TRY AUDIBLE AND GET Two Free Audiobooks.
Archive for 2016
March 19, 2016
AT AMAZON, deals on Levi’s Jeans.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: What’s The Largest Number You Can Represent With Three Digits? It’s Not 999.
WELL, TO BE FAIR, SNYDER’S A GOP OFFICEHOLDER, AND GINA MCCARTHY IS A DEMOCRATIC BUREAUCRAT: Flint Water Crisis Hearings: Watch Rick Snyder Accept Blame, EPA Furiously Avoid It; Snyder says government screwed up, EPA administrator says she’s not sure.
DOING JOBS AMERICANS WON’T DO: Illegals held in vicious Framingham rape. Cops: Boyfriend fought off Guatemalan attackers to rescue pinned-down girlfriend. Too bad he didn’t shoot ’em, but it’s Massachusetts where only criminals can have guns.
Related: Howie Carr: ‘Undocumented’ are running amok with no recourse. “So now we find out the four ‘Framingham men’ charged with grabbing an American woman off the street and then raping her in front of her boyfriend last weekend are in fact illegal aliens from Guatemala.”
FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS: When Your Spouse Is a Picky Eater.
I’M CONVINCED: Ban This Dangerous Weapon Right Now Before More People Die — These are the weapon of choice for serial killers, kidnappers, and racists. The torment must end.
I USED TO THINK I WANTED TO DO THIS, BUT I DECIDED NOT: My Next Toy Will Have a Barf Bag, Or: I’m Going to Buy a Plane. The problem is, if you’re going to fly you need to be a good pilot, and to be a good pilot you need to fly a lot of hours.
ONE BIG REASON WHY ‘INDIANA JONES 5’ MIGHT BE GOOD.
Hint: It’s the same reason why the newest Star Wars movie was actually watchable for a change.
OF PIGPENS AND PARADISE. Rod Dreher on America’s underclass in an era of collapsing social institutions and mores:
Presumably you would say something if you had cause to believe a child was being abused — physically, sexually, or emotionally. But if a child was being neglected in ways that didn’t rise to the level of the criminal, but which nevertheless had a huge effect on the child’s well being, and ability to thrive, would you say anything? Be honest.
Again: what would you say, and to whom would you say it? Over the years, and as recently as this past weekend, I talked to teachers who have told me that they have nobody in their students’ homes to work with as partners in education. They reach out to talk to the caregiver — you can’t even say “parents” anymore — and find at best someone who is overwhelmed or otherwise useless, and at worse somebody who gets resentful, hostile, and even violent.
Here’s the thing: it’s not just the poor and the working class anymore. I’m told by teachers and others that it’s the middle class now too. The attitude that if anything is wrong, it’s Somebody Else’s Fault, is becoming general. Nobody wants to hear criticism of any sort. Nobody wants to recognize authority, or to assert authority in a meaningful way.
This is what it means to live in therapeutic culture, in which maintaining a sense of well being is the absolute telos of our common and individual life. This is what it means when the values of the marketplace (e.g., “The customers is always right”) have infected our normative institutions, and inform the way families and individuals see themselves. This is what it means when our churches (insofar as people still attend them) treat their purpose as offering people comfort and uplift, not solid moral norms and preaching repentance when we fall short. This is what it means when we the people expect our institutions — our schools, our churches, and so forth — to cater to our own felt emotional needs.
The middle class can forestall the reckoning because we have money and resources to avoid the consequences; the poor and the working classes do not. But a reckoning is coming. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are irrepressible:
Read the whole thing.
WHEN ANTI-MODERNISTS COLLIDE: Swedish City Cancels “Earth Hour” Without Lights, Electricity Because Of Rape Risk.
As military historian Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in September of 2002, “9/11 revealed an emerging geopolitical reality: that the world’s most important fault line is not between the rich and the poor, but between those who accept modernity and those who reject it.”
And that’s a perfect description of both Europe’s growing flood of Islamic fundamentalists and the reprimitivist proponents of “Earth Hour.” (A Washington Post headline from October 2010 perfectly squared the circle: “Osama bin Laden embraces his inner Al Gore.”
Related: For those wondering why the left demands its virtue-signaling hour of darkness each year, “Earth Hour’s” backstory can be found here. Found via Tim Blair, who suggests, “In solidarity with our Swedish friends, let’s make this evening’s Hour of Power the brightest yet. Keep the forces of darkness at bay with a fearsome display of household illumination, commencing at 8.30pm. Send your Hour of Power photographs to , and aim to be seen from space.”
UPDATE: Austin Bay sends a link to his November 2001 column, which begins, “Osama Bin Laden has given us notice he believes the future lies in the past, or at least his highly edited and Bowdlerized version of the last thousand years:”
In Bin Laden’s future, the caliphate is restored. The decadent modern world fades as American power dies, though techy bits of modernity are OK, such as videophones and nuclear weapons. Global rule of Bin Laden-interpreted Islamic law follows.
Don’t snicker. Violent “imperial restorationists” have an ugly track record. Benito Mussolini and his Italian Fascists dreamed of restoring the Roman Empire. The obvious choice for caesar was Benito. Who but Bin Laden serves as caliph? Add that title to Osama’s “end state.” It underlines the autocratic and despotic motives that lie behind the schemes of various religious absolutists, ethnic zealots, ultra-nationalists and eco-crazies around the world who reject the moderation and compromise that participation in the global system requires. Remember, violent eco-crazies battle for the “restoration of nature” — a green empire.
Indeed they do.
I THINK I’LL START WORKING IN THE SWIMMING POOL IN ONE OF THOSE FLOATING LOUNGE CHAIRS WITH A DRINK-HOLDER: Standing can also be bad for you, says scientist studying desk set-up. Not sure if I’ll live longer, but I’ll certainly enjoy it more. . . .
WHY THE FBI AND PENTAGON are afraid of “gene drives.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why smart people are better off with fewer friends.
COMING SOON: A LORD OF THE RINGS-THEMED VERSION OF D&D: Why Roleplaying Game Companies Like Licensing Existing Properties, as explored by Moe Lane.
GREEN IS THE COLOR OF STATUS: Alas, this isn’t about St. Patrick’s Day but about trendy snobbery that hurts the poor.
A GREAT COLUMN BY ROBERT SHIBLEY ON Tennessee Democratic Legislators’ Efforts To Equate Support For Free Speech With Support For ISIS.
Finally, to fear pro-ISIS speech on campus to the extent of being willing to trash the First Amendment to prevent it is to accept some extremely dubious assumptions about Tennessee’s students. Do Tennessee legislators really think that ISIS’s message is so attractive to the state’s college students that they will be convinced to join if they hear it?
This profound lack of faith in the basic good sense of young Americans would be disturbing anywhere, but perhaps nowhere more than in Tennessee. The Volunteer State draws its very nickname from the willingness of its citizens to rise to the defense of the United States. Take it from this son of two Vols: Any list of places where ISIS’s message is least likely to be successful would very likely put the state of Tennessee near or at the very top.
Maybe you figure students could do without hearing what ISIS thinks — or the Westboro Baptist Church, or the Black Panthers, or even Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But in our democracy, all sides must be able to speak out so that people can fairly consider each other’s views and determine why they’re right or wrong.
Living in a free society means having the confidence that examining even the worst ideas can help us reach the truth — and there’s no place more appropriate for that exercise than a college campus.
Daniel showed that confidence on Wednesday. Hopefully, next year, the rest of the Legislature follows suit.
Indeed.
NOTHING CREEPY ABOUT THIS AT ALL: Twitter Facial Analysis Reveals Demographics of Presidential Campaign Followers. “The analysis by Wu and co is straightforward. They study both candidates’ followers, their user names, geographical information and each follower’s number of followers to determine their influence. In particular, they look at each user’s picture and use a machine-learning program to determine whether it shows a male or female and to identify that person’s ethnicity. The results are simple to state. An interesting angle is the gender balance of Clinton’s followers. While Clinton enjoys substantial female support among politicians, Wu and co say there is good evidence that her support among average Democratic women has fallen sharply. . . . Trump, however, has an almost identical level of support at 45 percent.”
#GREENFAIL: Obama-Backed Solar Plant Could Be Shut Down For Not Producing Enough Energy. “California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds. The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as part of its power purchase agreements with utilities.”