Archive for 2020
June 24, 2020
I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: SpaceX pops huge Starship SN7 test tank on purpose in pressure test (videos).
SAY, HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT ALL THE STORIES ABOUT THE JUMP IN CORONAVIRUS CASES DON’T MENTION THE MASSIVE PROTESTS THAT TOOK PLACE 1-2 INCUBATION PERIODS AGO?
LIFE IN THE CRAZY YEARS: Here’s What the M.I.T. Catholic Chaplain Got Fired Over.
IT’S A SOLID OPTION FOR A MAN WHO CAN’T COMPLETE A SENTENCE: Dems warm to Biden’s bunker strategy: Since the former veep launched his stay-at-home campaign, his lead has grown to double-digits in national polls.
Hillary should have tried this — she always got more popular the less people saw of her, and vice versa, too.
Related (From Ed): New Trump PAC Ads: ‘In a World Losing Its Mind, We Don’t Need a President Who’s Already Lost His.’
I’VE SPECULATED BEFORE THAT THE INNATE IMMUNE SYSTEM MAY BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANTIBODIES. NOW THERE’S THIS: Intrafamilial Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 Induces Cellular Immune Response without Seroconversion. “Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 can induce virus-specific T cell responses without seroconversion. T cell responses may be more sensitive indicators of SARS-Co-V-2 exposure than antibodies. Our results indicate that epidemiological data relying only on the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies may lead to a substantial underestimation of prior exposure to the virus.”
JOURNALISTS ABANDONING ‘OBJECTIVITY’ FOR ‘MORAL CLARITY’ REALLY JUST WANT TO CALL PEOPLE IMMORAL:
Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer-prize-winning correspondent for the 60 Minutes offshoot 60 in 6, has the latest and perhaps loudest in a recent series of think-pieces extolling the virtues of newsroom revolts such as the one that erupted at The New York Times earlier this month after its opinion pages published a controversial piece by Sen. Tom Cotton (R – Ark.).
Lowery and his industry allies contend that the national tumult stemming from the police killing of George Floyd is a prime opportunity to overhaul journalism’s very mission statement. “Neutral objectivity” as an aspiration, he argues in a Times essay, has failed, and should be replaced by “moral clarity.”
“Moral clarity would insist that politicians who traffic in racist stereotypes and tropes—however cleverly—be labeled such with clear language and unburied evidence,” Lowery writes. “Racism, as we know, is not about what lies in the depths of a human’s heart. It is about word and deed. And a more aggressive commitment to truth from the press would empower our industry to finally admit that.”
This proposed objectivity-for-morality swap is gaining momentum in the spaces where professional journalists congregate, pontificate, and/or swarm on Twitter to get senior managers fired.
Newsrooms “are really struggling to cover…in a way that appears to be nonpartisan a kind of political landscape where one political party in many ways has gone rogue and is not following the rules,” the Times’ Pulitzer-Prize-winning Nikole Hannah-Jones said on CNN’s Reliable Sources after the Cotton flap, in which she was a driving figure. “This adherence to even-handedness, both-sidesism, the View from Nowhere, doesn’t actually work in the political circumstances that we’re in.”
We’ve been here before, of course. Flashback to 2004:
An internal memo written by ABCNEWS Political Director Mark Halperin admonishes ABC staff: During coverage of Democrat Kerry and Republican Bush not to “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable.”
The controversial internal memo obtained by DRUDGE, captures Halperin stating how “Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.”
But Halperin claims that Bush is hoping to “win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.”
“The current Bush attacks on Kerry involve distortions and taking things out of context in a way that goes beyond what Kerry has done,” Halperin writes.
Halperin’s claim that ABCNEWS will not “reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable” set off sparks in St. Louis where media players gathered to cover the second presidential debate.
Halperin states the responsibilities of the ABCNEWS staff have “become quite grave.”
In August, Halperin declared online: “This is now John Kerry’s contest to lose.”
That was also the year that the New York Times’ then-ombudsman admitted the obvious: “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.”
But that was before “Safetyism” became the law of the land on academia. In a 2018 review of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind, Quillette contributor Matthew Lesh asked, “Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation?”
Safety culture undermines the entire purpose of a higher education. Universities exist to challenge students, to expand their worldview and develop their critical thinking. This is done by hearing and responding to ideas that make us feel uncomfortable. Efforts to censor speakers because they make some people feel ‘unsafe’ prevents the necessary process of argument and counter-argument in the pursuit of finding the truth.
Debate on campus is already undermined by the lack of viewpoint diversity – most academics come from a similar political pedigree, meaning students have fewer opportunities to be challenged in the first place. A lack of exposure to different ideas means a much more limited and weaker education. As British philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, ‘He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.’ In other words, to make an argument thoughtfully, it is necessary to understand the counterfactual of one’s own argument.
In 2015, Ashe Schow, then with the Washington Examiner wrote, “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”
The media world is finding out, good and hard.
Related: News Pages, Editorial Pages — Who Can Tell the Difference Any More?
SO I FINISHED TAYLOR ANDERSON’S FINAL DESTROYERMEN NOVEL, and he brought the series to a satisfactory — if long-delayed — conclusion. A great five-book series that stretched to fifteen and got too sprawling for my taste. Now reading Christopher Nuttall’s Debt of Honor. I’m trying to spend more time reading novels and less time on the Internet because, well, you know.
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Reign of Terror, you say? New York Times editor gets schooled after ridiculing Sen. Lindsey Graham’s French Revolution analogy.
Exit quote: “From the same paper that brought you the 1619 Project brings you… the French Revolution: a musical comedy.”
UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama Expresses Strange New Respect for George W. Bush.
Every Republican president is Hitler, until he leaves office, and then he is magically rehabilitated by the DNC-MSM as a distinguished and wise statesman to bash the current Hitler.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NEW SUMMER OF LOVE: What Shooting? Nets Skip Third CHOP Shooting in Four Days.
SURE, THIS MAKES SENSE: Macy’s to Set Off Fireworks Across New York City, With No Warning, for a Week.
As New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio puts together an entire task force to crack down on the illegal fireworks bored kids have been setting off across the city, he’s also green-lighting a week of Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks shows across each of the five boroughs starting June 29. “In reimagining this year’s show, the idea of bringing elements to many parts of our hometown resonated with our team and partners in the City of New York,” Susan Tercero, executive producer of Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks show, said in a statement to ABC 7. The fireworks will be set off at a “high elevation, unannounced” to prevent people from gathering to watch them.
What could go wrong?
PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES FOR THE WIN: New York Reverses Course, Will Seat Graduates Of Out-Of-State Law Schools For September Bar Exam.
CHANGE THE CULTURE: It’s Time to Build Again.
MEH. THEY SEEM TO THRIVE ON HYPOCRISY: 7 Statues the Left Really Should Want to Tear Down if They Don’t Want to Be Hypocrites.
REVIEW: Taurus G3 9 mm Pistol.