Transmillennial

The newly 'recognized' Turning Point USA UNL chapter have immediately put paid to speculation they might be any different than the other chapters of the alt-right campus freak show, by recruiting the unsavory Benny Johnson as their first speaker. Benjamin Arthur Johnson graduated from the University of Iowa in 2009. Although it's been variously reported he also has a degree in Organic Chemistry, U. Iowa seems to think he only graduated in Psychology . Since he was an honors student, I hoped to find the thesis he is supposed to have written; running that through a plagiarism checker might be a laugh riot. Unfortunately, it seems not to be in their digital repository. Johnson commenced his career with a listicle-laced gala performance of promiscuous plagiarism at Buzzfeed, which led to his firing. He stole from no fewer than 41 articles. Then, after a brief break to let the scandal die down, he got a job at IJR Review . The man has no shame; a hate click, he claims,...

Last October 1, a friend and colleague who inhabits the office next to mine, and who happens to be, ahem, somewhat right of center -- but I like him anyway, even though he's a Yankees fan -- banged on my office door, and said I'd been called out on Coby Mach's radio show, which is a low-rent local version of Rush Limbaugh. I think his exact words were 'what have you done now?' I was mystified. He said a 'retired airforce general' had reported me to the FBI, CIA (?!) and Board of Regents. I asked why? He said I had issued death threats to students. He recited some of what he'd heard, and damn it, it was the Mikado! Yes, this vicious little piece by society offenders William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. And then I realized. it was my version of "As some day it may happen.." I posted on my Facebook page two weeks previously. Apparently some right-wing loon has been patrolling my facebook page and thinks W.S. Gilbert was a terroris...

By now you've probably heard of the 20 paper, partially-successful hoax pulled by Peter Boghossian (clue right there!), James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose. If you can stand the self-congratulatory tone, it's described here . I don't have a lot to say about it that hasn't already been said, but here are my thoughts 1. Boy, do these people have time on their hands. I waste a lot of time myself, but time to generate 20 bogus papers to prove a point? Gosh, couldn't they have done something more useful with that time -- say, go down to their local park and pick up trash? 2. And it's not much of a point. Ever since I've been in academia, it's been a truism that if you select a bad enough journal, you can publish your laundry list, even in science. In what they call Grievance Studies , well, it's not my field, and I haven't devoted any time to studying it (see point 1), but I imagine with a bit of verbosity you can get away with murder. And things ...