HOW DARE YOU ASSUME THEIR SEXUAL PREFERENCE: These Mating Male Beetles Are Not Gay, Just Incompetent. “But while the discovery may shake up the world of insect sexuality, according to researcher Kris Sales, who worked on the study, the findings can’t be applied to other species.”
Archive for 2018
May 15, 2018
“PROGRESSIVISM,” WHERE TIME STANDS STILL.
● Shot:
Since the 1960s the prosperity and ethos of the California working class have spread to workers all over America–so much so that the terms working class and workers have become archaic. Today electricians, air-conditioning mechanics, burglar-alarm installers, cablevision linemen are routinely spoken of as middle-class. Many journeymen mechanics live on a scale that would have made the Sun King blink. They are a new class that has seriously altered the political make-up of this country over the past 25 years. And Ronald Reagan was their first spokesman, their first leader, their first philosopher. The existence of this class continues to baffle Democratic Party leaders. Their biggest problem in the presidential election this fall is what to do about these people whose goals they still do not understand.
—Tom Wolfe, “Head of The Class,” National Review, August 5, 1988.
● Chaser: “[Washington] Post: Trump voters remain loyal because they feel disrespected.”
—John Sexton, Hot Air, today.
UH-OH: Russia Inducts Its Own ‘Carrier Killer’ Missile, and It’s More Dangerous than China’s. “How the Kh-47M2 can drastically alter the balance of power in the Pacific.”
CALEB HOWE: Erdogan’s Hissy Fit and Withdrawal of Turkish Ambassador from D.C. Show Embassy Move the Right One. “Same goes for the MSM meltdown.”
As I’ve been saying here since the move was announced: The usual suspects will make the usual noises, but you’ll be amazed at how quickly the real world adapts to the new normal.
MIZZOU AND THE MASTER OF OUR UNIVERSE: Why Tom Wolfe is the most important writer of the twenty-first century.
HMM: Whistleblower reported daycare fraud and possible link to terrorism to DHS management.
Emails obtained by the Fox 9 Investigators show the Minnesota government agency was told millions of stolen tax dollars were going overseas and likely a portion of the money was being skimmed by terrorism organizations.
Scott Stillman spent eight years managing the state’s digital forensics lab, meaning he mined data from computers and smart phones.
“I have never seen anything like this level or scope in my 27-year career as an investigator,” he told Fox 9.
When the state started going after daycare centers suspected of fraud, Stillman was directly involved in the investigations.
Some of the businesses were gaming the system to steal millions in government subsidies meant to help low-income families with their childcare expenses.
According to Stillman, he alerted a number of people in DHS including the Commissioner’s Chief of Staff with the following message: “Significant amount of these defrauded dollars are being sent overseas to countries and organizations connected to entities known to fund terrorists and terrorism.”
According to public records and government sources, Somali immigrants own most of the daycare centers.
That certainly doesn’t play well with the immigration narrative.
AT AMAZON, save on women’s swimsuits and lingerie.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Ring doorbell flaw lets others watch after password changes. “At one point, the camera was exposed for months.”
IoT lighting can be convenient and fun — and harmless. But it’s going to be a long time before anyone should feel truly comfortable giving internet access to your door locks, garage doors, or gas cooking appliances.
SPACE: Yes, Europa really is sending plumes of water into space.
The Hubble findings were tentative but intriguing, so a team of US astronomers went back and took a second look at data collected by the Galileo spacecraft during its eight-year stay in the Jovian system. During that time, the spacecraft made 11 flybys of Europa, including one in which it came to within a few hundred kilometers of the moon’s surface.
To their delight, the scientists found such a signal on December 16, 1997, during the spacecraft’s E12 orbit. This was also Galileo’s closest approach to Europa, when it came to within 206km and flew near the Pwyll Crater region. During this pass, the spacecraft’s magnetometer measured significant changes, as did Galileo’s plasma wave spectrometer. They believed these fluctuations might be due to perturbations from a water plume in the plasma surrounding the moon.
“The sudden, short-duration jump in the frequency of intense emissions can be interpreted as consistent with a highly localized source of plasma, thereby supporting the hypothesis that the magnetic perturbations arise from passage through a localized plume,” write the authors of a new paper describing the findings in Nature Astronomy.
Sounds like we should attempt no landings there.
AT AMAZON, Lightning Deal, Men’s Daily Multivitamin Supplement.
AL QAEDA LEADER: Trump ‘Revealed the True Face of the Modern Crusade.’
LIGHTEN UP. SIGNED, FRANCIS. Read the Advice Frank Sinatra Had for George Michael in 1990.
BROOKS ON TRUMP: ‘There Are a Lot of Things I Like That He’s Done and the Economy Has Not Tanked.’
To say the least.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Social Assistance Reform Isn’t Cruel; It’s Necessary.
SULTANS GOTTA SULTANATE: Erdogan Plans to Tighten His Grip on Turkey’s Economy.
With the Turkish lira at a record low against the dollar and down this year against all 17 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, Erdogan told Bloomberg TV in London on Monday that after the vote transforms Turkey into a full presidential system, he expects the central bank will have to heed his calls for lower interest rates. The central bank’s key rate is now 13.5 percent, compared with 10.9 percent consumer-price inflation.
“When the people fall into difficulties because of monetary policies, who are they going to hold accountable?” the 64-year-old president said in the interview. “They’ll hold the president accountable. Since they’ll ask the president about it, we have to give off the image of a president who’s influential on monetary policies.”
That “may make some uncomfortable,” he said. “But we have to do it. Because it’s those who rule the state who are accountable to the citizens.”
Previously: “Democracy is like a tram ride: when you reach your stop, you get off.”
THE MAN, IN FULL: Tom Wolfe, Pyrotechnic Nonfiction Writer and Novelist, Dies at 87.
Here’s my 2016 review of Wolfe’s last book, a return to non-fiction after a series of blockbuster novels beginning with Bonfire of the Vanities in 1987: Tom Wolfe Hunts the Biggest of Prey in The Kingdom of Speech.
CHANGE: North Korea has Begun Dismantlement of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site.
Now that’s bringing something to the table.
UH OH: RealClearInvestigations: Two Colleagues Contradict Brennan On Use Of Dossier. “These accounts are at odds with Brennan’s May 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee that the Steele dossier was ‘not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment’ that Russia interfered in the election to help elect Donald Trump. Brennan has repeated this claim numerous times, including in February on ‘Meet the Press.'”
COLLUSION: Mueller’s FBI has a History With Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska. “The bureau in 2009 asked the oligarch to spend millions of his own dollars to fund an FBI-supervised operation.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Harvard organization doxxes professor because she criticized its portrayal of Trump voters. “[A]n incident like this could easily be discussed in the pages of Columbia Journalism Review, Poynter, or other industry publications, but the journalism community has been quiet on this matter, perhaps due to Nieman Lab’s influence in the industry. The silence sets a dangerous precedent.”