Archive for 2018
June 2, 2018
RAPTOR VAPOR: An F-22 in high speed maneuvers. The pilot and plane belong to the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Deflated: NFL popularity at new low, just 3 in 10 are ‘favorable.’
The National Football League has done nothing to recover during the off season from it’s miserable popularity ratings that are now at the lowest ever.
Rocked by the issues of players taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem, overly long games, and scandalous players, just 35 percent say they have a favorable view of “America’s sport.”
What’s more, only 15 percent called the NFL a “top interest,” and 37 percent said that they are “Not at all interested” in the games. . . .
In August of last year, Winston surveys put the approval rating of the NFL at 57 percent. In September, it had dropped to 44 percent favorable.
YouGov’s poll did find support for the new NFL policy on taking a knee. Under that rule, players who protest will be fined, though they can now stay in the locker room instead.
However, the public is still evenly split on the issue overall.
Ouch.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Will handing curriculum design to industry solve the skills gap?
Wherever you are in the world, a constant complaint from industry is that universities are not producing graduates with the skills needed for today’s job market.
In the UK, for example, the latest skills survey conducted by the business lobby group CBI and Pearson found that one in four businesses had had to provide graduate recruits with remedial training in basic skills, and that a third had expressed concerns about university leavers’ attitudes and resilience.
In the developing world, these concerns are often even more pronounced. A recent survey conducted in India found that only a third of employers and industry representatives believed that graduates possessed the skills that they wanted.
How, then, can this problem be solved? The approach adopted by South Korea’s Incheon National University – handing control of curricula to industry and reducing lecturers to tutors tasked with delivering pre-prepared content – is at one end of the scale, but it could become more widely adopted as countries push forward in the global skills race.
Such an approach would appear to pose significant problems for scholars. Not only does it shrink their influence in an area in which they have developed significant expertise, but it also raises questions about whether teaching can be informed by the research being conducted by academics, seen as a key driver of student engagement and the development of critical thinking.
Well, yes. But it’s not clear that “scholars” are creating the value they once did.
THANKS, TERRY! Congressional Candidate: I’m a Pedophile. “That same year, he sent a letter to the Secret Service threatening to kill the president, which landed him in federal prison for 14 months and barred him from seeking public office. But in 2016, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) restored voting and other civil rights to thousands of felons, allowing Larson to campaign yet again.”
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: There’s No Traffic or Road Rage and It’s Awful: Life in Caracas. “Noisy, smoggy commutes used to grind the city to a halt. Now, that daily headache would be a sign of better times.”
As I keep saying: Socialists run out of everything but zeroes.
A DEFEAT FOR BRADLEY/CHELSEA MANNING: “[A] soldier who willfully communicates information relating to the national defense ‘is not entitled to invoke the First Amendment as a shield to immunize his act of thievery.'” Sounds correct.
CATHY YOUNG: Hate on Jordan Peterson all you want, but he’s tapping into frustration that feminists shouldn’t ignore.
More than half a century after the modern feminist revolution began in the 1960s, we have yet to figure out new rules for partnership between men and women. . . .
Consider: We have rejected traditional sexist proprieties that forbade coarse language in front of “the ladies,” yet a man can now be fired for telling a crude joke that offends a female co-worker. Calling women “the weaker sex” would be considered shockingly retrograde, yet ambivalent sexual encounters are easily recast as violations of women, with men presumed entirely responsible for ensuring consent. Workplace romances abound, yet flirting could be one step away from someone’s idea of sexual harassment.
The rule is, the rules are whatever the loudest-screaming lefties want them to be at the moment. And they’re subject to change at any moment, or even retroactively, according to the political needs of right now.
But if you don’t like Peterson, you may want to hold back anyway. Because if you don’t like him, you really won’t like who’ll tap into that frustration if he’s gone.
June 1, 2018
A GOOD READ: S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador is $1.99 on Kindle. I liked that book, and hoped for more in that world. But it’s quite worth reading as a stand-alone.
THE INSTA-WIFE: Is Dependence on Others a Form of Slavery?
STOP THE PRESSES: DRUGS FOUND IN DRUG-IMPAIRED DRIVERS. Marijuana, opioids found in 58 percent of dead drug-impaired drivers.
OPEN THREAD: Roll it out.
A TALE OF THREE MEDIA MOMENTS:
Épater la bourgeoisie or épater le (or les) bourgeois is a French phrase that became a rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. It means to shock the bourgeoisie.
● Shot:
But executives at ABC and its parent company, the Disney Corporation, never had any interest in being perceived as “the Trump-friendly network” and in fact probably resented that the success of the Roseanne revival was driven, at least in part, by the character’s support for Trump. If Roseanne Barr was rational — and she pretty obviously isn’t — she would be aware that the suits were looking for any excuse they could to cut ties. (By the way, it didn’t matter if the show was way less political than its reputation suggested; that was the big headline coming out of the show’s return.)
Barr may have felt she was irreplaceable, but she really wasn’t. Roseanne got higher ratings and attracted 10 to 18 million viewers, but also cost more than the average television show; John Goodman and Barr were each making reportedly $250,000 per episode. “Kantar Media has estimated the show’s initial run of nine episodes over eight nights netted $45 million in ad revenue.” That’s nice, but for Disney, it’s a drop in the bucket. A generic sitcom with no-name actors will get half the ratings and cost a quarter of the price.
Former President Barack Obama and Michelle are still revered and beloved in most corners of Hollywood; when Barr said one of their best friends, Valerie Jarrett, looks like a character from Planet of the Apes, just what did Barr think was going to happen? Did she think the Obamas and all of their allies were just going to shrug it off, let it pass without response? You might hate the Obamas but give them credit for standing up for one of their own — or for having cultivated a reputation to the point where they may not have even needed to pick up the phone. Everyone at ABC and Disney understood that there would likely be consequences if they tried to give Roseanne a pass.
You think the Disney corporation wants to take any grief for an extra $45 million in ad revenue? You think advertisers would be eager to go back to the show as Barr made herself radioactive?
—Roseanne — and Roseanne — Was a Gamble from the Start, Jim Geraghty, NRO, May 30, 2018.
● Chaser:
This is how you understand corporate activism. This is how you understand media double standards. When conservatives cry foul and demand accountability for Samantha Bee or Joy Reid, they’re communicating with executives and colleagues who have known and liked “Samantha” and “Joy” for years.
When you see corporations launch into political activism, that’s not a market-tested response to the popular will. More often than not, it’s an expression of collective executive purpose, reinforced by the applause of spouses and friends — the people who matter most in any person’s life.
When you see a publication like The Atlantic jettison Kevin Williamson within days of a controversial revelation — and then watch its editor-in-chief declare that he’d “die” for writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, a man who’s written his share of heartless words — you’re watching a high-school-level morality play. We love our cliques. We have little patience for the out-group, and we can always reason backwards to justify our bias.
—How Samantha Bee Survives, David French, NRO today.
● Hangover: To use the language of the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg when he justified firing Williamson and keeping Coates on board, Joy Reid is very much “in the family,” too: “MSNBC breaks silence on star Joy Reid’s ‘hateful’ blog posts: ‘She has grown and evolved.’”
Just like her fellow fabulists Al Sharpton and Brian Williams. So much growth and evolving going on with the MSNBC starting lineup.
LESS-THAN-SHOCKING NEWS: Debt, Repayment Options Influence Physicians Practice Plans.
MICHAEL LEDEEN: Does the Trump Administration Support Regime Change in Iran?
Read the whole thing.
GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: American Brazenly Robbed of $58,100 Life Savings by Federal Agents at Cleveland Airport.
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NEWS YOU CAN USE: Escaping From Handcuffs.
FLOTSAM AND JETSAM: Sign Washed Away in Hurricane Sandy Lands on Beach in France. “It had been planted in back of a house for sale on Cedarcrest Drive, facing a narrow inlet called Debbie’s Creek. The sign was 18 by 24 inches and about an inch thick and made of plastic composite. It disappeared along with the post it was mounted to and was never seen again. Until around May 14, 2018. On a beach in France, 3,595 miles away.”
SARAH HOYT: Stop Buying the Left’s Pseudo-Freudian Analysis.