American Loon #2184: Ray Rooney, jr.

The digital media editor for the American Family Association, Ray Rooney, Jr., is the kind of person who goes out of his way to warn us that “we’re surrounded by venomous LGBT activists, antagonistic atheists, vitriolic academics, Christian bashers, God haters, Muslim sympathizers,...

Read the full lunacy: #2184: Ray Rooney, jr. Encyclopedia of American Loons

American Loon #2028: Jan Morgan

Jan Morgan is a blogger, NRA activist (she told Bryan Fischer that the solution to mass shootings in America is simply to declare that gun-free zones are unconstitutional), and owner of the Gun Cave Indoor Shooting Range in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 2014 she rose to some fame by...

Read the full lunacy: #2028: Jan Morgan Encyclopedia of American Loons

American Loon #2023: Daryn Moran

Ok, so birtherism might be considered a bit stale in 2018, but the prevalence of birtherism some years ago is still an important data point in the explanation of certain more current events. Besides, we have no reason to think Daryn Moran has acquired any basic critical thinking skills since...

Read the full lunacy: #2023: Daryn Moran Encyclopedia of American Loons

American Loon #2002: Austin Miles

Rev. Austin Miles is a paranoid idiot writing for Alan Keyes’s website Renew America. Miles is a 1950s throwback red-scare conspiracy theorist and the kind of person who, in 2014, would assert that Obama were going to cancel the 2016 elections as part of his plot to turn America into...

Read the full lunacy: #2002: Austin Miles Encyclopedia of American Loons

American Loon #1894: G. Gordon Liddy

Although he is mostly a ridiculous and toothless source of hilarity these days, George Gordon Battle Liddy is something of a legend, and certainly deserves an entry. Liddy is a conservative talk radio host, ex-convict and disbarred lawyer, but used to be a an FBI agent, operative in Nixon’s 1972 election campaign, and was one of the Watergate “plumbers”...

Read the full lunacy: #1894: G. Gordon Liddy Encyclopedia of American Loons

American Loon #1893: Colin Liddell

Colin Liddell is a reasonably central alt-right figure who edits (with Andy Nowicki) and regularly contributes to Alternative Right, where he argues for instance that European colonialism of Africa should be seen as a “vote of confidence” in the “Black man”:
“Sadly, the Africans are terrible...

Read the full lunacy: #1893: Colin Liddell Encyclopedia of American Loons

The mental contortions of The Kid

Last time, I told you all about how The Kid wrote that Hillary Clinton’s pneumonia was the result of a failure of the pneumococcal vaccine. He wrote:

Despite her proclaiming that “#vaccineswork”, the pneumonia vaccine obviously did not work for her in that instance assuming she even followed the CDC’s advice as she wanted everybody […]

Read more at: The mental contortions of The Kid by Reuben

A revealing map of the world’s most and least ethnically diverse countries - The Washington Post

Ethnicity, like race, is a social construct, but it's still a construct with significant implications for the world. How people perceive ethnicity, both their own and that of others, can be tough to measure, particularly given that it's so subjective. So how do you study it?

When five economists and social scientists set out to measure ethnic diversity for a landmark 2002 paper for the Harvard Institute of Economic Research, they started by comparing data from an array of different sources: national censuses, Encyclopedia Britannica, the CIA, Minority Rights Group International and a 1998 study called "Ethnic Groups Worldwide." They looked for consistence and inconsistency in the reports to determine what data set would be most reliable and complete. Because data sources such as censuses or surveys are self-reported – in other words, people are classified how they ask to be classified – the ethnic group data reflects how people see themselves, not how they're categorized by outsiders. Those results measured 650 ethnic groups in 190 countries....

Read the full story: A revealing map of the world’s most and least ethnically diverse countries - The Washington Post

Steiner Waldorf Schools Part 3. The problem of racism

This post deals with the most contentious and serious aspect of Steiner schools, racism. It makes, in my view, a convincing argument that Steiner’s undoubtedly racist views remain a problem today. They can’t be dismissed simply by saying that Steiner was a child of his times.

This post was written by an ex-Steiner school parent, known on the web as @ThetisMercurio.

The essay supplies yet more reasons to think that Steiner schools are all based on pseudo science: Steiner’s Spiritual Science. It is important that we understand these schools because funding of these schools is imminent, through Michael Gove’s Free Schools policy.

Extracts from works by Olav Hammer and Peter Staudenmaier are included with the permission of the authors.

Read on: Steiner Waldorf Schools Part 3. The problem of racism

Fairy-tale fallout - Education - The Listener

Te Ra Waldorf School has mastered the art of first impressions. “Oh my God, you hear this all the time,” says former staff member Sophie Perkins. “You feel like you’re coming home. It has this very peaceful feeling about it. It is church-like, almost. They do it so well.”

If you visit in the morning, you’ll smell fresh bread being baked. The school bell really is a bell – not an alarm tone piped through speakers. You won’t see kids scoffing chippies or plugged into iPods, or wearing branded clothing. No: Te Ra is a place of greenery, of airy wooden buildings, a place for kids to be kids.

But two years ago, parents at this Steiner school discovered a darker side to the writings of Rudolf Steiner. They found what Perkins now considers to be “evil, evil white racism”.

Over an extraordinary few months, parents and staff left the school in droves. The school has no clear record of numbers. But those we talked to say the racism – and the way the school “vilified” those who spoke out against it – drove out six of Te Ra’s 35 staff members and more than 29 families. It was a huge hit for the roll, which is now 140.

Perkins spent more than five years working at Te Ra and sent her children there. “We’ve managed to get ourselves out of something,” she says. “It’s like being woken up – I felt like Snow White, I really did – I felt like the poisoned apple came out of my mouth and I woke up.”

Last month an official investigation commissioned by the Ministry of Education...

Read the read of the article here: Fairy-tale fallout - Education - The Listener

(Thanks to @lecanardnoir for the heads-up)