10-YEAR-OLD CANADIAN GIRL BECOMES youngest person to discover a supernova.
Archive for 2011
January 5, 2011
A NEW GROUP BLOG FROM PAJAMAS MEDIA: The Tatler.
UPDATE: Oops — this wasn’t supposed to go public until the 10th. As usual, I’m ahead of the curve! I guess I tattled on The Tatler . . . .
TOM SMITH ON SNOWPLOWGATE: Why not just abolish the NYC sanitation department? “If the argument is, some functions are too critical to public safety to put in private hands, then that is an argument against allowing them to be unionized. If unionized, then the state no longer has a monopoly on the power exercised by that arm, which is the whole idea of putting it in the public sphere. So if you can’t have private police forces running around, let’s say, then it makes no sense to have the monopolized force of the state colonized or even dominated by a union with interests frequently opposed to those of the public.”
January 4, 2011
AS A FOLLOWUP ON MY “DUCK AND COVER” PIECE, I should note that Ed Driscoll is pushing back a bit:
I agree that we should be discussing the topic. But the boomer-era left shouldn’t be able to turn on a dime after nearly a half-century of endlessly mocking nuclear war preparations to suddenly embracing the idea overnight without at least a few raised eyebrows. It’s very much akin to the way Bill Clinton suddenly waxed nostalgic for the Cold War era shortly after its conclusion helped to propel him into office. As Howard Dean once said, “I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy;” there seems to megatons worth on this topic on his side of the aisle.
Meanwhile, Moe Lane wants the end of history back:
What’s depressing is that I grew up in the tail end of the Cold War, and I remember well drawing overlapping circles on a map of the tri-State area and concluding that there wasn’t a chance in Hell that I could get far enough from the primary blast zones if the balloon ever went up**. I did not mind in the slightest when history appeared to end in 1991.
But history doesn’t end, dammit. And we need to address our lack of a Civil Defense program.
And Michael Lotus emails about the Duck and Cover film:
That video makes me proud to be an American. Seriously. I had never actually watched it before. It was made by people who were not cynics or pussies. They had just finished destroying Japan and Germany by aerial bombing. They knew it could happen to us. They acted like grownups about it. Getting under cover to avoid burns, flying glass and debris, was good advice then and it is good advice now. Thanks for posting.
Yeah, you watch those 1950 civil-defense films and you realize the pipe-smoking dad stockpiling supplies in the basement is probably a World War II vet who just a few years before had most likely either dropped bombs or had them dropped on him (or both). Kind of puts a different color on it.
UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails: “Glenn, you are right. I’m sure the Air Raids Precaution drills people in London had to go through in 1939 seemed absurd to many, but they soon were very useful indeed. Few people today can put themselves in the place of Civil Defense planners in 1950, and we forget how close WWII was to them. 9-11 is coming up on its tenth anniversary this year and I can still recall watching the Pentagon burn three miles away from me, very vividly. Mike got it right; the A-bomb of 1950 was just another damned thing to deal with to these guys.”
Plus, reader John Brunemeier writes: “My dad dropped bombs on Germany from a B-17, and yes I grew up in a home with a very well stocked bomb shelter. Our family of 6 could have stayed in it for six months without coming out. It even had a toilet.”
KANYE WEST: Not just boring, but racist. Too boring for me to notice the racism. Is that a plus, or a minus?
Meh. I’m so unexcited about this year’s music I never even opened my Grammy ballot. Aside from Anders Trentemoller’s new album, and The Smart Set, I found 2010 pretty disappointing.
SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Voter Concern About Economy Hits Highest Level In Over Two Years.
CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Adam Serwer: Journalistic Con Artist?
TODAY IN Broadcast Regulation.
REP. PETER KING vs. The New York Times.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Holder Uses New York Times to Tamper with New Black Panther Investigation.
MY LAW SCHOOL CLASSMATE GENE SPERLING gets paid a lot more than I do for Op-Eds.
UPDATE: Sperling, Daley to White House?
THE FORNICATION LAMP is lit.
LOSING WEIGHT by eating soup.
ASKING FOR READER HELP with the PJM Transparency Project.
JENNIFER RUBIN: The Size Of Government Matters.
It is noteworthy that the policy preferences that Brooks attributes (correctly) to Republicans all have to do with shifting money and control away from the public to the private sector (“a flatter, simpler tax code with lower corporate rates, a smaller debt burden, predictable regulations, affordable entitlements”), not simply redirecting the trillions that we already spend. Republicans’ formula for arousing energy, spurring social mobility and helping people to transform their lives is to limit the size of government and allow the public sector (with the benefits of sound money, predictable regulation, a reliable legal system and low taxes) to flourish; Democrats don’t buy that.
The reason the parties fight about the size of government is because it matters so much. It would be nice to imagine we can avoid that fight, but ignoring the growth of government is precisely what has landed us in the current predicament.
Read the whole thing.
WHEN IS A LOBBYIST not a lobbyist?
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, uptight moralists would be Bowdlerizing children’s classics. And they were right!
THE TEN MOST UNDERREPORTED STORIES OF 2010, plus one more.
AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.
PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH points out the hypocrisy.
THE LINGERING MYSTERY OF Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
WHERE COURAGE comes from. And where its critics are coming from.