Archive for 2014
August 3, 2014
ROGER KIMBALL: A Lesson From DownUnder:
I write from an idyllic spot on the Great Ocean Road, a couple hours outside Melbourne on the way way to Adelaide. A vast expanse of spotless ocean opens out below me, and there’s nary a ship or illegal-immigrant-bearing boat in sight. That been happening mostly up by Christmas Island, an Australia territory in the Indian Ocean. Hordes of indigents from Sri Lanka, India, and elsewhere had been crowding on to something that floats and making their way to Christmas Island, if not the Australian mainland itself, and, one ashore, sought out the nearest welfare agency for their first check. It was not dissimilar to what’s been happening on the Southern border of the United States, except, alas, there is no great body of water to impede the eager welfare seekers.
The Aussies, under the enlightened leadership of Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, seem to be well on the way to solving the problem. The key is way they call “off shore processing.” They is nabbing the chaps before they set foot onto your sovereign territory. Do not, I heard Prime Minister Abbott say on television last night, do not get on a boat and try to come here illegally. It won’t work. Just like President Obama, right? Strong leadership from a man who has his own country’s vital interests at heart . . . (just kidding).
If people know it won’t work, they won’t try. If they expect amnesty, they will.
STANDING UP TO DEMOCRATIC RACISM: What Do You Mean, ‘Our’ Children, Congressman?
MEANWHILE, IN ASIA: In Slap At China, Japan Gives Vietnam Six Naval Patrol Ships.
ASHE SCHOW ON THE LATEST COLLEGE CRAZE: Thought experiment: Let’s reverse the sexes in this story about drunk shaming.
These upstanding citizens take photos of women after they have passed out, drawing crude Images on their face, arms and legs with markers or posing next to them in suggestive ways.
These men completely degrade these women while they don’t have the situational awareness to respond or defend themselves.
Is this not worthy of feminist outrage?
Well you can stop being outraged, because the sexes in this story are actually reversed.
Using the hashtag #CantHang, college women are doing the above shaming to men.
But of course there’s no outrage there right? I mean, who cares if this kind of stuff happens on college campuses, so long as it’s happening to men, am I right, feminists?
If it weren’t for double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY. Even when it’s barrelfishing.
IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: Leaked Memo Gives Away Dems’ “Extreme Weather” Talking Points.
FUNNY/SAD: Obama On Presidential Signing Statements.
THEY’RE LOOKING FOR EXCUSES TO HATE THE JEWS, BECAUSE, WELL, THEY ALREADY HATE THE JEWS: Krauthammer: World’s Anti-Semitic Reaction to Gaza ‘Orwellian.’ But it’s not a two-minute hate. It’s closer to a two-millennium hate.
REPORT FROM KENTUCKY: McConnell, Grimes Race Gets Raucous Down on the Farm.
August 2, 2014
SURELY NOT. YOU DON’T TUG ON SUPERMAN’S CAPE. Allison Grimes, Challenging Biden For Position Of Most Gaffe-Ridden Democrat.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Be Lucky. It’s not new, but it’s pretty good advice.
ERIC S. RAYMOND: Science Fiction and the damaging effects of literary status envy.
VOYAGER 1, THE LITTLE SPACECRAFT THAT COULD: Original 5-year mission is on year 37. “Not bad for vintage technology that has just 70 kilobytes of memory on board; a 16 gigabyte iPhone 5 has more than 240,000 times that amount.” Yeah, but people could write lean code back then.
SO IN LIGHT OF MY FITBIT REVIEW, I thought I should mention that there’s a similar gadget — the Pavlok — that will administer an electric shock to get you moving. I’m not sure if it’s a parody or not, a problem that seems increasingly common these days.
WHY, HOWEVER COULD THAT HAVE HAPPENED? The crusade against Iraq War supporters has forgotten someone: Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama used a similar line of attack on Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary campaign:
[People] should ask themselves: Who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right, and who got it wrong?
And yet less than two weeks after his election, Obama made the person who was doggedly wrong on the “most important foreign policy decision” in a generation his secretary of State.
That convenient amnesia is exactly what is going to happen in 2016, when many of those who are willing to shout “baby killer” at Paul Wolfowitz will make it their full-time job to elect Hillary Clinton commander in chief. Clinton has given a totally implausible account of her evolving views on Iraq, even as she continues her hard-line hawkishness. Her entire career has been peppered with urging presidents to bomb, whether the target was Serbia in the ’90s or Libya and Syria this decade.
I also predict that Obama’s supporters won’t be focusing on his right/wrong-call ratio much . . . .
HMM: Statins May Speed Wound Healing. Hmm. This research seems a little thin: Suggestive that further studies would be worthwhile, but little more.
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THIS IS NOT A BIG SURPRISE: For paralyzed men, sexual function just as important as walking. Happily, the technology to fix things is advancing.
CLAIM: Free Mobile Data Plans Are Going to Crush the Startup Economy. “What all of this zero rating activity is setting up is a mobile internet that looks a lot more like cable TV than our wide open Internet. . . . Soon, a startup will have to negotiate a zero rating plan before launching because mobile app customers will be trained to only use apps that are zero rated on their network.”
USING YOUR EAR to track your heart.
WELL, THIS IS COMFORTING: Ebola Virus Is Outpacing Efforts to Control It, World Health Body Warns.