they raised the price to 10 for a dollar). Forget continuity, I’d come to the end of a Fantastic Four cliffhanger and then the next comic in my pile would be a Baby Huey or something. Adapt or die, man.

Minor spoiler: Baby Huey does not show up in this movie.

Anyway, once I got on track it was a good, fun story. It’s not a deep cinematic masterpiece, but as long as your expectations are focused on appreciating a solid genre story, you’ll have a fine time. In particular what I liked about the movie is that it really returns to superhero movie roots: she’s a good person with super powers who cares about other people, including aliens, and exhibits empathy. It reminded me a lot of that first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve — it inspired hope in humanity rather than the usual angsty “let’s watch people fuck up a miraculous opportunity and suffer while demolishing a city”. I kinda need that now and then, because I already have a tendency to lapse into grimdark attitudes.

It’s a good sign for the next big blockbuster out of the MCU, because the Infinity War thingie fully embraced the grimdarkness with a depressing ending, and all the trailers for the Endgame movie are similarly discouraging. Captain Marvel is going to be key to wrapping up that story line, I think, and she’s bringing light and hope. Or at least, she better.

Another good sign: we sat through the end credits (it’s an MCU movie, you have to), and when it finally went black and got up to leave, the entire theater was still full, and everyone was smiling and talking happily. This was also a community event, with little kids in the audience, college students, old geezers like me, and you could just tell from everyone’s expressions that they’d had a good time. It’s a relax and feel good sort of movie.

Also, about the cat…a lot of reviews are talking up the role of Goose the cat. That’s fine, but while he has a few crucial moments, it’s not a big central part of the story. I also wouldn’t call it comic relief. Goose has some anatomical elements that made me very happy, but otherwise, despite the different coloration, he made me think of my cat: dangerously hostile and with peculiar digestive habits. I’m thinking of trying that trick of holding her up, aiming her at my enemies, and giving her a little squeeze.

Maybe we’ve adopted a flerken, rather than a cat. Holy crap, suddenly everything clicked again and it makes so much sense!

Also, a video review!

The Peterson/Zizek debacle to come

Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek are going to have a debate next month. I have a hard time imagining a more hellish prospect.

First, it’s a debate — regular readers know how much I’ve come to despise debate. They might as well make it a wrestling match or a tiddly-winks contest for all the relevance it will have. It will settle nothing, and just allow a couple of blowhards to shout past each other.

Second, it’s Peterson, a bloviating airhead with nothing but his biases to trot about. I want his 15 minutes of fame to end soon.

Third, Zizek. You can read the opinion of a man who totally favors Zizek; I’m not impressed at all. If he can’t resolve his own personal contradictions, why should I care about his philosophy? (Yeah, I know, a lot of philosophers seem to be colossal assholes, who still manage to say interesting things — Zizek is just one who has also put his personality front and center.)

But also, Zizek is going to lose this debate, not because he will do a poorer job of defending his position, but because a debate is never about who makes the most logical, best supported argument. Most of the audience will be there because of Peterson’s inexplicable popularity, and they will not be budged from their cultish idolatry, and they will totally shut off their brains while Zizek speaks. It’s going to be an ugly mess of childish assertions against a professional obscurantist, and the child will triumph with his audience of man-babies.

Zizek was nuts to consent to this, which is another reason to doubt his competence in performing in this circus.

What else do you hate? Asking for a friend.

There’s another common theme in comments to that video about Ethan Van Sciver: oh, no, he’s not using right-wing rage to promote himself. Uh, yes, he is. That’s what his entire channel is about, claiming that the SJWs are coming to take your comic books away. They’re killing your movies. They’re turning women into merciless, man-hating lesbians. He’s using the Fox News/Donald Trump model of engagement.

It’s all about anger as a tool.

In other words, anger is a powerful tool in the worlds of both politics and media. Anger is why narratives about people being “outraged,” written with the intent of actually making readers feel an outrage over that (real or imagined) outrage, are so popular in political media. A lot has happened since Ryan published his study in 2012, but the state of politics and media would seem to only bolster his conclusions.
Keeping audiences lathered into a perpetual state of outrage is good politics and good business. Look no further than Fox News for proof.
Was there ever really a “War on Christmas” involving mass calls to ban Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside? No. Is Purdue University trying to ban the word “man”? Also no. Does Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) want to steal your steak? Not at all. Is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) proposing that we “get rid of children?” Absolutely not.

Are the SJWs coming to rip the comic books out of your hands, replacing them with feminist tracts, full of flat-chested old ladies in loose clothing? Nope.

Although this idea of fanning the flames of hatred to drive traffic to your site has some merit. I’ve been doing it lately. Why do you think I’ve been posting all this stuff about spiders? It’s to get you seething and coming back for more.

Is it working?

If you poke a sewer rat in the eye, it doesn’t respond rationally

I did a little experiment. I made a video criticizing a loony comic book guy who hates SJWs. I was also partly driven by disgust: he lies transparently. In this one video he made, he goes over published reviews of a movie online, taps on the screen with his pencil, and says the reverse of what the reviewer said, and his fans believe him. Honestly, it’s that blatant: he shows a positive, favorable review, which any viewer can easily read, and declares that, well, this reviewer can’t even stomach the film, contradicting the review in plain sight. It’s psychologically fascinating and revolting at the same time.

So I pointed out that he’s lying over and over again.

Of course his fans discovered that I’d criticized their hero and came flooding in, which is where it gets interesting. I’m told I have low testosterone, I’m boring, I need to watch more of his videos (no thank you), and since I’m obviously a Social Justice Warrior, my opinion is not to be trusted. For instance…

I think you misunderstood what SJW is . You are a Beta Male by definition. That would make you a white knight with a agenda to deny your own masculinity in procurement of selfish attention . Mostly by overly dominant females. Your total lack of information is also a symptom of a SJW mindset and especially a Beta Male.

Ouch. So many cliches. “Beta male”, “white knight”, “deny your own masculinity”, and I’m motivated solely by my craving for attention from dominant feeemales. None of that addresses any of the points I made, and in fact, none of the comments addressed the problem that this Ethan Van Sciver character is openly misrepresenting what he shows.

Further, they mainly seemed to be focused on their martyr complex and imaginary conspiracy theories. For example…

The problem with SJ is that it’s not real Justice. In real justice, you are innocent until proven guilty. You have the right to a trial. You have the right face your accuser. You have the right to counsel. Evidence needs to be gathered to support the accuser’s claims. SJ has no court, no appeals and no jury. SJ only requires an accusation and a twitter mob to take your life away. SJ is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I couldn’t let that stand, so I asked, “Whose life has been taken away without due process by SJWs?” He had an answer.

OH MAN! I’m glad you asked. I’m short on time, so I’ll just point some more glaring examples of the lives effected by an evil philosophy.

Count Dancula
Jessie Smollet
Vic Mignogna
Hayden Williams
Nick Sandmann (along with the entire school)
Steven Crowder
Jordan Peterson
Martina Markota
Lindsay Shepherd

I could sincerely go on. Social justice sounds beautiful. I get it. But the underlying philosophical pillars are build on sand.

Jordan Peterson video on SJ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA96Kf30TQU

Count Dankula is a British YouTuber who trained a dog to make a Nazi salute in response to the phrase, “Gas the Jews”. He was fined £800 for violating the Communications Act with his tasteless joke. He then went on to raise £100,000 on GoFundMe.

Jussie Smollett is an American actor who apparently (it’s currently under investigation) staged a hate crime. I’m not sure why he’s on the list, since it blew up in his face and he’s destroyed his own career.

Vic Mignogna is an American voice actor for anime. Multiple women, many of whom were underage at the time, have stepped forward to accuse him of decades worth of sexual harassment, and he’s lost a major gig after an investigation, and anime cons aren’t inviting him to their events any more. So yes, he’s lost revenue for his actions. Deservedly.

Hayden Williams is a representative for Turning Point USA who was punched by Zachary Greenberg while he was staffing a table at UC Berkeley. Greenberg was arrested and is facing serious criminal charges. Greenberg’s life has been and is going to be seriously affected…is that a bad thing?

Nick Sandmann is the smug, obnoxious high school kid who confronted a Native American singer at the Lincoln Memorial. Nothing has happened to him or his school, other than that his behavior was shown in a viral video. His family is suing the Washington Post for $250 million.

Steven Crowder…are you fucking kidding me? He’s one of the dumbest people on YouTube, and he’s parlayed that into gigs on Blaze TV, Fox News, PragerU, and the Glenn Beck show. The only penalty he seems to have suffered is that Fox News dropped him…for criticizing noted SJW Sean Hannity.

Jordan Peterson…jesus. This is ridiculous. Peterson is a man who has turned his persecution complex and his bizarre Jungian ideas into a money-making machine. He has suffered no substantial consequence other than, perhaps, self-afflicted constipation from his terrible diet.

Martina Markota is a far-right fanatical Trump supporter who spreads conspiracy theories, like PizzaGate, and shills for the Proud Boys. She had an account with Chase Bank that was closed, because the banks…hate…conservatives? I guess? She then raised $34,000 on IndieGoGo.

Lindsay Shepherd was a Peterson acolyte who was reprimanded for showing a Peterson video in a class she was TAing (I actually think the reprimand was inappropriate), and has since gone on to a career as a speaker and columnist for far right media, and has a few multi-million dollar lawsuits against the university pending.

So, basically, in response to a request for names of people who have had their lives taken away by horrible SJWs, he listed people who are profiting from conspiracy theories about how horrible SJWs are taking away people’s lives. Please, could someone ruin my life this way?

I expressed my disbelief that he actually cited Jordan Peterson as someone whose life has been destroyed by SJWs. Here’s his nonsensical reply.

Jordan Peterson is a Genius Canadian Treasure. And the leftist propaganda machine have been trying to slander him for years. It’s not working because no one trusts the media, and Peterson makes sense. The fact that he’s successful isn’t evidence that he’s not been maligned. All the money he’s making is a result of free market choices. Which in the end, is the fairest measure of success.

I think I’m done with these loons. Experiment successful. Once again, dishonest conservative blowhard is exposed for his lies, and once again, it makes no difference — it will be turned into profit and imaginary confirmation of the lies.