SHORTCUTS: How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer. “Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to blame.”
Archive for 2019
April 21, 2019
HE’S JEWISH, TOO: Ukraine election: Comedian Zelensky ‘wins presidency.’ “The 41-year-old is best known for starring in a political satirical drama in which his character accidentally becomes Ukrainian president.”
His victory makes Ukraine the only country besides Israel to have a Jewish President and a Jewish Prime Minister, Volodymyr Groysman.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Emma Thompson Helps Destroy the Planet to Save the Planet.
Dame Emma Thompson joined climate protesters in London on Thursday to declare that she wants to be among those demonstrators arrested by police.
However, it has emerged that the Oscar winning British actress was photographed a day earlier arriving at Heathrow Airport after apparently flying from Los Angeles where it is believed she had been celebrating her 60th birthday…
It is estimated that a single 5,456-mile transatlantic flight between Los Angeles and London Heathrow would run up a three tonne carbon footprint.
I don’t want to hear another word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint, to coin an Insta-paraphrase.
SPACE: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft had an anomaly during tests Saturday. “It is not immediately clear how significantly this incident will affect SpaceX as it works toward Dragon’s first crewed mission, which will carry astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station. Previously, sources have said that flight could occur by about October under ideal conditions. If the problems were serious, Saturday’s accident may substantially delay this schedule—although in the past SpaceX has shown a propensity to rapidly diagnose failures and return to flight quickly, with just 4.5 months of downtime after a rocket failure in September 2016.”
BEING EVIL: Did Google Sabotage Firefox and IE? Using its web dominance to attack competing browsers. Just another argument for an antitrust breakup.
THIS IS TAKING THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY FAR TOO LITERALLY:
—Twitchy, on Friday.
Chaser: Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib shouts, “Hold my Challah!”
OH, THEY’LL GO LOWER: New York Times hits new low with mortifying Notre Dame correction.
JOEL KOTKIN: The unwitting Committee to Re-elect the President.
Given his consistently poor approval ratings, and growing concern about the polarization that he has exacerbated, Democrats should have little trouble ousting President Trump next year. But instead, with a series of outlandish and often deeply unpopular proposals, they have morphed effectively into the Committee to Re-Elect the President.
Democrats could succeed easily if they focused on basic middle class issues, such as health care and reforming the tax system, where popular opinion, including among working class whites, is largely on their side. Infrastructure spending, if they can somehow disassociate it from the usual pork-barreling, could also gain support, particularly from construction workers.
Instead many Democratic candidates appear if they are trying to win the campus and media intersectionality challenge, emphasizing cultural “purity” in ways that worry such craftier politicians as Barack Obama. The views now commonly expressed on gender, race, immigration and the environment may work in the deep blue recesses of our majority cities, but are unlikely to play in Peoria.
I still say that getting Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar elected was Roger Stone’s finest dirty trick.
JOURNALISM: NY Times: Say, this Steele dossier appears to be false (and maybe was a Russian disinformation effort). “Think about what the claims in the dossier have generated? Much of the past two years of anger and public outrage, the desire to eliminate the electoral college, claims Trump isn’t a legitimate president, etc, etc.—it may all be based on Russian lies. If that’s the case then the bulk of the damage Russia did to our system wasn’t though a few million dollars spent on Facebook and Twitter, it was through billions of dollars in earned media on CNN, MSNBC, and Buzzfeed (among many others). Let that sink in a moment.”
HOW THE MEDIA REPORTED THE FIRST EASTER: Here’s an interesting thought experiment – how would you have reacted had you been in Jerusalem on the Sunday after the crucifixion of Jesus on Friday?
Odds are, unless you were a Roman political official or soldier in the occupying army, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin or perhaps a merchant with a table in the Temple, you would likely only know what you heard from neighbors and the rumors in the streets.
Being a journalist and lover of history, I sat down and wrote three “news” stories as I might have done as a local reporter in Jerusalem on the first Easter. You can see the outlines of the debate that has continued for 2,000 years on what really happened, which makes for an unusual and revealing way of seeing a traditional holiday.
Check it out for each day – Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And try not to be freaked out by the hands on Saturday!
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Major win for free speech in Florida as Gov. gets campus heads to sign resolution.
BERNIE SANDERS, SCIENCE-DENIER: Bernie Sanders Denies Closure Of Vermont Nuclear Plant Increased Emissions — The Data Say Otherwise.
HE’S A REPUBLICAN, AND HE’S DOING HIS JOB INSTEAD OF KOWTOWING TO DEMOCRATS: Victor Davis Hanson: Why the Effort to Demonize Attorney General Barr?
CHURCHES AND HOTELS TARGETED: Explosions kill at least 140 in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
THIS AGGRESSION WILL NOT STAND: Delta is reducing how much its seats recline.
I say, time to let foreign airlines compete.
Flashback: Cabotage, baby!
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: The Ohio Guy Who Only Drank Beer For All Of Lent Is … Healthier Than Ever? “‘I feel like I’m in my 20s,’ the 43-year-old Army veteran said.”
UNEXPECTEDLY! New York state tax revenues plummet by $3.7 billion. In the midst of an economic boom. Well, we know where New York is on the Laffer Curve now.
THIS SHOULD BE GOOD: Clint Eastwood to Direct Movie About Fake News Victim Richard Jewell. “Jewell was a 34-year-old security guard at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and at first he was rightfully hailed as a hero after he discovered a backpack filled with explosives and risked his own life to evacuate the area. After the bomb went off, dozens were injured and one person was killed. There is no question, though, that many, many more would have died had Jewell not sounded the alarm. Unfortunately for Jewell, the acclaim didn’t last long. He was overweight, white, and a southerner — the perfect target for our left-wing media… And so, three days later the media reported the F.B.I. was looking at him as a possible suspect. There was zero evidence against Jewell. The entire story was based on a criminal profile of the bomber.”
April 20, 2019
AT AMAZON: save in Health and Household.
HOW THINGS WORK IN TODAY’S AMERICA:
