Bettina Arndt has posted this on her Facebook page. The seven-syllable refrain of the feral mob on the associated video (0:30):

Liberal scum, go away

No second line, just that. Clearly even less bright than the feminists with the mental capacity to recall two lines of seven syllables.

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An excellent piece just published on TCW.

The subject of feminised workforces inevitably brings to mind Samantha Brick’s story of her attempt to start and run a company with an all-female workforce, which was critiqued by 6oodfella. Enjoy (video, 22:28).

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Our thanks to James for this (video, 5:09).

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A tip of the hat to the indefatigable Gary Costanza of AVfM for this.

Our thanks to Sean for this gem (video of JH-B, 14:37), broadcast this morning on talkRADIO. Julia on top form. There’s nobody quite like her. We’re long been big fans.

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It’s official. The world’s going to hell in a handcart (video, 1:12). Is nothing sacred? On the plus side, the big Jesse’s homage to John Cleese’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch in Monty Python’s Flying Circus is something to behold.

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A piece by Didi Tang in today’s Times:

Chinese students are used to vast amounts of homework but one teacher set the bar just a little too high.

She asked her class of nine year olds to count out 100 million grains of rice.

The task was supposed to help the children to grasp the concept of extremely large numbers. Instead it ended up with the teacher grasping the concept of extremely angry parents.

“How would you like us to count?” one incredulous parent inquired in a text message. “One by one,” Ms Su, the teacher, replied in a group chat to parents in the southern city of Foshan.

It was then pointed out that even at reasonable speed — counting a grain a second for eight hours a day — it would take about nine years for the children to complete the homework.

When another worried parent challenged the validity of the assignment, suggesting that 100 million grains would amount to an impractical eight tonnes of rice, Ms Su responded that they must have miscalculated the weight.

She then urged parents to supervise the count at home but agreed to forgo her request that the children carry the counted rice to school. She also gave them more time to complete the work, writing: “If you don’t have time tonight, you can complete the assignment this weekend.”

News of the unusual homework spread quickly on China’s social media and was widely ridiculed. Even state media waded in, with one official calling it “a teaching accident”.

“What’s most worrying is that the maths teacher herself had no idea of the concept of 100 million when she assigned the work,” an editorial in China Youth Daily said. Others suggested that it was symptomatic of the sometimes unreasonable demands placed on Chinese pupils.

Chinese students spend nearly three hours a day on homework, almost three times the global average. They can be asked to do highly repetitive work, such as copying text several hundred times.

You can subscribe to The Times here.

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Our thanks to Steve for this remarkable piece from the US. Extracts:

SALEM, Ore. — The discovery of a black Lab named Lucy led to the unravelling of a criminal case Monday against an Oregon man who had begun serving a 50-year prison sentence. Joshua Horner, a plumber from the central Oregon town of Redmond, was convicted on April 12, 2017, of sexual abuse of a minor.

In the trial, the complainant testified Horner had threatened to shoot her animals if she went to the police about the alleged molestation, and said she saw him shoot her dog, killing it, to make his point.

Six months after a jury convicted Horner in a verdict that was not unanimous, [J4MB emphasis] he asked the Oregon Innocence Project for help. The group took up his case.

When the group raised concerns in April about the case with Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel, he agreed to work with them…

“Lucy the dog was not shot. Lucy the dog is alive and well,” Hummel’s office said in a statement…

After Lucy was found, the complainant failed to attend a meeting in August to discuss her testimony, Hummel said. Last Wednesday, one of his investigators heard she was at a home near Redmond. When he pulled up to the driveway, she ran away…

Horner had been indicted under a previous district attorney, but the trial and conviction came under Hummel’s watch.

Hummel said in an email the issue of the dog being shot was raised for the first time during the trial, so there was no investigation to be done regarding it prior to trial, “and we had no credible reason to question the statement after it was made.” [J4MB: The man on trial denying he’d shot the dog was evidently not a “credible reason”, in contrast with the word of a female minor, in a case that was to lead to a 50-year prison sentence. And the issue of the dog being shot not being raised pre-trial didn’t raise suspicions about the girl’s reliability? It would be hard to invent a clearer story to illustrate that in matters of sexual abuse, men are presumed guilty, needing to prove their innocence.]

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A piece by Matthew Moore, Media Correspondent, in today’s Times:

The BBC is looking to attract more female, gay and ethnic minority contestants on Mastermind in a “creative refresh” of the long-running quiz show.

The diversity drive is part of a push to draw young viewers to the show, which was first broadcast in 1972 and is presented by John Humphrys, 75.

Women won the first three series of Mastermind but in recent years the later rounds have been dominated by men. Only four women have been crowned champion in the past 20 series.

The BBC’s plan to attract a broader range of contestants — and fears about being seen to dumb down the quiz — are revealed in a document distributed to television production companies.

Mastermind and Celebrity Mastermind have always been made by the BBC’s in-house studios but are being put out to competitive tender under new requirements to commission more from external producers.

“We wish to attract a wider and even more diverse audience and contestants for these series,” the document states. “We wish to explore how to cast a wider-ranging contestant pool attracting younger and older contestants, and wider diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability.”

Bidders should also submit proposals for using social media to boost the show’s appeal to young people. These could include ideas for enabling viewers at home to answer the questions digitally, the tender hints.

Any radical changes to Mastermind would prove controversial. It emerged this year that producers are rejecting contestants’ requests to be questioned on pop culture specialist subjects such as Blackadder and executives appear sensitive to claims that the show’s intellectual rigour is being compromised.

“The strength of Mastermind and Celebrity Mastermind lies in the fact that it’s a serious quiz which our audiences really value,” the tender states, making clear that the “precision of the questions” must be maintained.

Humphrys must also be retained as presenter. He has suggested that men tend to do better because they are “more nerdy and more capable of amassing sometimes useless facts”, while women are “more interested in the important things in life”.

Mastermind is not the only BBC quiz struggling to attract female contestants. Last month several former University Challenge winners said that women thought twice about applying because of fears of abuse on social media and articles about their appearance.

You can subscribe to The Times here.

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Our thanks to E for editing a three-hour-long show, broadcast last Thursday, into this (56:36). In the video description box we’ve put the times of individual contributions, along with links to their web pages, where available.

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