Archive for 2016
December 29, 2016
Related: Obama Orders Sanctions On Russia. But Why Now? “The press uses the phrase ‘election hacking’ deliberately, I suspect, to convey the false impression that Russia somehow altered vote totals in Donald Trump’s favor. No such claim has been made.”
SO THESE ARLO SECURITY CAMERAS are currently a hundred bucks off on Amazon. I’ve seen them in action and they’re pretty impressive, and easy to install and set up. Worth a look if you’re interested in security.
CHARLES MOORE: I’m a part of the elite. So why am I cheering for the populist right?
The cultural signals from the powerful are almost unthinkingly hostile to majority populations. This month, to take a minor example, a report into ‘diversity’ in the theatre commissioned by Andrew Lloyd Webber reported (reusing a phrase from Greg Dyke years ago) that it is ‘hideously white’. Why should the dominant racial characteristic of all western societies be considered ‘hideous’? If you said that anything was ‘hideously black’ you would (rightly) be shunned by polite society. Such asymmetry inspires revolt. The rise of Trumpery shows that the right has learnt a tactic of the left, which is to play up grievance to get power, money and attention. Grievance politics is extremely unattractive, but if western societies no longer deliver rising general prosperity and disrespect the people whom they are failing to serve, what do you expect?
As Peggy Noonan says, we’re patronized by our inferiors.
AT AMAZON, Year End Deals in Sports and Fitness.
Plus, Outlet Deals Galore.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT WHAT CELEBRITIES THINK, when this is how they choose to dress?
KURT SCHLICHTER: Some New Year’s Resolutions for Our Progressive Pals. “The year 2016 was a great one for our progressive friends – except for that whole utter repudiation unpleasantness of last November. Now, as a concerned conservative friend eager to help, let me offer you some New Year’s resolutions that will keep you on the path to success. The bottom line: stay the course!”
UPDATE: From the comments: “Heh – you should have given that both a “read the whole thing” and a ‘don’t read while drinking or eating’ warning.”
SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: SJWs Bully Steve Martin to Delete ‘Sexist’ Carrie Fisher Tribute.
Related: Cinnabon Caves to PC Police, Deletes Hilarious Carrie Fisher Tribute.
I barely bother with Twitter anymore. This is why.
Heckuva job, Jack.
CHARLIE MARTIN IS IN TROUBLE, AND HAS A GOFUNDME SET UP. I donated, and I encourage you to. I get a lot of good links from him, and he’s good people.
A P-38 LIGHTNING WARMS UP: Today’s StrategyPage Battle of the Bulge photo.
ONE I MISSED: A dug-in mortar emplacement near St. Vith. Looks like the outfit in the Hunnage photo (updated a week ago thanks to the Instapundit commenter who recognized the locale). The mortar photo is marked as a U.S. Army photo.
IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? Don’t want to go deaf? Have a pint of Guinness each day: High levels of iron helps to prevent hearing loss, study finds.
It’s an Imperial pint-sized glass of science. You wouldn’t want to argue with science, would you?
THE SOVIET UNION’S DEMISE: It’s been 25 years.
A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING: Defensive Knife Use: Robbery victim disarms, fatally wounds perp.
At least he understands he’s chosen the form of his destructor.
Read the full interview with Reason’s Alexander Bisley.
CHARLIE MARTIN ON Election Fraud Nonsense.
MEDICINE: New Brain Cells Help Fight Cancer.
The treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, has been used for blood cancers, but its value for solid tumors is unknown. City of Hope has been testing injecting the cells directly into the brain.
First, [50-year-old brain cancer victim Richard] Grady had more surgery to remove three of his largest tumors. Then he got six weekly infusions of the cells through a tube into his brain, where the biggest one had been. No cancer recurred there, but the remaining tumors continued to grow, new ones appeared, and cancer spread to his spine.
Doctors decided on a bold step: placing a second tube in his brain, into a cavity where spinal fluid is made, and putting the cells there.
“The idea was to have the flow of the spinal fluid carry the T cells to different locations,” along the route the cancer had taken, Badie said.
After three treatments, all tumors had shrunk dramatically. After the 10th treatment, “we saw all the tumors disappear,” and Grady was able to cut back on other medicines and return to work, Badie said.
New tumors, though, have now emerged in different spots in his brain and spine, and he is getting radiation treatment. But his response to immunotherapy lasted more than seven months, and “for him to live more than a year and half” after starting it is amazing for a situation where survival often is measured in weeks, Badie said.
Amazing, indeed.
SAFETY: Automatic brakes may have saved lives in the Berlin Christmas truck attack.
Related: Tesla Autopilot’s new radar technology predicts an accident caught on dashcam a second later. “The driver of the Tesla also reported that Autopilot started braking before he could apply the brakes himself, according to Noordsij.”
IT’S NOT THAT THEIR AUDIENCE IS SHRINKING; IT’S MERELY BECOMING MORE “SELECTIVE:” ESPN posts second-worst ‘Monday Night Football’ season. As Reuters adds, “If not for this past Monday night’s highly watched NFL game [with the Lions versus the resurgent Cowboys], The Walt Disney Co’s ESPN network would have had its smallest audience for ‘Monday Night Football’ in 2016 since the 2006 season.”
ESPN (with the full encouragement of the NFL) has worked very hard to become MSNBC with (slightly) better visuals; it shouldn’t be surprised when MSNBC-sized ratings are the result.
Or as Iowahawk would say:
(Classical allusion in headline.)
THE LAST DAYS OF BARACK OBAMA: “There will surely be others like him, and that should frighten us more than it does.”
Kevin Williamson:
To be a republican in the 18th century was to be a radical. The American founders were deeply suspicious of pomp and circumstance: It is not mere coincidence that the ban on an official national church (that, and not having a manger scene at city hall, is what “establishment of religion” means) came in the first item on the Bill of Rights. Many republicans of the founding era were so suspicious of religious bureaucracies that it was not a foregone conclusion that the Catholic Church would be tolerated throughout the colonies. (Indeed, for a time it wasn’t.) And they were even more suspicious of the claims of royalty. In the person of the English king, they found a compound of those sources of suspicion: a hereditary monarch who was head of state and church both.
The idea that a large, complex society enjoying English liberty could long endure without the guiding hand of a priest-king was, in 1776, radical. A few decades later, it became ordinary — Americans could not imagine living any other way. The republican manner of American presidents was pronounced: There is a famous story about President Lincoln’s supposedly receiving a European ambassador who was shocked to see him shining his own shoes. The diplomat said that in Europe, a man of Lincoln’s stature would never shine his own shoes. “Whose shoes would he shine?” Lincoln asked.
As American society grows less literate and the state of its moral education declines, the American people grow less able to engage their government as intellectually and morally prepared citizens. We are in the process — late in the process, I’m afraid — of reverting from citizens to subjects.
Read the whole thing.