Doofus Of The Day #1,082

 

Today's award goes to the Astronomy Department of Cornell University in New York.

Physicists at MIT and SUNY Stony Brook recently announced findings that the total surface area of two black holes was maintained after the two entities merged. While this research was a welcome confirmation of both Stephen Hawking’s work and the theory of general relativity, it failed to address a crucial matter: what were its racial implications?

That is a lacuna that an astronomy course at Cornell University aims to prevent. “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos” asks the question, “Is there a connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness?” Anyone familiar with academia’s racial monomania knows the answer: of course there is! Though “conventional wisdom,” according to the catalog description of “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos,” holds that the “‘black’ in black holes has nothing to do with race,” astronomy professor Nicholas Battaglia and comparative literature professor Parisa Vaziri know better.

. . .

The humanities and much of the social sciences have been beyond parody and beyond shame for a long time. What’s different about “Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos” is its co-listing in an actual science department. The course fulfills Cornell’s science distribution requirement, touching as it does on such concepts as the electromagnetic spectrum.

. . .

Today’s academic charlatanism consists in part in mistaking rhetoric for knowledge and words for things. This sleight of hand is particularly prevalent in matters relating to race ... Seeing specters of racism everywhere, the racial avengers are tearing down every institution associated with Western civilization, simply because of its “whiteness.” Science had stood as a guard against such metaphorical, magical thinking. Bit by bit, it is succumbing.

There's more at the link.

Such a course may help racial activists become even more incompetent, irrelevant and incomprehensible than they are already, unlikely though that sounds.  However, I fail to see how it will help astronomers understand one whit more about their field of study, or make any meaningful contribution whatsoever to the study of the universe.  What are they supposed to do after taking this course?  Reclassify "black holes" as "rainbow-deficient voids"?  Demand that white dwarf stars be referred to henceforth as melanin-deprived and vertically challenged?  Hypothesize that spacecraft may one day be propelled by unicorn farts and sparkles?

However, I do have one scientific experiment to propose, linked directly to this new course.  Let's drop everyone at Cornell who had anything to do with designing, approving and presenting this course into the nearest black hole, and watch as their academic intersectionality takes on an appropriate gravitas - or, in this case, gravity.  That might be highly informative!

Peter