All The Cooking Fit For Wokism

For John, BLUF:  Political Correctness ruined a popular cooking show from Bon Appetit  Who benefitted?  Not the many people who viewed the show and learned about cooking while being entertained.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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How Toxic Leftism Killed The Vibrant Bon Appetit YouTube Channel

Here is the sub-headline:

The Bon Appetit saga proved you can politicize everything, as the mob demands, or you can create a vibrant, innovative culture — but you can't have both.

From The Federalist, by Sommelier Ellie Bufkin, 10 December 2020.

Here is the lede plus five:

During the lockdown regime of the past year, millions of Americans turned to their televisions, computers, and phone screens to escape despair.  Because we are creatures of innovation and curiosity, however, many people taught themselves to make sourdough bread starters from the internet and something new the next day.

The bread-baking game got so out of hand at one point this summer that yeast vanished from grocery store shelves.  The appetite for hobbies, knowledge, and bread was ferocious.

Suddenly barred from dining out, the gastronomically inclined turned to their own kitchens, ordered new tools from the internet, and taught themselves culinary tricks.  Social media overflowed with images of the burgeoning class of new home chefs, spurned from their favorite table at Le Diplomate but finally finding joy in sipping Gamay at home while searing their first-ever magret de canard.

It takes a nearly perfect combination of skill, approachability, and charisma to hook an audience the way Julia Child did, but one cooking channel stood above the rest, garnering millions of loyal followers even before the pandemic.  Bon Appetit’s “Test Kitchen” series on YouTube seemed to truly understand people’s modern need for a combination of real instruction with a willingness to fail.

Even in the vast sea of online cooking shows, this one stood out.  Imagine the natural give and take of NBC’s enormously popular sitcom “Friends” in a cooking show.  That was the vibe from the bright and engaging stars of the “Test Kitchen.”

Even with all its charisma and promise, however, Bon Appetit couldn’t stave off the death grip of leftist ideology.  It became one more source of entertainment and inspiration relegated to the burning cultural heap just when Americans most needed a pandemic and political escape.

Many of us learn from our mistakes.  That is not good enough for our woke masters.  For them it is one strike and you are out.  There is no redemption.  It is an attitude that reminds me more of the Chinese Communist Party than of America.  Freedom means the right to be wrong.  It is not a license to do wrong, but it is the space to grow and correct one's mistakes.

Bad behavior is not to be encouraged.  Rather, it is to be discouraged.  Having an alternative view is one thing, and being a bore, or being insulting to other people is another.  There may be a fine line in some cases.  We must leave space for alternative views, although not necessarily in our own parlor or our local drinking establishment.  Alternative views help us advance.  Much of what we knew to be true 121 years ago has now been proven false.  And it is a better world for it.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Playing the Wrong Game

For John, BLUF:  One does have to know the game one is playing.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Bernie’s Whole Campaign Was Based On a Misreading of the 2016 Election

From New York Magazine, by Reporter Jonathan Chait, 10 March 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

Four years ago, Bernie Sanders put up a surprisingly strong fight against Hillary Clinton on the strength of his support among white working-class voters...

... who proceeded to desert Clinton in November... [T]he left quickly [concluded that]... the Democrats had failed to offer the kind of progressive radical alternative Sanders stood for, voters instead opted for Trump’s reactionary attack on globalism.  In order to win them back and defeat Trump, Democrats needed to reorganize themselves as a radical populist party....  The second Sanders campaign has shown conclusively how badly the left misunderstood the electorate....  White working-class and rural voters have swung heavily against him....  The factor that actually explains 2016, as some of us chagrined liberals insisted at the time, was Hillary Clinton’s idiosyncratic personal unpopularity.  It turned out large portions of the public, even of the Democratic electorate, simply detested her....  Clinton hatred allowed Sanders to draw more than 40 percent of the primary vote, and Clinton hatred allowed Donald Trump to narrowly win....

It is not only that President Trump is playing four dimension chess, to the Democrats' two dimensional game.  One suspects the President doesn't care who he is playing against, except maybe Tulsi.

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Regards  —  Cliff

Digging a Hole for the Future

TRIGGER WARNING:  In which I suggest covering up statues and paintings of past events is unhelpful for learning about who we are.

For John, BLUF:  If you don't know how you got here, how can you know which direction to take into the future?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Will history survive?

Here is the sub-headline:

The ongoing monument controversy shows the susceptibility of ‘liberating tolerance’ to fanaticism

From The Spectator, by Dr Roger Kimball, 18 February 2019.

Here is the lede plus four:

The news that the University of Notre Dame, responding to complaints by some students, would ‘shroud’ its 12 134-year-old murals depicting Christopher Columbus was disappointing.  It was not surprising, however, to anyone who has been paying attention to the widespread attack on America’s past wherever social justice warriors congregate.

Notre Dame may not be particularly friendly to its Catholic heritage, but its president, the Rev. John Jenkins, demonstrated that it remains true to its jesuitical (if not, quite, its Jesuit) inheritance.  Queried about the censorship, he said, apparently without irony, that his decision to cover the murals was not intended to conceal anything, but rather to tell ‘the full story’ of Columbus’s activities.

Welcome to the new Orwellian world where censorship is free speech and we respect the past by attempting to elide it.

Over the past several years, we have seen a rising tide of assaults on statues and other works of art representing our nation’s history by those who are eager to squeeze that complex story into a box defined by the evolving rules of political correctness.  We might call this the ‘monument controversy,’ and what happened at Notre Dame is a case in point:  a vocal minority, claiming victim status, demands the destruction, removal, or concealment of some object of which they disapprove.  Usually, the official response is instant capitulation.

As the French writer Charles Péguy once observed, ‘It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.’  Consider the frequent demands to remove statues of Confederate war heroes from public spaces because their presence is said to be racist.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, for example, has recently had statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson removed from a public gallery.  In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has set up a committee to review ‘all symbols of hate on city property.’

A hundred and fifty years from now, when we are generally in agreement that late term abortions are, in fact, infanticide, will we be tearing down or covering up the statues of President Obama and Senator Clinton and chiseling out of plaques the names of various Senators and House Speakers?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

The Societal Danger of Mathematics

For John, BLUF:  We don't need no stinking math.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Professor:  Learning Math Can Cause ‘Collateral Damage’ to Society

Here is the sub-headline:

Some things in life are objective and rational, and that’s perfectly okay.

From National Review, by Katherine Timpf, 20 June 2018.

Here is the lede plus five:

According to a new textbook written by a professor at the University of Exeter, learning mathematics can cause “collateral damage” to society because it “provides a training in ethics-free thought.”

“Reasoning without meanings provides a training in ethics-free thought,” Paul Ernest writes in “The Ethics of Mathematics:  Is Mathematics Harmful?” — a chapter of his book The Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today.

In an abstract for the book, Ernest claims that although he does “acknowledge that mathematics is a widespread force for good,” “there is significant collateral damage caused by learning mathematics.”

According to Ernest, this “collateral damage” happens in three ways.  First, he argues, the styles of thinking involved with mathematics are “detached” and “calculated” ones, which value “rules, abstraction, objectification, impersonality, unfeelingness, dispassionate reason, and analysis” — which he claims “can be damaging when applied beyond mathematics to social and human issues.”

The second problem, he explains, is that “the applications of mathematics in society can be deleterious to our humanity unless very carefully monitored and checked.”

“Money and thus mathematics is the tool for the distribution of wealth,” he writes.  “It can therefore be argued that as the key underpinning conceptual tool mathematics is implicated in the global disparities in wealth.”

Finally, Ernest claims, “the personal impact of learning mathematics on learners’ thinking and life chances can be negative for a minority of less successful students, as well as potentially harmful for successful students.”  Ernest continues to explain that math is often viewed as “masculine,” and that that can essentially make it difficult for women to deal with learning it.

I guess the solution is to stop teaching math in school, although still teach counting, so we can tell ages and book page numbers.  And the knowledge of making change.  But, leave anything else up to a Secret Society.  The initiates would learn the secrets of quadratic equations and trigonometry and geometry and things beyond.  Boy Scouts would still be allowed to use that trick for measuring the width of a river by using trees and pacing things off.

By the way, the book is another overpriced item out of academia.  Don't buy it, even in the Kindle version.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

Adjusting the Settled Science

TRIGGER WARNINGS:  Our understanding of science evolves, as we learn more.  The other option is to become more ignorant as Normals become smarter.

For John, BLUF:  So, 1.5 C (As in Communist) is like 2.7 Fahrenheit.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Wanna see some hot models?

From Ms Natalie Solent, of Essex, at Samizdata, 18 September 2017.  She describes herself thusly—"I remain more of a believer in anthropogenic climate change than many here, but after three or four cycles of this, cynicism does creep in."

Here is how the Blog Post starts:

As ever, Paris was the place to see really hot models, but you have missed your chance.  A couple of years ago they were basking in the admiration of the world. Now, they are looking a little old.  However you can still read about them in today’s Times:

We were wrong — worst effects of climate change can be avoided, say scientists

Catastrophic impacts of climate change can still be avoided, according to scientists who have admitted they were too pessimistic about the chances of limiting global warming.

The world has warmed more slowly than had been predicted by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions on average temperature, research has found.

New forecasts suggest that the world has a better chance than claimed of meeting the goal set by the Paris Agreement on climate change of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The study, published in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience, makes clear that rapid reductions in emissions will still be required but suggests that the world has more time to make the necessary changes.

Michael Grubb, professor of international energy and climate change at University College London and one of the study’s authors, admitted that his previous prediction had been wrong.

Here is how it ends, with a bit of snark:

He [Professor Grubb] said that too many of the models used “were on the hot side”, meaning they forecast too much warming.

See, I promised you hot models and here are so many hot models, you may even get tired of hot models.

Another approach may be that this is mainly an engineering problem, in which the engineering has to stay ahead of the climate changes.

Regards  —  Cliff