FAKE BLOOD, REAL SCREAMS: What I Learned at Wilderness Medic Training.

MACHINE LEARNING: Self-taught artificial intelligence beats doctors at predicting heart attacks.

AND SPEAKING OF GRAMSCIAN DAMAGE, If You Paid $63,916 Per Year To Attend Wellesley And You Write Like This, You Got Ripped Off.

ANDREW MICHTA: The Deconstruction of the West: The greatest threat to the liberal international order comes not from Russia, China, or jihadist terror but from the self-induced deconstruction of Western culture.

It’s all Gramscian Damage.

THE INTELLECTUAL’S BARGAIN: The New York Review of Books quotes from Terry Teachout’s introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Norman Podhoretz’s Making It:

But Making It is never more memorable than when it describes its author’s belated discovery of “the brutal bargain” to which he was introduced by “Mrs. K.,” a Brooklyn schoolteacher who took him in hand and showed him that the precocious but rough-edged son of working-class Jews from Galicia could aspire to greater things—so long as he turned his back on the ghettoized life of his émigré parents and donned the genteel manners of her own class. Not until much later did he realize that the bargain she offered him went even deeper than that:

She was saying that because I was a talented boy, a better class of people stood ready to admit me into their ranks. But only on one condition: I had to signify by my general deportment that I acknowledged them as superior to the class of people among whom I happened to have been born…. what I did not understand, not in the least then and not for a long time afterward, was that in matters having to do with “art” and “culture” (the “life of the mind,” as I learned to call it at Columbia), I was being offered the very same brutal bargain and accepting it with the wildest enthusiasm.

So he did, and he never seriously doubted that he had done the only thing possible by making himself over into an alumnus of Columbia and Cambridge and a member of the educated, art-loving upper middle class. At the same time, though, he never forgot what he had lost by doing so, having acquired in the process “a distaste for the surroundings in which I was bred, and ultimately (God forgive me) even for many of the people I loved.” Neither did his mother, who in later years would look with wonderment at “this strange creature, her son” and mutter, “I should have made him for a dentist.”

Which is a pretty neat summary of the elites in academia and those who make the sausage for the DNC-MSM, actually.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The Least Diverse Place in America.

STANDING UP AGAINST AGE DISCRIMINATION: Older Workers Challenge Firms’ Aggressive Pursuit of the Young: In one class action against PricewaterhouseCoopers, two men say they were rejected because they lacked the youthful profile possessed by many PwC recruits.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1438: Sessions Is Noncommittal On GOP Request To Reopen DOJ Probe Of Lois Lerner.

CHINA AND JAPAN TAKING PREVENTIVE MEASURES IN THE EVENT OF A MILITARY CONFRONTATION WITH NORTH KOREA: A dire headline.

More:

As political scientist John Delury stated regarding the “pre-emptive strike” scheme for a March 10 report, “The role of a South Korean president, whether liberal or conservative, is to be the person who gently takes that option off the table. The South Korean president has to be saying, ‘If you take out their missile pad, they take out our capital.’ But that hasn’t been happening.”

RELATED: The Korea Times reports that the U.S. and North Korea may be holding back channel discussions. It’s poorly sourced and the so-called “deal” is rather absurd. The Korea Joongang Daily has more details on North Korea’s new missiles and palace intrigue in Pyongyang. Here’s the real diplomatic and historical context, to include the economic “soft power” appeals to North Korea that didn’t work.

IT MEANS THE PRESS THINKS THAT THE TRUTH WILL HELP LE PEN: Silence in Paris: What does it mean when no one talks about a brutal murder? The thing is, when people know that the press acts this way, that helps Le Pen even more.

ANDY MCCARTHY ON THE TRUMP WIRETAPS FALLOUT: If the Government Cannot Be Trusted, Can It Protect the Nation?

Any power you give the government will be abused for political purposes eventually.

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA TOLD US WE COULDN’T DRILL OUR WAY OUT OF OUR ENERGY PROBLEMS: US Shale Grows Stronger.

Rigs aren’t a perfect metric for measuring the health of the oil industry. When oil prices were high, companies were expansive in their shale ambitions and the rig count ballooned accordingly. Following the crude price collapse, those same firms shut down their least-productive and least-profitable wells, leaving behind the gushers and the real money-makers. While the rig count fell from more than 1,600 down below 400, U.S. oil production dipped just 200,000 barrels per day over that time period.

That said, it’s fair to say that the rig count today, coming off the back of a bearish time in the oil market, is a more accurate measure of how well the U.S. shale industry is doing. The fact, then, that it added 11 rigs in the past week is confirmation of something we’ve been watching carefully in recent months: Shale is booming once again, and the U.S. energy outlook is looking awfully bright.

Good!

BERKELEY HATEWATCH UPDATE: Vandal Calls for Beheading, Lynching of Berkeley College Republicans. Also, as far as I know, despite “investigation” of the Milo riots, I don’t believe anyone has actually been prosecuted for the violence there. “A College Republicans spokeswoman also said that members had been ‘pepper sprayed, sucker-punched and verbally and physically assaulted for voicing their opinions and beliefs’ on campus. And in March, members caught another student destroying one of the College Republicans’ signs, posting video of the vandalism to their Facebook page.”

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CLARICE FELDMAN ON THE TRUMP WIRETAPS: In Her Majesty’s Disservice. “It has become increasingly clear to me that there was widespread wiretapping of President Trump and his associates and that the underlying justification was pretextual — it was actually intended to spy on a political opponent. And it is equally clear that the nonsensical post-election tale that Russia colluded with Trump so that he could beat Hillary Clinton was a coverup tale to justify the unmasking and leaking of some of the information — particularly about General Flynn — which has taken place. The prior administration was so confident Hillary would win that they left their tracks uncovered and afterward were desperate to hide the truth so they projected and whispered the Russians were colluding with Trump.”

That does seem increasingly likely to be true.

THE HILL: Seven Regulations Targeted By Trump.

President Trump has spent his first months in office working to fulfill his campaign pledge of rolling back regulations.

On the campaign trail, Trump said that as many as 70 percent of federal agency regulations could be eliminated by his administration.

While the conservative American Action Forum has argued it’s “likely impossible” for Trump to deliver on his promise, the president is using every tool at his disposal to try.

In the last three months, Trump has issued executive orders directing agencies to rewrite Obama-era climate rules and find two rules to repeal for every new rule created. He’s also directed each agency to name a regulatory reform officer and create a task force to carry out his regulatory agenda.

The president has also signed 13 resolutions passed by Congress under the Congressional Review Act that overturned rules the Obama administration finalized before leaving office.

Here’s a look at the top regulations Trump has targeted.

Full list at the link.

CONGRESS MUST INVESTIGATE THE SPURIOUS SYRIAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS DEAL OBAMA MADE WITH VLADIMIR PUTIN: How much influence did Putin have in the Obama Administration? Syrians continue to die and it sure looks like Obama lied. (It’s my latest Observer essay.)

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, HANKY-PANKY EDITION: UC-Berkeley, Former Law School Dean Settle All Litigation Over Alleged Sexual Harassment; Sujit Choudhry Agrees To Pay $100,000, Resign From Tenured Faculty In Spring 2018.

ALSO, AN HOUR OF RUNNING WILL SEEM LIKE 7 HOURS OF YOUR LIFE: An Hour of Running May Add 7 Hours to Your Life. “The new study found that, compared to nonrunners, runners tended to live about three additional years, even if they run slowly or sporadically and smoke, drink or are overweight. No other form of exercise that researchers looked at showed comparable impacts on life span.” Hmm.

UPDATE: I’m not dissing running, though I do find it kind of boring. Personally, I do intervals — I walk a mile or two, and do a few 90-second intervals of running absolutely flat-out. Research seems to indicate that that’s just as beneficial as running the whole distance, and it’s easier on my joints.

THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED, WE’D SEE A RETURN TO MANDATORY LOYALTY OATHS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Universities require scholars pledge commitment to diversity.

MILES AND MILES OF ASTROTURF:Podesta’s CAP Action Partners With Town Hall Project for Anti-Trump Events.

IN THE EMAIL FROM DAVID BURKHEAD: Rainy Days and Moon Days (FutureTech Industries).

PEEPSHOW! Peeps on Television: 20 Shows Starring Marshmallow Peeps.