The week in higher education – 6 August 2015

The good, the bad and the offbeat: the academy through the lens of the national press

August 6, 2015
The week in higher education cartoon (6 August 2015)

Comments about Mexican immigrants widely seen as offensive have failed to dent Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions, but lawsuits over his failed for-profit university might. According to a report on the Vox website on 29 July, the entrepreneur will have to testify in court on 10 August over a class action lawsuit regarding Trump University, which charged up to $35,000 (£22,447) for business school classes between 2005 and 2010. Despite promotional materials suggesting that the real estate tycoon was heavily involved in the enterprise, Trump University “delivered neither Donald Trump nor a university”, according to Art Cohen, one of the plaintiffs. Some 800 former students have already received compensation, but further political embarrassment is expected as the legal saga rumbles on.


A “very aggressive” turkey that has “terrorised” a university campus has finally been captured. The wild bird, dubbed on social media Gobbles or, inexplicably, Dr Tom Tom, had evaded the clutches of authorities on the University of Michigan’s north campus since late June, featuring in a total of seven police reports last month, the Ann Arbor News reported on 30 July. The fearsome fowl had left staff and students trapped in academic buildings, and it had also attempted to board buses, the paper said. However, Gobbles was captured on 2 August and relocated to an animal sanctuary in southern Michigan. “I think the biggest thing is that we’re thankful the turkey and other people didn’t get hurt, and we don’t have any property damage as a result of it,” said a clearly relieved, and clearly underemployed, Diane Brown, from the university’s police department.


Working out “whodunnit” in an Agatha Christie detective story has become a little easier thanks to a mathematical formula created by academics, the Daily Mail reported on 3 August. The equation – k(r, δ, θ, c) = f{rk+δ+θ{PM}, c(3≤4.5} – might seem rather baffling for most armchair enthusiasts, but it lays out a clear set of rules that will lead to the killer, say academics at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Exeter. To find the killer (k), readers should pay close attention to the chapter in which each character is introduced (c): culprits always appear in the first half of the tale, and usually in the first fifth. Violent murders are normally committed by a man, while poisoners tend to be women, according to the academic analysis of nearly 30 different novels by the grande dame of crime fiction. But isn’t there a parenthesis missing from the equation? This research might not be as sophisticated and rigorous as it first appears.


A hitchhiking robot created by Canadian academics has been decapitated just two weeks into its voyage across America, The Guardian reported on 3 August. HitchBOT, which set off on its east-to-west road trip on 17 July, lost its head in an attack in Philadelphia on 1 August, the paper said. Created as an art project-cum-scientific experiment, the robot had previously crossed Canada in 26 days last summer, gaining internet celebrity thanks to the photographs that it had regularly posted on Twitter and Facebook. No photographs were taken of hitchBOT’s assailant, but its co-creator Frauke Zeller, of Ryerson University in Toronto, said that she was not interested in seeking justice for the dismembered bot. “We wish to remember the good times, and we encourage hitchBOT’s friends and fans to do the same,” Dr Zeller said.


Young people in Britain who have a “pending” or “discretionary” immigration status will be able to apply for student loans thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, The Daily Telegraph reported on 30 July. The blanket ban on students who did not have “indefinite leave to remain” in the UK or full British citizenship was disproportionate and could not be justified, said Baroness Hale of Richmond, deputy president of the Supreme Court. The judgment related specifically to 20-year-old Beaurish Tigere, from Zambia, who has lived in the UK since she was six. Although legally resident in the UK, she was unable to take up one of her five unconditional offers of a university place because of her immigration status. However, the ruling will apply to an estimated 600 to 1,000 young people each year who were previously hit by the restrictions introduced in 2012.

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Reader's comments (1)

There is a term in psychology referring to the unsuspecting bystanders who inadvertently get lured into becoming the tool and weapon of narcissists who set out to abuse their victims from afar and from behind the scenes: ¨flying monkeys¨ (clearly owing it's theme from the story of "The Wizard of Oz".) Through the flying monkeys the narcissist(s) relish in a flurry of ad hominem and psychological projection - always specific to their very own guilt denied being faced, while the newfound cult commits what's known as "cause stalking", or "gang stalking". This has become a very serious thing online and by the literature it does seem to end up driving the victims either insane or into psychological trauma, given that the harassment is coming from random people the individual doesn't personally know and could come from anywhere or anyone - which is exactly how the narcissists try to manipulate it to be as they lie, slander, and get great joy out of watching people attack the person they despise for them and under not only wrong beliefs - but specifically wrong, given that the narcissists themselves are the ones who are guilty of the story-line which they fed to the unsuspecting crowd. The cult then becomes emotionally invested into the affair, entirely engulfed in the story and spending time and effort out of their day and lives to stalk, harass, and try to harm the innocent individual, all the while believing themselves to be "heroic". The investment from the group members is precisely what the narcissist(s) desire of them, as once they've put in enough of their time and effort towards "the cause", they become entrapped in a fallacy called the "sunk-cost fallacy". The sunk-cost fallacy is the fallacy where we tend to not want to give up a belief or task or project due to having already invested so much into it (just as marketers online depend on, which is why they create "journeys" of landing pages and video-watching, so to get the user to invest enough time to where they just want to get the thing for sure so they get something out of it). Unfortunately this also has a psychological effect on the, now cult/gang members - they become emotionally invested into enforcing the story line narrative is "true", as that to even consider the person they're attacking to be "innocent" would have a huge hoard of implications of shame and guilt to be faced, of which the subconscious mind brings occasional "hints" of due to the fact that the subconscious mind has no filter and takes in all data. The problem is that the subconscious mind does not know time not sequence of events. It does not use logic, it only holds onto the data. It is specifically here that the most damage is done, as the individuals of the group then have a shared-blind-spot of denial which none of them will look at, and all of them will fight to ensure anything which reminds them of what they know subconsciously but don't wish to admit on a waking conscious level gets buried, shunned, silenced, mocked, trolled, and in many cases in history - even murdered. Anything and everything is fair-grounds to the flying monkeys who the narcissist has trained, and then that narcissist is at their peak-empowerment, since the people of their ego-centered and fallacy-based lie would then all aim to protect the false "dignity" of the narcissist(s) naturally without the narcissist(s) needing to do or say a thing. This happens far too much in society and historically, and I'm sure the reader can think of a time or two in history that they could see this clearly had been the case. In reference to one of those historical cases, I like to call this social fallacy of group narcissistic abuse denial - "the Anti-Christ consciousness", as it is exactly the psychological denial of the group in their projection of shames that had murdered Christ, and I do believe this was how Christ new what was going to happen to him and why he knew there was no way out of it. The people simply would never choose to see that they were not only wrong, but specifically wrong. I'm going to now state a list of good, positive actions that I took to commit myself to last year during the lock down. In reading it, I'd like for the reader to pay close attention to their emotions and what is felt. I will ask you afterwards what you believe that tone I wrote it in, sounds like to you. Simply by what emotion you feel I have in my tone in writing this, I can depict not only what you did last year, but what media you watch (since I watched them all), what beliefs you hold (since I know which media presented which narrative), the reader's political affiliation (*Note: I am from California, San Francisco Bay Area, and have never lived in a Republican state in my life.), and I can tell from the collection of deductive reasoning given above, what level of liability the reader is to the well-being of those around them. In the beginning of 2020 I learned from my friend (who is a Vedic Swami from India) that anti-biotics do not work on viruses. I asked him "Why?". I had no idea at that point that he had majored in biology in college. He responded by educating me on the fact that viruses are not bacteria. They are not fungi. They are inanimate proteins of DNA or RNA and are not "living beings". My world was flipped upside-down and I didn't believe him so I had to look it up myself. Not only was he right, but there was no argument I could find to say any different. That was the whole of the scientific consensus, always was, and there was never any scientist claiming otherwise - ever - so far as I could find. Since that defining moment I have read over 100+ peer reviewed science papers on virology and the human genome considering that viruses are solely and merely bits of DNA or RNA. I am a paying subscriber to 4 science journals and I am now a lifetime member of one private organization of doctors and scientists, I am now a part owner and initial investor for one true-news media company which had been formed solely because it's founder had seen the horrific gas-lighting of the science half of the public had begun to commit to irresponsibly and narcissistic in their specific tact and imposition onto the rights and freedoms of the whole of us without having any science to back up any of their claims. I've written 14 of what I've coined "Fact-Check Integrity Reviews", published each, to where I found that all but one of which had absolutely zero logic, and had been ridden with ad hominem fallacy, strawman fallacy, and red herring fallacy, and nearly every time, and in that order, then ending with the three again in reverse-order. Most of those reviews can be found published on The Corporate Wall on Medium: [https://medium.com/the-corporate-wall]. All of the reviews I did had multiple fallacies, with the one that made-the-cut barely standing up with integrity in it's logic and still - like the rest - needed at least to have corrections to the text made. The others though, needed to be redacted indefinitely. There was zero response by any of the acclaimed "fact-check organizations", meaning there was no accountability. Given that there was no accountability - there was no science, so much as dogmatic belief, making it a religion and with a cult as well who blindly believe the narrative without even having the integrity to read the science papers, and every excuse to falsely claim anything uncomfortable for them to look at as "wrong". If these factors here are already known then I solute the reader. But I won't just assume so, therefore, here are some easily verifiable facts the reader can and should verify - as the reader should have before if the elements had come across path: 1. Thanks to 42 US CODE 300aa-22, there is no liability for any vaccine manufacturer no matter what should happen to the people who take their vaccines. They themselves cannot be sued, nor blamed, nor criminally charged thanks to that law. The vaccine courts were erected due to that very-easy-to-read law, which the reader should look up to verify since it's very short and in simple proper English. And in the vaccine courts a false-identity is set up as a seat in the court filled by a member of the vaccine court establishment so as to not append blame on the manufacturers. 2. There is no science that goes to show that masks should be mandated or is at all needed for people who aren't showing symptoms. In fact, Dr. Fauci has said this. Dr. Birx has said this. The World Health Organization has said this and the Center for Disease Control has said this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MurJOfZzGqg] Therefore it's completely unjustified to enforce as a mandate, and is fascist to do so. 3. There's a good fair chance that every one willing to take the vaccine - is solely doing so from a place of not having informed consent, and not desiring to be informed. I make this claim given that those who speak the information I keep seeing solely arguing against taking it. While those who argue for taking it have zero data and zero information in their arguments. Here's a walkthrough I made to show you how to query on the CDC website for the deaths of the Pzizer and Moderna vaccines: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n8OCkE7txE&t=350s]. Well, I'll leave it at that. But tell me, how does the reader feel after reading that? And how does the reader feel about my tone? I think the factors stated earlier are self explanatory at this point. The opposite of integrity, is narcissistic projection of that which I term the "Anti-Christ Consciousness". Are you the Anti-Christ? Possibly. But no worry - I have the decency of researching for myself before ever gambling to punish the innocent. Oh real quickly I should add: it is a ten year prison sentence to "fake" like you're a doctor. I am not a doctor. Also, I highly doubt anyone who made a video trying to warn you and while claiming to be a doctor - was at all faking it. Most likely they all were actually just doctors, in case you thought a video or so had been at all "fake". I would say there's a higher chance that any who would claim that without looking to do the research is merely projecting their fears and insecurities. Gas-lighting themselves.

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