RACHEL DOLEZAL: So, do you wanna go to The Gap?
Archive for 2015
June 15, 2015
YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW, PEASANTS! Clinton Campaign Won’t Commit to Releasing Hillary Medical Records. Hey, Bill got away with it.
MAYBE SHE SHOULD HAVE ASKED JEB, OR TED, OR MARCO TO GIVE IT A QUICK READ-OVER: Hillary’s Spanish-Language Website Filled With Mistakes.
You know, after the “reset” fiasco, you’d think she’d have tightened up her foreign language operation.
SO, THIS MORNING I WAS UNFAIR TO JOHN DICKERSON. Although it’s true that Dickerson, faced with Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook’s absurd statement that no poll shows that people distrust Hillary, didn’t “rebut Mook with the poll data,” he didn’t give him a pass, either, making clear that Mook was spouting crap. You can see video and transcript here. Related: Hillary Aide Denies Mook Lied About Her Untrustworthiness. That doesn’t seem like a good outcome for Hillary. And although plenty of press people give Hillary a pass, I shouldn’t have charged Dickerson with that.
WELL, YES: Diet More Important Than Exercise For Weight Loss. That said, though, I think exercise plays a more important role than is generally appreciated — especially weight training, of course. That’s not only because of calories burned, but also because I think it causes you to take responsibility for your body and how it looks, which encourages you to be more careful about what you eat.
Meanwhile, my advice is if you’re going to do diet, try the Taubes approach. If you ‘re going to exercise, try the Rippetoe approach.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO SCREW AROUND ON THE JOB: New York Prison Worker Joyce Mitchell Was Investigated for Sexual Incident With Escapee. “Mitchell was going to pick up the two escapees at the prison power plant and run away with them. He said Mitchell brought in blades, drill bits and other tools that helped the prisoners escape. Mitchell agreed to be the getaway driver but backed out because she still loved her husband, prosecutors said as the manhunt entered its 10th day Monday.”
You know, if I were her husband I don’t think I’d be feeling too good about her right now.
AT AMAZON, take 20% off handbags.
MOSTLY, I SUSPECT, AS AN EXAMPLE TO THE OTHERS: Why did the Clinton campaign exclude the pool reporter?
VIRGINIA POSTREL: How Textiles Repeatedly Revolutionized Technology.
Textiles are technology, more ancient than bronze and as contemporary as nanowires. We hairless apes co-evolved with our apparel. But, to reverse Arthur C Clarke’s adage, any sufficiently familiar technology is indistinguishable from nature. It seems intuitive, obvious – so woven into the fabric of our lives that we take it for granted.
We drag out heirloom metaphors – ‘on tenterhooks’, ‘tow-headed’, ‘frazzled’ – with no idea that we’re talking about fabric and fibres. We repeat threadbare clichés: ‘whole cloth’, ‘hanging by a thread’, ‘dyed in the wool’. We catch airline shuttles, weave through traffic, follow comment threads. We talk of lifespans and spin‑offs and never wonder why drawing out fibres and twirling them into thread looms so large in our language.
he story of technology is in fact the story of textiles. From the most ancient times to the present, so too is the story of economic development and global trade. The origins of chemistry lie in the colouring and finishing of cloth. The textile business funded the Italian Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; it left us double-entry bookkeeping and letters of credit, Michelangelo’s David and the Taj Mahal. As much as spices or gold, the quest for fabrics and dyestuffs drew sailors across strange seas. In ways both subtle and obvious, textiles made our world.
Most conspicuously, the Industrial Revolution started with the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the thread-producing mills in northern England that installed them. Before railroads or automobiles or steel mills, fortunes were made in textile technology. The new mills altered where people lived and how they worked. And the inexpensive fabrics they produced changed the way ordinary people looked.
True.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN’T GET ANY CRAZIER: Rachel Dolezal Sued Howard University For Refusing To Hire Her Because She Was White.
But wait, there’s more! Rachel Dolezal’s Artwork Is Not Only Problematic, It Might Be Plagiarized.
See, lefty social-justice-warrior types always lie. It’s just that often, they lie to other lefty social-justice-warrior types, too.
BORIS JOHNSON: Male and female are different: hardly earth-shattering news. But saying it is horribly retro, except when it’s Importantly Feminist.
DOLEZAL RESIGNS: The faux-black head of Spokane’s NAACP resigns, stating,“in the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP.” Despite NAACP’s formal statement of “support” for Dolezal, I suspect this was a forced resignation.
THE POPE GOES POLITICAL: A draft of “Laudato Si,” a encyclical on the environment, calls climate change an “urgent” matter caused by human activity.
In the draft, Pope Francis wrote of a “very consistent scientific consensus that we are in the presence of an alarming warming of the climactic system.”
While acknowledging that natural causes, including volcanic activity, play a role in climate change, the pope wrote, “numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) emitted above all due to human activity.”
The pope wrote that there is an “urgent and compelling” need for policies that reduce carbon emissions, among other ways, by “replacing fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”
According to The Guardian, the encyclical will have a decidedly anti-capitalist tinge:
The encyclical will go much further than strictly environmental concerns, say Vatican insiders. “Pope Francis has repeatedly stated that the environment is not only an economic or political issue, but is an anthropological and ethical matter,” said another of the pope’s advisers, Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Peru.
“It will address the issue of inequality in the distribution of resources and topics such as the wasting of food and the irresponsible exploitation of nature and the consequences for people’s life and health,” Barreto Jimeno told the Catholic News Service.
He was echoed by Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who coordinates the Vatican’s inner council of cardinals and is thought to reflect the pope’s political thinking . “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” Rodríguez Maradiaga said.
I’ve written about Pope Francis’s political inclinations and support of liberation theology before (here and here), so this doesn’t surprise me. The Pope’s aggressive entry into the global warming climate change debate recently caused the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) to say, “The pope ought to stay with his job, and we’ll stay with ours.”
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Russia says will retaliate if U.S. weapons stationed in Baltics. “The United States is offering to store military equipment on allies’ territory in eastern Europe, a proposal aimed at reassuring governments worried that after the conflict in Ukraine, they could be the Kremlin’s next target. Poland and the Baltic states, where officials say privately they have been frustrated the NATO alliance has not taken more decisive steps to deter Russia, welcomed the decision by Washington to take the lead.”
Meanwhile, if I were President I’d tell the Russians that if Iran gets the bomb, we’re giving nukes to Poland.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Sweet Briar’s leadership was a short-sighted mess, former board member says.
HOW JURASSIC PARK made so much money.
AUTONOMY: Mercedes-Benz E Class Will Out-Robot Top-of-the-Line S Class. “New cars famously lose value as they roll out of the dealership, and they may start losing it even faster now that tech—a perishable attribute—takes up so much of the sticker price. . . . The E Class will be able to stick to its lane, drive itself through dark tunnels and make lane changes, all at speeds up to 130 kilometers per hour (80 mph)—faster than the S Class now can do. It will also take bends in the road, though sharp turns are out—for the moment. And if the driver swerves to miss an obstacle, the system will step in to fine-tune the swerve and pull the car out of it afterward.”
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Computational nanotechnology reveals complex interactions in double-walled carbon nanotubes.
READER BOOK PLUG: From longtime reader (and blogger!) Mitch Berg, Trulbert!: A Comic Novella About the End of the World As We Know It.
BRENDAN O’NEILL ON THE MAGNA CARTA ANNIVERSARY: 800 years on, why Magna Carta still matters. Some passages of the Tennessee Constitution come pretty much verbatim from the Magna Carta.