Archive for 2016

MUST-BLEED TV: America’s Got Talent Contestant Shot in the Throat by a Flaming Arrow in Stunt Gone Wrong.

“I’m okay, it got my shirt, I’m okay,” he eventually assured the terrified crowd.

Despite Stock’s insistence that he was fine, the judges were adamant that he seek medical attention immediately. Cowell even interrupted Klum’s feedback by asking, “Why are we judging this act? Amber just shot Ryan and he needs to go to a hospital now! I’m being serious.”

After a commercial break, host Nick Cannon assured viewers that Stock was examined by EMTs and appeared to be fine.

Ed Ames and Johnny Carson still have the better act.

NOW YOU CAN WATCH ‘CAN WE TAKE A JOKE?’ FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN HOME: This FIRE-supported documentary on the collision between comedy and outrage culture is now available on iTunes, where it has gotten as high as the #3 most downloaded documentary! And if you like the film, go say so on Rotten Tomatoes.

THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED, EXCEPT THAT THERE WASN’T ACTUALLY ANY SCIENCE TO SPEAK OF: Dentists forgot to study flossing for a century, recommended it anyway. “This stain on the dental profession was cracked wide open last year when the Associated Press asked federal agencies for the data behind its recommendation that Americans floss. After the AP filed Freedom of Information Act requests, the government admitted that it didn’t have adequate data to back the recommendation—something it is required to have by law. The US Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments quietly removed the flossing recommendation from the latest version of dietary guidelines.”

JOE BOB BRIGGS ASKS, WHAT IS IT ABOUT DONALD TRUMP THAT MAKES JOURNALISTS GO INSANE?

Another abandonment of traditional journalistic responsibility—Dr. Naugahyde is turning over in his grave—connotes massive ignorance on the part of the Fourth Estate, and they’re not even ashamed of it. It takes the form of the “Who the Heck Is Voting for Trump?” article. This is apparently a perplexing conundrum to the national press corps, especially the branch that dines at the Yale Club.

First of all, you’re not supposed to be asking who votes for Trump, you’re supposed to be telling us. I realize this might require moving outside the realm of people who wear 18th-century crests on their Princeton crew jackets, but it’s kind of why you’ve been given the job in the first place.

Back in late 2004 on her little-seen CNBC show, Tina Brown interviewed David Westin, then the president of ABC News. Westin told her that the DNC-MSM needed to dispatch the equivalent of foreign correspondents out from Manhattan to parachute into the Red States. There, they could witness firsthand how these strange people in the hinterlands live out their exotic day-to-day existences, and then be able to report back why they rejected the suave and debonair John Kerry for that hayseed George W. Bush.

Any time now, fellas, any time.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

FASTER, PLEASE: Moon Express Approved for Private Lunar Landing in 2017, a Space First.

Moon Express submitted an application to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on April 8. The document then made its way through the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission, Richards said.

The interagency approval process “took some time, not because anybody was against or averse to this,” he said. “It’s just that we asked questions that had never been asked before, and that had to be addressed and worked out.”

Moon Express can now focus exclusively on the financial and technical challenges of the 2017 moon mission, which will begin with the launch of the company’s MX-1 lander atop a Rocket Lab Electron booster.

The company also hopes to win Google’s $30 million Lunar X-Prize and says that future missions will “help assess, extract and exploit lunar resources such as water ice, helping to launch a new era in space exploration.”

Starting as soon as next year, I hasten to reiterate.

I’VE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR A WHILE: The Next Health Fad? Blood Transfusions from Young People. “Ambrosia is planning on giving 600 patients four rounds of weekly blood infusions coming from 16- to 25-year-olds. Ambrosia founder Jesse Karmazin, who went to Stanford Medical School, said in an e-mail that he was inundated with interview requests and unable to speak today. . . . Another company called Alkahest has been conducting a clinical trial with young blood infused into patients with probable Alzheimer’s. Its results are expected out by the end of the year.”

TRUMP’S UNCOUTH: Hillary’s un-conscience?

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Clinton Foundation drug contracts intersected with State Department work.

During Clinton’s first year at the [State Department], Merck lobbied the State Department to ease regulations restricting the distribution of its drugs “in certain Latin American markets,” according to lobbying disclosure forms from 2009. That placed the drug company’s international interests squarely on Clinton’s desk.

Clinton sat down with Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier privately in March 2012 in a meeting that was closed to the press, according to her official schedule from that day. Immediately afterward, she walked into a staff meeting about “global health strategy.”

By June of that year, her staff was collecting press clips on a $75 million partnership with Merck, funded by the State Department, to reduce childbirth-related deaths in Africa. The Norwegian government had pledged a matching $75 million to the initiative, which was spearheaded by Clinton.

The government of Norway has also donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation, giving up to $25 million to the nonprofit. In fact, Clinton’s emails suggest she even asked members of her State Department staff to facilitate a Norwegian donation to a foundation project, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

The clean cookstoves project served as a clear example of the blurred lines between Clinton’s foundation and State Department work.

Read the whole thing.