(0838) Morning all. Health issue at this end (dental this time). Shall do as much as I can.
7. TDS today … Kings College, London
“Avid readers of the Daily Sceptic might recall my occasional accounts of surrealism and insanity I withstood at the hands of my former employers at King’s College London … every now and then, a former colleague sends me a freshly cultured sample from the still-smouldering wreckage of the Department of War Studies – or what one former colleague dubbed the Department of Woke Studies – and I experience a familiar fever: the chills of bureaucratic delirium, the sweats of astonishment, the shakes of uncontrollable laughter.
The latest specimen is a set of grading guidelines entitled ‘Inclusive Assessment and Closing Awarding Gaps’, a document so transcendentally absurd that it should be preserved in a museum of educational decline….”
6. To everything, there is a season
The near impossibility of getting the truth of any matter out, in order to be understood across the land, demands strategies which by definition must be flawed, due to conflicting agendas, differing paths to that point where everyone, on one day, is in one room and all are hearing the same message.
Then come, later, their wildly diverging interpretations of it. We see it in the Sherlock Holmes stories, that divergence of interpretation. How does an online pundit, sometimes tagged “alt”, approach the divergence and the human tendency to look down on the interpretation of others as not worthy of consideration, as it is not his?
Decades ago in my young teaching days, I brought in a system of evaluation of someone’s presentation in two parts … firstly, the other pupils could give their opinions, I then gave mine, the two were combined, though not equally. One girl asked if she could speak with me privately outside … outside she said that she rejected this trial system as the others, particularly her namesake friend, was not in any position to evaluate her work, plus all sorts of personal rivalries could come into it.
I said the idea was that other pupils would need to listen and think, instead of just awaiting their turn. She said yes, commendable (not that word actually but that’s what she meant) but if this mark was going into the record next to her name, and she had gone to all the trouble she had in preparing (she was the star pupil you’d have gathered by now), then … dot dot dot.
I said she was right in this. It was not going in the record … she relaxed but then doubled down and said she did not want the other Rebecca evaluating her work … there were reasons I was not aware of. I agreed with that. The recess bell went, I dropped the idea. My feeling now is thank goodness she was in the class, otherwise I could have caused a major issue.
Now another tale … Creedence Clearwater Revival. Most of the age which listened to that band realised just what a classy outfit it was. True, as with Mark Knopfler, the star was Jon Fogerty … writer, vocals, lead guitar.
And as Fogerty put to the test after the acrimonious end of the band had begun, when he demanded they each submitted a song, in answer to their claims of his highhandedness … and after he had humiliated them (in their eyes) by showing up their inabilities by thus demanding, I feel, now, that he was out of order. Yes, he was the star, as Susie was in the Bangles but Knopfler, Fogerty, Hoffs needed to understand that it wasn’t just them producing that sound … it was the mix of how each added to the sound … for example, the drums, bass, rhythm in I Put A Spell On You … which created the sound, not just Fogerty.
And that was reflected in the album Zombie after he went solo … as with so many stars, they do lose something in the mix, it was nowhere near as good, because it really did need all those elements combined in that particular mix. And I’m sure someone will criticise that I linked to a reaction video, not to the Woodstock performance alone, on the grounds that the audience reaction is just as much part of the mix … so yes, the star Rebecca in that classroom was right … but so was the interest shown by the other pupils … that could not be altogether ditched … often a fellow contributor brings something to the mix …
… and in the end, the right mix, the fertile ground, is where the truth can germinate, not killed off by rival angles … and yes, I am moving towards something unpopular to post … you know me by now.
Some time back, IYE I think … forgive my now shocking memory … dropped a Grifty on us about Andy (not ours here) and the first part was par for the course … since then, I’ve discussed with a few people the Airmiles-VG thing, agreeing that 17 is hardly paedo, esp. as she opted to do it … but I also saw that he, in this case, had not bothered to watch that Grifty episode because the VG thing was not the central matter. No, the central matter, with receipts in the second half, was all about the daughters, plus Fergie herself. Now unless you understand that we’re not speaking 17 here but something far darker … well … enough.
There’s a 14 year old in the States, last night our time, who vehemently spoke, on X, of anyone under 18 being a child, no matter what. Someone said she was too young to know … which was an interesting double-edged argument. This post is not specifically about this issue or Biden or even of that Mexican model who was videoed outside a building, screaming that “they” were “eating humans in there”. She was disappeared that night, never seen again. With what comes next below, I can well believe they were.
Which brings us to something Toodles said:
