Archive for 2018
November 26, 2018
REMEMBER, WHAT WAS NORMAL AND UNEXCEPTIONABLE UNDER OBAMA IS APPALLING, UNPRECEDENTED, AND EVIL UNDER TRUMP: Tear gas used once a month at border under Obama.
AT AMAZON, today is Cyber Monday.
OPEN THREAD: Hope you had a good Cyber Monday!
CHARGES: SUV DRIVER WHO HIT GATE AT MINNESOTA GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE WANTED TO SPEAK WITH DAYTON.
After Fouquette was removed from the vehicle, he told troopers “he had many problems and … believed the only solution was to speak with the governor.”
He went on to tell paramedics that he had medical problems and was weary of “all the electricity” under his skin, the criminal complaint quoted him as saying.
Authorities estimated that the crash caused $50,000 to $75,000 damage to the gate.
Earlier: John Stossel on How the Government Fails to Help the Mentally Ill (Video).
MAYBE YOUR SLEEP PROBLEM ISN’T A PROBLEM:
I have heard this all my life: Society likes morning people. Loves them, actually. Early risers tend to be more punctual, get better grades in school and climb up the corporate ladder. These so-called larks are celebrated as the high achievers, the apple polishers, the C.E.O.s.
It’s basically the idea that Ben Franklin touted more than 250 years ago — “early to bed, early to rise” — with everyone else cast as lazy or self-indulgent.
But what if they are wrong? What if night owls are actually the unsung geniuses? What if we are the ultimate disrupters and rule changers, the ones who are better suited to a modern, postindustrial society ruled by late-night coders, digital nomads, freelance moguls and co-working entrepreneurs?
Regardless of that, it’s not a question of character:
According to Dr. Walker, about 40 percent of the population are morning people, 30 percent are evening people, and the remainder land somewhere in between. “Night owls are not owls by choice,” he writes. “They are bound to a delayed schedule by unavoidable DNA hard wiring. It is not their conscious fault, but rather their genetic fate.” . . .
When night owls are forced to rise early, their prefrontal cortex, which controls sophisticated thought processes and logical reasoning, “remains in a disabled, or ‘offline,’ state,” Dr. Walker writes. “Like a cold engine in an early-morning start, it takes a long time before it warms up to operating temperature.”
That might even serve an evolutionary purpose. When early humans lived in small tribes, as in the early scenes of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” staggered sleep schedules bestowed a survival advantage: Someone was always awake to watch for prowling leopards and club-wielding rivals, according to the book.
But it has been downhill for us night owls ever since. The rise of agriculture brought fields to till at daybreak. The industrial revolution brought factories with 8 a.m. time clocks. Night owls were forced to adapt, and that appears to have taken a toll.
Indeed.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Obama-supporting Comedian Kevin Hart and His Wife are Attacked by the Social Justice Mob Over Child’s Birthday Party. “Kevin and his wife, Eniko Parrish, have come under fire for the birthday bash they threw for 1-year-old son, Kenzo. The party had a theme, and it’s gonna hurt. Parental Advisory. Here we go: The theme of the party was Cowboys and Indians. You know how cowboys and Indians existed? Well, you can’t reference that existence by dressing up like them.”
Why not? I thought identity was entirely fungible in the 21st century.
VIDEO: VISIT PORTLAND, STAY FOR THE RIOTS. “Only 1:21 long, but you’ll want to watch it five times, and send to all your friends. Especially your Oregonian friends.”
DAN MARKEL UPDATE: June 3, 2019 Trial Date Set For Suspects In 2014 Dan Markel Murder.
TWITTER & FACEBOOK — SOCIAL MEDIA COLLIDES WITH HUMAN NATURE. At NRO, David French writes:
Our social-media companies face a series of fateful choices. If they choose to be primarily platforms for human expression, they’ll empower many millions of voices that they despise. They’ll facilitate outcomes they may loathe. If, by contrast, they choose to prioritize progressive ideology and progressive outcomes, they’ll limit their reach, their influence, and their wealth. They’ll open themselves up to aggressive competition.
What’s the lesson here? When you empower people, you find that they have their own will. When you seek to control that will, you find that they’ll rebel. The idealism of tech is dead. Human nature killed it. Nobody can have it all.
Read the whole thing, and then check out Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who looks at Jesse Kelly’s banishment from Twitter yesterday and concludes:
The answer to this and other examples of ludicrous speech-code imposition isn’t government intervention, however. It’s recognizing that Twitter is basically a social-justice-warrior cesspool and one of the worst places for intellectual discourse possible. Even with benign management, each 280-character bite practically begs to be taken out of context by those with malice. The malignant and arrogant manner in which Dorsey and his team manage the platform make it even worse yet by pretending that all the outrage is somehow justified just because it exists at all, even if it’s nothing more than a pretense for political attacks on perceived enemies.
With that said, it’s still possible to have positive engagement on the platform, at least in the short run. If that’s of any value, stick around and stick up for those who get banned; if not, follow Instapundit’s understandable decision to depart. The biggest lesson from the social-media platforms’ onerous and one-sided interventions is that it’s still best to control your own platform in cyberspace rather than rely on the kindness of Dorseys and Zuckerbergs in the long run.
And finally, speaking of social media and human nature, at Twitchy, “Lutheran pastor’s ‘little rant’ about Twitter’s speech police is a definite must-read.”
Exit quote: “[T]he Selma-envy-riddled youngsters want to play both sides in their civil rights movement LARPing. They want to be the heroes on the right side of history. And they also want to be the guys controlling the firehoses…When people imagine Christianity to be foolish and cruel, the religions they invent to replace it are a thousand times stupider and more oppressive.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: High School Graduation Rates Go Up Even as Students and Teachers Fail to Show Up.
Phelps reflects a national trend in which high schools across the country have both high absenteeism and high graduation rates. A recent national study by the U.S. Department of Education showed that about one in seven students missed 15 days or more during the 2013-14 school year – the year before the national high school graduation rate hit an all-time high of 84 percent.
Students aren’t the only ones not showing up – absenteeism is also common among teachers. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank, found that in 2013-2014, at least one-fifth of traditional public-school teachers missed more than 10 days in 32 of the 35 states studied. According to federal data, in 2015, more than 41 percent of Rhode Island’s teachers were absent more than 10 days of the year. That was an increase from under 40 percent in 2013, but Rhode Island’s graduation rate nevertheless has hit an all-time high.
“It’s really easy to graduate more kids,” said David Griffith, a policy associate at the Fordham Institute. “You just graduate them.”
Degree inflation is a thing, even in high school diplomas.
WATCH: BRILLIANT VIDEO SHOWS YOU JUST HOW WRONG JIM ACOSTA WAS ABOUT THE MIGRANTS STORMING THE BORDER.
Or as Ace writes, in his own inimitable way, “Jim Acosta roughs up the truth as if it’s a slender White House intern.”
YES/NO/MAYBE: Can the iPad Pro Replace Your Laptop?
After a week with one I put my MacBook up for sale on eBay, but that definitely isn’t for everyone, or even for very many — yet.
NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Lindsey Graham Has A Recommendation For Ocasio-Cortez After She Likens The Holocaust To Migrant Caravan.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had some words of advice for Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who likened the ongoing situation at the U.S. southern border to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust.
“I recommend she take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC,” Graham tweeted Monday. “Might help her better understand the differences between the Holocaust and the caravan in Tijuana.”
Lindsey 2.0 is much more fun that his squishy RINO predecessor.
GOOD LORD: Video shows driver trying to run over Jews near Los Angeles synagogue. “The driver, who has been identified as 32-year-old Mohammed Mohammed, reversed and tried to hit them again, according to the the local outlet.”
THIS IS CNN: Hamburgers will kill us and cause global warming or something.
[CNN “counterterrorism analyst” Phil Mudd:] If you look at people in my world talking about things like climate change, they talk about things like changing weather, weather patterns, believe it or not, a national security issue, because that has to do with water. In places like the Middle East water is an issue that people go to war over. But this is pretty simple. I think we are debating this. This is an — this is a leadership issue. Tens of millions of Americans will wake up today and eat hamburgers for lunch, that’s going to kill them. People don’t focus on the long term, they focus on the short term.
When will Mudd demand that Time-Warner-CNN-HBO drop all advertising from McDonald’s, Burger King, and other hamburger restaurants to save the planet?
AT AMAZON, today is Cyber Monday.
ASHE SCHOW: Virginia City That Gave Millions To Amazon Now Hassling Restaurant Over Mural.
A spokeswoman for the Department, Helen Duong, told Arlington news outlet ARLnow that zoning inspectors “concluded that the artwork is considered a sign under Arlington County’s zoning ordinance because the artwork relates to the advertisement of a business and its services.”
This means, according to ARLnow, that Goody’s had to get a permit before painting the mural. Duong told the outlet that the restaurant “did not receive prior approvals from the county.” She also said the County has so far only issued the restaurant a “courtesy notice” about the mural, which included how Goody’s could square itself with Arlington officials (which no doubt includes some form of payment to the County).
Arlnow spoke to Glenda Alvarez, who owns Goody’s. Alvarez says, as of November 20, that she had not sought county approval for the mural yet and did not know she needed a permit before adding the mural. She said she commissioned the painting because the outside of her restaurant “was not attractive enough.”
“We just wanted to get a little more attention from people walking by,” she said.
Arlington has previously gone after Wag More Dogs, a dog daycare that painted a mural of puppies chasing bones on the side of its wall back in 2010. As with Goody’s, Wag More Dogs was found to have violated Arlington’s onerous “sign” requirements because the dogs were considered an advertisement for the business. A self-service dog wash across the street was allowed to keep commissioned graffiti on its walls because it did not contain any references to dogs.
Advertising is OK so long as you don’t reveal what you’re advertising?
WHOM SHOULD JEWS EXCOMMUNICATE NOW? Man tries to run down Jews leaving Los Angeles synagogue.
So someone else tried to murder American Jews at a synagogue, this time unsuccessfully. After the Pittsburgh shooting, the Jewish left went nuts, blaming Trump, Trump-supporting Jews, and Israel (!) for the incident. The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer wrote, “Any strategy for enhancing the security of American Jewry should involve shunning Trump’s Jewish enablers. Their money should be refused, their presence in synagogues not welcome. They have placed their community in danger.”
The perp in L.A., however, was not a “white nationalist” but a Muslim named Mohammed Mohammed. I want Foer to follow his own logic. If “Trump’s Jewish enablers” were to blame for Pittsburgh, who in the Jewish community is to blame for Los Angeles? And who should be “shunned” now?
THEY DO EXIST: Ten Great IPAs for Craft Beer Lovers.
I DO SOME OF THESE: Skills Check: 5 Body-and-Head Drills.