DAVE BARRY: Even with Irma knocking at our door, we here in Miami are NOT FREAKING OUT AT ALL!

Here’s how I know a hurricane is coming: We have lentils.

We NEVER eat lentils. I am not 100 percent sure what a lentil is. I do know for a fact that not once has anybody in our household ever said, “You know what would be great for dinner tonight? Lentils!”

But at the moment we have roughly a 45-year supply of lentils on hand. This is because we are in Hurricane Preparedness Freakout Mode, and one of the things we Floridians do in this mode is go to Publix and get in long lines to buy mass quantities of things we will never eat. Publix could put out a big display of cans labeled “Toad Intestines Packed In Snail Vomit” and we Floridians would snap them all up in minutes. That’s how prepared we are.

Crack open a can or two of lentils and read the whole thing.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Star Wars’ New Dreadnought Is a Better Star Destroyer—And It Still Doesn’t Make Any Sense.

FROM DE BLASIO’S PERSPECTIVE, THE UPSIDE IS THAT THIS COULD ELIMINATE MANY PROBLEMATIC STATUES: New York City is overdue for a major earthquake.

LYFT’S STRATEGY: Be the Android of the self-driving car business.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems. Is social justice war coming home to roost at Oberlin, as it did at Mizzou and Evergreen State?

FLORIDA MAN: First Looters Already Arrested in Florida Ahead of Irma.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Man finds naked woman in his bed, doesn’t dig it. Could be worse, could’ve been Lena Dunham.

ADVICE FOR DONALD TRUMP: Mr. President, They’re Never Going To Like You.

IT’S AS IF ALL THIS “GREEN” STUFF IS JUST PROPAGANDA FOR THE RUBES: Germany Isn’t Anywhere Close to Its 2020 Climate Target.

Germany has fashioned itself a new brand for the 21st century as the global green leader, but it’s nowhere close to meeting the ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets it set for itself. The German government has targeted a 40 percent reduction of GHG emissions by 2020, as compared to 1990 levels, but with less than three years to go the country remains far from achieving that goal. Berlin already admitted that the 40 percent goal likely wasn’t possible, and instead lowered its sights to a 35 percent reduction, but even that seems unlikely now. A new study from the green think tank Agora Energiewende says Germany is likely to achieve only a 30-31 percent reduction.

That report lays the blame for this “drastically missed” target at the feet of bargain prices for both oil and carbon. The global crude market is awash in supplies today, which has meant cheap oil products (like transportation fuel) for consumers. People are driving further and more often, and that’s not helping German efforts to cut emissions. The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is similarly flooded with supplies, though in this case it’s emissions allowances rather than barrels of crude. This glut of permits has produced a price of carbon far below what is necessary to incentivize heavy emitters to alter their behaviors, which (again) has made the German quest to cut GHGs more difficult.

Europe’s broken carbon market and today’s new oil reality are important trends to help understand why Germany is so far away from that 40 percent target, but the elephant in the room here is nuclear power. As part of Germany’s clean energy transition—its energiewende—nuclear power was phased out, a process hastened following the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Some environmentalists will have told themselves that the zero-emissions power produced by these nuclear reactors was replaced by Germany’s surging renewables sector, but wind and solar produce a much more intermittent type of power, unlike reliable nuclear workhorses. The perverse result is that even as Germany has lauded the “greening” of some parts of its energy mix, it’s had to increase its reliance on lignite coal—just about the brownest energy source around—to compensate for its shuttered nuclear fleet.

Who could have seen this coming?

STORM WATCHING: Live video feed from Two Friends patio in Key West, “while it lasts.”

Plus: Watch Hurricane Irma from these Florida webcams.

Also: Sanibel Island traffic cams.

UPDATE: If you’re wondering why the Key West feed doesn’t look too bad, it’s because it’s recorded now. I guess it didn’t last.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University denies promoting masturbation as deterrent to rape.

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NATO ARMOR ON THE MOVE: The lead vehicle is from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. U.S., British and Romanian soldiers are participating in an exercise in Poland.

UH OH: European model that correctly predicted Irma and Harvey shows Jose hitting DC to NYC in 10 days.

EMBRACE THE SUCK: The new, expanded Second Edition paperback has a pre-order page at Amazon.

With more than 500 definitions Embrace the Suck is the perfect gift for the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman in your life—or for the Beltway Clerk** who yearns to speak like one.

Beware the dirty work of Beltway Clerks:

**Derisive term for a Washington political operative or civilian political hatchet man. May refer to so-called “Washington defense experts” who’ve never served in the armed forces.

The Kindle version will be available in early December.

SHOCKER: Outspoken East Tennessee white nationalist at Fort Sanders rally once active in Occupy, communist groups.

RUTH MARCUS: Betsy DeVos could change sexual assault policy for the better.

It’s not enough to get rid of the “dear colleague” letter though. The Education Department must affirmatively force due process, or colleges will stick with existing policies because those policies have organized constituencies — and jobs — on campus.

BYRON YORK: Crime and Immigration: What’s in the Dream Act:

Commentary on the DACA controversy frequently notes that the nation’s nearly 700,000 so-called Dreamers are a law-abiding group. But a new bill to give DACA recipients full legal status, sponsored by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake and Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin and Chuck Schumer, would allow newly legalized Dreamers to have many run-ins with the law — arrests, charges, convictions — and still receive benefits. Schumer, the Democratic leader, is demanding quick passage.

Former President Barack Obama’s original 2012 executive action creating Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals stipulated that to be eligible, recipients must have “not been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offense, or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.” When Obama announced the criteria for renewing DACA status in 2014, the standard was “have not been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor or three or more misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.”

The Obama administration defined a “significant misdemeanor” as a crime with a maximum sentence of one year, or, regardless of length of sentence, “an offense of domestic violence; sexual abuse or exploitation; burglary; unlawful possession or use of a firearm; drug distribution or trafficking; or driving under the influence.”

With the Dream Act of 2017, Graham, Flake, Durbin, and Schumer have adopted much of the existing Obama-era criteria about crime, but in a way that would allow Department of Homeland Security officials to be more generous with newly legalized DACA recipients.

If only they were as lenient with citizens who break the law.

WHAT’S CHANGED IN BRITAIN SINCE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE? “He stated that it was now impossible, for a believing Christian to hold a prominent position in British politics.”

Related: So, should we ban Catholics from public life?

YES, IT’S TRUE. The NSA has been tapping my phone for years.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Radical fallout: Oberlin College enrollment drops, causing financial problems. “At both the University of Missouri and Evergreen State College, an atmosphere of aggressive ‘Social Justice’ activism damaged enrollment and contributed to financial difficulties. Apparently, even liberal students don’t want to attend institutions where student and faculty social justice warriors have turned the campus into a battleground. The same thing may be happening at Oberlin College in Ohio.”

EMILY YOFFE: The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault: Assertions about how trauma physiologically impedes the ability to resist or coherently remember assault have greatly undermined defense against assault allegations. But science offers little support for these claims.

As of 2014, Harvard Law’s Title IX training for its disciplinary board included Campbell’s PowerPoint slides. Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School, wrote of the intended effect of the training on recipients: “It is 100% aimed to convince them to believe complainants, precisely when they seem unreliable and incoherent.”

It’s Malleus Malificarum all over again. Plus:

The spread of an inaccurate science of trauma is an object lesson in how good intentions can overtake critical thinking, to potentially harmful effect. Many rapes go unreported because the process of reporting them and seeking justice can be miserable for the victim. That the desire to lessen this misery has guided many reforms to campus adjudication is understandable and appropriate—to a point. Campbell’s 2012 lecture sought to persuade police investigators to give victims, in the immediate aftermath of a sexual assault, some space to collect themselves, and to conduct a first interview in a way that’s neutral rather than hostile—laudable, common-sense goals. But common-sense goals, when dressed up by policy makers and victims’ advocates in the inaccurate science now widespread on campus, can be (and have been) easily expanded to serve the idea that virtually every action and behavior that might cast legitimate doubt on an assault should be routinely discounted—and that no matter what precedes or follows an accusation of assault, the accused is always guilty.

The result is not only a system in which some men are wrongly accused and wrongly punished. It is a system vulnerable to substantial backlash. University professors and administrators should understand this. And they, of all people, should identify and call out junk science.

I reject the notion that this proceeds from anyone’s “good intentions.” It is the product of the stereotyping that institutionalized hate breeds.

SARAH HOYT remembers Jerry Pournelle.