Still Mired Down...

I’m still in a bit of a funk when it comes to “meaningful” blog posts. You know, things like Putin reviving the Cold War, Obama’s formal announcement (yeah, like that’s news), or even another incidence of academic political correctness winning the day. Wait. Back up. Let’s reconsider that last item:

The feminist takeover of Harvard is imminent. The Harvard Crimson reported yesterday that the university is about to name as its new president Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard’s Corporation, which is likely to recommend Faust to the university’s Board of Overseers for confirmation, could not have more clearly repudiated Lawrence Summers’s all-too-brief reign of meritocracy and academic honesty, or more openly signaled that Harvard will now be the leader in politically correct victimology.

Faust runs one of the most powerful incubators of feminist complaint and nonsensical academic theory in the country. You can count on the Radcliffe Institute’s fellows and invited lecturers to proclaim the “constructed” nature of knowledge, gender, and race, and to decry endemic American sexism and racism.

And from that “powerful incubators” link in the preceding quote…

…beneath the ubiquitous “discourses,” “constructions,” and “negotiated meanings”—behind the coy hyphens, parentheses, and slashes—lies the belief that there is no such thing as the “self,” or “truth,” or “males” and “females,” or “good” and “bad,” that all are arbitrary categories designed by an oppressor class of white male heterosexual capitalists to keep a victim class of minorities, women, and poor people silenced and powerless?

That particular paragraph describes the mindset of Harvard’s (rumored) new president. Hell, she was instrumental in shaping what can only be called a radical point of view and is in the vanguard of the “movement,” so to speak. My reaction?

Good Lord. It’s hard to see how the pendulum can swing any further to the left, or to imagine a more egregious offense to the values that made this country what it is today, or rather what it was...back when “traditional values” were the norm and well before we began lionizing the “victim class(es).” I only hope that some sort of backlash is forming, somewhere. Coz it’s way past time for the pendulum to begin its swing back towards reality. The fate of western civilization hangs in the balance, and I’m not being melodramatic. Not in the least.

So. Let’s lighten up. In the “Fun with Site Meter” department, I offer you the leading search terms resulting in EIP visits from Googlers for the past 45 days or so:

“My Lil Reminder” in its various permutations (IIVP): 136
“USAFA Cadet Requests F-15 Ride” IIVP: 59
“YGBFSM” IIVP: 39
“Petticoat Punishment” IIVP: 29
“Heidi Cullen” IIVP: 15
People Looking for Becky’s Place but Winding Up at EIP Instead (“Hemipenes”): 2

And the strangest search term these past days:

“Woah-Oh Oh-Woah-Oh-Oh-Woah Woah-Oh-Oh-Woah-Oh-Oh techno song lyrics.”

Could you just hum a few bars? I might have that. Somewhere. On the other hand…techno has lyrics? Who’d thunk it?

On the other, other hand, I’m surprised this got any hits at all:

“who sings, "live on the edge" for pontiac commercial.”

Why? Because the commercial in question is a Ford ad, Sparky.

I loves me some Site Meter!

I forgot to make another entry in the “nothing lasts forever” department this past week. This time it was my beloved trusty HP LaserJet 5P printer, a device that made no demands, worked first-time, every time, was economical to operate, and so on. Until about a month ago, when it refused to power up when I hit the switch. No blown fuses or other obvious indications of ill-health, just a quiet death. That printer served me quite well…for well over ten years (more like 12), as a matter of fact. But it’s gone now, replaced with a shiny new HP D7360 ink-jet photo printer, which will do double-duty printing the odd document here and there, like the annual 1040s or directions from Google Maps. And the price was more than right, too: only $129.00 at Office Max. I’ve wanted a photo printer for the longest time. And now I finally have one. This time the philosophical “nothing lasts forever” statement was good news.

The weather is always good for a paragraph or two when all else fails, and it’s gonna be pretty good today: partly cloudy with a forecasted high of 67. That sounds like top-down weather, doesn’t it? I think I just might get out in it today and see if I can’t get a February sunburn. That would be interesting, nu?

Today’s Pic: Granddaughters Anastasia and Amanda running to avoid getting wet while SN2 looks on, as a very cool fountain in Seattle dances in time to classical music. The girls unsuccessfully avoided the water, I should add: they got soaked. There are speakers arranged around the periphery of the fountain, and the music varies from up-tempo classical to pop (technical details here). The water jets in the fountain are choreographed to “perform” in conjunction with the music. Way-cool. Way-wet, too!
June, 2000.