THE CURRENCY OF HEROISM IS BEING DEBASED: The U.S.S. Gabby Giffords. Coming soon: The U.S.S. Trayvon Martin.
Archive for 2014
April 22, 2014
CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL STAR WARS DAY with deals on Star Wars items. Hey, as holidays go, it’s not any faker than Cinco de Mayo.
HANNA ROSIN DEMONSTRATES what feminist “rape culture” looks like. What do you mean, “victim?” He got attention from “pretty girls!”
DAVE KOPEL ON Second Amendment Symposia at the Tennessee Law Review, past and future.
UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!
THIS WILL CERTAINLY ENHANCE NYU’S ABILITY TO RECRUIT STUDENTS AND FACULTY: Law School Trustee’s Company Chills Critical Speech With Subpoena For Students’ Personal Emails. I’m pretty sure that I’d side with him vs. the SEIU, but this seems rather extreme.
ISN’T THIS, YOU KNOW, ILLEGAL? Viagra-Laced Ice Cream. “Created by self-proclaimed “edible inventor” Charlie Harry Francis, ‘arousal,’ a new blue-colored ice cream, might mean you never have to pop those little blue pills again. Francis was asked to create a Viagra-laced ice cream for a party for one of his A-list celebrity clients, according to his aptly named blog, ‘Lick Me I’m Delicious.’ Each scoop of the champagne-flavored ice cream contains 25 mg of the well-known male enhancement drug — the same amount in the lowest dose of the drug.”
Oh, who am I kidding? Laws are for the little people, not for celebrities and their chefs.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Krugman’s CUNY Sinecure.
Whether or not Krugman’s scholarship and teaching ability warrant such a superior salary is certainly worthy of debate, but the real issue for most commentators is not how much CUNY will pay Krugman, but how little they are asking him to do. CUNY is essentially offering him what used to be called a sinecure. Like ecclesiastical appointments “without the care of souls,” the terms of Krugman’s contract require him to do almost nothing his first year and then teach just one graduate seminar each year for as long as he would like to stay at CUNY. This required teaching in the second year is less than half of the usual course load for most distinguished professors at the Graduate Center, some of whom teach three classes per year and advise several dissertations at a time. Whether Krugman will advise or sit on any dissertation committees remains to be seen.
It is clear from his acceptance email however, that he is interested in doing as little work as possible.
So, kind of like his columns, then.
SOLAR POWER SATELLITES: A Visual Introduction. With solar power satellites and a hydrogen economy driven by electrolyzed seawater, you’d have a very environmentally friendly energy setup. That’s why so many environmentalists are loudly supporting space-based solar, I guess. . . .
OVER AT LARRY CORREIA’S MONSTER HUNTER NATION, a charitable event to help out an SF writer in trouble.
BIG DATA, and the limits of social engineering.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Toss Out Abusive College Administrators.
MARK RIPPETOE: Why You Should Not Be Running: Long, slow, distance exercise has no business being the standard advice for better health. I do intervals running stairs, but that’s not what he’s talking about. That said, when I was doing a lot of cardio (for me) ten years ago — 45 minutes with heart rate above 140 — my resting pulse was 51. It’s now around 60.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: If you cosign your kid’s student loan, it may go into default when you die, even if it’s paid-up.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Physicists suppress ‘stiction’ force that bedevils microscale machinery.
IN RELATED NEWS, U.S. FACEBOOK SITE UNDER COMPLETE CONTROL OF OBAMA ALLIES: Russian Facebook site under ‘complete control’ of Putin allies, says ex-CEO.
WHAT IT TELLS ME IS THAT WE’RE NOT READY FOR ELECTRONIC VOTING, OR THE “INTERNET OF THINGS” JUST YET: How Heartbleed transformed HTTPS security into the stuff of absurdist theater.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The American Middle Class Is No Longer The World’s Richest.
It’s as if it’s been targeted by a coalition of the richest and the poorest.
GREEN-CAR ENTHUSIASTS WORRY: Is Tesla Motors becoming a Republican darling?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Virginia Postrel: “Free Speech Zones,” And Other College Lies. My USA Today column, which will be out later today, sounds a similar note.
DEMOCRATS EXPERIENCE “War On Women” Blowback.
IT’S BECAUSE GLOBAL WARMING SUPPORTERS, LIKE MICHAEL MANN, ACT LIKE THEY’VE GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE: Gallup: Skepticism About Global Warming Grows.
21ST CENTURY DOMESTICITY: I Automated My Apartment—And It Kind of Creeped Me Out. “Last summer a hacker used a blackout command to successfully break in to a set of Hue bulbs. The consequences were hardly catastrophic—the lights shut off. But the possibilities are disturbing. One night I forgot to set my app to Good Night mode, which would have cut my security camera, before I went to sleep. I awoke to 17 texts: “There is motion in the Bedroom and photos have been taken at Alexis’s Apartment.” I scrolled through shots of myself in bed, sleeping.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor: Republicans are ‘Racist, Misogynist, Money-Grubbing People.’ . . . If GOP Wins Universities Will Close.
Well, they’ll close either way, actually. But clowns like this are accelerating the decline by undermining their value. A six-figure cost to attend a center of left-wing agitprop and not much else is a poor deal.