32 Comments

I am retired, which allows me to say anything I want. The downside is that no one cares about the blatherings of old retired losers. I am, however, participating in organizations which hold academic institutions to a "free speech" standard, which is an explicit rejection of the Woke/DIE standard. I am a member of the UNC-CH group, and am trying to start one at UI-UC.

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Well, I am kind of "retired" too, at age 64 with a history of only TEACHING college chemistry over 30 years, the teaching experience has gone way down hill, particularly when student evaluations are now the norm regarding regarding retention, promotion, recruitment, NOT merit or years of teaching undergraduates. Being called a misogynist, racist, and worse in student evaluations because I ask all students to read the book and do a lot of homework problems, and ask all students to earn their grades in General Chemistry 1 and 2 got very tiresome.

Good luck with your efforts, but asking administration to change their views when they are held hostage by an admin department set up to enforce DEI on their campuses won't happen. The fact racist Hannah decided to go to Howard instead of accept UNC-CH offers was because conservatives on the outside and the board put up a stick, that exposed the rot on campus for all to see. It was not a faculty revolt who rose up and decided that person was a propagandist and not a real academic or qualified in her field to properly teach anything particularly American History.

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Why would someone who calls himself George Q. Tire-Biter ( Tyrebyter) "ask administration" anything? I imagine he might talk to donors to a College or to politicians about funding neo-marxist-charlatans or "race grifters". But a tire biter isn't as predictable as a brow beaten member of a doomed "Academy" to whom "the administration" has been DEI-fied. Cheer up! Hope someone needs ya! Hope someone feeds ya!! Now ('cause) you're 64!!! [Whooh!]

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Pathetic. You are older than that, you fool.

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Of course I'm older than 64. I was 18 years old when the Beatles did the song "When I'm 64", in 1967, on the Sargeant Peppers album. Bet you didn't get the reference you grouchy little twerp --- he said ad hominously. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTunqv1Xt4

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Classy....... LOL

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Perhaps not, but this character is a classic obnoxious troll. He needs to be discouraged from trolling.

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Now you're gossiping about me behind my back to the 64 year old chemist who seems to have given up. How "woke" of you. I liked Chemistry in 1967 where most of the course was about Stoichiometry --- Stoic balance among the stoicheons/elements of ancient Greek alchemy advanced from the ancient 4 stoicheons (air earth fire and water) to the 100 and some of Mendeleev's atomic table of elements. I got the 2nd highest mark among students from the Alberta "Tundra" in the departmental examinations that year. As to obnoxious, be careful with what judgment you judge --- little snot-nosed twerp. In my day, at your age, with your attitude, you would be missing more teeth than you have brains.

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Yeah, like your method will work....... LOL

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I’m not retired. So i can’t say anything - not if I want a pension

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Likewise.

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I wanted to comment on my experience as a septuagenerian in a state college major ing in English who fell into the "safe spaces" "phallocentric" Spivak, Derrida etc classes, including intersectionality, and I was mostly the grey-haired white guy who is portrayed as the enemy. My then-professor has a PhD in gender studies from an Ivy League school. I would like to say that I read the NYS monoclonal guidelines, and you fail to mention above that supplies are extremely limited so the recommendations involving certain groups are due to added risk. I don't see wher your argument has traction here. Try to keep to the higher ground so you don't shrink your following. Thank you.

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Not that I can claim to really understand this contribution from an "English major", but it strikes me that this comment sort of exemplifies the problem we are confronting. Sure, let's be intimidated by someone studying the humanities with a confusing argument that does not seem to make much sense, but carries with it some implicit threat that is irrelevant to the OP. Wow. Nice logic on display here. "Keep to the higher ground" means, basically, shut up and let the woke mob destroy STEM. Isn't that great advice? And coming from one of the disciplines that spawned this woke mind virus.

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1. Why would "a confusing argument" be intimidating ["... Let's be intimidated by..]?

2. Where is the "threat" in any argument, particularly a "confusing" one?

3. Quote: "Nice logic on display here. 'Keep to the higher ground' means, basically, shut up and let the woke mob destroy STEM. Isn't that great advice?" [You tell us! That was your "advice" not his. This "argument" is called a "straw man", where you put your words in his mouth and then knock down the "straw man" with your question. It is also called "gas lighting". KB]

4. Quote: "And coming from one of the disciplines that spawned this woke mind virus." [ This is called the "genetic fallacy". The genesis or generator of the argument bogusly "determines" whether or not the argument is good or bad, right or wrong, true or false. It also features the actually "woke" tendency to focus on groups such as "disciplines" rather than individuals like Ed.]

Actually "Ed" correctly noted the one very minor "weakness" in a geophysicist's otherwise excellent argument. Certain populations, with woke "emphasized" traits or characteristics, do have distinct and different medical vulnerabilities. One does "take the high ground" when noting the few exceptions to a general rule. And just because you dislike "wokesters" does not mean that they haven't influenced how you argue against them --- or even against an actual ally like Ed.

Kevin James Byrne

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KJB, you are obviously just a troll who everyone should ignore. You know your country is an international disgrace. Go away.

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Gadzooks Octavo! You're a living textbook of illogic. Now you've added the "ad hominem" (against the man --- er --- troll) fallacy and the "ad country" fallacy as well. Stay on, young blue amoeba and teach us some more fallacies, even though this is not your substack. Perhaps your illogic is a consequence of being a single blue-celled organism incongruously named 8. Let me guess. Your blurb says you are in a STEM field. Would that be engineering? The kind of engineering where you only need to know that "poop flows down hill", learnable by observation rather than logic? Keep up the good work. Plumbing is important and necessary work for, as Aristotle said, the mass of men prefer (illogical) lives more suitable to beasts. And beasts need their stalls cleaned and/or their toilets flushed into a suitable septic facility. For certainty:

ARISTOTLE: "Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts, but they get some ground for their view from the fact that many of those in high places share the tastes of Sardanapallus [a Persian King doomed by domesticity]. (The Politics Book I, Ch. 5. 1095b lines 19 - 22)"

So very good. All plumbers and beasts should ignore Socratics, because we're too poor to feed you and you beasts or plumbers have no use for logic.

KJB

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A more succinct way to put it is, put up or...

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What does the beast or the plumber have of a "succinct" nature?

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Here is a suggestion for you, KB. You seem to believe that there are no problems with the current "woke mind virus" in STEM, and perhaps no any other problems in STEM. Therefore, why not write an essay for Dorian Abbot of Heterodox STEM on this topic? Lay out your self-proclaimed superior reasoning, from your position as a Canuck trained as a "medical lab technician" out on the tundra, and let others read your "contribution".

If you need his email address, it is easy for a master of the internet such as yourself to find it. Or I can provide it for you.

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There is a problem with "the woke mind virus". You have it. You are illogical and have demonstrated several simple fallacies. Your teachers have been and are "woke". You learned from them. Ergo you have their "virus". I don't have "self proclaimed superior reasoning." I didn't invent the informal fallacies you have demonstrated. Aristotle and Socrates noted them circa 2400 years ago. I was not "Canuck trained". I was trained by pathologists and lab technologists of every race and ethnicity on the earth. Finally, I don't take the suggestions of irrational little twerps in order to "kiss the behinds" of their erstwhile "heroes" no matter their names. I take it that someone named Dorian Abbot was the anonymous author of the mostly intelligent essay which you call "this topic". But his topic was not "The illogic of a small blue Octave. (who has the woke virus and doesn't know it)."

KB

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Whatever. You are in no position to cast aspersions or lecture anyone, particularly on this topic.

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I am, too, in a "position" to note logical fallacies that you demonstrate and to lecture you on them. That's what substacks are about. This topic is your illogic. You may consider it an "aspersion" on your character for you, yourself, to demonstrate fallacies. But DOCILE people may learn to correct their errors. You, however, TWERP, are not "docile". The anonymous author's topic was about warning "faculties" about DEI encroaching on STEM disciplines. Totally different subjects. What is your faculty, twerp? Beastliness, plumbing or what? Aristotle tells me that I have to know my audience in order to get through to them with the sort of "noises" to which their tiny little ears, brains and intellects are accustomed. Do you know what an intellect is, twerp? An intellect is something that becomes whatever it thinks IN FORM, but not in matter. As Aristotle said:- We don't have stones in our souls. We have the form/ideas of a stone/calculi without the matter. You have "woke ideas" but do not have the logical skills to refute/elenchus such ideas.

KB

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Excellent points, thanks for writing this.

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I am way past "being respectful" to the DEI ideologues.

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OCTAVE: Whatever. You are in no position to cast aspersions or lecture anyone, particularly on this topic.

LECTURE

Aristotle [Ch. 3. Sophistical Refutations]: First we must grasp the number of aims entertained by those who argue as competitors and rivals to the death. These are five in number, refutation, FALLACY, paradox, solecism, and fifthly to reduce the opponent in the discussion to babbling-i.e. to constrain him TO REPEAT HIMSELF a number of times: or it is to produce the appearance of each of these things without the reality. For they choose if possible plainly to refute the other party, or as the second best to show that he is committing some FALLACY, or as a third best to lead him into paradox, or fourthly to reduce him to solecism, i.e. to make the answerer, in consequence of the argument, to use an ungrammatical expression; or, as a last resort, to MAKE HIM REPEAT HIMSELF.

OCTAVE: I can't be bothered with your nonsense. Write an essay, as I ADVISED YOU BEFORE.

COMMENT: The little blue Octavious Amoeba repeats himself, thereby demonstrating another thesis of Aristotle, in addition to his previous fallacies.

ADVICE: Never do what a "woke" idiot tells you to do. Never apologize to a woke idiot --- "idiot" (self-centred narcissistic being) as distinct from and contrary of/to a "patriot" (neighbor centred social being).

OCTAVE: You have no idea what "woke" even is, clearly.

REPLY: Derrick Bell was a civil rights lawyer and, eventually, the first tenured black law professor at Harvard University. After helping desegregate about 300 Mississippi schools and working tirelessly for black civil rights throughout the Martin Luther King Jr. 60s and into the 1970-es he decided/concluded that

BELL: "... racism is so deeply rooted in the makeup of American society that it has been able to reassert itself after each successive wave of reform aimed at eliminating it."

Just simply replace "racism" above with the word "crime". That works too, if one is a pessimist. Do it again with "sexism". Do it again with homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, ageism, fascism, naziism, communism, white supremacy, black power etc. etc. --- any "ism" what-so-ever. Woke is simply pessimistic name calling. Or if you ask the dogmatically inspired DEIsts:- Woke is advocacy for social justice and the rights of every oppressed category above cited.

In short and in sum:- "Woke" is class struggle Marxism, with more categories and classes than stupid Karl Marx's bourgeois-capitalists oppressing/exploiting proletarian-workers. Now it is White-Capitalist-Patriarchal-Supremacist-Males exploiting/oppressing BIPOC-socialist-anarchical-Oppressed-alphabet-gendered-goofs. That's all it is, little amoeba. It's name calling in order to get rid of people you don't like. It's the first fallacy mentioned by Aristotle before he got to Ch. 3 of The Sophistical Refutations, quoted above. The fallacy that "turns upon names alone" --- the most dull-witted fallacy for the dullest people in the history of the world ---- AMERICANS!

When Americans actually knew Aristotle, they became the greatest people and the greatest country in the world because Charles Carroll of Carrolton was the leading Roman Catholic scholar among the American Constitutionalists. He taught his colonial buddies to draft the American Constitution straight out of Book IV, Chapters 14 through 16 of Aristotle's Politics. Carroll was a Jesuit trained American scholar, when Aristotle was the only "philosopher" taught as a philosopher by the Jesuits and Thomas Aquinas (an Aristotelian) was the most important of (maybe?) 3 theologians taught by the Jesuits.

OCTAVE: And if you are a such a genius, why is your grammar so lousy?

REBUTTAL: The above is a "loaded hypothesis" fallacy. There are only 2 ways to argue logically from a hypothesis. You may affirm the antecedent proposition of any hypothesis in the 2nd (or minor) premise of a hypothetical syllogism. Incidentally the hypothesis, itself, is the major premise of a hypothetical syllogism. When one affirms the antecedent proposition of the hypothesis in the minor premise, then it is logically warranted to conclude the hypothetical syllogism with the consequent proposition of the hypothesis. The second logical way to argue from a hypothesis is to deny the consequent proposition of the hypothesis, after stating the hypothesis and then one is logically warranted to deny the antecedent proposition of the hypothesis in the conclusion of a hypothetical syllogism. But when one sticks a question (interrogative proposition) into the consequent proposition of a "loaded hypothesis", then one cannot logically deny the question. Thus the hypothesis becomes as "loaded" as the proverbial loaded question Q. "Have you stopped beating your significant-other yet?" If you answer yes, then you were a criminal. If you answer no, then you are still a criminal. Ergo "loaded question".

This is the actual "loaded hypothesis" of Octave, without the interrogative proposition in the consequent position of the hypothesis:-

IF you are such a genius THEN your grammar is lousy [hypothesis]

KB is a genius [Affirms antecedent]

Therefore his grammar is lousy! [Warranted conclusion; modus ponens] --- or ---

IF you are such a genius THEN your grammar is lousy [hypothesis]

KB's grammar is NOT lousy [denies consequent]

KB is NOT a genius. [Warranted conclusion; modus tollens]

In the end the little blue amoeba apparently "thinks" that geniuses are bad grammarians or that good grammarians cannot be geniuses. As to why denying antecedents and affirming consequents of hypotheses are fallacies, that is probably too far over an amoeba's little blue head.

OCTAVE: Are you a good candidate for MAID?

REPLY: That's the true "woke" Marxist spirit, kid. Kill your critics!

OCTAVE: It might appear so.

REBUTTAL: Only to "woke" little amoebas, such as you, Octavius-Killer.

And remember folks on this list. This little amoeba says that he is "on your side"! Can you imagine what the attitude of the other side actually is? It's worse than the little blue amoeba's position by far.

Kevin James "Joseph" Byrne

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