Jun 25, 2021 05:25 PM
Floodgates open for Alzheimer's drugs that don't work
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/ar...floodgates
Cornell University course asked is the term Black Hole racist. It is not.
https://www.science20.com/hontas_farmer/...not-255100
EXCERPTS: Cornell University's accreditation should be called into question for having offered a course called “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos". I cannot begin to put into works how vacuous this is. [...] The only conceivable excuse for this would be if woke students somehow got the idea that astronomy was “colonial” or based on White supremacy.
[...] A point by point response.
Conventional wisdom would have it that the "black" in black holes has nothing to do with race. Surely there can be no connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness. Can there?
There is not. The terms Black Hole, or Dark Matter have nothing to do with race and everything to do with how things interact with light (broadly meaning any EM radiation). A Black Hole would not even be “black if you got close to it. They tend to bend all the light around them in such a way that they have a glow from that light that did not get close enough to fall in.
[...] Contemporary Black Studies theorists, artists, fiction writers implicitly and explicitly posit just such a connection. Theorists use astronomy concepts like "black holes" and "event horizons" to interpret the history of race in creative ways, while artists and musicians conjure blackness through cosmological themes and images.
This sounds like a perfectly legitimate description for a performance art class in which Black people who are not astronomers or astrophysicist would draw inspiration from the use of our word in a positive way. Black holes big and powerful. Dark matter and Dark energy 95% of everything shaping everything. I would not find that too objectionable if it were not billed as being an astronomy class.
[...] The right way to promote Black scientist would be to hire me.
There is a much MUCH simpler way to promote woke “communist” pro black and transgender ideology at your school. Give me a tenure tracked position where I will teach a rigorous observational and appropriately mathematical intro astronomy class, as well as any area of theoretical physics/ astrophysics that you see fit. My “pronouns” with students are prof/professor/professor and with faculty they are hey/you/coffee. This way you would not have to engage with anything like this, you would get someone already working on a major science project (LISA) and demonstrate some real diversity. Like for starters I would have been there to really tell you how awful and somewhat offensive of an idea this is before you did it... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Critical Race Theory
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Cynical Sindee: Gven the ludicrousness of the situation, one might as well add that this is balanced by the white hole of astronomy -- which, because it is hypothetical, is less privileged than the more or less confirmed black hole of astronomy.
The history of this Woke BS weaseling its way into science has a history from the Jacobins to Marxism to Critical Theory. Leftist development in general has its origin in the French Revolution. Especially "The Reign of Terror" phase, which it repeats versions of over and over after its initial revolutionary attempts at utopia predictably collapse into dystopia. Insanity is never learning from iteration.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/ar...floodgates
Cornell University course asked is the term Black Hole racist. It is not.
https://www.science20.com/hontas_farmer/...not-255100
EXCERPTS: Cornell University's accreditation should be called into question for having offered a course called “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos". I cannot begin to put into works how vacuous this is. [...] The only conceivable excuse for this would be if woke students somehow got the idea that astronomy was “colonial” or based on White supremacy.
[...] A point by point response.
Conventional wisdom would have it that the "black" in black holes has nothing to do with race. Surely there can be no connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness. Can there?
There is not. The terms Black Hole, or Dark Matter have nothing to do with race and everything to do with how things interact with light (broadly meaning any EM radiation). A Black Hole would not even be “black if you got close to it. They tend to bend all the light around them in such a way that they have a glow from that light that did not get close enough to fall in.
[...] Contemporary Black Studies theorists, artists, fiction writers implicitly and explicitly posit just such a connection. Theorists use astronomy concepts like "black holes" and "event horizons" to interpret the history of race in creative ways, while artists and musicians conjure blackness through cosmological themes and images.
This sounds like a perfectly legitimate description for a performance art class in which Black people who are not astronomers or astrophysicist would draw inspiration from the use of our word in a positive way. Black holes big and powerful. Dark matter and Dark energy 95% of everything shaping everything. I would not find that too objectionable if it were not billed as being an astronomy class.
[...] The right way to promote Black scientist would be to hire me.
There is a much MUCH simpler way to promote woke “communist” pro black and transgender ideology at your school. Give me a tenure tracked position where I will teach a rigorous observational and appropriately mathematical intro astronomy class, as well as any area of theoretical physics/ astrophysics that you see fit. My “pronouns” with students are prof/professor/professor and with faculty they are hey/you/coffee. This way you would not have to engage with anything like this, you would get someone already working on a major science project (LISA) and demonstrate some real diversity. Like for starters I would have been there to really tell you how awful and somewhat offensive of an idea this is before you did it... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (scivillage): Critical Race Theory
- - - - -
Cynical Sindee: Gven the ludicrousness of the situation, one might as well add that this is balanced by the white hole of astronomy -- which, because it is hypothetical, is less privileged than the more or less confirmed black hole of astronomy.
The history of this Woke BS weaseling its way into science has a history from the Jacobins to Marxism to Critical Theory. Leftist development in general has its origin in the French Revolution. Especially "The Reign of Terror" phase, which it repeats versions of over and over after its initial revolutionary attempts at utopia predictably collapse into dystopia. Insanity is never learning from iteration.