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Archive for 2016
December 2, 2016
WELL, THEY GELDED THEMSELVES, REALLY: How Trump Turned the National Media Into Impotent Hecklers.
SARAH HOYT: I AM ALIVE. “Apparently my life was getting boring so this morning, in the shower, it seemed a good idea to have a cardiac episode.”
Hit her PayPal button if you’re so inclined.
WE MAY NEVER KNOW THEIR MOTIVATION: One year after the San Bernardino attack, police offer a possible motive as questions still linger. “Before the couple got married and Malik came to the United States, the two exchanged messages online ‘showing signs in their communication of their joint commitment to jihad and to martyrdom,’ FBI Director James B. Comey said last year.”
It’s an enigma.
Plus: “One person working in the neighborhood told a local outlet he had seen numerous Middle Eastern men in the area but did not report anything to avoid racial profiling. Another man told a local broadcast station that an unspecified person saw purported suspicious activity — including the couple getting numerous deliveries and working in the garage at odd times — but, again, did not want to be seen as involved in racial profiling.”
STRANGE NEW RESPECT IN 3, 2. 1. . . Sarah Palin: Trump’s Carrier deal is ‘crony capitalism.’
ON FACEBOOK, CHARLES GLASSER CALLS THIS “The most grown-up, intelligent interview I’ve seen in 2016.” Tucker Carlson Interviews Ny Times Public Editor Liz Spayd On Biased Trump Stories.
NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATTHEW YGLESIAS: SILICONCUBINES Sex robots will let kinky couples enjoy raunchy threesomes WITHOUT getting jealous.
Plus: “Sex therapist Ari Tuckman said robots will be a welcome relief for people who have mental or physical disabilities impeding their chances of finding a partner.”
Just be sure you have robot insurance.
ONLY IN 2016 DO YOU SURRENDER BY HAULING YOUR FLAG UP: Hampshire College returns US flag to full staff; president denies playing politics.
UPDATE: Thoughts from Mike Rowe. “Tuition at Hampshire College is about $60,000 a year. That’s not a problem because it’s expensive – it’s a problem because 85% of Hampshire students qualify for some form of federal financial aid. http://bit.ly/2gsZxnk. That means that We the People are enabling schools like Hampshire to sell a liberal arts degree for approximately $250,000.”
It’s like there’s some sort of Higher Education Bubble or something.
THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT: Chia Donald Trump.
I’LL HAVE WHAT THE GENTLEMAN ON THE FLOOR IS READING: Columbia Room Has a Cocktail Literally Made With Old Books.
Columbia Room has played around with plenty of unusual ingredients, like fig leaf milk and potato water, in its cocktails. But “In Search of Time Past” — the third drink on its current tasting menu—is the most Portlandia yet.
That’s because it includes a tincture made of old books. Literally. Really literally.
Owner Derek Brown got the idea after visiting El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, where he encountered candied page fragments on the avant-garde tasting menu.
“He was morbidly fascinated by it,” says head bartender JP Fetherston. So, the team began working on a cocktail that would replicate the sensation of opening an old book or walking into an old library.
That old book smell is so delightful, I once bought a 19th Century geography primer in terrible condition, just because it smelled more like old books than any of my other old books did.
Fascinating, indeed.
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MARK STEYN: Make Kellogg’s Gr-rr-rr-rr-rreat Again. “America is a split nation politically. If the likes of Kellogg’s and Anheuser-Busch want to extend that split to beer and corn flakes, there won’t be a lot left. The damage is not just to their brand but to the kind of civil society that produces companies like theirs. If the left really cannot handle losing an election, why don’t they just cut to the chase and demand full-out civil war?” Give ’em until February.
WHEN EVEN SALON WON’T BUY YOUR SMEARS: Calling Jeff Sessions “racist” conveniently ignores the work he’s done for Alabama’s black community.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: An Infidel’s Quick Guide to Islamic Sects.
HE SWIMS THROUGH THE POPULACE LIKE A FISH THROUGH WATER: Donald Trump’s Guerilla War Against the Liberal Media.
JILL GLAM, HILLARY SCAM: They’re both ridiculous Tramtrumettes, but hey — it’s 2016!
CHANGE: Trump makes history with phone call to Taiwan leader. “Trump’s transition team confirmed late Friday that the president-elect had spoken by phone on Friday with Taiwan’s president, the first conversation between a U.S. president or president-elect with Taiwan’s leader since 1979, when the two countries severed diplomatic ties. . . . The phone call will almost certainly infuriate Beijing, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province. Jimmy Carter formally declared Beijing the sole government of China in 1979, which ended formal U.S. diplomatic relations with Taiwan.”
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Shot: Emory Reviews ‘Sanctuary Campus’ Petition; Assesses Options. “In Georgia, local officials are required by law to prove their compliance with federal detention requests — no city in the state can be designated a sanctuary city, including Atlanta.”
Chaser: Emory could lose state funding if it declares a ‘sanctuary campus’ to shield immigrants.
A powerful Republican lawmaker aims to cut off state funding to Emory University and any other higher education institution that declares it will defy President-elect Donald Trump if he tries to deport immigrants who are illegally in the U.S.
State Rep. Earl Ehrhart plans to introduce legislation to block colleges from receiving state funds if they aren’t complying with state and federal law in response to the report last week that Emory was weighing whether to declare the school a “sanctuary campus.”
“Private institutions can do what they want, but there are consequences to actions. And it can’t be an option to choose not to follow state and federal laws,” said Ehrhart of Powder Springs, who is chairman of the House’s higher education financing subcommittee.
“There’s a raft of state taxpayer dollars for private institutions,” he said, “and I’m very sanguine about being able to pass a piece of legislation that says if you’re picking and choosing which laws you’re going to follow, state dollars aren’t going to follow.”
Emory University President Claire Sterk wrote in a letter to students last week that administrators are reviewing their request “for a sanctuary campus and ways to protect all members of the Emory community” and said the school would continue to support students, known as “Dreamers,” who were granted a temporary reprieve from the threat of deportation by an executive order from President Barack Obama.
I suppose there’s nothing stopping states from lifting state tax-exempt status from institutions that defy the law.
Look for state legislators to start providing more adult supervision for higher education institutions, both public and private. Those institutions used to be shielded by prestige, but there’s a lot less of that now.
I’M WITH SHAQ: Shaquille O’Neal says Donald Trump won “fair and square,” so forget calls for a recount and get over it.
SO JUST LIKE CNN STAFF, THEN: Gitmo Prisoners ‘Thought It Was the End of the World’ on Election Night, Asked for Tranquilizers.
JOURNALISM: Cillizza, other journos whine when Trump RAMS them at rally. Delicious schooling came next. Naming and shaming is supposed to be their turf.
WE SEEM TO BE ENCOUNTERING A LOT OF NEW THINGS IN PHYSICS LATELY: Scientists Catch “Virtual Particles” Hopping In and Out of Existence. The quantum effect known as vacuum birefringence was predicted in the 1930s, but this is the first observational evidence of the phenomenon in action. “Quantum electrodynamics (QED) describes the relationships between particles of light, or photons, and electrically charged particles such as electrons and protons. The theories of QED suggest that the universe is full of “virtual particles,” which are not really particles at all. They are fluctuations in quantum fields that have most of the same properties as particles, except they appear and vanish all the time. Scientists predicted the existence of virtual particles some 80 years ago, but we have never had experimental evidence of this process until now.”