shooting oneself in the foot

The Brits turn hard left and veer into the stupid lane:

The Beginning Of The End For British Shale Gas

Amid the ruckus of Great Britain’s reckless Brexit saga, one might not have noticed the ongoing environmental battle that could put a sudden end to shale gas development in the UK. While Britain’s energy security does not have any direct links to Brexit – its hydrocarbon production went into decline in 2000 and has been falling ever since, although the mid-2010s evidenced a stabilization of output – the UK High Court decision over the nation’s shale gas projects might deal a painful blow to the little hope British producers had to kick-start something new.

Meanwhile, US university-level education continues to prove its own worthlessness:

Camille Paglia Can’t Say That
Art students are trying to get the social critic fired from a job she has held for three decades.

For more than 30 years, the critic Camille Paglia has taught at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Now a faction of art-school censors wants her fired for sharing wrong opinions on matters of sex, gender identity, and sexual assault.

“Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color,” an online petition declares. “If, due to tenure, it is absolutely illegal to remove her, then the University must at least offer alternate sections of the classes she teaches, instead taught by professors who respect transgender students and survivors of sexual assault.” Regardless, the students behind the petition want her banned from holding speaking events or selling books on campus. In their telling, her ideas “are not merely ‘controversial,’ they are dangerous.”

People have been talking for some time now about how the UK has been going down a darkly Orwellian road, but the above-linked Paglia article affirms that the US has its very own Orwell problem. The state of US institutions truly saddens me. If I were living in the States with kids, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend that they go to college. Seems like a goddamn waste these days, what with all the ideological brainwashing, even in the hard sciences.

ADDENDUM: this might restore my faith in US higher education.