Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: off-topic ranting
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Nelson Mandela’s passing was only a few days ago and already the left-wing press and counter-press have managed to come up with a wide range of criticisms of someone who should, ostensibly, be their hero. Slavoj Zizek, that staunch opponent of anything modern in the left, is recycling the old claim that Mandela simply changed…
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Last weekend the Guardian had an interesting article about the New College for the Humanities, some dodgy knock-off rich-kids proto-university in the UK, land of inequality. Apparently it’s being run by someone left-wing, so we have to take it seriously even though it charges 18,000 pounds a year (twice the cost of Oxford) for a…
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I have a friend in Sydney, Australia who has things a little tough. She has a decent professional job – though its a job in a woman’s career, so it doesn’t pay as well as professional jobs should – and she’s a good worker. She has been working ever since I met her without a…
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I have recently been spending a lot of time around (white) foreigners in Japan, much more than usual, and a recent experience with a particular pair of them has helped me to understand a kind of increasing discomfort I have with the way westerners interact and the way they perceive Asia. I guess being largely…
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A little-remarked upon aspect of this most recent Australian federal election has been the performance of the Greens. It’s not surprising that the media don’t report on the Greens’ results, since they hate the Greens and they can’t take them seriously as a party, but it is a little disappointing that they haven’t commented on…
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The Guardian today reports that Britain’s top 50 state-funded comprehensive schools and academies have become more unequal over recent years, and are not reflective of the social composition of their surrounding areas, or of the remainder of the schools in England. Those of us from more equal societies might think this is not a big…
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Friday’s Guardian editorial featured a spit-flecked rant against internet pornography, starting and finishing with a demand to ban all of it. At the same time, the Daily Mail was putting up a strident demand for more efforts to police child porn. These articles are both profoundly wrong on facts and science, and breath-takingly hypocritical, not…
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Today it was 26C in Tokyo, and we had our first taste of this year’s yellow dust, the strange and nasty pollution that tends to drift over Japan from China during spring and summer. Today’s was the worst I have ever seen in 5 years in Japan – the above photograph, taken from my ground…
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On Monday I was required to monitor at the Tokyo University undergraduate entrance exams. I shepherded 60 terrified 17 year olds through a 2.5 hour Japanese language test and then a 100 minute maths test. These tests were part of a two day examination process for those want to enter the humanities faculty of Tokyo…
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I want to start this rant with a quote from the British chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander. In discussing a review of the alternatives to the UK’s trident missile program, he announced We are in a position where the costs of the Successor have to be paid for from within the MoD budget.…
Compromise and Conceit 