33 Comments

1.   Zombie Mao (Tuesday 11 March 2008, 11:30 pm) # 

   hmmm

   the Young Liberals purge of leftists seems familiar to me.

   it reminds me of the Cultural Revolution I instigated back in the day, students closing schools, persecuting teachers for not being communist enough…hey even actually killing the treacherous bastards.

   I think the Chinese Communist party should sue.

   
   
2.   Damian (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 12:18 am) # 

   Can’t wait to hear about Hockey’s arse. What a selling point.

   
   
3.   Damian (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 12:44 am) # 

   Just quickly about Rudd saying no one will be worse off after his carer’s changes, that sounds a bit like “no worker will be worse off”.

   
   
4.   Damian (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 12:58 am) # 

   Testosterone in lattes. Gold.

   Another noice one, and well done to Kej.

   
   
5.   Jeremy (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 7:20 am) # 

   Isn’t Bartlett the President in “The West Wing”?

   
   
6.   keri (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 8:15 am) # 

   See what happens when you don’t have an Onymous lefty present?

   All we could remember was that it was Jed Clampett in the Beverley Hillbillies.

   
   
7.   keri (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 8:18 am) # 

   Oh, and thanks Damien. God only knows what I sound like. I’m still debating as to whether I could stand the cringe factor of listening to my own voice enough to review it.

   
   
8.   MrLefty (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 11:41 am) # 

   Without you, Keri, they’d have still thought it WAS Jed Clampett. And I fail to see what some fortunate sod who strikes it rich through complete luck would have in common with a Young Libe… oh, wait.

   
   
9.   MrLefty (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 11:42 am) # 

   By the way, I’m not schizophrenic; it’s just that I haven’t updated the work computer since I stopped going by “MrLefty”.

   
   
10.   keri (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 11:45 am) # 

    Well, I suppose that works in some way. I can tell them what it isn’t, you know what it is.

    
    
11.   MrLefty (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 1:43 pm) # 

    Imagine the GrodsThinks if we were there together! Passing pop-cultural references wouldn’t have a chance.

    
    
12.   keri (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 2:07 pm) # 

    That and obscure british comedy.

    When they make a podcast out of that, my ship will truly have come in.

    
    
13.   Jeremy (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 3:15 pm) # 

    Maybe we should start one.

    
    
14.   keri (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 4:09 pm) # 

    Talk about limited appeal, though, Jeremy. Although being involved in these things is as much fun if not more fun than listening as an outsider.

    
    
15.   Bruce (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 6:56 pm) # 

    Government has apparently just back-flipped on the carer’s bonus. Would still be better to see it assimilated into their fortnightly payments though.

    
    
16.   Bruce (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 8:11 pm) # 

    Scrooge McDuck?

    Has Nick seen this?

    
    
17.   Chuck A. Spear (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 8:54 pm) # 

    Yes Bruce, Ed predicted that one. They did it because of the “angst” surrounding the issue… apparently.

    
    
18.   Bruce (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 9:11 pm) # 

    Recording evidence of left-wing bias in schools? Given that Creationism is a right-wing political ploy, and according to Ann Coulter (along with Behe of Intelligent Design fame who “tutored” her on evolution), neo-Darwinism is a religion for Godless Liberals, do Universities have to give equal time to the likes of Ken Ham?

    You can extend this absurdity to mathematics. 1+1=2 demonstrates a bias against the “world views” that posit that 1+12. Do maths teachers have to give equal time to these other world views, for every other bloody number? There’s an infinite number of alternatives, and if you divide any number by infinity you wind up with zero, ergo to give even time you must teach “1+1=2″ a total of zero times.

    This is stupid.

    I think people forget the natures of conservation and progression. If a student learns nothing, it is a conservation of their cognitive state and if they learn something new, it is a progression.

    Conservatism by definition is the observance of tradition until you are forced to do otherwise, even beyond the point where reason breaks your theory (hence why the conservative end of the spectrum is haunted by homophobic dead-morality, creationism, pseudo-science racism and so on) whereas universities are the place where new knowledge is generated and old theories are broken.

    Of course learning institutions have a bias against conservatives. Motivated conservatism isn’t just a political persuasion it’s also by way of it’s deficient epistemology a form of learned mental retardation.

    And of course “leftist academics” are going to seem intellectually intimidating to someone who is retarded. The distinction needs to be made between an academic that appears intimidating and a teacher that is motivated to intimidate.

    It’s the same with difficult assignments; they may intimidate the student but that’s no reason to give them something so bloody damn far in their comfort zone. Or in the case of the whinging conservative, a right-wing-relativism, all-views-are-correct, even-if-the-evidence-says-that-the-crap-they quoted-from Ham/Lind/Behe/etc is entirely false, charity. A motivated, responsible learner (i.e. a student who is doing what is obligated of them) doesn’t shirk the kind of challenge that an intellectually rigorous task presents.

    Bias and indoctrination aren’t the same thing of course. Indoctrination is a methodology and evidence of bias isn’t evidence of indoctrination.

    Indoctrination if either conservative or progressive is bad but what I do find interesting in having watched this kind of anti-academic, anti-progressive witch-hunt take place in the US is that they sometimes find evidence of bias, but rarely of indoctrination. Indeed, as with the Benning case in Denver, the parts of recordings where the teacher made caveats that his lectures were to be critically analysed and that he was in parts playing the devil’s advocate, were removed before being handed over to the media.

    I can remember Mike Jericho in a case of special pleading, pointing to the tone of Benning’s voice. It was shrill. So what? It proves nothing (just like the rest of the selective evidence presented in the witch-hunt).

    I expect the same phonyism to occur down under. I also expect that as with Howard’s Public-Schools-Have-No-Values-BS from 2004, only the utter nutters are going to take it seriously and most people will just tell them to go and take a jump.

    Only this time, I suspect the Australian public will be even less likely to be caught out by this kind of spin (as indicated by their treatment of the product of the right-wing culture warrior propagandists over the past 16 months).

    
    
19.   Bruce (Wednesday 12 March 2008, 9:13 pm) # 

    posit that 1+12

    Ah bum, my greater-that / less than symbol was predictably eaten as the opening and closing of a HTML tag. You get the gist. I wonder if “><” works…

    
    
20.   Jeremy (Thursday 13 March 2008, 12:40 am) # 

    “being involved in these things is as much fun if not more fun than listening as an outsider.”

    I’ve recently discovered that’s true.

    
    
21.   John Surname (Thursday 13 March 2008, 12:58 am) # 

    Anyone who downloads it is a sucker.

    SUCKER.

    
    
22.   keri (Thursday 13 March 2008, 8:32 am) # 

    That’s some nice slef-promotion work there, John.

    
    
23.   John Surname (Thursday 13 March 2008, 9:44 am) # 

    I’m a good slef promoter.

    
    
24.   keri (Thursday 13 March 2008, 9:51 am) # 

    Oh,Arse.

    
    
25.   John Surname (Thursday 13 March 2008, 9:56 am) # 

    Where???

    
    
26.   keri (Thursday 13 March 2008, 10:00 am) # 

    That’s be the thing you usually talk out of, John.

    
    
27.   John Surname (Thursday 13 March 2008, 10:10 am) # 

    oh ha ha.

    
    
28.   keri (Thursday 13 March 2008, 10:14 am) # 

    What a scathing and pithy retort! That’s put me in my place, hasn’t it?

    
    
29.   John Surname (Thursday 13 March 2008, 10:18 am) # 

    Silence, woman, or you’ll feel the lash of me horsewhip.

    
    
30.   keri (Thursday 13 March 2008, 10:23 am) # 

    Was there any comment you could have made that was less likely to make me shut up?

    
    
31.   The Editor (Thursday 13 March 2008, 10:53 am) # 

    Get a room, you two.

    
    
32.   Bruce (Thursday 13 March 2008, 11:21 am) # 

    But please don’t record it for the next GrodsThink.

    
    
33.   keri (Thursday 13 March 2008, 11:33 am) # 

    You wouldn’t be able to hear anything over the sound of the sheep anyway, Bruce.

    
    

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