Friday, December 23, 2016

Proof that a new ice age has already started

Lawrence Solomon: Proof that a new ice age has already started is stronger than ever, and we couldn’t be less prepared

“The New Little Ice Age Has Started.” This is the unambiguous title of a new study from one of the world’s most prestigious scientific institutions, the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg. “The average temperature around the globe will fall by about 1.5 C when we enter the deep cooling phase of the Little Ice Age, expected in the year 2060,” the study states. “The cooling phase will last for about 45-65 years, for four to six 11-year cycles of the Sun, after which on the Earth, at the beginning of the 22nd century, will begin the new, next quasi-bicentennial cycle of warming.” 
... An overheated planet has never been a threat, say climate skeptics, not today, not ever in human history. An underheated planet, in contrast, is a threat humans have repeatedly faced over the last millennium, and now we’re due again.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Private school gender politics, Part II - Names are named

Christie Blatchford: Posh Vancouver school places staff under gag order after teacher fired
Fraser Academy, the expensive Vancouver private school where last month a teacher was fired after making allegedly “triggering” remarks to a Grade 12 law class, has put its staff under a gag order.
Maureen Steltman, the school head, told Postmedia in a brief emailed statement the school “does not comment on personnel issues, even when we take issue with public inaccuracies.”  ...
Christie documents a history of similar abuses by this tyrannical school head-mistress, closing with:
... As for the teacher who was dismissed last month, he received a notice this week from the Teacher Regulation Branch, telling him the Fraser Academy has “provided a report about your conduct.”  He is so crushed and distraught, he said, he may voluntarily surrender his teaching certificate.
Nice! I hope that teacher can summon the nerve (and cash) to take Fraser Academy to court for wrongful dismissal and publicly expose their insanity.   If he identified himself perhaps he could get some crowd funding from, say, The Rebel.  I'd be willing to chip in.  Or, (I hate to even suggest such a thing) failing that take the bastards to the BC Human Rights Tribunal (no cost for complainants) - on second thought, those 'social justice' morons would likely side with the school.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Gender politics infecting private schools

Christie Blatchford: B.C. teacher fired for having the wrong opinion
A teacher at a posh private school in British Columbia was fired last month after making an innocuous comment about abortion to his Grade 12 law class.
Though there is no way of knowing, since discipline matters are shrouded in secrecy, it may be the first time a Canadian teacher has been fired not amid allegations of impropriety, but for having the wrong opinion.
... Before classes even started last fall, teachers underwent serious “gender training” given by QMUNITY, an organization for LGBTQQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and two-spirit) people. Teachers were told in no uncertain terms, for instance, that “no one is 100-per-cent male or female” and that everyone is somewhere on the “gender spectrum.”
... Unsurprisingly, students at the school, where $30,000-a-year tuition buys small classes, regularly say “I’m so triggered” and are allowed to walk out of class. 
... What happened to the teacher over the ensuing few days sounds like something out of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China, where people were subjected to what were known as ideological struggle sessions, forced to “confess” to various imagined sins before large crowds, and roundly denounced.  
... Postmedia is not identifying the school at the teacher’s request. “They torched me,” he said, “but I’m reluctant to damage the brand … So many kids who would otherwise fall through the cracks … are valued and helped here,” he said.
That teacher should be encouraged to name names.  The school and it's administrators need to be identified, named and shamed. This idiocy needs to be put down. The student who complained sounds like she suffers a mental illness - an illness likely contracted in her Queer studies classes. Given that the school is in Vancouver it is highly possible that much of the gender identity nonsense originates with the likes of Dr. Mary Bryson, the radically queer UBC "gender studies" professor who Christie wrote about in connection with Jordan Peterson's troubles .

And, as it stands, if anyone needs a "safe space" in that school, it's the regular teachers. They need protection from sick students and their enabling administrators.