Archive for 2020

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Parts of Beijing locked down due to fresh virus cluster. “Dozens of people tested positive for the coronavirus in Beijing as parts of the city were locked down Saturday after the emergence of a new cluster linked to a wholesale food market. . . . AFP reporters saw hundreds of police officers, many wearing masks and gloves, and dozens of paramilitary police deployed at the two markets, with no one allowed to leave Xinfadi.”

Reportedly, the market “provides much of the capital’s food supply.” That must be a gigantic market.

I BLAME SOCIAL MEDIA: Young Adults Having Less Sex. “In 2018, 31 percent of men and 19 percent of women between ages 18 and 24 reported no sexual activity in the previous year, researchers said. In 2001, 19 percent of men and 15 percent of women in the same age group had no sexual activity during the previous year. In addition to the findings on young adults, the number of men 25 to 34 years old who reported sexual inactivity in the past year doubled to 14 percent in 2018 from 7 percent in 2000, researchers said. The percentage of women who reported sexual inactivity in this age group also rose — to 13 percent from 7 percent over the same period.”

For older adults the numbers are unchanged. No wonder millennials are so kooky and grumpy. They’re not getting enough.

WELL, THIS IS PROMISING: Most asymptomatic COVID-19 cases stay that way, small study says. “Are many of these ‘asymptomatic’ carriers simply in a stage of infection that later moves on to symptomatic COVID-19? No, suggests a small, new study of cruise ship passengers and crew.”

JUST DON’T MENTION THE CULTURE WAR: Fawlty Towers’ “The Germans” episode to be reinstated by UKTV.

Oceania has never been at war with Basil Fawlty.

Earlier: John Cleese Slams Removal of Fawlty Towers Episode From Streaming Site.

And from Steve: Cancel Culture Comes for John Cleese and ‘Fawlty Towers.’

Steve’s article is just for our VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.

 

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON On Name Changing and Statue Toppling:

General David Petraeus wrote an impassioned article in the Atlantic this week about the need to change the names of military bases that for over a century have been named after Confederate generals and to recalibrate iconic remembrances such as statues commemorating Robert E. Lee at West Point — points of reference he reminds us that have been central in his own experience and career.

His relevant points were twofold and ostensibly rational: Commanders such as Bragg and Benning (Petraeus proposes the renaming of other eponymous bases as well) were not especially effective commanders worthy of such majestic base commemoration. In some cases, as Petraeus notes, they were not even highly regarded by their peers. No one, certainly, would wish to defend the worldview of a Braxton Bragg. And, as Petraeus put it, as “traitors” they fought for an ignoble cause that perpetuated slavery. (Of course, the logic of renaming should then apply to the northern California community of Fort Bragg, also named after the unattractive Braxton Bragg — an idea to which some in the Democratic California legislature failed to win over the town’s mayor in 2015).

Read the whole thing.

COMING SOON, A Real Estate Tax Revenue Death Spiral?

Who would have thought that Minneapolis might become the next Detroit? Well, some of the people who are making it happen, maybe.