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Archive for 2014
October 8, 2014
HORSE, MEET BARN DOOR: European Leaders Scramble to Upgrade Response to Ebola Crisis. Well, okay, it’s not quite horse/barn door territory, but acting a month ago would have been a lot better.
UPDATE: New York hospital officials assure they are ready for Ebola outbreak after first U.S. patient dies.
Plus: Ebola decontamination crew describes ‘eerie’ experience.
ER, BECAUSE THEY FUDGE THE NUMBERS ON EVERYTHING? Liz Peek: Why The White House Fudged The Numbers On Student Loans.
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: For some Ferguson whites, racial fault lines exposed by shooting come as a surprise. “I didn’t have any problems with anybody or any color, and all of a sudden it feels like we are being held responsible for something that’s not our fault. . . . I don’t get it.”
TERROR: British Jihadi Plot Caught By MI5.
Related: Stop jihadi Britons returning to UK, say Londoners as ‘Islamic terror plot’ is smashed. “Three out of four Londoners believe Britons who have gone to Iraq or Syria to fight with extremist groups should be banned from returning to the UK, a new poll reveals today. The YouGov survey found women in particular take a hard line on refusing jihadists back into the country.” So they have Security Moms in Britain, too, I guess.
FLOP? THE MOVIE WAS GOOD AND THE BOOK WAS BETTER: Doomsday Machines. “Fail-Safe was a flop, but it’s much smarter about nuclear war than Dr. Strangelove.”
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Female high school teacher in Austin fired, accused of sexually assaulting student.
IN THE VILLAGE VOICE, a surprisingly sympathetic piece on knife rights.
Related: New York’s Gravity Knife Prosecutions Are Unjust, And New York Knows It.
TEXAS DEPUTY WHO WAS IN PATIENT’S APARTMENT now transported after showing Ebola symptoms.
UPDATE: This story suggests the risk is quite low. Well, let’s hope so. Better safe than sorry, though.
MERCEDES UNVEILS a self-driving truck. “It never gets tired. It’s always 100 percent and sharp. It’s never angry; it’s never distracted.”
On the other hand, it can’t be bargained with, can’t be reasoned with, and it doesn’t feel pity or remorse.
AMERICAN OFFICIALDOM IS MADE UP OF PANICKY PANTYWAISTS.
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader G.L. Snodgrass, Certain Rules.
PERSONALLY, I’M LEANING TOWARD “NO.” Should Industrial Robots Be Able to Hurt Their Human Coworkers? Though at least “accidental robot strike” would be a 21st-century sort of death.
JOE PAPPALARDO REPORTS FROM DALLAS: When Ebola Comes To Your Town.
OIKOPHOBIA IN ACTION: Jesse Walker: I think I accidentally started an urban legend. My bad.
Someone once said that if a spooky legend catches on, it says something true about the anxieties of the people who believe and repeat the tale, even if it says absolutely nothing true about the subject of the story itself. My yarn may be more funny than scary—that’s what I was aiming for, anyway—but the idea that people would prohibit a harmless children’s book is still pretty frightening. And it’s not hard to imagine what underlying worries might be at work here.
Many educated elites live in fear of Bible-thumping troglodytes haunting the hinterlands, some great redneck beast slouching towards Washington to make Sarah Palin president. Book-banning stories are tailor made to fit that terror. Palin herself had to deal with rumors in 2008 that she had fired a librarian who wouldn’t remove offensive texts from the shelves. The Guardian once ran an Amanda Marcotte editorial under the headline “The Tea Party moves to ban books.” The editorial contained exactly zero examples of Tea Partiers trying to ban anything.
There really are crusaders out there whose fear of demons leads them to try to suppress speech. Just ask the American Library Association. But there are also people whose fear of demons leads them to imagine book bonfires where none exist.
Yep.
HEH. DRUDGE DOES IT AGAIN.
PAKISTANI-BORN ANGLICAN BISHOP defends Western civilization in Britain.
GRIM MILESTONE: Dallas Ebola Patient Dies.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Liberals Storm California’s Bedrooms.