STORIES YOU SEE IN 2016: The 5 Best Weapons For Clown Defense.
Archive for 2016
October 8, 2016
PERSONALLY, I BLAME CHEMTRAILS. OR MAYBE DIEBOLD: Analysis: Are Obama’s Wind Turbines to Blame for Hurricanes?
I dunno. I better run this story past Obama’s “Science” “Czar.”
ECONOMY PRODUCES ANEMIC 156,000 JOBS; UNEMPLOYMENT RATE TICKS UP: “Sounds like a job for the Washington Post, aka Jeff Bezos’ multimillion in-kind donation to Hillary.” And they’re on the case!
SNOWFALLS WILL SOON BE A THING OF THE PAST: Experts said Arctic sea ice would melt entirely by September 2016—they were wrong.
(Classical reference in headline.)
October 7, 2016
SEX IN SPACE: Experts reveal the challenges of becoming intimate in microgravity. If you want to experience zero-gravity sex, a swimming pool or ocean is a less-challenging environment, since the resistance of the water makes things easier.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: In his post today titled “‘Grab them by the p***y’: A new October surprise drops on Trump,” Allahpundit concluded with one of his patented exit questions: “Is Paul Ryan still planning to campaign with Trump tomorrow in Wisconsin? If he bails, that’s going to be the strongest signal yet to downballot Republicans that it’s time to abandon ship on Trump.”
Question answered: “Paul Ryan cancels Saturday appearance with Trump,” the Washington Examiner is reporting tonight.
I’M EXPECTING BASICALLY ONE CONTINUOUS OCTOBER SURPRISE UNTIL ELECTION DAY NOW: Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches to Goldman Sachs Finally Leaked.
WHEN CHARLES MURRAY ASKED THIS, PEOPLE WERE APPALLED: “We know what to do about poor kids with IQs of 120—what about the ones with IQs of 100? What about those with IQs of 90?”
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: American vegan tourist brought to tears after shocking discovery that New Zealand has sheep.
THE FBI REVOLT BEGINS: A retired FBI agent says “The FBI has politicized itself, and its reputation will suffer for a long time. I hold Director Comey responsible.”
Got to say it again. Don’t let Comey put a crook in the White House.
I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN “OCTOBER SURPRISE” WAS SPOKEN IN THE SINGULAR TENSE: Lewd Trump Tape Prompts GOP Nominee to Say He’s Heard Worse from Bill Clinton.
THE ECONOMICS OF DINING AS A COUPLE.
BRITISH FRACKING: Stephen Green linked to this article this morning. I link again with reason. Almost two years ago I attended a forum on fracking. It was held in Texas. One of panelists made a couple of comments about restrictions on fracking outside the US. During Q&A a man in the audience rose and said potential shale gas fields in Britain were still being evaluated to determine if they had sufficient gas to justify “fracking” them. There had been problems with some fracking operations. However, he believed many British citizens thought tapping the gas was a good idea. He had a British accent. I approached him after the program concluded. He said there were people in Britain totally opposed to fracking but energy independence is a good thing. Many British citizens thought that, too. He had only expressed his opinion. Turns out he had an informed opinion. There had been problems in Britain. As the BBC article notes, fracking was temporarily banned. There is opposition. Wales has natural gas fields but just how large they are remains to be determined. (This report is a bit dated but lays out the possibilities.) However, the Welsh government opposes fracking and per the BBC article the UK government has devolved “fracking licences to the Welsh Government…”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Army Abrams Tanks to Control Robotic Attack Drones.
“As I look to the future and I think about game-changing technologies, manned-unmanned teaming is a big part of that. There’s a set of things that we think could be really transformational,” Bassett said.
This kind of dynamic could quickly change the nature of landwar.
Autonomous or semi-autonomous robotic vehicles flanking tanks in combat, quite naturally, could bring a wide range of combat-enhancing possibilities. Ammunition-carrying robotic vehicles could increase the fire-power of tanks while in combat more easily; unmanned platforms could also carry crucial Soldier and combat supplies, allowing an Abrams tank to carry a larger payload of key combat supplies.
Also, perhaps of greatest significance, an unmanned vehicle controlled by an Abrams tank could fire weapons at an enemy while allowing the tank to operate at a safer, more risk-reducing stand-off range.
The important question is whether such technology could be reduced enough in size to fit in the back of a midsize SUV, like one might find in my garage.
SKIN IN THE GAME: Make Colleges Pay Loans If Their Graduates Can’t.
When the U.S. Education Department shut down ITT Technical Institute at the beginning of the fall semester, some people saw it as just desserts for the for-profit college. Given ITT’s relatively low graduation rates, alleged use of deceptive job placement figures in its recruiting efforts, and high numbers of loan defaults and delinquencies, the government may have seemed justified in refusing to fund more loans to ITT students.
Yet, now, 35,000 students are suddenly without a school and 8,000 faculty and staff are unemployed, and the entire episode shows that the government remains fixated on problems in the for-profit sector while virtually ignoring that all of U.S. higher education has long been guilty of what, in another business, might be called price gouging.
It will come as no surprise to most Americans that college tuition has been rising at about twice the rate of inflation for a quarter century. This has left student borrowers with increasingly heavy debt burdens, which in turn have led to rising delinquency and default rates. The fundamental problem is that a large portion of any college’s operating funds come from federal student loans, on which taxpayers take the loss if students fail to repay. Universities themselves have no skin in this game.
The solution is to require that colleges absorb some of the loss on delinquencies and defaults by their graduates and dropouts: say, the first 5 percent of losses. And 1 percent to 2 percent of loan amount should be deposited with the Education Department at origination, as collateral.
Only colleges can control tuition, and the cost of room and board and other student expenses. Only they can assess which students are likely to gain the benefits that college should provide. Only they can design their curriculums to prepare students to be productive members of society and to make a living sufficient to repay their loans. We should hold colleges accountable so they do all these things far better than in recent decades.
I agree.
THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: I Let A Company Scan My Naked Body To Get The Perfect Suit.
HOW THE EDUCATION GAP IS TEARING POLITICS APART: “The possibility that education has become a fundamental divide in democracy – with the educated on one side and the less educated on another – is an alarming prospect. It points to a deep alienation that cuts both ways.”
It’s more of a smugness gap, really, and people will put up with a lot but not with being openly despised.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: A Christian Mom Is Cyberbullied for Her Video Exposing Vince Staples’ ‘Norf Norf.’
CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER SAYS SHE FEARED USING GUN WHILE BEING BEATEN.
Jack Dunphy has been writing about this sort of thing for some time now. “Murder rates are soaring in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Baltimore and elsewhere,” he noted back in March, “as the police in those cities, acutely aware of the politics of the moment, attune their behavior so as to minimize risk – not the risk to life and limb, which they accept and prepare for as part of the job, but the risk to their livelihood that arises when the tactical decisions they make in the blink of an eye are viewed through a political prism for months or even years. There is no amount of training that can prepare a cop for that risk; there is only the choice to avoid it… Crime is up and will go higher. Don’t expect this to change any time soon.”
Incidentally, Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office the same year that The Maltese Falcon was a box office smash. No, not the Humphrey Bogart movie, the original version released in 1931.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Thank God Harvard Students Won’t Starve During Dining Hall Workers’ Strike.
IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THEY’RE READY TO DO UNLESS THEY ACTUALLY DO IT: FBI agents are ready to revolt over the cozy Clinton probe.
“IT’S PERHAPS THE MOST VALUABLE PACER IN THE WORLD!” Excellent! The AMC Pacer Used In Wayne’s World Up For Sale.
AT AMAZON, save on Bestselling Office Products.