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How do we relate to our ancestors who did things that we would and do not do, for example hold slaves or express views about racial differences we find abhorrent? The impulse nowadays is to react to our ancestors who lived in the past and who produced us as unacceptable versions of ourselves —and to show this we frequently feel we must take down their statues and re-name buildings and institutions. This is a form of colonialism of time rather than place. The past is always different than the present, which is why we see it as the past, whether better or worse. Yet it is part of us and made us who we are. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative thought is structurally different from liberal. Conservative thought defines actions that all individuals must take, and therefore is absolutist. Liberal thought focuses on individuals, their desires and motives, and therefore is relativist, allowing many valid courses of action. Liberalism, which defines the modern Western state, is like a credenza that allows many cubbyholes, each of which can be filled by a conservatism. Conservatism is intolerant of other conservatisms, so only liberalism can serve as the overstructure of many; any conservatism can threaten to expand outwards to take over the whole. Yet another current threat to the liberal over-structure is Perverted Liberalism (PL), which uses the vocabulary of liberalism but attempts to take over its relativist structure like a conservatism. The goal of PL is however not to change the world, it is to force expressions of guilt and contrition on the part of those its adepts see as the more powerful. Because the victories of PL are victories of words only, it has taken root in the temple of words, academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The admissions process at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis is both like and unlike the admissions process at US civilian schools. It is similar in that the institution reports a low admission rate as evidence of its high quality, and dissimilar in that it inflates the number of real applicants by about a factor of four to achieve the appearance of this selectivity. It is like civilian schools in awarding slots to non-white racial minorities and recruited athletes, and unlike them in that these are categories that determine the level of academic standards applicants must meet rather than parts of a holistic decision process. It is like civilian schools in that applicants know they will take classes that are for the most part identical to classes at civilian universities and receive a bachelor's degree upon graduation, yet unlike them in that graduates are guaranteed employment for at least five years in the Navy or Marine Corps. It is unlike civilian schools in its strong "pull factor" of zero cost to students; the whole cost of about a half a million dollars per student over four years is borne by taxpayers, despite the fact that much cheaper commissioning pipelines produce 80% of new officers. Finally. admission is not by the Admissions Board, which only labels applicants "qualified" or not; it is the military brass which decide who receives this free-to-students education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics nowadays have invented many phrases for which they demand widespread acceptance that do not accurately represent reality, or which make no sense when we consider them closely. Prime among these is the concept of “sexual assault,” which has made its way into state laws and the UCMJ since its coinage in the 1960s and 1970s and is now a mainstay of training on college campuses. This concept is flawed because it includes all sexual actions under the rubric of the noun “assault,” as if we spoke of “driving aggression” rather than “aggressive driving,” to color all driving with the possibility of aggression. It is simply not true that sexuality is nothing but one more form aggression, and that all sex is potentially aggression if it is perceived by one partner as such. Another false coinage we are asked to accept is the notion that men “objectivize” women. In fact few men want to sleep with or get an erotic charge from objects; if anything the issue seems to be focus on physical details. Then there is the widely repeated assertion that “gender is assigned at birth.” Rather than debating whether or not this is so we should ask whether the concept itself makes sense. Assigned? By what entity? Just at birth? These are examples of linguistic over-reach, the attempt to change the world with words rather than letting a change in the way we see the world (Kuhn’s paradigm shift) produce corresponding words in a more gradual way that most of us can accept. Just because we hear these phrases all the time from professional wordsmith academics with axes to grind, we need not feel constrained to accept them if they are not accurate representations of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant paradigm nowadays for understanding male sexuality is derived from Kinsey's assumption that men can be classified as individuals with specific scores on a scale, scores that predict whether future partners will be male or female. Each man is defined by an essence, homo- or heterosexual or somewhere in between. However this is an incorrect view of male sexuality, because it makes us unable to say why a man is attracted to or has sex with a specific person: the same person can be attractive or unattrative depending on circumstances, and he can act or not act on his inclination depending on circumstances. The more correct view of male sexuality is thus of 'fly' and 'no-fly' zones, which understands male sexuality as defined by variable situations, not a score of the individual in all situations. This conception allows us to avoid the theoretical mistakes of the current assault on 'sexual assault.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US military today is full of problems, ranging from its corrosive and destructive campaign ostensibly targeting sexual assault but actually designed to satisfy politicians, to the rampant malfeasance of numerous commanders removed from their posts. These problems are the result of the military's too-great reliance on self-serving notions like 'character' and on the personal nature of command in the military, as well as the fact that the military acts even within its ranks by top-down force, not discussion and rationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the nascent vocabulary of transgender theory. What are the implications of separating 'sex' from 'gender' and such locutions as someone 'being a woman in the body of a man'? It suggests that this vocabulary is problematic and based on a false view that I alone can control the vocabulary others use to refer to me. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An innovative form of clinical training has been a successful and popular component of the MD undergraduate program in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia since 2004. The Integrated Community Clerkship Program is an example of a longitudinal integrated clerkship that integrates student clinical experience and ensures continuity of student contact with patients. The program offers year 3 medical students an alternative to traditional teaching hospital rotations. The current annual cohort of 20 students is selected from a pool of applicants. Launched in Chilliwack, BC, a largely rural community of 80 000, the Integrated Community Clerkship Program is now operating in six different communities in the province. Students learn from the opportunities afforded by long-term relationships with patients, preceptors, and health care team members. Since the launch of the program, students have been found to perform academically as well as their traditionally trained counterparts, and to demonstrate strong procedural and problem-solving skills. Although to date most integrated clerkship graduates have tended to choose family medicine, any program choice is open to them, as residency match results for 2006 to 2012 indicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A personal narrative is presented in which the author discusses the death of his brother from AIDS in the 1990s, and compares family mementos such as photographs to the social importance of historical artifacts such as carved ivory from Afghanistan, mummies from Egypt, and jewelry from dead people.

The article comments on the Service Academies in the U.S. It states that the U.S. military academies keep up the simulacrum of living, Victoriana in a way that even the European military academies have largely abandoned. The American academies which house all students together, forbid marriage or indeed sex of any sort on their grounds. It also states that the small number of the officer corps produced by the academies is extremely expensive to taxpayers.

The article presents a discussion of the differences between civilian and military worlds as seen through the U.S. Naval Academy, adapted from the book "Why Liberals and Conservatives Clash," By Bruce Fleming.

The Weinberger Doctrine of 1984, for example, considered by many strategists the template of the first Gulf War, is both drawn from and cites "Clausewitz." Widely held to have summarized the lessons of the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger's six points for committing troops called for broad public support before engagement and a clear definition of objectives, things that were presumably lacking in the case of Vietnam. Weinberger invoked Clausewitz to justify the necessity of defining objectives clearly: "No one starts a war or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war, and how he intends to conduct it."

Examines the value of literary studies. Contrasts between wisdom and knowledge paradigms; Emphasis of reductionism in religion; Impact of literature on social life; Definition of radical monadicity; Nature of the nineteenth-century literary studies; Use of the study of contemporary novels as basis for a university degree.

Discusses the question of the reliability of the governess in the novella 'The Turn of the Screw,' by Henry James. View of both the governess' reactions and the ghosts as related halves of a particular world-view or perceptual paradigm; Evidence that both the housekeeper and governess in the story are both floundering about in silence.

Contends that Chinua Achebe and Joseph Conrad are guilty of using a definition of one group through unequal reference to another. Essentializing of Africa in Conrad's `Heart of Darkness'; Essentializing of Europe in Achebe's `Things Fall Apart'; A temporality in Achebe's criticism of Conrad; Racism in Conrad's writing; Similarities and differences between the work of Achebe and Conrad.

Describes Volker Schlondorff's film adaptation of `Young Torless,' by Robert Musil. Emphasis on sadism and confused sexuality; Characters; Plot; Styles of translations; Interpretations.

Presents a reply to the letter to the editor on the article on the misuse of Clausewitz work published in the June 2004 issue.

Health professions the world over value various competencies in their practitioners that are not easily captured by academic measures of performance. As a result, many programs have begun using multiple mini-interviews (MMIs) to facilitate the selection of candidates who are most likely to demonstrate and further develop such qualities. In this twelve-tips article, the authors offer evidence- and experience-based advice regarding how to construct an MMI that is fit for purpose. The tips are provided chronologically, offering guidance regarding how one might conceptualize their goals for creating an MMI, how to establish a database of stations that are context appropriate, and how to prepare both candidates and examiners for their task. While MMIs have been shown to have utility in many instances, the authors urge caution against over-generalization by stressing the importance of post-MMI considerations including data monitoring and integration between one's admissions philosophy and one's curricular efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]