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Archive for 2019
August 26, 2019
I KNOW YOU’RE SHOCKED TO HEAR THIS: Footage from camera outside Epstein’s cell deemed unusable. Stuff like this should be a strict-liability crime for those responsible, like in drug manufacturing cases.
THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A HOW-TO MANUAL: Not From the Onion: The NY Times Newsroom Literally Has a Bedbug Problem on Several Floors. But let’s be honest here — this would be a Babylon Bee story, not an Onion story, if it were satire instead of, you know, reality.
POLITICO TO NYT: STOP WHINING! Why Journalists’ Old Tweets Are Fair Game for Trump: New York Times editors don’t deserve special immunity from scrutiny for bigoted speech. “Journalists don’t deserve a get-out-of-bigotry-jail free card just because they’re journalists. If their past tweets, however ancient, undercut their current journalistic work or make them sound hypocritical, they can’t blame their diminished prestige on Trump’s allies.”
Nope, their partisanship, and thin-skinned entitlement, are what has diminished their prestige. Well, and the fact that most of them just aren’t very good at what they do.
RATS ON THE WEST SIDE, BEDBUGS UPTOWN: Not From the Onion: The NY Times Newsroom Literally Has a Bedbug Problem on Several Floors.
I’m surprised that the Times or Vox hasn’t written an actuaaaallllly, bedbugs are a good counterfactual piece yet.
OPEN THREAD: Share your views freely.
THE BABYLON BEE IS NOT LETTING UP: In Order To Stop White Men From Legislating Women’s Bodies, Democrats Fight To Overturn Roe V. Wade.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Get Ready For Apocalypse Ruth.
I WAS EXPECTING A MAGNETAR-SHATTERING KABOOM: Magnetars Can Crack Themselves Open and Bombard Earth with Gamma-Ray Flares, New Theory Suggests.
WERE THEY WEARING THEIR SKIRTS TOO HIGH? Rep. Rashida Tlaib Blames The Jews For Palestinian Terror Attack.
WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF FLORIDA UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: Miami fans attacked Florida marching band after game, director slammed to ground.
Found via Iowahawk, who tweets, “Miami fans make Oakland Raiders fans look like the Algonquin Round Table,” adding, “There is no better way for an alumnus to defend the honor and dignity of his beloved alma mater than to put your opponents’ band geeks in a headlock and punch those grins right off their stupid faces.”
THE 60th ANNIVERSARY OF KIND OF BLUE: MILES DAVIS’ MASTERPIECE. Over at Ed Driscoll.com, I have a review of jazz historian Ashley Kahn’s beautifully written and researched 2002 book, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, plus a new video from Sweetwater on how this seminal jazz album came to be.
(Bumped.)
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
Suddenly everyone is concerned about fires in the Amazon (the forest, not the online shopping company). There are all sorts of scary stories being published, and even the G7 leaders (minus Trump) met to discuss what to do about it.
Last year there were bigger fires in the Amazon and no coverage at all. What changed?
This year there’s a conservative government in Brazil.
Yeah.
IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Researchers search for next pandemic human flu virus in county fair pigs.
MEN BEWARE: Following the Billy Graham Rule Could Get You Fired. It Happened to a N.C. Sheriff.
[Manuel] Torres, who worked for the Lee County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) from 2012 until he was fired in 2017, filed a complaint on July 31 accusing Sheriff Tracy Lynn Carter of discriminating against him by terminating his employment after he requested a reasonable religious accommodation based on his Christian beliefs — namely, Torres asked that he not be forced to spend time alone with a female coworker whom he was assigned to train. Torres is seeking “equitable and monetary relief in the form of present and future lost wages and benefits, compensatory damages for emotional distress and other injuries, and punitive and/or liquidated damages, as provided by law.”
The Billy Graham rule dates back to the 1940s, when Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham, who was spending long stretches of time on the road away from his family, made a pact with several other men involved in ministry, called the Modesto Manifesto, vowing to “avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion,” according to Graham’s autobiography. The idea behind the rule was to obey the Bible’s command to “abstain from every form of evil” (sometimes translated “abstain from all appearance of evil”). Graham’s desire was that no one should be able to accuse him of sexual misconduct as a result of being spotted alone with a woman. Vice President Mike Pence also follows a variation of the rule and has been the object of much scorn and mockery for his “antiquated” religious beliefs.
Five minutes before Harvey Weinstein became a household name, and Pence emerged looking like the smartest man in the Washington, DC media fishbowl.
THE TRUTH IS, NOBODY KNOWS. The election’s more than a year away.
WHY PEOPLE ON THE RIGHT LIKE TRUMP: Finally, conservatives have a street fighter as president.
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Study Says People Who Drink Alcohol and Coffee Live Longer.
JESSE WALKER: The Podcast Revolution. “There was a time when a radio program required an actual radio station. Podcasting changed that. It is now possible to transmit a talk show, a documentary, or an audio play without dealing with anyone licensed to broadcast on the AM or FM bands. Needless to say, this costs a lot less to operate than it did the old way. And with less money on the line, your audience doesn’t need to be as big for your show to be profitable—if profits even matter to you in the first place.”
This isn’t really new — I wrote about this stuff in An Army of Davids, and the late, lamented Glenn & Helen Show started in 2006. But what’s happened since is that it’s gone from remarkable, to part of the normal fabric of everyday life. I kind miss the Glenn & Helen Show — I just listened to one of the last episodes when I got the above link — but not enough to go back to it, I think.
VENI, VIDI, VINUM: How Two Italians Achieved a 200-Year-Old Dream of Virginian Wine. “Since Thomas Jefferson first tried, growing European vines had always failed.”
This is actually from last year, but ran across it while enjoying a little light reading with lunch:
Op-eds criticized them as buffoons. Locals cracked jokes about them being in the Mafia. An arsonist burned down the barn housing their winery. Farmers who had planted French-hybrid vines spoke out against them. Officials viewed them with suspicion—as if the endeavor were actually a ruse to undermine the East Coast’s so-called wine industry or mislead local farmers.
When Virginia’s commissioner of agriculture ascertained what was happening, he summonsed Rausse to a conference room in Richmond. For two hours, 24 scientists and professors took turns lecturing. Plant pathologists explained American diseases and virologists told of native viruses. One after another, they said Rausse would fail. The meeting adjourned with the commissioner pointing to a cigar box: “Tobacco is the real future of agriculture in Virginia, not wine.” A Virginia Tech professor added, “The moment you get a Virginia farmer excited about something that does not make any sense, we have a duty to step in and stop you.”
Rausse says he did not like being told what he couldn’t do.
He then went on to make lots of award-winning Virginia wines, and in the process almost single-handedly jump-started quality East Coast winemaking.
I very much doubt our experts in any field have gotten smarter, better informed, or wiser in the last 40 years. Or as Heinlein wrote just a few years before Rausse was told what he couldn’t do, “Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”
IF THEY DO, I HOPE THEY RAID HIS HOUSE AT 4AM LIKE THEY DID WITH PAUL MANAFORT: Prosecutors Near Decision on Whether to Indict Andrew McCabe. Perp-walking him off a live CNN set is also acceptable.
WHEN MARY SUES GO BAD: Star Wars Episode IX Teaser Revealed, Fan Reaction Mixed. “The teaser ends with the tagline, ‘The story of a generation comes to an end.’ The burned cynic in me hopes this is true. Please, please, please let it end. The eight-year-old kid in me is just dying for a few more Star Wars movies that don’t suck. This D23 preview makes me think my inner eight-year-old is about to become a burned cynic.”