THERE’S A REASON SNOW TIRES EXIST: Watch as a Bunch of Trucks and Buses Slide Into Each Other In the Snow.
Archive for 2016
December 7, 2016
THAT WOULD EXPLAIN… EVERYTHING: Earth’s days getting longer, slower.
Over the past 27 centuries, the average day has lengthened at a rate of about +1.8 milliseconds (ms) per century, a British research team concluded in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
This was “significantly less”, they said, than the rate of 2.3 ms per century previously estimated — requiring a mere 2.6 million years to add one minute..
Oh. So it is just 2016 then.
IT’S AMAZING: Give the Gift of Amazon Prime.
WELL, WHAT’S THERE TO CLAP ABOUT, REALLY? Video: Few troops clap for Obama during final national security speech.
EVERYTHING IS SEEMINGLY SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Remarkable New Theory Says There’s No Gravity, No Dark Matter, and Einstein Was Wrong.
Professor Erik Verlinde, an expert in string theory from the University of Amsterdam and the Delta Institute of Theoretical Physics, thinks that gravity is not a fundamental force of nature because it’s not always there. Instead it’s “emergent” – coming into existence from changes in microscopic bits of information in the structure of spacetime.
Verlinde first articulated this groundbreaking theory in his 2010 paper, which took on the laws of Newton and argued that gravity is “an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies”. He famously stated then that “gravity is an illusion,” elaborating further that:
“Well, of course gravity is not an illusion in the sense that we know that things fall. Most people, certainly in physics, think we can describe gravity perfectly adequately using Einstein’s General Relativity. But it now seems that we can also start from a microscopic formulation where there is no gravity to begin with, but you can derive it. This is called ‘emergence’.”
What’s more, the Dutch professor now published an elaboration of his previous work in “Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe”, which argues there’s no “dark matter” – a mysterious kind of matter that along with dark energy theoretically makes up 95% of the universe, but has not really been discovered yet.
“Dark matter” always felt like a rationalization to cover up a serious flaw in our understanding of the universe, but the idea that gravity doesn’t exist until it emerges locally is too bizarre for this non-physicist to comprehend.
As usual, Douglas Adams might have nailed it decades ago:
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Indeed.
WHEN “SEXUAL HARASSMENT” POLICIES INTERFERE WITH “FREEDOM OF INTIMATE ASSOCIATION:” Professor’s Right to Seek Affair With Student Constitutionally Protected: “Freedom of Association” Includes “Exercising His Right to Freely Associate With Other Persons” Even For Sexual Activities.
I’ve said for a while that many intrusive college sex rules are unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas. Next step: Rights for Dionysexuals.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: How Lasers and a Goggle-Wearing Parrot Could Aid Flying Robot Designs.
THE ARTS WORLD: Rivalry, Drama, Betrayal—and the Opera Hasn’t Even Started Yet: Feuding Maltese houses live to upstage each other; ‘let us enjoy squabbling.’
The tiny island of Gozo, population about 37,000, has one hospital and one McDonald’s. But it has two opera houses.
Astra and Aurora are owned by rival band clubs that both trace their founding to 1863. For over a century they have been one-upping each other in everything from musical performances to feast-day celebrations. Once, when Aurora heard rumors that Astra planned to bring a horse onstage during a performance of “Aida,” the competing house—which was presenting its own “Aida”—secretly cast two horses.
Some locals on the island compare the rivalry to an arms race.
“We don’t fight with nuclear weapons,” said Matthew Sultana, an Aurora Theater organizer. “We fight with opera and saints.”
Well, that’s for the best.
MAKE APPLE GREAT AGAIN: Apple Supplier Foxconn Plans Expansion in U.S.
Foxconn Technology Group, which manufactures Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other products, said it is in talks to expand in the U.S. The statement comes amid President-elect Donald Trump’s push for a return of manufacturing to the U.S.
Foxconn said the size and scope of its potential U.S. investment hasn’t been determined. . . .
Foxconn’s statement came a day after Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Masayoshi Son met with Mr. Trump in New York and pledged to invest $50 billion in the U.S. Foxconn’s logo appeared beside SoftBank’s on the piece of paper that Mr. Son held while speaking to reporters.
Mr. Son and Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou are longtime friends. SoftBank and Foxconn have collaborated on several investments, including on a joint venture last year with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to sell the Japanese company’s humanoid robot, Pepper.
Well, this doesn’t fulfill my Taiwan-call-based prediction, yet. But . . .
YOU CAN’T LEGISLATE LOVE: Denzel Washington on Race Relations.
WHY ARE UNIVERSITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF INTOLERANCE? Adam Carolla Off to a Rocky Start Filming Movie About Political Correctness at Universities. The celeb is accusing California State University, Northridge of refusing to allow him to co-host a program with radio host Dennis Prager because of their politics. “Comedian Adam Carolla and radio host Dennis Prager are touring the nation’s universities while making their documentary film, No Safe Spaces, and their first stop, scheduled at CSUN, was canceled, according to lawyers, because the content of a talk they were to give was deemed politically incorrect.”
But they’re not taking it lying down. They’ve brought in a pit-bull lawyer:
“It appears your institution may have caused damage by committing unlawful content-based discrimination against my client and others,” wrote Kurt Schlichter of Schlichter & Shonack on behalf of Moral Compass, the limited partnership set up by the filmmakers.
The letter obtained by The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday is dated Dec. 2 and addressed to CSUN president Dianne Harrison.
The filmmakers say they also were told that the appearance of Prager and Carolla might cause some students to protest, and in a letter informing them that they weren’t able to use the venue, a CSUN a representative wrote: “The scope and logistics around the event is just not feasible.”
The college has in the past hosted President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Louis Farrakhan, poet Maya Angelou and other dignitaries at various places on campus.
Cal State Northridge locked horns with James Taranto when he was an undergraduate and lost. I doubt they’ll do better this time. . . .
A BIG CHANGE FROM JEH JOHNSON: Retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly picked to head Department of Homeland Security. “In the end, people familiar with the transition said, the choice came down to Kelly and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. McCaul was considered an early favorite, but his chances were hurt by opposition from some conservatives who found him insufficiently tough on border security, the people said.”
TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: Person of the Year: Donald Trump, President of the Divided States of America.
—Time magazine’s latest cover story. As Ed Morrissey writes in response, “Had Hillary Clinton managed to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the way that Trump did, there’s no doubt that Time would have bestowed this honor on her. Would they have subtitled her ‘President of the Divided States of America’? Almost certainly not, even though it would have applied just as well to Hillary; they would have probably used a ‘glass ceiling’ reference instead.”
TRANSPARENCY: Obama’s Pentagon Suppresses Study Finding $125 Billion in Wasteful Spending.
That’s $125 billion annually.
President Barack Obama’s Pentagon discredited and suppressed an internal probe that uncovered $125 billion in wasteful spending on the enormous administrative operations primarily ran by civilians and contractors.
The money could have been reinvested in payment for troops, weapons, and renovating the aging nuclear arsenal, the Washington Post (WaPo) has learned.
The Defense Business Board produced the study in January 2015 by a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, in coordination with consultants from McKinsey and Company.
More:
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) leaders – namely Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, the Pentagon’s second-highest-ranking official, and Frank Kendall III, the Pentagon’s chief weapons-buyer – reportedly buried the report by discrediting and suppressing its findings after the study discovered far more wasteful spending than the department expected.
According to the study, DoD is spending about 23 percent ($134 billion) of its $580 billion on back-office business operations, namely accounting, human resources and logistics and property management.
If we had as much military power as we actually pay for, we’d be the United States of Earth and Neighboring Satellites and Planets by now.
IN THE MAIL: From Steven F. Hayward, Patriotism Is Not Enough: Harry Jaffa, Walter Berns, and the Arguments that Redefined American Conservatism.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 50% Off Florsheim Men’s Shoes.
And, also today only: Save up to $30 on Call of Duty Infinite Warfare.
TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY: Pearl Harbor Day. And more.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1308.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Mainstream media is the chief culprit behind ‘fake news’
Ashe Schow:
There are several additional, high profile examples of the media promoting the spread of fake news, though these examples thankfully have not resulted in physical harm. (Emotional harm is debatable.)
The first: Andrea Mitchell’s claim Juanita Broaddrick’s accusations against Bill Clinton were discredited.
Mitchell said in a May segment for MSNBC that Broaddrick’s claim against Clinton had been “discredited and long-denied.” NBC News later edited out the “discredited” line because Broaddrick’s accusation has never been discredited. But saying as much certainly helps a narrative that continued to keep Bill popular with Democrats (and Mitchell was referencing Broaddrick in an effort to smear Trump during the election).
The second: Trump’s “grab them by the p—y’” comment.
Make no mistake, these words were really said by our president-elect, and they are disgusting. But the media began to claim that Trump was admitting to sexual assault when he uttered those words. The full context revealed Trump saying that when someone is as rich and famous as he is, women would let him do whatever he wanted. After these decade-old remarks were revealed, women began coming out of the woodwork to claim they never consented to Trump’s advances. Now that the election is over, we aren’t hearing much from these women.
The third: Trump “fact checks” conducted by media outlets.
Read the whole thing.
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: The Left Sees the Rise of a Rival Consciousness and is Becoming Afraid.
Tony Blair, for one, has stopped regarding what the press terms the “populist revolt” as a mere aberration and come to see it as a actual, threatening historical development. Little by little the Left is starting to realize that a global reaction to it is not a freak confluence of rogue waves but driven by systemic factors — and an awareness that it has not been seen for a long time.
It is that self-awareness that is so frightening to the Left. It does not mind fighting foes that have no mind. What was formerly described as conservativism was as a nuisance but never a real a threat to the left because it had no counterprogram beyond caution. They were regarded as frightened rabbits who never reached for the steering wheel of history only pleaded on occasion for a touch of the brakes to still their shattered nerves.
They were therefore safe because despite the occasional setback the Left held the Western monopoly on ideological direction-giving, and were never seriously challenged. . . .
What is emerging, if anything is, may not be the Left’s foe in the way the Left would be its own foe. But it is conscious and therefore they are afraid: because they know what the Left would do and they do not want done to them what they would do to others.
Well, yes. Flashback: When rulers despise the ruled.
PASS THE POPCORN: Lame Duck Obama Seeing Power of Presidency Slip Away.
PROCUREMENT: Boeing Said to Offer Talks on Air Force One After Trump Tweets.
The Pentagon already is budgeting $3.2 billion for research and development, military construction and acquisition of two of the Air Force One planes through fiscal 2021, said Kevin Brancato, the lead government contracts analyst for Bloomberg Government. More money is anticipated in the two years after that. Boeing 747-8 planes average about $225 million each, he said, which means most of the expenses will go to outfitting the planes for presidential use.
The Air Force and Boeing are still conducting work to reduce the program’s technical risks before the company is awarded an advanced development contract, Captain Michael Hertzog, a spokesman for the service branch, said in an e-mail. Budgeted spending can be expected “to change as the program matures with the completion of the risk reduction activities,” he said.
“This is what an Air Force One costs,” Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at Teal Group, said of Trump’s tweet. “There have been no cost overruns. The ability to fly the president during a war is fundamentally expensive.”
The Boeing executives who contacted Trump officials suggested that the price of the new planes could be reduced if the Air Force and Secret Service revise their specifications for the aircraft, the people familiar with the discussions said.
The US military already flies four “doomsday planes,” capable of staying airborne while commanding any conflict up to and including a full-scale nuclear war. Militarized 747s with “what is likely the most complete and sophisticated spectrum of communications equipment ever flown,” all four E-4 Advanced Airborne Command Posts together cost a little less than one billion in 1998 dollars.
But today we can’t build a pair Air Force one jets for less than $3.2 billion?
Something doesn’t seem right.
SO IT’S BEEN ALMOST A MONTH, HAS ANYBODY DONE THIS? Time to Play Catch-Up on Hillary. “Donald Trump’s candidacy represented such a unique threat to democratic norms that the Fourth Estate decided it had an obligation to overcome its supposed objectivity in 2016. . . . The question now for reporters and editors, programmers and producers, is how do they respond after Hillary Clinton’s foe is vanquished? Reporters will have quite a bit of catching up to do when it comes to holding Hillary Clinton to account for what Americans discovered over the course of this campaign.”