FREE FROM SARAH HOYT: Three Fantastic Surprises.
Archive for 2015
December 31, 2015
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HAPPY NEW YEAR: Two Munich Train Stations Evacuated Over Potential ISIS Threat. Contained.
MARK JUDGE: Star Wars and the Crisis of Masculinity.
GEORGE WILL: Goodbye to 2015, The Year American Institutions Became Parodies of Themselves. Fundamentally transformed!
FIVE WORDS? NEXT YEAR WILL BE WORSE.
Related: “President Obama is preparing to unleash a wave of new regulations in 2016 as he looks to shore up his legacy on public protection issues during his final year in office.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, JAPANESE LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Japanese Law Schools Facing ‘Unprecedented Crisis’ Amidst 84% Applicant Decline.
What if that happened here? The horror.
JON GABRIEL: IS NEW YEAR’S EVE THE WORST HOLIDAY?
Eventually I figured out why I didn’t care for New Year’s celebrations: They’re filled with people who shout “Wooo!” I don’t like being in places where people shout “Wooo!” It’s like the partiers are trying to convince themselves (and everyone around them) that they they’re having fun, but failing.
As Gabriel asks his readers, “What do you think: Is New Year’s Eve overrated or do you have a celebration planned that will change my mind?”
GEORGE LUCAS APOLOGIZES FOR ‘WHITE SLAVERS’ REMARK ABOUT DISNEY:
Lucas has expressed conflicting feelings about selling the “Star Wars” franchise to Disney for $4 billion in 2012.
He and Disney had different visions for the future of the franchise, which helped him make the decision to move on, though he still refers to the “Star Wars” movies as his “kids.”
“I loved them, I created them, I am very intimately involved in them,” Lucas told [Charlie Rose] about the franchise.
Lucas then quipped: “I sold them to the white slavers that takes these things, and…” Lucas trailed off with a laugh and didn’t finish his sentence.
Gee, as opposed to your kids being conscripted into the Vietcong, the inspiration for the original Star Wars?
Related: Man who pockets four billion dollar golden parachute bemoans evils of “capitalist society.”
AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ADDS THE WORLD AT WAR: I’m not sure when the 26-part 1973 series was added to the free programming available to those with an Amazon Prime account, but I noticed it on the roster for the first time while clicking through the Amazon video applet on the Roku box earlier this month. 20 years before the launch of the History Channel, the World At War played frequently on American TV in the mid-to-late 1970s. But for those who’ve never seen it, it’s arguably the best video introduction to World War II that’s ever been released. Produced by Thames Television beginning in 1969, the series featured the sonorous narration of Lawrence Olivier, powerful background music, loads of newsreel footage, and most importantly, interviews with all sides — soldiers who were still only in their 40s, and surviving former world leaders and politicians. (Contrast that with today’s History Channel documentaries, which struggle to find surviving WWII infantrymen who are now in their late 80s and 90s.
We’re very lucky that the World At War has been grandfathered into today’s world of PC history — just imagine how today’s SJWs and their love of both the airbrush and Black Armband History would have told the story of WWII. As I wrote back in 2013 in my introduction to Civilisation, another landmark British TV documentary series produced shortly before The World At War (and equally impossible for the left to make today):
The World At War was made at the perfect time — television documentary techniques were sufficiently developed by 1969 when production on the series began to tell the story properly, and it was only a quarter century after WWII concluded, and enough survivors were still around, still sharp, and able to appear on camera. But of equal importance is that it was made before political correctness had sapped the cultural confidence of the West. If the BBC or Thames’ successor network were to remake the The World at War today, it would have a very different tone to it, probably far closer to Oliver Stone’s “Springtime for Hitler and Stalin” Showtime series than the BBC would care to admit.
Also, the interviews and the contemporary non-newsreel footage were shot in color. We take that entirely for granted now, but when the show first went into production, color TV was still a new phenomenon to many English viewers; BBC2 had only begun broadcasting in color in 1967, and BBC1 not until 1969. It’s tough to conceive of something like Monty Python‘s Flying Circus as being shot in black and white, but as late as 1967, its immediate predecessor, a show with the classic title of At Last, the 1948 Show, was a monochrome production.
Of course, the one problem with The World At War is that those who need to see the series the most will likely never watch it:
I ASKED STEPHEN GREEN ABOUT THIS AND HE SAID, “WATER?” Should You Filter Your Water? “Using the right water filter can help further reduce pollutants like lead from old water pipes, pesticide runoff in rural areas and byproducts of chemicals like chlorine that are used to treat drinking water. Radon, arsenic and nitrates are common pollutants in drinking water, and trace amounts of drugs including antibiotics and hormones have also been found. Certain filters may help remove these impurities as well.”
IT’S ABOUT JUSTICE DON WILLETT, NATCH: Tweeter Laureate rocks social media from judicial post.
DISPATCHES FROM THE PARENTHESES STATES: California, Leading from Behind, Victor Davis Hanson writes:
California somehow has managed to have the fourth-highest gas taxes in the nation, yet its roads are rated 44th among the 50 states. Nearly 70 percent of California roads are considered to be in poor or mediocre condition by the state senate. In response, the state legislature naturally wants to raise gas taxes, with one proposal calling for an increase of 12 cents per gallon, which would give California the highest gas taxes in the nation.
Because oil prices have crashed, state bureaucrats apparently believe that the public won’t notice the tax increase in their fill-up costs* – even though special California fuel mandates already help make gas prices 25 percent higher than the national average.
Consider California’s upside-down logic.
The state wanted to discourage driving and promote hybrid vehicles by upping taxes on carbon fuels. It worked, though it cost the public dearly. People drove less and bought more fuel-efficient cars. But now, because less gas is burned, fewer taxes are collected. So the state wants to reward motorists for their green sacrifices by raising their taxes even higher to make up for missing revenue. If state motorists drive even less and cram into two-seat commuter cars, will California further reward them with even higher gas taxes?
Meanwhile, in the other big blue parenthesis state, “Cigarette tax revenue plunges as smokers buy outside New York:”
New York state cigarette tax collections have plunged by about $400 million over the past five years…sales of taxed cigs in New York are off by 54 percent in the past decade, which is also cutting into the profits of local store owners peddling smokes. In that same period, about 19 percent of New Yorkers stopped smoking, a pace well below the huge sales dip.
“The Germans call it ‘schadenfreude’ when you take pleasure from another person’s misfortune,” noted Dan Mitchell, a tax expert at the Washington DC-based Cato Institute, commenting on the New York smoking tax fiasco.
Mitchell added, “I confess that I get a certain joy from this story because politicians are being punished for their greed. I like the fact that they have less money to waste.”
To paraphrase VDH’s conclusion, both states have governments that ultimately serve one purpose — reminding Americans what not to do.
*And they’re counting on their Democrat operatives with bylines not to point that out — who are all too eager to follow their marching orders.
YESTERDAY’S POST ON EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS BROUGHT THIS RECOMMENDATION FROM A READER: Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country: How to Save Your Home, Business, and Life.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:
● “Obama: Nihilist or Just Incompetent?”
—Victor Davis Hanson, October 4th, 2015.
● “Obama to Seinfeld: ‘I Always Wanted To Be In a Show About Nothing.’”
—Tammy Bruce.com, yesterday.
“IT’S TIME TO SAY NO TO OUR PAMPERED STUDENT EMPERORS* — The Rhodes statue row can be blamed on a generation raised to believe that their feelings are all that matter,” British columnist Harry Mount writes in the London Telegraph:
The little emperors have grown up. The babies of the late 90s – mollycoddled by their parents, spoon-fed by their teachers, indulged by society – have now reached university. Some of the brighter ones are now at Oxford, demanding that the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel should be torn down, because of his imperialist, racist views.
We shouldn’t be so surprised. If you’ve had a lifetime of people saying “yes” to you, of never being told off, you remain frozen in a permanent state of supersensitivity. I wasn’t offended by the Rhodes statue when I was at Oxford 20 years ago. But, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have thought my wounded feelings should be cured by tearing apart the delicate fabric of a beautiful university.
Universities are reaping the whirlwind of two decades of child-centred education. That whirlwind has imported imbecilic trigger warnings – when academics have to warn students that western European literature, from the Iliad on, is full of sex and violence. It has also brought the pernicious idea of “no-platforming” – when students refuse to give a stage to anyone who doesn’t fit with their narrow view of the world.
Read the whole thing.
Related: “Remy: Students United! Collegians everywhere are asking tough questions: Why is our tuition so high? Where are our jobs? Can’t you see your words hurt me, you dumb piece of sh*t?”
* Personally, I prefer Iowahawk’s “Screaming Campus Garbage Babies” description, but perhaps that’s too provocative a characterization for the Telegraph.
“THAT’S NICE [SINCE] SHE HELPED DESTROY THEIR COUNTRY:” “Samantha Power, United States ambassador to the United Nations, wants to welcome refugees into the country with open arms. The next time you think you’re being clever by asking Power how many Syrian refugee families she’s taken in, keep in mind that she’s taken in one family more than you have — for dinner and a photo-op — and just might have them back for her Super Bowl party.”
DUBAI INFERNO: FLAMES SHOOT UP 63-STORY HOTEL. “As some million people packed Dubai for the emirate’s notoriously spectacular New Year’s fireworks displays, an inferno lit up a 63-story luxury hotel downtown,” Bridget Johnson writes at PJM. “Witnesses said the fire broke out at about 9:30 p.m. local time on the lower third of the building and spread quickly. The hotel was evacuated and there were no immediate reports of injuries.”
No victims? Well, that’s what they want you to think, Allahpundit conjectures. “From what I saw, the blown-out parts ran around 10 stories high and a good 10 or so windows across. (The hotel is 63 stories tall and not quite 1,000 feet high.) Unless literally everyone inside the hotel was out on the streets celebrating New Year’s Eve, there are victims.”
So what caused it? “One Twitter user captured an image showing only a very small fire at the start; local authorities tell CNN that it started on the exterior of the 20th floor. Could fireworks from the ground have misfired? Stay tuned,” he writes, adding in an update, “One reason to think this might be accidental rather than arson is that the hotel is near the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. If you were a terrorist or pyromaniac looking to maximize the impact of your crime, wouldn’t you target the Burj instead?”
In February, a fire devastated another Dubai skyscraper, a 79-story residential structure with 676 apartments carrying an unfortunate moniker — “The Torch.”
As Nathan Wurtzel remarked on Twitter concerning the two fires, “We can make one assumption, but don’t rule out the sh**ty construction assumption.”
I DON’T WANT YOU DYING IN A FIRE: At Amazon, Deals on Kidde Products. I have, by the way, a CO2 fire extinguisher for my kitchen, because the dry-chemical kind make a mess.
Also, New Year, New You.
REMEMBER THE 1990s? IT WAS IN ALL THE PAPERS:
—Headline, NewsBusters, Tuesday.
Chaser: “‘Is that right? Fourteen??’ That’s Alisyn Camerota, 1:21 into the video clip. The shock and incredulity in the voice of the CNN host is stupendous! Yes, who could possibly imagine that, as CNN commentator Errol Louis stated, there are 14 women who could potentially make allegations of improprieties against Bill Clinton.”
—NewsBusters, today.
MARK RIPPETOE: The First Three Questions.
TWO STEPS CLOSER TO A QUANTUM INTERNET.