Archive for 2017
January 3, 2017
IT’S LIKE STUDENTDOC FOR LAWYERS: Some Lawyer Is Posting Hilarious “Tips” On Facebook. And if you have a month to spare, here is a link to student doctor. If you’re of a prurient disposition, don’t blame me if it eats your life.
STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES: Kaepernick’s Foolish Crusade Ends Up Costing 49ers Coach and General Manager Their Jobs.
FASTER PLEASE: The Fountain of Youth by Targeting Senescent Cells? I wouldn’t be twenty again for half the time and twice the pay, but I wouldn’t mind having my twenty year old body back.
WHAT SORCERY IS THIS? Colloquium: Protecting quantum information against environmental noise.
SNOW FLAKES CLUTCHING THEIR PEARLS: Rockette Says Dancers Performing For Trump Will Be ‘Branded In History As One Of Those Women’. Which is weird. Where do you think they hide the pearls in those outfits?
APPARENTLY THERE ARE RULES TO THIS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION THING, EVEN WHEN IT’S TASTY TASTY CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: Salon Shrewsplains Paella.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Islamic Cash Keeping Daniel Silva’s Books Out of Hollywood?
JUST TO MAKE THINGS CLEAR: Eight Facts on the “Russian Hacks”.
TRUMPSPLAINING TO EUROPEANS: The First Casualty.
January 2, 2017
AT AMAZON, save on bestselling Video Games.
Beginning with the election of President Reagan in 1980, isn’t this Bruce’s standard boilerplate response whenever there’s a president with an (R) after his name? Conversely, Springsteen’s pose of optimism as a mascot of the anointed* on the eve of Obama assuming office hasn’t exactly stood the test of time, either.
* Classical reference.
12 GREAT CARS that nobody bought in 2016.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: The DNC-MSM and “The Office Of The President-Elect,” Then and Now. As Paul Mirengoff writes with alteration ascendant at Power Line, “The President-Elect Need Not Be a Potted Plant:”
Ruth Marcus, the liberal Washington Post columnist, advises Donald Trump that “there can be only one president at a time.” This slogan raises, but does not answer, the question of what the president-elect should say or do when the lame duck takes highly controversial action with which his successor-to-be strongly disagrees. More on that in a moment.
But first, let’s share a laugh over Marcus’ invocation of Richard Nixon in defense of the idea that the president-elect should be seen but not heard. Marcus writes:
President Richard Nixon, at a news conference a week after being sworn in. . .noted that, in conversations as president-elect with Johnson administration officials, he had “scrupulously followed the line that we have one president at a time, and that he must continue to be president until he leaves office on January 20.”
It was Nixon, though, who as a candidate for president (not president-elect) worked to scuttle Vietnam peace talks. Fearing that the prospect of peace talks would harm his election campaign (his opponent Hubert Humphrey was cutting into Nixon’s once-large lead), Tricky Dick let the South Vietnamese government know it could get better terms if it obstructed peace talks.
Funny, I don’t recall the Washington Post losing much sleep over those infamous “Office of the President-Elect” placards that Obama began draping over his podium immediately after he won the election – several weeks before the Electoral College made his victory official – until he took office in mid-January of 2009. They were clearly designed to bigfoot George W. Bush in his last months in power, and blur the line between the authority each man held. I don’t believe Obama has any guilt over any of his decisions, no matter how poorly made. But in addition to his anger over Trump’s victory, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of Obama’s grandstanding in recent weeks was caused by flashbacks to his own playing the poseur while waiting to take office.
SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Nude Neptune sunk by Facebook’s privacy controls.
ARGUMENT AD HOMINEM ALBUS:*
This will go great with my set of “go fuck yourself” cards. https://t.co/IuEiTxCTnU
— neontaster (@neontaster) January 1, 2017
Headline above coined by NYU’s Jonathan Haidt. An ad hominem argument is “a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character,” or in this case the race (albus is Latin for “white,” of the person making the argument. As Haidt tells interviewer Tom Woods in the podcast below, just flip the race from white to black, or to the religion of the person making the argument you don’t agree with, to understand just how bigoted the concept of “privilege” is:
* It also translates equally well as “This is how you got Trump, leftwing campus crybullies.”
OUT: DRY JANUARY. In: Sugarless January. What I’ve learned is that if you start avoiding sugar, and things with a lot of sugar in them, you quickly stop missing sugar.
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: The Year in Housing: The Middle Class Can’t Afford to Live in Cities Anymore.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Liberals imagine that law-abiding citizens do not have any idea how to use a gun responsibly — and that criminals will start following rules.”
—Thomas Sowell, “The New York Times’ Fictitious Image of Gun Carriers,” NRO, December 21st.
(Via Maggie’s Farm.)
CUBANO EMBARGO: Venmo Keeps Flagging Payments for Cuban Food As Potential U.S. Trade Violations.
BuzzFeed’s team tried divvying up the cost of a work lunch of Cuban sandwiches, and the app flagged a payment request simply described as “Cuban.” By way of explanation, Venmo told the site that it takes U.S. trade sanctions “seriously,” especially for money transfers involving “foreign countries … on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list maintained by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.” Cuban could describe the cuisine you ate, or the money you’re secretly funneling to a communist dictator — hard to say, really. BuzzFeed says Venmo gives you 15 days to offer proof.
Just don’t order your lunch with a side of Russian dressing.