Ralston college, headquartered in Savannah,Georgia, was just recently established, with the goal of providing the rigorous, classical education which has all but disappeared from today’s Universities.
Below is an interesting diagnosis of the disintegration of Cambridge University, so bad that it prompted David Butterfield, one of their Classics professors to resign (said colleagues, friends, and family “nobody does that”) and join the Ralston faculty. *
According to his dissection and diagnosis, things are bad, perhaps fatally bad at Cambridge.*
I’ve always thought him pretty funny, and he can certainly deliver a line well. After the video finished my YouTube naturally recommended a video for me. For some reason I watched and thought it was pretty good. Since it’s an open thread, I thought I’d post it.
I like today’s Hugh Grant much better than the suave, vulnerable, romcom heartthrob he started as. He’s now a craggy, sly old fox, using his insider Brit / Oxford background to full advantage.
Check out his recent films with Guy Ritche: “The Man from UNCLE,” “The Gentlemen,” and “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.”
Not great cinema, but stacked casts and cracking good fun.
According to his dissection and diagnosis, things are bad, perhaps fatally bad at Cambridge.*
==
Decline is a choice. The article tells us what is happening, but not the names of those responsible for the decisions he laments. Article is of limited utility.
started as an ecclesiastical institutions like many of the ivies, now it’s more like hogwarts
his latest role in Heretic, is genuinely creepy
an interesting side note about Operation Fortune, it was slated to premier in the spring of 2022, one of Jason Statham’s entertaining although forgetable action adventures, Hugh Grant plays a character somewhat like fellow Cantabridgian
Hugh Laurie played in the Night Manager, perhaps not a villain but a middleman for sundry interests, but after February of that year, they decided to postpone the premier, the villains were entirely the wrong sort,
I see its roots in Apple’s iconic 1984 Macintosh Superbowl ad and Steve Jobs’ “Think different” catchphrases — copied in Jaguar’s verb-adjective versions such as “Create exuberant.” However, these are mated to Total Woke and Zoolander tone-deafness.
A bunch of futuristically dressed diverse “edgy” types” are strutting about, apparently, on the surface of Mars. No prestige automobiles or precision engineering in sight. What do they think they are selling and to whom? Where is that sleek beautiful Jaguar icon?
The new logo is clever in that it is in today’s fashionably bland lowercase except the “GU.” Which I guess is a callback to the British three-syllable pronunciation — “ja-GYU-ar.”
The ad, needless to say, has been savaged on the internet.
The Jaguar people coyly hint this is an opening salvo of some sort which will become clear later. Some commentators agree that it is a prank of some sort.
However, according to the Jaguar Marketing Director:
_______________________________
We’re on a transformative journey of our own. Driven by a belief in diversity, inclusion, creativity, policy and, most importantly, action. We’ve established over 15 DEI groups such as Pride, which are here tonight, and Women in Engineering and Neurodiversity Matters…
At Jaguar we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community because we know that originality and creativity thrives in spaces where people are free to be themselves.
Jaguar Marketing has been assimilated by the Woke Borg.
they had 15 dei groups!, i’m reminded of when homer designed a car for his brother played by danny devito
it was robert mccall’s car in the equalizer, and wasn’t it bonds at one point, its like defacing a cultural monument
As just one indicator of how bad things have gotten at Cambridge, the article Butterfield wrote for the “Spectator” had a graph demonstrating how, during the last 15 years, there has been a five fold increase in the number of students who claim to have some sort of disability, with the greatest increase being in mental or learning disorders (6,000 “disabled” students, roughly one in every four students) which apparently entitles these “disabled” students to various remedial actions which, I’d imagine, results in their having a less rigorous curriculum.*
I think I was the first person she encountered as she came in the front way. I had gone around some road closed signs and had come in the back way through the wreckage so I sent her over there. The area with above ground power is not technically in Mirrormont as MM proper has buried utilities.
Wow. Even The Guardian is savaging the Jaguar ad:
___________________________________
–Marina Hyde, “Hats off to Jaguar’s ‘inclusive’ new branding: now people of all backgrounds won’t buy its cars”
The article notes that a big rebranding campaign takes months to prepare, costing however many millions. Who knew Trump would be reelected and the world was swinging anti-Woke?
Wonderful timing.
It’s like the hippie production of “Hair” debuted just after Reagan won in 1980.
The Jaguar ad campaign is the sort of thing that happens to organizations living in left-wing bubbles.
Chases Eagles, my wife grew up in amongst the trees, but that’s a problem for W. Washington– as the suburbs have expanded into the forests, people want to live among the trees– but it comes with risks– not only winter storms, but forest fires as well.
Which one are you? I understand if you don’t want to identify yourself– I wish the internet didn’t have the crazy element, so I could know and see who I’m communicating with.
My sister lives in Olympia and they did lose power momentarily (probably a switching station) but no damage.
Glad you’re OK. Houses can be rebuilt.
Get New York Post emails on their articles.
The emails are sometimes better than the articles – example:
ICC: An International Court of Criminals
The International Criminal Court is proving that it’s really a court of criminals. It issued morally sick arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The warrants are essentially kidnapping threats, should either of the men travel outside Israel. And they’re based on entirely bogus, antisemitic charges against the Jewish state for having the temerity to defend itself against Hamas terrorists. Are Americans next?
The Senate should join the House in passing the bipartisan Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which imposes sanctions on ICC employees if they pursue trumped-up charges like these. After all, if ICC officials can restrict the leader of a democracy like Israel (and the US?) from traveling abroad, the US and Israel should restrict them — and maybe the heads of the ICC nations that permit such perversity, too. Heck, maybe it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for the Trump Justice Department to mull racketeering charges against this criminal enterprise.
No damage here, although a tree did fall in the forest behind our home. Mercifully, the weather was not very cold, and we stayed relatively comfortable by wearing warm clothes. The fifteen-hour nights are a pain. We don’t have cell phones, so it was sit in the glow of a lantern and listen to a battery powered radio until bedtime.
We have a gas stove and were able to prepare hot food. Sure glad the all-electric craze hasn’t taken over here in WA……yet.
The bad thing was no coffee – we have a Keurig. So, it was off to Mickey Ds for coffee every morning. And what huge lines they had. But we enjoyed listening to music and news on our car radio while waiting.
I wish some of the people who want to switch to wind and solar, and go all electric were forced to live with frequent blackouts and no power for days at a time. That’s the future if they have their way.
I’ve been asking why the utilities in Puget Sound have not been putting their main lines underground since we move here 32 years ago. All new developments now have underground eclectic lines. Had they began putting a few miles of line underground every year since 1992, storms like this one would not have caused such widespread outages. There are people in the south Sound that will not have power back until Sunday or later.
Such an experience reinforces the truth that we are very, very dependent on electricity. Protecting our grids should be a a major national security issue.
Welcome back, J.J.!
I fear for our power grids.
Brian E, I am not on tv. My house had no damage. I have one largish tree in my driveway that fell from the far side of the neighbor’s driveway. Mirrormont is at least 50 years old because my parents considered it when we first moved here. We lived on Mercer Island however. I told the reporter I wasn’t there during the storm as I live on the Hood Canal. She asked about the winds out here that day. Almost dead calm. Then I sent her to where she could get good destruction pictures. I did tell her I thought the 2006 event was worse.
In 2006 my house was hit by a cedar tree but it broke up hitting various retaining walls and bounced off a 6×8 picture window. I saw on tv tonight some destruction in Samamish. The owner was lamenting that it would take a fleet of PSE trucks to get his power on. In 2006 there was nothing going on in Mirrormont until day seven. Then a fleet of PSE trucks and others (some Canadians) swept through the area and fixed everything all at once. Dozens of trucks.
During the day Qwest (now CenturyLink) powered the local switch with a generator truck about 8-4. The batteries at the switch would last until about 8pm. Then no phone until 8am. No cell coverage either. The broadband lasted about 2 days and then went down until day seven.
My brother in law, who went to diamond cutting school and became a jeweler and then went back to school and became a power engineer for Seattle City Light says buried utilities have their own unique problems.
When my father lay dying, the power went out at his house. As my brother and I were the total hospice team, my stress level was pretty high before we lost power. The power company showed up and said the main feeder for that area was unground and had failed on my parent’s property. Fortunately it was not under the beautiful red brick driveway but actually was under a creek that ran down the side the driveway. Whew. Didn’t want to tell my mother, who was not dealing very well with my father dying, that her driveway was going get ripped up.
For some reason, my father had covered that portion of the creek with plywood and beauty bark. The power company guy, who is unaware of the creek, walks out into this patch of bark and announces the fault is here. Whereupon the by now rotten plywood gives way and dumps the guy in the creek.
The house is on a cliff above the sea overlooking an offshore rock used by seals for giving birth. The air was swirling with eagles and vultures going for the afterbirths.
Father dying, mother hysterical, seals pupping, eagles swirling, power guy in the creek.
Does it seem to anyone besides me that Trump is appointing an unusually large number of women? I hope that these are in no way AA or DEI picks.
Dax, You do know they make up half of the population. 🙂 I count 10– not all cabinet positions.
One of the controversial picks is Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who supported legislation while a representative making it easier for workers to unionize. We have become the big tent party.
Brian E
We have become the big tent party.
Any black Americans in that “big tent” yet? 😉
huxley, I thought you would enjoy how Steve Hayward, at Power Line, describes that Jaguar ad: “Jaguar’s bizarre decision to transition from a luxury car brand to a Teletubbies car company.”
I haven’t read the posts by Sundance, and I don’t think he is a nut about everything, but I’m wondering just who he would select.
We seem to have a lot of pundits complaining about Trump’s picks, but not coming up with alternatives that are better, for whatever values of “better” they think are important.
Are they making the perfect the enemy of the good enough?
I am glad to hear all y’all in Washington have emerged from the storm and power problems safely. We are moving, in the spring, to a house being built for us in western NC. It will have a whole-house generator.
Here is an alarming report about people still living in tents in mountain towns in NC, while many dozens of FEMA RV trailers sit empty where they are staged in Hickory, NC, a short drive away.
Regarding the tent, a NPA could look at the last election.
The Jaguar ad campaign is the sort of thing that happens to organizations living in left-wing bubbles.
==
The managing director of Jaguar has expressed his fury at people cutting up the ad. Great attitude.
==
Videos of public remarks by the marketing director at Jaguar make plain the man is (1) queer as a $3 bill or (2) managed over the course of his life to develop mannerisms redolent of $3 bills.
==
Recall Robert Conquest: bureaucratic behavior can be explained if you assume the corporation is under the control of a secret cabal of its enemies.
Hugh Grant has turned out to be a much more interesting person and better actor than I would have thought.
Also, he’s an excellent example of how you can’t necessarily predict how children will look based on their parents. His mom is maybe a little cute, and he’s got her eyes, and dad is a little handsome but it all came together splendidly in their son.
Grant has specifically eschewed plastic surgery, which is one of the things that’s interesting about him.
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Ralston college, headquartered in Savannah,Georgia, was just recently established, with the goal of providing the rigorous, classical education which has all but disappeared from today’s Universities.
Below is an interesting diagnosis of the disintegration of Cambridge University, so bad that it prompted David Butterfield, one of their Classics professors to resign (said colleagues, friends, and family “nobody does that”) and join the Ralston faculty. *
According to his dissection and diagnosis, things are bad, perhaps fatally bad at Cambridge.*
* See https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/decline-and-fall-how-university-education-became-infantilised/
I’ve always thought him pretty funny, and he can certainly deliver a line well. After the video finished my YouTube naturally recommended a video for me. For some reason I watched and thought it was pretty good. Since it’s an open thread, I thought I’d post it.
Roger Scruton: Why Intellectuals are Mostly Left
https://youtu.be/FYo4KMhUx9c?si=bPcUtqT8PVZx9Xn4
I like today’s Hugh Grant much better than the suave, vulnerable, romcom heartthrob he started as. He’s now a craggy, sly old fox, using his insider Brit / Oxford background to full advantage.
Check out his recent films with Guy Ritche: “The Man from UNCLE,” “The Gentlemen,” and “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.”
Not great cinema, but stacked casts and cracking good fun.
According to his dissection and diagnosis, things are bad, perhaps fatally bad at Cambridge.*
==
Decline is a choice. The article tells us what is happening, but not the names of those responsible for the decisions he laments. Article is of limited utility.
started as an ecclesiastical institutions like many of the ivies, now it’s more like hogwarts
his latest role in Heretic, is genuinely creepy
an interesting side note about Operation Fortune, it was slated to premier in the spring of 2022, one of Jason Statham’s entertaining although forgetable action adventures, Hugh Grant plays a character somewhat like fellow Cantabridgian
Hugh Laurie played in the Night Manager, perhaps not a villain but a middleman for sundry interests, but after February of that year, they decided to postpone the premier, the villains were entirely the wrong sort,
Re: Jaguar commercial
… must be seen to be believed.
–“Jaguar | Copy Nothing”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtFIrqhfng
I see its roots in Apple’s iconic 1984 Macintosh Superbowl ad and Steve Jobs’ “Think different” catchphrases — copied in Jaguar’s verb-adjective versions such as “Create exuberant.” However, these are mated to Total Woke and Zoolander tone-deafness.
A bunch of futuristically dressed diverse “edgy” types” are strutting about, apparently, on the surface of Mars. No prestige automobiles or precision engineering in sight. What do they think they are selling and to whom? Where is that sleek beautiful Jaguar icon?
The new logo is clever in that it is in today’s fashionably bland lowercase except the “GU.” Which I guess is a callback to the British three-syllable pronunciation — “ja-GYU-ar.”
The ad, needless to say, has been savaged on the internet.
The Jaguar people coyly hint this is an opening salvo of some sort which will become clear later. Some commentators agree that it is a prank of some sort.
However, according to the Jaguar Marketing Director:
_______________________________
We’re on a transformative journey of our own. Driven by a belief in diversity, inclusion, creativity, policy and, most importantly, action. We’ve established over 15 DEI groups such as Pride, which are here tonight, and Women in Engineering and Neurodiversity Matters…
At Jaguar we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community because we know that originality and creativity thrives in spaces where people are free to be themselves.
–Santino Pietrosanti, UK Brand Director at Jaguar Land Rover
https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/jaguar-marketing-directors-comments-celebrating-commitment-dei-resurface-after-woke-rebrand
________________________________________
Jaguar Marketing has been assimilated by the Woke Borg.
they had 15 dei groups!, i’m reminded of when homer designed a car for his brother played by danny devito
it was robert mccall’s car in the equalizer, and wasn’t it bonds at one point, its like defacing a cultural monument
As just one indicator of how bad things have gotten at Cambridge, the article Butterfield wrote for the “Spectator” had a graph demonstrating how, during the last 15 years, there has been a five fold increase in the number of students who claim to have some sort of disability, with the greatest increase being in mental or learning disorders (6,000 “disabled” students, roughly one in every four students) which apparently entitles these “disabled” students to various remedial actions which, I’d imagine, results in their having a less rigorous curriculum.*
* See https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/decline-and-fall-how-university-education-became-infantilised/
Here is the reporter that talked to me yesterday:
https://komonews.com/news/local/mirrormont-boil-order-bomb-cyclone-weather-damage-power-lines-southeast-of-issaquah-washington-state-windy-conditions-cleanup-efforts-water-quality#
I think I was the first person she encountered as she came in the front way. I had gone around some road closed signs and had come in the back way through the wreckage so I sent her over there. The area with above ground power is not technically in Mirrormont as MM proper has buried utilities.
Wow. Even The Guardian is savaging the Jaguar ad:
___________________________________
–Marina Hyde, “Hats off to Jaguar’s ‘inclusive’ new branding: now people of all backgrounds won’t buy its cars”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/22/jaguar-new-branding-cars-donald-trump
___________________________________
The article notes that a big rebranding campaign takes months to prepare, costing however many millions. Who knew Trump would be reelected and the world was swinging anti-Woke?
Wonderful timing.
It’s like the hippie production of “Hair” debuted just after Reagan won in 1980.
The Jaguar ad campaign is the sort of thing that happens to organizations living in left-wing bubbles.
across the pond
https://x.com/AlisonSomin/status/1860003117150138757
I think they need to take the chapel off georgetown, just for starters,
they [Jaguar] had 15 dei groups!,
I noticed that absurdity too.
It’s delicious to imagine the 15 (more to come) identities competing with each other for dominance in the victim status hierarchy.
Which is, no doubt, why there are 15+ DEI groups.
Sundance’s followup posts about Bondi dispose me unfavorably towards her nomination.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/11/21/president-trump-nominates-pam-bondi-for-u-s-attorney-general-the-deep-swamp-smiles/
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/11/22/ag-nominee-pam-bondi-and-chief-of-staff-susie-wiles-ballard-partners-law-firm-lobbyists/#more-266557
Chases Eagles, my wife grew up in amongst the trees, but that’s a problem for W. Washington– as the suburbs have expanded into the forests, people want to live among the trees– but it comes with risks– not only winter storms, but forest fires as well.
Which one are you? I understand if you don’t want to identify yourself– I wish the internet didn’t have the crazy element, so I could know and see who I’m communicating with.
My sister lives in Olympia and they did lose power momentarily (probably a switching station) but no damage.
Glad you’re OK. Houses can be rebuilt.
Get New York Post emails on their articles.
The emails are sometimes better than the articles – example:
Here’s the article it links to: ICC fake charges against Netanyahu and Gallant prove US must never recognize the court
Finally back online after 54 hours without power.
No damage here, although a tree did fall in the forest behind our home. Mercifully, the weather was not very cold, and we stayed relatively comfortable by wearing warm clothes. The fifteen-hour nights are a pain. We don’t have cell phones, so it was sit in the glow of a lantern and listen to a battery powered radio until bedtime.
We have a gas stove and were able to prepare hot food. Sure glad the all-electric craze hasn’t taken over here in WA……yet.
The bad thing was no coffee – we have a Keurig. So, it was off to Mickey Ds for coffee every morning. And what huge lines they had. But we enjoyed listening to music and news on our car radio while waiting.
I wish some of the people who want to switch to wind and solar, and go all electric were forced to live with frequent blackouts and no power for days at a time. That’s the future if they have their way.
I’ve been asking why the utilities in Puget Sound have not been putting their main lines underground since we move here 32 years ago. All new developments now have underground eclectic lines. Had they began putting a few miles of line underground every year since 1992, storms like this one would not have caused such widespread outages. There are people in the south Sound that will not have power back until Sunday or later.
Such an experience reinforces the truth that we are very, very dependent on electricity. Protecting our grids should be a a major national security issue.
Welcome back, J.J.!
I fear for our power grids.
Brian E, I am not on tv. My house had no damage. I have one largish tree in my driveway that fell from the far side of the neighbor’s driveway. Mirrormont is at least 50 years old because my parents considered it when we first moved here. We lived on Mercer Island however. I told the reporter I wasn’t there during the storm as I live on the Hood Canal. She asked about the winds out here that day. Almost dead calm. Then I sent her to where she could get good destruction pictures. I did tell her I thought the 2006 event was worse.
In 2006 my house was hit by a cedar tree but it broke up hitting various retaining walls and bounced off a 6×8 picture window. I saw on tv tonight some destruction in Samamish. The owner was lamenting that it would take a fleet of PSE trucks to get his power on. In 2006 there was nothing going on in Mirrormont until day seven. Then a fleet of PSE trucks and others (some Canadians) swept through the area and fixed everything all at once. Dozens of trucks.
During the day Qwest (now CenturyLink) powered the local switch with a generator truck about 8-4. The batteries at the switch would last until about 8pm. Then no phone until 8am. No cell coverage either. The broadband lasted about 2 days and then went down until day seven.
My brother in law, who went to diamond cutting school and became a jeweler and then went back to school and became a power engineer for Seattle City Light says buried utilities have their own unique problems.
When my father lay dying, the power went out at his house. As my brother and I were the total hospice team, my stress level was pretty high before we lost power. The power company showed up and said the main feeder for that area was unground and had failed on my parent’s property. Fortunately it was not under the beautiful red brick driveway but actually was under a creek that ran down the side the driveway. Whew. Didn’t want to tell my mother, who was not dealing very well with my father dying, that her driveway was going get ripped up.
For some reason, my father had covered that portion of the creek with plywood and beauty bark. The power company guy, who is unaware of the creek, walks out into this patch of bark and announces the fault is here. Whereupon the by now rotten plywood gives way and dumps the guy in the creek.
The house is on a cliff above the sea overlooking an offshore rock used by seals for giving birth. The air was swirling with eagles and vultures going for the afterbirths.
Father dying, mother hysterical, seals pupping, eagles swirling, power guy in the creek.
Does it seem to anyone besides me that Trump is appointing an unusually large number of women? I hope that these are in no way AA or DEI picks.
Dax, You do know they make up half of the population. 🙂 I count 10– not all cabinet positions.
One of the controversial picks is Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who supported legislation while a representative making it easier for workers to unionize. We have become the big tent party.
Brian E
Any black Americans in that “big tent” yet? 😉
huxley, I thought you would enjoy how Steve Hayward, at Power Line, describes that Jaguar ad: “Jaguar’s bizarre decision to transition from a luxury car brand to a Teletubbies car company.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/11/the-week-in-pictures-transition-edition-2.php
I haven’t read the posts by Sundance, and I don’t think he is a nut about everything, but I’m wondering just who he would select.
We seem to have a lot of pundits complaining about Trump’s picks, but not coming up with alternatives that are better, for whatever values of “better” they think are important.
Are they making the perfect the enemy of the good enough?
I am glad to hear all y’all in Washington have emerged from the storm and power problems safely. We are moving, in the spring, to a house being built for us in western NC. It will have a whole-house generator.
Here is an alarming report about people still living in tents in mountain towns in NC, while many dozens of FEMA RV trailers sit empty where they are staged in Hickory, NC, a short drive away.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/11/21/fema-rv-trailers-sit-empty-while-homeless-nc-hurricane-victims-face-snow-and-freezing-temps-report-1504567/
Regarding the tent, a NPA could look at the last election.
The Jaguar ad campaign is the sort of thing that happens to organizations living in left-wing bubbles.
==
The managing director of Jaguar has expressed his fury at people cutting up the ad. Great attitude.
==
Videos of public remarks by the marketing director at Jaguar make plain the man is (1) queer as a $3 bill or (2) managed over the course of his life to develop mannerisms redolent of $3 bills.
==
Recall Robert Conquest: bureaucratic behavior can be explained if you assume the corporation is under the control of a secret cabal of its enemies.
Hugh Grant has turned out to be a much more interesting person and better actor than I would have thought.
Also, he’s an excellent example of how you can’t necessarily predict how children will look based on their parents. His mom is maybe a little cute, and he’s got her eyes, and dad is a little handsome but it all came together splendidly in their son.
Grant has specifically eschewed plastic surgery, which is one of the things that’s interesting about him.