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Archive for 2015
September 27, 2015
MARS MYSTERY SOLVED, says NASA.
No further details are available on the nature of the mystery. However, the lineup for the Monday press conference sports top agency authorities, including NASA director of planetary science Jim Green and lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program Michael Meyer.
The other guests, relatively unknown researchers from American universities, led the science and tech publication Inverse to speculate.
“Our best guess: flowing water, and the potential for alien life,” the publication wrote late Thursday.
That’s because on of NASA’s featured Monday speakers, Georgia Tech grad student Lujendra Ojha, doesn’t quite match the high profile of the NASA leadership hosting the conference. But, Inverse notes, Ojha was responsible in 2011 for the discovery of “possible flows of salt water on Mars.”
According to a 2011 CNN report, native Nepali Ojha used a computer algorithm to remove visual distortions from satellite images of Mars, and notices slim snaky features that moved over time. All he could guess is that they were water.
“There’s going to be years of research put into this to even prove that this is definitely proof of water. And from that, we can move on: OK if this is water, what are the chances that life could be in these kinds of surroundings?” he told CNN.
Most scientists already agree that the canyons and gullies that cover the Martian surface were once carved by water that flowed across the planet’s now-desolate surface. Now the plant’s poles also sport massive caps of frozen water. But one mystery persists: what happened?
Well, perhaps we’ll find out. Related: Why I Hope There’s No Life On Mars.
ROLL CALL: Signs Point Against Cummings Running for Senate.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, who has been considering entering the Democratic race for Maryland’s open U.S. Senate seat, said he will reveal his plans for 2016 during a three-stop tour that could come in “maybe less than two weeks.”
Cummings revealed his plans on Tuesday, just a few hours before Baltimore Rev. Jamal H. Bryant — who was seen by some as perhaps the toughest Democratic primary opponent in the 10-term lawmaker’s career — said he would drop his own campaign for the 7th District seat.
Martha McKenna, a Baltimore-based Democratic operative, said the “tea leaves” point toward Cummings staying out of the race to replace retiring Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski to focus instead on his own re-election and representing Baltimore.
“Bryant dropping out says a lot,” said Martha McKenna, a Baltimore-based Democratic operative.
Bryant, who leads a church of 12,000, told the Baltimore Sun on Tuesday night, “I believe the continued stewardship of my church is my highest calling.”
Another sign? Cummings told reporters in Baltimore he would make his intentions clear during stops in Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County — all parts of the 7th District he represents.
When asked Tuesday what should be read into his those plans and whether they meant he had decided one way or the other on the Senate seat, Cummings — who has been coy about the subject for months now — hedged again: “You never know,” he said.
He’s bad in the House, he’d be bad in the Senate.
I DON’T KNOW, BUT I KNOW WHICH WAY TO BET: Myra Adams: Is the IRS in Collusion with the Clinton Foundation?
JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE LIQUOR IN YOUR CUP doesn’t mean you’re incapable of consenting to sex.
INSOMNIA THEATER (JARED POLIS EDITION): As devoted readers know, both Glenn and I posted a little while back about Colorado Rep. Jared Polis’ so-called “apology” for suggesting that college students accused of sexual assault should be expelled even if they are innocent.
Since then, Polis’ halfhearted mea culpa has only continued to generate criticism for its defense of dangerous ideas about students’ rights to due process. The Daily Camera, Polis’ hometown newspaper, published several responses to his apology, even devoting a whole page of its September 19 print edition to the topic.
FIRE’s Joe Cohn wrote his own retort in The Daily Camera, arguing that “By insisting that college administrators adjudicate serious felonies, Polis doubles down on a failed policy that threatens students nationwide.” And if you haven’t seen it already, or if you just want to reassure your memory that “someone really said that,” please watch the video of Polis’ now-infamous remarks and share with a friend.
You can see the full hearing on the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training’s YouTube channel.
SCHADENFREUDE: Feel Good Story of the Day.
THEN WHY NOT CO-ED SPORTS: Obama’s dangerous drive to make US combat troops co-ed.
BECAUSE SOUTH AMERICAN LEFTIST: On climate change, Pope Francis isn’t listening to the world’s poor.
OCCUPY EUROPE ONCE AGAIN: The Camp of the Saints Comes to Europe.
TREAT LIBERALS LIKE IDIOTS: Treat Meat Eaters Like Smokers, says Jeremy Corbyn’s New Vegan Farming Minister.
OCCUPY EUROPE: On Sweden’s open door policy.
September 26, 2015
JOHN PODHORETZ: Pope Francis is just another liberal political pundit.
Pope Francis is unquestionably a man of uncommon personal grace, the possessor of a genuinely beautiful soul. “On Heaven and Earth,” his book-length exchange with Rabbi Abraham Skorka first published in 2010, is a remarkable testament to the breadth of his perspective.
But that’s not exactly the guy who showed up Friday at the United Nations. That pope endorsed the Iran deal, the UN’s environmentalist goals and what amounts to a worldwide open-borders policy on refugees — and offered a very specific view of how to promote development in the Third World that’s straight out of a left-wing textbook.
I guess that’s why liberal political pundits love him.
KEN WHITE: A Few Comments on the UN Broadband Commission’s “Cyber Violence Against Women And Girls” Report.
I don’t trust the UN on free speech issues. You shouldn’t either. In a world where Iran wins a seat on the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women, people who care about women’s rights should also be skeptical. Pro-censorship forces continually pressure the UN for international laws and norms restricting speech — for instance by demanding laws outlawing blasphemy. Allow me some unabashed American exceptionalism: that’s a bad thing. The United States’ vigorous approach to protecting free speech and rejecting blasphemy laws is good, and foreign norms that encourage blasphemy laws often used to persecute religious and ethnic minorities are bad.
My take: “Cyber Violence” is not real violence. People who want you to conflate online misbehavior with physical attacks have an agenda, and it’s a bad one.
CONFESSIONS OF a Sitzpinkler.
JOURNALISM: Dave Weigel Reminds Us Of — And Minimizes — Hillary 2008 Strategy Memo “Otherizing” Obama. “I dare any fair-minded person to read this and conclude that Penn wrote this ‘as a warning, not a strategy.'”
Plus: “Kudos are due to Weigel for unearthing the memo, but not for his characterization, which is so hyper-charitable that it is not really accurate. Weigel’s piece highlights the critical need to read source documents and not accept Big Media’s characterization of those documents.”
THIS IS SWEET, THOUGH JAKE’S LOSS WAS TRAGIC: Audio: Mary Katharine Ham Memorializes Her Husband, Jake Brewer.
BOEHNER’S BIGGEST MISTAKE: A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION: “Weak, ineffectual, incompetent — he is, to my mind, the worst speaker in my lifetime,” Rick Moran writes. “But there is another factor that caused his downfall: an adherence to old-fashioned ideas about responsible governance and a failure to imagine a way to lead his fractious, undisciplined mob of a caucus.”
Boehner seems like he’d be a nice guy to have a beer and a smoke with – but the second coming of Gingrich, he certainly wasn’t. Speaking of whom, any chance you’d sign up for another go at the rodeo, Newt?
Related: “From a Democrat’s perspective,” Cruz said, “why would you let an appropriations bill pass if you can just wait until the end of the fiscal year, come right up to the edge of the cliff, and know Republican leadership will surrender? You don’t even have to guess on it. They promised you from the outset.”
FACING THE TRUTH: Neo-Neocon writes:
Take Obama. I think many things about him are now obvious—and should have been obvious even during the 2008 campaign. I’m happy to be able to look back at my posts from then and see that, although I certainly didn’t perceive everything about him, I perceived plenty. That’s not because I’m such a psychic or a genius, it’s because I think it was obvious to any intelligent person who was paying attention. And yet, plenty of seemingly intelligent people don’t see it, even today. Is that a failure of courage? Information? Judgment? Imagination? Is it in many cases a reluctance to admit one was wrong (I wouldn’t underestimate that motivation)? Or party loyalty? Or a fear of being accused of racism, even at this late date? I think it must be different for different people. But at this point, people do know or should know that something is very, very wrong.
I’m not a relativist. I do not think that truth is completely “constructed” and exists only in the mind of the beholder. I think there really is an objective truth. But I also think we can only see it through a glass, darkly.
Read the whole thing.
WHY WALKER FAILED AND WHY FIORINA IS IN FOR TROUBLE: “The Democrats see Fiorina as Mitt Romney in a dress, and can’t wait to tear her apart. After all, by their lights, she’s not a ‘real’ woman, is she?”, Michael Walsh writes.
Building on their dehumanizing hatred for black conservatives such as Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, that was the rule the left established for both Hillary in early 2008 – when she was an obstacle for Obama – and then for Sarah Palin.
IN SHOCKING NEWS, DIFFERENT RACIAL GROUPS ARE GENETICALLY DISTINCT: Inuit Study Adds Twist to Omega-3 Fatty Acids’ Health Story.
In the 1970s, Danish researchers studying Inuit metabolism proposed that omega-3 fatty acids found in fish were protective. Those conclusions eventually led to the recommendation that Westerners eat more fish to help prevent heart disease and sent tens of millions scrambling for fish oil pills.
Today, at least 10 percent of Americans regularly take fish oil supplements. But recent trials have failed to confirm that the pills prevent heart attacks or stroke. And now the story has an intriguing new twist.
A study published last week in the journal Science reported that the ancestors of the Inuit evolved unique genetic adaptations for metabolizing omega-3s and other fatty acids. Those gene variants had drastic effects on Inuit bodies, reducing their heights and weights.
Rasmus Nielsen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of the new study, said that the discovery raised questions about whether omega-3 fats really were protective for everyone, despite decades of health advice. “The same diet may have different effects on different people,” he said.
Do tell.