Archive for 2018
June 22, 2018
DEBRA HEINE: Peter Fonda Apologizes to President and Family for Vulgar Tweet. “No apologies yet to DHS Sec. Kristjen Nielsen or White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.”
Fonda’s deleted tweet about Nielsen read, “Kristjen Nielsen is a lying gash that should be put in a cage and poked at by passersby. The gash should be pilloried in Lafayette Square naked and whipped by passersby while being filmed for posterity.”
Which I guess is supposed to be acceptable.
PROFESSIONALS STUDY LOGISTICS: The Biggest U.S. Oil Patch Is Near Its Limit.
The worsening bottleneck in the Permian region that straddles west Texas and New Mexico offers an unexpected fillip to OPEC and other oil producers outside the U.S., who’ve seen rampant production from America’s shale producers grab market share.
“We will reach capacity in the next 3 to 4 months,” Scott Sheffield, the chairman of Pioneer Natural Resources Co. said in an interview at an OPEC conference in Vienna. “Some companies will have to shut in production, some companies will move rigs away, and some companies will be able to continue growing because they have firm transportation.”
His comments are the strongest indication yet that the growth in the red-hot shale region is about to slow down soon due to a lack of pipeline capacity.
This is no time for US producers to be hitting logistical bottlenecks, but the story notes that the situation likely won’t improve until next year.
GOOD: Princeton Takes a Stand for Free Speech on Campus.
Much of the news regarding free speech on campus is enough to make anyone despair. Year after year more people and ideas are muzzled.
But some very heartening news of late comes from Princeton. Due largely to a new book promoting free speech by Princeton University political scientist Keith Whittington and the unusual support and campus-wide promotion of the book by Princeton’s president Chris Eisgruber, Princeton is now in the forefront of those American colleges and universities that have said “stop” to the onslaught of thuggish campus militants intent on shutting down free speech. This latest development comes on the heels of several other very positive developments on the free-speech front at Princeton.
Three years ago, in April of 2015, the governing board of the faculty at Princeton adopted the main body of what has come to be known as the Chicago Principles of free speech and free expression. Originally drawn up by a committee of the University of Chicago chaired by law professor Geoffrey R. Stone, these principles condemned the suppression of views no matter how “offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed [they may appear] by some or even by most members of the University community.”
Princeton’s version of the Chicago Principles was proposed by mathematics professor Sergiu Klainerman and 60 faculty members of diverse political persuasions. Klainerman grew up in Communist-ruled Romania and observed first-hand how tyrannical power can be used to stifle important criticism and debate. He saw American colleges and universities being threatened by the same sort of intolerant forces that had ruled his homeland, and along with several other Princeton faculty members, was determined to halt the menacing developments he was witnessing in America.
Like I said, good.
OOPS: Russia’s Tank Drone Performed Poorly in Syria. “The Uran-9 lost contact with its controllers, maneuvered badly on broken terrain.”
Remotely controlling drones over rough terrain isn’t easy. Then again, our civilian space agency has been doing it for years. On Mars. Which on average is about 150 million miles away.
ED MORRISSEY ON THAT PHONY TIME COVER: About That Time Magazine “Crying Girl” Cover … “In other words, like so much of the media coverage of this issue, Crying Girl actually represents the opposite of the assumptions blasted around by outlets like Time. We’ve experienced a deluge of misinformation and a complete lack of context over the past week or so from media outlets that are clearly more interested in an agenda than an informed debate. Yanela Varela Hernandez is the poster girl for media’s appetite for activism over truth. And they wonder why people continue to accuse them of peddling ‘fake news’?”
TOXIC MASCULINITY IN HISTORY: In honor of UW-Whitewater professor Kathleen Elliott’s suggestion that the evils of “toxic masculinity” should be taught starting in kindergarten, I looked up the death toll on the Titanic. Sure enough, according to the figures I found, the survival rate for women was high–74%. For men, not so much. Only 16% survived. And it wasn’t just a class thing. Third-class (steerage) women were more likely to survive (49%) than first-class men (32%). N.B.: The reason for the difference was not that women are better than men at treading water.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: At college where violence greeted Charles Murray, students say they’re afraid to disagree.
Cost of attending Middlebury College: $69,464 per year.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Big Deadline Today, Jacket-Gate and Much, Much More. “I don’t care about this manufactured crisis anymore so I have nothing to say.”
SHOUT IT LOUD AND PROUD: Embrace the Suck audio version is out — at Amazon. Drill sergeant quality without the decibels.
NO. Democrat Congressman Wants ‘Taxpayer-Funded Dorms.’ “Legislation would subsidize living expenses for House members.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) introduced a bill that would ban members of Congress from sleeping in their offices and would change the tax code to allow House members to deduct their spending on housing in D.C. up to $3,000. The deduction would not apply to senators.
Thompson has also proposed turning a vacant building near Capitol Hill into apartments for House members at the expensive of taxpayers, which critics have dubbed a “Congressional Animal House.”
The taxpayer-watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste criticized Thompson’s legislation and his proposed “taxpayer-funded dorms.”
“On May 16, 2018, Rep. Thompson introduced H.R. 5845, the ‘No Couches for Congress Act,’ which would ban members of Congress from sleeping in their offices,” the group said. “He also proposed converting vacant residence halls near the Capitol into ‘affordable‘ housing for members of Congress, who make $174,000 per year. He claimed that it would be available for members who found housing costs to be ‘prohibitive.'”
Washington is too expensive because Washington is too expansive. Reduce the latter and the former will take care of itself.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Frustrated Faculty Struggle To Defend Tenure Before It’s Too Late.
[T]he argument that tenure is the essential protection faculty members need to do their jobs is one that an increasing number of professors have felt compelled to make — and almost always to less-than-receptive audiences. In an era where skepticism about higher education runs high and anti-intellectualism thrives in the political discourse, the concept of tenure fuels perceptions that professors are a protected class isolated from the rigors of the real world.
The argument that tenure is essential to protecting independent thought would be more compelling if universities and their faculties showed more interest in independent thought. And that’s not because of “anti-intellectualism” on the part of the public.
FAKE NEWS: Crying child on TIME cover ‘never separated by border control agents’ from her mother. Buried lede: Time is still a thing?
COLD WAR II: Laser Attacks Against U.S. Forces Spread to the Pacific. “The laser strikes follow reported incidents in Djibouti by Chinese military personnel.”
China has been accused of developing and marketing anti-eye lasers, weapons whose use in wartime would constitute a violation of international law. These weapons include the BBQ-905 Laser Dazzler Weapon, the WJG-2002 Laser Gun, the PY132A Blinding Laser Weapon, and the PY131A Blinding Laser Weapon.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command confirmed to AvWeek that the laser strikes are taking place both from shore and fishing vessels. It’s not clear where the shore attacks are taking place, but China trains and offers subsidies to fishing boat crews to act as what observers call China’s “maritime militia.” Fleets of fishing boats often sail into territory claimed by China as a precursor to China’s claiming the region for itself, to hassle other fishermen and local coast guards, and to act as the eyes and ears of the Chinese military.
Pointing lasers at low-flying American planes would fall in line with the maritime militia’s duties, allowing the Chinese government to demonstrate that U.S. forces aren’t welcome in an area without using official Chinese military or coast guard forces.
The increasing sophistication of these lasers implies Chinese state support for the laser attacks.
Ya think?
LESS TALK, MORE TECH, TIM: Apple’s Tim Cook drops to 96th place on list of CEOs most popular with workers.
PRIVACY: Google to Fix Location Data Leak in Google Home, Chromecast.
Craig Young, a researcher with security firm Tripwire, said he discovered an authentication weakness that leaks incredibly accurate location information about users of both the smart speaker and home assistant Google Home, and Chromecast, a small electronic device that makes it simple to stream TV shows, movies and games to a digital television or monitor.
Young said the attack works by asking the Google device for a list of nearby wireless networks and then sending that list to Google’s geolocation lookup services.
“An attacker can be completely remote as long as they can get the victim to open a link while connected to the same Wi-Fi or wired network as a Google Chromecast or Home device,” Young told KrebsOnSecurity. “The only real limitation is that the link needs to remain open for about a minute before the attacker has a location. The attack content could be contained within malicious advertisements or even a tweet.”
Tech blogger John Gruber notes that “This is the common sense fear of this whole Internet of Things movement: that these devices we’re putting on our networks aren’t secure, even the ones from big companies like Google.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. University Boardrooms Need Corporate Governance-Style Reform.
Universities are in many ways the worst run institutions in our society, with basically lousy governance.We see this in the way administrative bloat drives university tuition increases at well above inflation rates. We see it in the way the inmates are all too often allowed to run the asylum. We see it in how hiring emphasizes every kind of diversity except for ideological and intellectual diversity.
Maybe the answer has been staring us in the face; namely, bringing corporate governance reform to the university. . . .
Some of these reforms go beyond what I think is appropriate for corporations, but the reason should be obvious. Firms operate in host of markets that constrain managers and discipline poor ones. Imperfectly, to be sure, which is why governance is important, but surely better than the virtual absence of market constraints on universities.
The entire nonprofit sector is way overdue for reform.
OH, THAT DEEP STATE: John McCain Staffer Told Lois Lerner To Audit Non-Exempts Till They Collapsed.
PRIMARY SEASON: Arizona GOP Senate Primary Candidates Run Right While Deciding How Far Is Too Right. “Rep. Martha McSally (R) — seen as the moderate in the GOP primary field — pulled back her support for carving a DREAMers’ path to citizenship.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor: Learning Math Can Cause ‘Collateral Damage’ to Society.
According to a new textbook written by a professor at the University of Exeter, learning mathematics can cause “collateral damage” to society because it “provides a training in ethics-free thought.”
“Reasoning without meanings provides a training in ethics-free thought,” Paul Ernest writes in “The Ethics of Mathematics: Is Mathematics Harmful?” — a chapter of his book The Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today.
In an abstract for the book, Ernest claims that although he does “acknowledge that mathematics is a widespread force for good,” “there is significant collateral damage caused by learning mathematics.”
By “ethics-free” I think he means “not corrupted by social justice ideology.”
SPOILERS FOR JERRY POURNELLE? High Justice and Criminal Jurisdiction in Space (with spoilers).
PROBLEM IS SOONER OR LATER YOU RUN OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Democrat Congressman Wants ‘Taxpayer-Funded Dorms’.