21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Plasmonic Nanomotors Move in New Directions.
Archive for 2020
November 15, 2020
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH BILL MAHER IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Bill Maher Owns Libs, Who Think ‘Silence Is Violence and Looting Is Not.’
UPDATE: Maher: Democrats’ obsession “woketopia” is why the blue wave didn’t happen on election night. “His audience suuuuuure is quiet during this segment.”
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Apophis asteroid might be more likely to strike Earth in 2068 than thought.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Healthy diet, exercise good for heart regardless of medication use.
In 2018, Power Line noted that The ACLU had begun to secretly demote free speech:
The left bailed on free speech a while back. Everyone who has been paying attention knows this.
Less widely known is that the ACLU seems to be bailing too. So argues Wendy Kaminer, a former board member, in the Wall Street Journal.
Kaminer reports on new ACLU guidelines governing case selection and “Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities.” According to Kaminer, the guidelines are contained in a secret, internal document that wasn’t to be seen even by ACLU members. It was distributed to select ACLU officials and board members, who were instructed not to share it.
As portrayed by Kaminer, the guidelines suggest that, for today’s ACLU, free speech is just another “competing value or priority” to be balanced against others. Per the guidelines, in selecting speech cases to defend, the ACLU will now balance the “impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression.” Factors like the potential effect of the speech on “marginalized communities” and even on “the ACLU’s credibility” could militate against taking a case.
Fundraising and communications officials helped formulate the new guidelines, according to Kaniner’s sources. These officials understand that free speech values do not appeal to the ACLU’s increasingly partisan leftist constituency, especially after the 2017 rally in Charlottesville.
Back in 2003, the late Steven Den Beste compared the ACLU with Amnesty International, after the latter forgot its original mission (remember those “to freedom!” ads that ran on MTV in the 1980s?) over how its members (read: fundraisers) viewed the Iraq War:
It’s not going too far to say that many of Amnesty International’s members have approximately as strongly negative of feelings now about America and George Bush as the ACLU’s members had about the Nazis when the ACLU defended them in Skokie.
The ACLU made the principled decision and weathered the downturn in contributions. When condemnation of Iraq didn’t make AI look as if it was aligning with America, Amnesty International was willing to try to shine a spotlight on the abuses there. But now AI has suddenly gone silent. The abuses against the citizens of Iraq have not stopped; indeed they’ve gotten worse. In addition to ongoing violent repression of Iraq’s civilian population, various Iraqi military and para-military units have been directly violating the Geneva Convention by, for instance, abusing the white flag of truce, and by using protected humanitarian facilities to hold military equipment, and by using “human shields” in combat, and by directly firing at refugees, and in numerous other ways.
And what we’re seeing is that AI seems unwilling to make more than oblique mention of these things, while at the same time explicitly condemning the US for what are at best minor transgressions by comparison. Why is it more important to strongly focus attention on “censorship” while ignoring mass slaughter of refugees?
In retrospect, Conquest’s second law of politics (“Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing”) dictates that it was only a matter of time before the ACLU would similarly lose the thread.
And they’re far from alone:
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: A Montana man smashed his car through the front doors of a grocery store then proceeded to drive up and down the aisles and there are videos.
As always, life imitates Top Gear:
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Meet the Man Who Was Our First Multiracial Vice President.
IN THE MAIL: From Andrew Fox, Hazardous Imaginings: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: From Cool to Cringe: what’s happened to American culture?
America’s cultural machinery jammed in the late Sixties. In the decades that followed, Cool burned itself out in the Culture Wars. This agonizing and often illusory conflict is many things. Cool is not one of them. Before it sprouted liver spots, the Culture War was at least capable of the odd vital explosion. Witness Town Bloody Hall(1979): witness Norman Mailer (in 1971), fresh from writing an essay on the sex war he described as ‘the most important single intellectual event of the last four years’, as he bluffs, batters, bristles and flirts his way through an electric two-hour debate with hardcore gynocrats Germaine Greer, Diana Trilling, Susan Sontag and Jill Johnston. ‘You are all singularly without wit,’ Mailer snarls, while the libbers hiss. It’s pure theater. The sexual chemistry between Mailer and Greer could have powered USS Gerald R. Ford.
How does the sex war play out today? Agonizingly, like all Culture War battles. Take Cardi B and her porno-rap single ‘WAP’ (the initials stand for ‘Wet-Ass Pussy’). Released in August, it rapidly became the most streamed and most watched single in Billboard 100 history. Miss B, who is shaped like five Hindenburgs stuffed into a fat suit, was the focus of much try-hard celebratory commentary by the femo-hacks who staff so many of our Republic’s prestige publications. Who would defend virtue, propriety and what Roman rapper Cicero called the summum bonum against this delirious filth?
Ben Shapiro, knight-at-arms, that’s who. Seeing the opportunity to start yet another pointless moral fracas, Shapiro devoted a fussy podcast segment to Ms B’s lyrics, which range from the drolly risqué to the uncomfortably gynecological. Shapiro, whose wife is a doctor, suggested that Ms B and her fellow lyricist Megan Thee Stallion bragging about requiring ‘bucket and mop’ for their ‘pussies’ suggested they required urgent medical attention. Ho, ho, ho! Gleefully, thousands upon thousands of Twitter accounts then suggested that Shapiro had never aroused any women, anywhere, poor Mrs Shapiro included.
There was, unfortunately, more. A few weeks later, Ms B, whose entire shtick is boasting about her sexual prowess, was humiliated in turn by the public collapse of her marriage to the rapper Offset. It seemed he’d been bucket-and-mopping behind her back for years. By the end, every participant in this toe-curling saga was diminished, smaller than before. That’s the Culture of Cringe in miniature.
It’s all so tired. The Sixties set the stage, the players and the rhetorical range of cultural life. The counterculture became a co-culture, then a co-opted culture and eventually a co-opting culture. Cool was absorbed by consumerism, and became a manufactured good, like the battle between liberals and conservatives, or fights between the sexes. The old ferocity and subversiveness was bought off, lobotomized and placed in a zoo.
How bought-off? Joe Biden, President Of Cardi B(abylon). Biden gave Cardi B one of his very rare interviews (well, of sorts) that was published by Elle magazine on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in August.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Principal tweets violent anti-Trump meme, but school forbids pro-Trump flag protest.
ANDREA MITCHELL LAMENTS FALSE ‘SOCIALIST MEMES’ HARMING DEMOCRATS.
But the calls are coming from inside the house!
UPDATE: A couple more.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Music prof pushes to purge ‘dead white guys’ in ‘national overhaul’ of curriculum.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The political class’s coronavirus credibility crisis endangers public health. “Too many of our elected officials are asking the public to make tremendous sacrifices, from keeping their children out of traditional schooling, skipping family holiday gatherings, and even adhering to restrictions on hospital visitations and funeral, and yet, they are unwilling to make those same sacrifices in their own personal life. Yet, the issue here is more than a simple moral question — it’s a threat to public health. The public is, understandably, experiencing serious pandemic fatigue. But given the rising case levels across the country, it’s really important right now that people continue to take safety precautions and do their best to slow the virus’s spread. It’s unrealistic and unfair to expect people across the country to keep abiding by onerous restrictions while officials flaunt them. When elite politicians decide the rules don’t apply to them, they aren’t just being woefully hypocritical — they are undermining public health and making the COVID-19 crisis worse.”
SPACE: SpaceX, NASA prepare to make history with launch to space station. “SpaceX and NASA hope to make history again Sunday as four astronauts — the first foursome ever to lift off atop a rocket — head to the International Space Station from Florida.”
GOT ALL MY THANK-YOU EMAILS FOR PAYPAL DONATIONS CAUGHT UP. If I somehow missed yours, thanks very much. I appreciate the support.
AT AMAZON, 3ply Disposable Face Mask, 50 Count.
SALENA ZITO: The Election Day Michigan Massacre That Never Came To Be.
The 30-plus square miles sprinkled with endless pristine lakes, well-kept homes, and tidy streets that make up West Bloomfield Township can only be described as the perfect illustration of what an Oakland County suburb looks like. A few years ago, it was one of the most reliable suburbs for Republican candidates in the state, and a few weeks ago, races up and down the ballot in this county were supposed to be a bloodbath for the Michigan Republican Party. State Rep. Ryan Berman, the Republican incumbent who represents this area, was supposed to be a dead man walking. His expected loss was going to help flip the Republican state House majority here blue for the first time since the 2008 elections.
Except, the bloodbath never happened.
Democrats thought they were going to get all of this township to win the state House seats. Instead, the voters split their decision. . . .
Berman beat back Democratic challenger Julia Pulver, a nurse, by getting 51.9% to her 46.5%. If you paid attention to the race, it was easy to see who had the better message for these suburban achievers: She ran on a public option healthcare platform, and her win could have helped give Democrats more control in Lansing, the state capitol. Berman ran on the economy, law and order, auto insurance reform, and education. His message was not overtly partisan and reflected his district’s values.
Going into Election Day, Democrats were confident they were on the road to flip four suburban state House seats held by Republicans en route to flipping the GOP’s 58-52 majority. But as of this Tuesday afternoon, with two races still too close to call, Michigan Republicans have already secured 57 seats.
That’s the story all over. So much for the Blue Wave.
Plus: “Whitmer and state Democrats have to wonder if this is a step backward for their party and their push for control. The results seem to be a message from voters on how Michigan Democrats have managed the pandemic and their heavy emphasis on national politics and power rather than local politics and governing.”
