ANALYSIS: TRUE. Kurt Schlichter: Everything About Hollywood Is Terrible.

It’s time to repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts.

SHOCKER: Yes, Students Do Learn More From Attractive Teachers.

How to help students do better in school? Maybe we should try hiring better-looking teachers. Or subsidize gym memberships and makeovers for the teachers we already have.

Those, at least, are the implications of a new study from researchers at the University of Nevada, who designed a simple but revealing experiment using college students to see whether a lecturer’s attractiveness has any impact on how much of the lecture students retain. If you guessed that the answer is yes, go to the head of the class. Extra credit if you intuited that teacher attractiveness had other effects as well.

More surprising: The researchers don’t think that sexual interest explains the results, which held up whether the teacher and students were of the same sex or not. This suggests, they write, that the improved student performance was “driven by processes independent from human sexual attraction, such as attention and motivation.” Or, as one of them put it, it’s just human nature.

We’re superficial creatures.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Anaphylactic Political Shock: Sorry, Hillary. The feds are to blame for Mylan’s EpiPen monopoly.

EpiPen should be open to generic competition, which cuts prices dramatically for most other old medicines. Competitors have been trying for years to challenge Mylan’s EpiPen franchise with low-cost alternatives—only to become entangled in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory afflatus.

Approving a generic copy that is biologically equivalent to a branded drug is simple, but the FDA maintains no clear and consistent principles for generic drug-delivery devices like auto injectors or asthma inhalers. How does a company prove that a generic device is the same as the original product if there are notional differences, even if the differences don’t matter to the end result? In this case, that means immediately injecting a kid in anaphylactic shock with epinephrine—which is not complex medical engineering.

But no company has been able to do so to the FDA’s satisfaction. Last year Sanofi withdrew an EpiPen rival called Auvi-Q that was introduced in 2013, after merely 26 cases in which the device malfunctioned and delivered an inaccurate dose. Though the recall was voluntary and the FDA process is not transparent, such extraordinary actions are never done without agency involvement. This suggests a regulatory motive other than patient safety.

Then in February the FDA rejected Teva’s generic EpiPen application. In June the FDA required a San Diego-based company called Adamis to expand patient trials and reliability studies for still another auto-injector rival.

Mrs. Clinton claims the EpiPen price hikes show the need for price controls, and she says she’ll require drug makers to “prove that any additional costs are linked to additional patient benefits and better value.” Somebody in Congress should require the FDA to justify how its delays are advancing the same goals.

Requiring bureaucrats to justify their actions is anathema.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Rational improvement of DNA nanodevice function.

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ANNALS OF “BAD LUCK:” ‘No One Is Safe’: Zimbabwe Threatens to Seize Farms of Party Defectors.

Hey, it was over a decade ago when Nick Kristof reported that Zimbabweans were nostalgic for the days of white rule:

An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: “I want the white man’s government to come back. Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today.”

His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. “I miss the days of white rule,” she said.

And things have only gotten worse since. But they’re right to be nostalgic: International opinion would never stand for a white government that treated blacks so badly. For Mugabe, though, it just yawns.

THIS IS SAD: Watch the Destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, Re-Created with Computer Animation (79 AD).

DEVASTATING: JAKE TAPPER SHARES A GOLD STAR MOTHER’S TAKEDOWN OF COLIN KAEPERNICK:

It’s the Twitter version of this 49ers fan’s understandable reaction, setting alight his Kaepernick jersey in a Drudge-lanched video.

In contrast, ESPN continues its descent into MSNBC land: ESPN Writer Pablo S. Torre Thinks Only Trump Backers Offended by Kaepernick Protest.

Speaking of contrast, James Woods neatly sums up the current state of the “fundamentally transformed” NFL:

And of course, as Jon Gabriel would say:

EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM:

Moscow's doing its biggest MILEX since right before the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. It's either 1 helluva demonstration of power, or…

— John Schindler (@20committee) August 28, 2016

IF YOU’RE MYSTIFIED ABOUT WHY INEQUALITY STARTED GROWING IN THE EARLY 1970S, you might want to note that that was when the so-called “regulatory explosion” took place, with the creation of the EPA, OSHA, etc. That’s also when the “golden quarter-century” of innovation came to an end. Coincidence?

IF YOU CAN MATCH VELOCITIES WITH SOMETHING GOING THIS FAST, DO YOU EVEN NEED TO? Meet the ‘space train’ concept that can get to Mars in 2 days. Either the idea is dumb, or the description doesn’t make sense. If I can go from the surface of the earth to matching velocities with something traveling fast enough to reach Mars in two days, I can reach Mars in two days without the rendezvous.

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WHEN BELIEF FADES, CIVILIZATIONS MAY FADE, TOO.

When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing. He believes in anything, as Chesterton, alas, never said.

Earlier: Dear Social Justice Warriors: Your Religion Is Progressivism, Not Judaism.

As I mentioned when linking to that article, all of “Progressivism” is largely an exercise in building a substitute religion minus God.

THAT SEEMS PRUDENT: All Donated Blood in U.S. Should Be Tested for Zika, F.D.A. Says. “The recommendations are an acknowledgment that sexual transmission may facilitate the spread of Zika even in areas where mosquitoes carrying the virus are not present. Officials also want to prepare for the possibility that clusters of local infection will continue to pop up in parts of the United States for years to come.”

A FORMER COP REVIEWS HEATHER MAC DONALD’S NEW BOOK, THE WAR ON COPS:

The unavoidable reality is this: The police are the only part of the government that is authorized to kill Americans on the spot, and make the decision to kill in an instant. This is not true of Special Forces, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, Congress, the president, the IRS, the Department of the Interior, Exterior, or somewhere in between.

They are also the people called to respond to every single problem in poor, mostly minority communities. Noise complaint? Cops. Kids hanging out on the corner? Cops. Someone is hungry or drunk? Cops. Your kids won’t obey you? Cops. Your cousin is suicidal? Cops. Your neighbor is schizophrenic? Cops. Your landlord is a jerk? Cops. After all the rhetoric and nonsense, poor, urban neighborhoods call for police services more than anywhere else.

I don’t know if this is evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement is totally disconnected from normal urban culture, or if this is evidence of an astounding lack of self-awareness. Remember that the defining quality of the role of police, versus all other social and governmental support, is that they are expected to be obeyed or they can, will, and often are required to use force. Police are government power in its plainest form.

This is a concept called “The law of the instrument,” coined by Abraham Maslow to describe the over-reliance on familiar tools. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Maslow said. For our social decline in the inner city, all we have is police, and we are amazed that everyone has started to look like a criminal to them.

Read the whole thing.

YELLOWSTONE, in the age of the Helicopter Parent.

THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY SINGULARITY I WAS PROMISED: Alt-Right and Black Lives Matter are One and the Same, writes Andrew Klavan.

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CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Clinton Global Initiative Moderator Describes Group’s Events As ‘Creepy,’ ‘Disgusting,’ ‘Gross.’ Well, to be fair, Bill’s involved.

HMM: Clinton’s lead halved in new national poll. I’d be interested to see an overlay of how Trump’s polling against Clinton vs. how McCain and Romney did against Obama.

WHY ISN’T IT ‘THE ECONOMY, STUPID’ THIS TIME AROUND?

In 1992, Bill Clinton announced that “It’s the economy, stupid.” That was pretty much the sole theme of his campaign. He ludicrously claimed that the country was then experiencing “the worst economy since the Great Depression,” a lie that the press, to its everlasting shame, not just allowed but often endorsed. So what was the level of GDP growth that Clinton relentlessly denigrated?

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the quarterly growth numbers for 1992, in chained 2009 dollars, were 4.8%, 4.5%, 3.9% and 4.1%. That’s right–the growth that Bill Clinton derided as the “worst economy since the Great Depression” was around four times what we are now seeing under Barack Obama. And Hillary Clinton promises to continue Obama’s anti-growth policies.

* * * * * * * *

“I would have thought that the economy would be at the center of the presidential campaign. Instead we’re hearing about which candidate is more racist. It’s crazy. It’s sad.”

Read the whole thing.

BILL MCKIBBEN: We Need The Moral Equivalent Of War On Climate Change.

I agree, and as my first act of wartime sacrifice, I vote to ban air-conditioning in Washington, DC.

For my second act of wartime sacrifice, I vote to raise taxes on coastal cities.

And I don’t want to hear any backtalk. This is war, boys!

ACE OF SPADES: TRUMP ISN’T THE REAL POPULIST — IT’S THE ELITES RUNNING OUR INSTITUTIONS, Relentlessly Undermining Our Institutions (Which They Hold to be Corrupt and Racist), Who are the Real Populists. And the Dangerous Ones.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Why The Elites Are Really Populists At Heart.

Flashback from Glenn in USA Today: When rulers despise the ruled: It’s like The Hunger Games: the Capital City, and its hangers-on, flourish, while the provinces starve.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Ray Mabus’ Social Experiment Navy is Steaming Ahead to Disaster.

Almost ready for the big expedition to Lake Pahoe!

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)