Archive for 2018
May 10, 2018
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Quai James Did Something Terrible to a Hasidic Child, and Then Did Something Surprising. “Not everybody who does something bigoted is genuinely hateful in their hearts.”
IF THE RIGHT WANTED TO UNDERMINE THE SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL AUTHORITY OF ACADEMIA, IT COULDN’T DO BETTER THAN ACADEMIA HAS DONE FOR ITSELF:
Last month, during a conference for scholars who study international affairs, Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, asked a crowded hotel elevator what floor everyone needed. Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King’s College London, replied, “Ladies’ lingerie” (or, as Sharoni remembers it, “Women’s lingerie.”) Several people laughed. Was that sexual harassment?
Academics have been debating the question among themselves since last month, when Sharoni filed a formal complaint about the incident, triggering an investigation by the International Studies Association. The ISA would later conclude that Lebow must apologize in writing by May 15.
So far, he has refused.
He should refuse, and the filing of such a complaint is itself a form of sexual harassment, and an indicator that Prof. Sharoni is not fit to attend public events.
And as I say, you could write a strong argument for patriarchy using only the things feminists say about the fragility of women.
GIANT BOOBS STILL MORE IMPORTANT THAN EMPLOYMENT RATE OR PEACE IN KOREA: Bumped up from this morning, my Daily Caller column for this week.
DEATH ON FOOT: Why So Many Pedestrian Deaths?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Statically Charged Lunar Dust Is Very, Very Bad for Your Lungs.
FASTER, PLEASE: The Top Four Obama Policies Trump has Reversed.
SCIENCE MARCHES ON: A bone drug may be used to treat baldness.
AT AMAZON, deals in Grocery and Gourmet Food.
CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: ‘People don’t feel sorry for us’: Huma Abedin opens up about special bond with Georgina Chapman over public humiliations and a lack of sympathy from people who think they are ‘rich, thin and beautiful.’
Huma Abedin isn’t unsympathetic because she’s “rich, thin, and beautiful,” but because she’s served as the Chief Enabler for one of the most corrupt politicians of our time, and also for her teen-stalking creep of a husband.
And statements from her like this one aren’t making her any less unsympathetic.
HEALTH: Study Finds Little Bang for the Buck in Zika Blood Testing. “Screening blood donations for the Zika virus netted only a few infections at a cost of more than $5 million for each positive test result, according to new research.”
POSTMODERN NANNYSTATISM: The City of Austin imposes a 10pm bedtime on homesharing guests.
Home-sharing—renting a room or an entire home from a homeowner, often through an online platform like Airbnb and HomeAway—offers travelers a cost-effective and customizable alternative to traditional hotels. It helps homeowners pay their mortgages and other bills. And it gives entrepreneurs an incentive to buy dilapidated houses and restore them. But most importantly, home-sharing is an important way for property owners to exercise their basic right to choose whether to let someone stay in their home—a right the United States Supreme Court has called “one of the most essential sticks in the bundle of rights that are commonly characterized as property.” That’s why protecting responsible homeowners’ right to rent their homes is one of the Goldwater Institute’s top national property rights priorities.
Unfortunately, the city of Austin has not welcomed this economic opportunity or respected the rights of property owners, but rather joined a growing number of cities that have imposed draconian rules that deprive homeowners of some of their most basic constitutional rights.
Austin’s regulations restrict the number and activity of guests of short-term (but not long-term) rentals, subject home-sharers to warrantless searches, and completely ban homeowners from offering their home as a short-term rental if the home isn’t their primary residence.
Let’s call this what it is: Punitive rent-seeking by the hotel industry.
MICHAEL WALSH: For Trump, the End of the Beginning.
The president and his new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, were undoubtedly emboldened to flout the conventional wisdom of Foggy Bottom and its amen chorus in the press corps by their success (caveat: so far) in handling North Korea. Just a few months ago, the usual worrywarts and chin-pullers were fretting that the madman in Washington was about to provoke the only slightly less mad Kim Jong-un into a nuclear exchange in the international equivalent of a dick-measuring contest. Meanwhile, the same Wise Men were thrilled with the “success” of their beloved Obama’s giveaways to the mullahs in Tehran.
And then, suddenly, there was Li’l Kim in South Korea; after nearly 70 years of a state of war between the two Koreas, talk of peace—if not actual reunification—is in the air…
So the end of the Iran deal will have ramifications and repercussions far beyond this nation’s dealings with Iran itself. Certainly, the excitable Iranians must now understand their bluff has been called, there will be no further rollovers from Uncle Sam, and that their long-accruing butcher’s bill, outstanding since 1979, is now due and payable. The Iranian regime is on shaky ground, its youthful population restive, and it might well have fallen during the Obama Administration had we supported the Green Revolution with just the slightest gesture. The abrogation of the “deal” will now doom them, irrevocably.
The past two weeks might eventually go down as the most consequential in American diplomacy since Ronald Reagan’s “failed” 1986 Reykjavik summit with Mikhail Gorbachev, which more than any other single event set the stage for peaceful victory in the Cold War.
And do read the whole thing.
WHEN ROBOTS CAN SUCCESSFULLY MASQUERADE AS HUMANS: “Google showed off a computer assistant that makes convincingly human-sounding phone calls , at least in its prerecorded demonstration. But the real people in those calls didn’t seem to be aware they were talking to a machine. That could present thorny issues for the future use of AI. Among them: Is it fair—or even legal—to trick people into talking to an AI system that effectively records all of its conversations? And while Google’s demonstration highlighted the benign uses of conversational robots, what happens when spammers and scammers get hold of them?”
NEW AGE EMERGENCY SERVICES: Wisc. Ambulance Service Replaces Opioids With … Essential Oils.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.
AT AMAZON, deals on Inverters.
I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM — AND I GOT ONE: Israel strikes ‘nearly all’ Iranian infrastructure in Syria after Iran rocket attack, minister says.
The Israeli Defense Force said it deployed fighter jets and used missiles to strike a range of targets, including military compounds, intelligence operations and munitions warehouses, a statement read. The strikes were Israel’s largest air operation in Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
“The IDF will not allow the Iranian threat to establish itself in Syria. The Syrian regime will be held accountable for everything happening in its territory,” the press release read. “The IDF is prepared for a wide variety of scenarios.”
The missile launcher responsible for the Iranian rocket strikes was also destroyed, according to the release.
Israeli casualties: Zero.
Nice work, IDF.
WELL, WHATEVER OTHER CRITICISMS OF MY TEACHING MAY EXIST, THIS ONE DOESN’T APPLY: “I think your identity as scholars and your elite school formation have left most of you with an emotional need to believe that you’re vastly smarter than everyone else. So you tart up law in an attempt to make of it something more intellectual than it is. The result is that many of you teach in a needlessly opaque way that harms the students and the school.”