NOW THIS IS ACTUALLY COOL: New nanomaterial can extract hydrogen fuel from seawater.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:

Two Canadian professors have developed an approach they call “Trojan horse pedagogy” to peddle social justice to otherwise unassuming students. Sal Renshaw and Renee Valiquette, both of whom teach at Nipissing University in Ontario, detailed their extensive “ruse” in a recently published book, boasting that their “Introduction to Interdisciplinary Analysis” class is actually a “social justice” course in disguise… “Our goal in this class is to move both hearts and minds, in part by ‘forcing’ an encounter with at least some knowledges that students have already decided they are not interested in,” Renshaw and Valiquette explain, adding that the classes are “rooted in… post-structural feminist theory.”

According to Renshaw and Valiquette, being dishonest about course content, and about the subsequent likelihood of getting a job, is “a pathway to social justice education” and therefore, they insist, “the ruse is justified.” The lecturers in question admit that for many students “social justice” claptrap has a poor reputation and is actively avoided, which prompts the professors to sidestep that reputational challenge by simply lying to students about what it is they’re paying for. The two words you’re looking for are fire and immediately.

And it’s pretty safe to do so, knowing that with minimal acquisition of new skills, vast career opportunities would await them in the DNC-MSM.

SADLY, NOT INCLUDING JETSONS-STYLE FLYING CARS. Bracing For The Next Wave of Technology. “News organizations which have struggled in the past two decades as readers moved online and to mobile devices will soon need to adapt to artificial intelligence, augmented reality and automated journalism and find ways to connect beyond the smartphone, the report said.”

ANDREW KLAVAN ON AMERICAN HEROES, UNIVERSAL EVIL:

Like most conservatives, I was sickened by the way the left rushed to manipulate the nation’s grief and anger in an attempt to strip us of our right to defend life and liberty, a right also known as the right to bear arms. Then Mollie Hemingway said something on the Special Report panel that was so compassionate and illuminating, it cooled my outrage. “We’re pretending we’re having a debate about gun control,” Mollie said, “but we’re really having a debate about the nature of evil and whether a big enough government can contain it.” It was an observation so womanly wise that a mere news discussion couldn’t address it. The rest of the panel ignored her and the talk immediately turned to the utterly meaningless effort to ban bump stocks.

But of course, she was right: that’s exactly what we’re really talking about. The left sneers at conservatives for “doing nothing,” but conservatism understands the tragedy of the fallen world: we can only choose between freedom with evil and slavery with evil, because no government is large enough to make evil go away.

Read the whole thing.

NON-SJW MARVEL DIDN’T LAST LONG: Marvel Drops Planned Joint Venture With Northrop Grumman.

INNOVATION: Where Does IBM Research Get Ideas? Open Mikes and Interns.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Then: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”

—Hillary Clinton(!), November 22nd, 2015.

Now? Not so much:

In making her announcement on Twitter, Ms. Bloom did not offer an explanation for her resignation. The tactics and tenor of her defense of Mr. Weinstein have varied, and there were often substantial differences in her public and private statements. The emails, viewed by The New York Times, reveal that at least two board members did not approve of her approach.

As the board convened an emergency phone meeting on Thursday evening to address the allegations, published in an investigation by The Times, Ms. Bloom sent an email to board members attacking the article. She outlined a plan that involved “more and different reporting,” including “photos of several of the accusers in very friendly poses with Harvey after his alleged misconduct.”

—“Lisa Bloom, Lawyer Advising Harvey Weinstein, Resigns Amid Criticism From Board Members,” the New York Times, yesterday.

Hollywood in 2014: “Hollywood PSA: ‘It’s On Us’ to Stop Sexual Assault.”

Rob Reiner, yesterday: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Audience member at LBJ movie screener: In the wake of what we learned about Harvey Weinstein, how can that still be happening in 2017 and what can your community do about it?

Rob Reiner: What can my community do? Listen, this is happening in every workplace in America. I mean, you have Fox News. I mean, this is — you talk about sexual harassment. That goes on and it’s disgusting. It’s disgusting, you know? And the thing to do about it is to – how about this? Harvey Weinstein funded this movie The Hunting Ground. How do you do that? I mean, you know.

That’s something that we all have to — you know, we have to create these safe atmospheres where women can come forward and say what they need to say in order to get these things — but this kind of stuff is going on in every industry.

It’s not just Hollywood. He’s one schmuck who did what he did but you know, there’s lot of great people in Hollywood that don’t do that kind of stuff.

“So there are a lot of fine people among those sexual harassers who run Hollywood? Is that what we’re hearing?”, Twitchy adds.

Incidentally, as Sopan Deb of the New York Times notes, Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker, the moderator of the event “teed up multiple questions about Trump. Didn’t ask about Weinstein. Good on the audience member for asking.”

QUESTION: WOULD THE HARVEY WEINSTEIN STORY HAVE COME OUT IF HILLARY HAD BEEN ELECTED? Flashback: Harvey Weinstein Urged Clinton Campaign to Silence Sanders’s Black Lives Matter Message.

NO, PLEASE DON’T: Four Belated Sequels We Need More than Blade Runner 2049.

I’m so old, I remember when Hollywood still had ideas for new, standalone, movies.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Albion College president allegedly defended assault of white student due to her ‘privilege.’

A private college president allegedly told a student government meeting that a young woman’s assault at the hands of campus protesters was justified on the grounds that the victim had “privilege.” The president, meanwhile, denies that he made such a claim. . . .

Albion’s student newspaper, The Albion Pleiad, identified the young woman as student Ashley Witowski. The Pleiad reported that Witowski “left the Senate meeting visibly upset” following Ditzler’s response to her boyfriend’s question.

A series of tweets by Witowski corroborates Olsen’s version of events: “[T]he president of my college told me I’m of privilege and it’s okay for me to be harassed verbally and physically…There was a protest at my school today and I was physically pushed during it…The president of my college said that it should be a learning experience for me because I am of white privilege…[H]e said this to my face.”

Presented with Olsen’s account of the meeting, President Ditzler told The Fix: “That is not my memory of the conversation. I do not believe your summary is an accurate reflection of my belief or my statement.” . . .

Reached by phone and presented with Ditzler’s statement, Olsen explicitly rejected Ditzler’s version of events, claiming the president did indeed tell a young woman that her assault was justified. Ditzler’s comments at that meeting were so troubling to Olsen, she told The Fix, that she withdrew from Albion the day after the senate meeting.

Well, I don’t know what happened, but sadly those “privilege” remarks are entirely conceivable. And anyway, we all know that in a he-said/she-said situation on campus, we’re supposed to believe the women!

Cost of attending Albion College: $54,150 per year.

OKAY, THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: Researchers Develop ‘Smart’ Bandage That Can Speed Healing.

Faster, please.

JULIE KELLY: Hey Lefties, Where Are Your Pussyhats Now? “So, let’s take a little trip down Social Media Lane and see how our virtuous, high-minded celebs who wanted Trump charged with rape a year ago have reacted to the Weinstein story. Do you hear the crickets? I sure do.”

Related: Not even one “Weekend Update” joke about Harvey Weinstein on last night’s “SNL.”

STEPHEN CARTER: A Little Bit of Hypocrisy Goes a Long Way.

Let’s begin with what ought to be common ground: It’s wrong to use the word “hypocrite” for individuals who simply fail to live up to their own standards. Were that the definition, all of us would be hypocrites, because all of us do things, pretty much every day, that we know we shouldn’t.

The hypocrite is something different — a person who pretends to an unearned virtue. Abraham Lincoln once entertained his generals with the story of a teetotaler who was offered some lemonade and then told by his host that the drink would taste better with a bit of brandy in it. The teetotaler answered that he had no objection, as long as the brandy was added “unbeknown” to him. This is exactly what the word hypocrisy has traditionally described: The teetotaler did not have a brief moment of weakness. He wanted the benefit of public virtue while maintaining in private what his admirers would have considered a vice.

Pastors in the 19th century liked to illustrate hypocrisy with the tale of a man who was on trial for public drunkenness. When the bartender was asked on the witness stand whether he recognized the defendant, he replied that he did, and that he recognized the judges, too. The point was that the court was sitting in judgment on a man who had done what they themselves had done.

You know, like Hollywood people condemning sexual harassment.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: EPA employees asked to stop pooping in hallway. “Poop bandit” may still be on the loose.

Ayn Rand didn’t write The Return of the Primitive as a how-to guide. On the other hand, after Obama’s EPA destroyed Colorado’s Animas River last year, as Jonah Goldberg tweets, “I’m just glad to know somebody at the EPA gives a crap.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Article that Made 16,000 Ideologues Go Wild. “The desire of the anti-colonialist faction to reach beyond Gilley to intimidate other scholars who might pick up his thread is a backhanded acknowledgment of Gilley’s credibility and the force of his argument.”

Honestly, the last 50 years or so are not exactly a slam-dunk case for the virtues of “anti-colonialism.” So I can see why they’re so defensive. And if academics are so eager to shout down and intimidate people whose ideas they don’t like — and by all appearances, many are — then they should not be surprised if the larger society returns the favor. Why lefty academics think they’ll flourish in an environment of mob rule and ideological witch-hunts is beyond me, but I suspect it’s a function of academia’s lack of diversity.

UPDATE: Seen on Facebook: “The settlement of other continents by Europeans is called colonialism. The settlement of Europe by people from other continents is called multiculturalism and emergence of a global society.”

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Digital Deals.

THE BRAVERY OF THE “RESISTANCE:” SNL completely avoids Harvey Weinstein scandal. “SNL isn’t the first to avoid this scandal. Every late-night talk show host from Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Bill Maher did not crack any jokes at Weinstein’s expense since the exposé was published Thursday morning.”

Think of them as Democratic Party tools and you won’t go far wrong. In fact, you won’t go wrong at all.

IS ROGER GOODELL SECRETLY IN THE PAY OF NASCAR OR SOMETHING? Shock poll: NFL now least liked sport, core fans down 31%.

Over just one month of player, coach, and owner protests of the flag and National Anthem, the National Football League has gone from America’s sport to the least liked of top professional and college sports, according to a new poll.

From the end of August to the end of September, the favorable ratings for the NFL have dropped from 57 percent to 44 percent, and it has the highest unfavorable rating – 40 percent – of any big sport, according to the Winston Group survey provided exclusively to Secrets.

Worse for football, which was already seeing lower TV ratings and empty stadium seats, the month of protests and complaints about them from President Trump drove core fans, men 34-54, away, the most significant indicator that NFL brass aren’t in touch with their base.

The problem is, the people running the NFL — like the people running many institutions — care more about approval from their social peer group than they do about the opinions of their customers, or even the performance of the institutions they run. The solution is to get people from a different social peer group, one more like the customers, to run things, but that’s hard given the tremendous homogeneity of America’s ruling class.

ROSS DOUTHAT ON HARVEY WEINSTEIN: The Pigs of Liberalism. “Maybe his overdue exposure shows that the world has changed, and progressive industries are finally feminist enough to put their old goats out to pasture. But it might just show that a certain kind of powerful liberal creep only gets his comeuppance when he’s weakened or old or in the grave. The awfulness of Ted Kennedy, at Chappaquiddick and after hours in D.C., can be acknowledged only now that he’s no longer a liberal lion in the Senate. The possibility that Bill Clinton might be not just an adulterer but a rapist can be entertained now that he’s no longer protecting abortion from the White House. The sins of Woody Allen … well, I’m sure Hollywood will start ostracizing him any day now.”

HAS JIMMY KIMMEL SAID ANYTHING ABOUT HARVEY WEINSTEIN YET? Democrats rush to cut ties with Harvey Weinstein.

AS CHURCHILL SAID, TWEET-TWEET IS BETTER THAN WAR-WAR: Blitzkrieg to sitzkrieg to twitzkrieg. I know he said that, because I saw a meme on Facebook quoting him.

CALIFORNIA HAS QUITE AN INTERESTING TAKE ON “PROGRESSIVISM:”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Friday threatened more immigration raids in California’s neighborhoods and worksites one day after Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law new restrictions on how local police work with federal immigration authorities.

The legislation, known as SB54, made California the largest US jurisdiction to punch back against the Trump administration’s anti-sanctuary measures. Last week, ICE acknowledged it had intentionally targeted sanctuary cities in its most recent raids.

Tom Homan, ICE acting director, said SB54 makes California a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants, including those who have committed crimes, and nearly eliminates all cooperation with local police and its agents.

“ICE will have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at worksites, which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests,” Homan said in a statement. “Instead of focusing on arrests at jails and prisons where transfers are safer for ICE officers and the community.”

Undocumented immigrants who have committed no crimes but are detained by ICE during an operation are considered collateral arrests. Homan also said ICE will likely have to hold people arrested in California in detention centers outside the state, far from family and support they may have in the Golden State.

SB54 “will undermine public safety and hinder ICE from performing its federally mandated mission,” Homan said. “The governor is simply wrong when he claims otherwise.”

— ICE Says The Gloves Are Off As California Becomes A Sanctuary State, BuzzFeed, yesterday.

So how does Sacramento top itself?

● Knowingly exposing others to HIV will no longer be a felony in California.

—Headline, the L.A. Times, yesterday.

As Kate of Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog likes to say, “O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas, Hear My Prayer.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE.