An unaccustomed backdrop

 

You may remember how on December 8th I spotted a bright red balsam gourd fruit hanging on a prickly pear cactus pad. As I walked to the end of that photo session a different red came into sight, namely that of our Subaru Outback. After I got close to the car I noticed that a tiny fly, probably no more than a quarter of an inch long (6mm), had landed on it. I approached using my macro lens with a ring flash around its far end. The flash got within inches of the fly, which despite the closeness obligingly stayed put while I took five pictures from varying angles. Bugguide.net so far has provided no more identification than that this is a member of the family Muscidae, known as house flies—even if this tiny one was outdoors.

 

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If you want recent examples of how close academia in English-speaking countries has been coming to the dystopian society George Orwell described in his novel 1984, you need only read the January 4th article “Reaping Postmodernism’s Violent Whirlwind.” The author, Prof. Frances Widdowson, was fired from her position at a Canadian college for raising questions like “How should researchers deal with the historical circumstance of some indigenous groups pushing earlier inhabitants out of their territories?” In the article she gives details of her own harrowing experience with mob mentality. She also recounts what happened to a physics professor at another institution. In that case, his university paid an outside “expert” psychiatrist to diagnose the professor. Not surprisingly, the paid psychiatrist concluded the professor was “mentally deranged, dangerous, and deserving of forcible removal from the university”—despite the fact that the psychiatrist never even met with the professor. That’s all too reminiscent of the way the communist dictators in the Soviet Union used to have political dissidents locked up in insane asylums.

People, wake up to what’s going on! You can read the full article on the Minding the Campus website.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman