DEFUND THE EDUCATION APPARAT? Kurt Schlichter: This is a great opportunity to destroy Academia. “Now, the only thing really keeping academia attached to the body politic like the institutional deer tick that it is was the widespread and baseless belief that our universities are somehow our culture’s crucial repositories of knowledge and learning. But it’s kind of hard to argue that when it belches forth graduates who decide to show that black lives matter by toppling statues of Abe Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.”

Plus:

This decision to use academia’s institutional credibility as a cultural chamber pot comes at just the wrong time. Video and computer technology was already making the old giant lecture hall model obsolete even before the bat soup flu. You get the same level of loving personal attention staring at a iPad in your house as you do staring at the TA 100 yards away from you in a behemoth lecture hall, and you don’t have to breath in either the viruses or the scent of old Pabst wafting off of the unwashed bodies of your fellow students.

And adding insult to insult is the idea that you have to pay upwards of $50,000 or more a year for the “college experience.” The Porsche experience is nice, but most people still choose the Chevy experience. You get there either way – just the latter way you aren’t impoverished for the rest of your life.

Of course, because it’s the Ivy League – that same institution that brought us the Wall Street collapse, Iraq, and a society where the nonsense scribbled down in White Fragility is not immediately laughed out of polite company – we have now Harvard demanding full tuition for the 2020-2021 academic year conducted completely by video learning. It’s basically a public confession that the whole point of the place is getting admitted – as long as at the end of a few years you get a diploma reading “HARVARD,” who cares what goes on during them?

Over-priced, inefficient, and not merely useless but actively detrimental to society – yeah, I’m sold on academia as currently constituted. So, let’s take this opportunity to burst this societal pimple. . . .

This is our chance to undo one of America’s biggest mistakes in the last century, allowing academia to metastasize into the societal tumor that it has become. Technology and economics were already gut-punching this flabby punk before both the double-strike combo of the pangolin pandemic panic and the woke insurrection revealed that not only did the emperor have no clothes but he wasn’t packing much to speak of besides.

Read the whole thing.

Related, seen on Facebook:

ONE-MAN RULE: Newsom Claims More Power from Legislature’s ‘Hiatus.’ “Sure enough, it took Gov. Newsom less than a day to use the Legislature’s abdication to his advantage. In a new filing with the Appeals Court, he argues the Court should immediately remove any restraints on his authority.”

That doesn’t sound very much like a republican form of government to me.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ:

HMM: ‘Unknown pneumonia deadlier than coronavirus’ is sweeping across Kazakhstan, Chinese embassy claims as video emerges of families queuing to collect bodies from morgue. “But experts have suggested any deaths linked to a ‘new pneumonia’ are most likely unconfirmed Covid-19 deaths.” Let’s hope.

LET ME JUST GET OUT AHEAD OF THE STORY AND SAY THAT GHISLAINE MAXWELL DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE: Ghislaine Maxwell ‘made to wear paper clothes’ in New York jail over suicide fears.

(Classical reference in headline.)

BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN TOLD THEY’RE CAPABLE OF EVERYTHING AND THE BEST THING ON TWO FEET, AND YET THEIR LIFE IS NOT EXTRAORDINARY:  Why Do So Many White Women Hate Themselves?

THIS DOES SEEM TO BE THE STRATEGY: Trump’s last line of defense is the economy. Biden and Democrats must knock it down.

HMM: China’s Quantum Radar Could Reveal All Submarines.

Some naval analysts are decidedly bearish on the prospects of submarine stealth in the twenty-first century, looking ahead to highly sensitive low-frequency sonars, advanced satellite-based optical sensors that may bypass acoustic-stealth entirely, and powerful computer processors that can churn through vast quantities of data to discriminate faint contacts from background noise. China is even developing a satellite-based laser surveillance system aimed at detecting vessels submerged as deep as five hundred meters.

Recently, the field of quantum mechanics has increasingly shown its potential to disrupt established paradigms in multiple domains of warfare—particularly due to the concept of quantum entanglement, the uncanny phenomenon by which bonded particles continue to uncannily reflect each other’s behavior even across long distances.

Though still facing by range coherence limitations, quantum sensors and communicators could potentially bypass many of the limitations and vulnerabilities of traditional radio-frequency sensors, remaining effective despite jamming or stealthy-aircraft profiles. As detailed in this article, China appears to have taken an early lead in ‘quantum radar’, though how soon the technology can be developed into an operationally viable system remains to be seen.

As threats go, this one is still a ways off, and there’s no doubt we’re working on something similar.

THIS WELL END WELL: Majority of Seattle council pledges to support Police Department defunding plan laid out by advocates.

In a presentation to the council’s budget committee Wednesday, they said the Police Department’s 2021 budget should be reduced by 50% from the status quo (its budget is $409 million this year). They also said the department’s remaining 2020 budget should be cut by 50% this summer.

Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now laid out a four point proposal for defunding the Police Department:

• Remove Seattle’s 911 dispatchers from police control
• Scale up community-based solutions to public safety
• Fund a community-led process to “imagine life beyond policing.”
• Invest in affordable housing

The aim is “defunding the Seattle Police Department and building a world where we trust and believe in community to provide the safety that we need,” Decriminalize Seattle’s Jackie Vaughn said at a news conference Thursday.

Related: Baltimore Residents Blame Record-High Murder Rate On Lower Police Presence.

More: City of Seattle Tells Employees To Risk Their Safety For Leftist Causes.

USING BLACK AND BROWN BODIES AS GUINEA PIGS: Washington State School Reopening Option Prioritizes ‘Students of Color.’

SO THIS “DEFACEMENT” IS NANCY PELOSI APPROVED, RIGHT?

● Shot: Black Lives Matter mural near Chicago defaced, changed to read ‘All Lives Matter.’

—The New York Post, yesterday.

● Chaser: Pelosi on Christopher Columbus statue destruction: ‘People will do what they do.’

—Fox News, yesterday.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE AND LISTEN TO THE CDC! WAIT, NOT THAT SCIENCE! CDC director: Keeping schools closed poses greater health threat to children than reopening.

JACOBINS: Vandals Target Monument for Those Evil Racist — Checks Notes — 9/11 Firefighters.

SHOCKINGLY, MOST PEOPLE IN HOSPITALS DON’T HAVE CORONAVIRUS: Stanford expert says 80-85 percent of Texas hospital patients ‘have nothing to do with COVID-19.’

Scott Atlas, former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, said Monday that for people under 70, the death rate from COVID-19 is lower than or equal to the seasonal flu.

“When we see this focus on more cases, it doesn’t really matter how many cases — it only matters who gets the cases. We know that the infection-fatality rate for people under 70 is 0.04 percent — that’s less than or equal to the seasonal flu,” Atlas told Fox News’ “The Story.”

“The cases themselves should not be and were never the focus. It’s only the tragic consequences of the cases. When we look at the cases in every state, the overwhelming majority are younger and healthier people,” he added.

Atlas said the rate at which high-risk people are being affected and whether the death rate from the virus is increasing is what matters.

Seems reasonable.

AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD STRIKES AGAIN:  Gavin Newsom Alerted To Illegal Activity By The Sound Of Children’s Laughter.

RING AROUND THE SUN:  Solar Orbiter operational, first images to be released.

IT’S AUSTRALIA. IT’S PROBABLY POISONOUS:  Astronomers spot unidentifiable ‘circular’ phenomena over Australia.

HUMANS ARE HARD TO KEEP IN ONE PLACE:  Study shows ancient contact between Polynesians and South Americans.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE SCIENCE IN THE OLD SOVIET UNION:   I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It.

WE NEED MORE OF THIS:  Ohio Sheriff: ‘I am Not the Mask Police. I am Not Going to Enforce Any Mask-Wearing’.

AND YOU GET A DOSE OF STUPID, AND YOU GET A DOSE OF STUPID, AND YOU GET–  Oprah, Lionsgate Pick Up Disgraced NYT ‘1619 Project’ for Film, TV.

DOESN’T THE CDC NEED TO CHANGE ITS NAME? I CAN’T UNDERSTAND HOW CDC CAN BE AN ACRONYM FOR “SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF HOMESCHOOLING:”  CDC Not Amending Its Proposed School Reopening Guidelines, But Will Hand Out Additional Documents.

SHE SHOULD ASK MARIE ANTOINETTE FOR TIPS ON KEEPING HER MOUTH SHUT:  Nancy Pelosi on Iconoclasm: What’s the Problem?

UNEXPECTEDLY!  Surge in NYPD Retirement Causes Alarm.

I AGREE. SOMALIA NEEDS TO STOP OPPRESSING ITS PEOPLE. AND THEN ILHAN OMAR CAN GO TO THE HOME SHE LOVES:  Dismantle Whole System Of Oppression – Ilhan Omar.

Yes. I know that’s not what she means. I also think she needs to be investigated for immigration fraud.