HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University of Michigan professor receives ‘anti-racism’ grant to study ‘algorithmic reparations.’

PUSHBACK: Sanity Prevails: Overwhelming Majority of People Believe There Are Only Two Genders.

STILL POPULAR: Bowflex SelectTech 552 Adjustable Dumbbells (pair). #CommissionEarned

I THOUGHT NOBODY WAS ACTUALLY TRYING TO DEFUND THE POLICE? 5 times campus leftists tried to Defund the Police this year.

POSTMODERN PRAETORIANS: CNN Cries ‘Fake News’ to Accurately Say Biden Has More Covid Deaths Than Trump.

AFGHANISTAN: Remember That New Modern Taliban? They Banned Women Driving Long Distances Alone.

PRETTY DUMB TO LAUNCH YOUR SPACE STATION INTO AN ORBIT THAT CONFLICTS WITH STARLINK’S CONSTELLATION: Elon Musk sparks China fury as space station takes emergency measures to avoid collision.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Biden Train Wreck Is All the Way Off the Rails Now. “I remember listening to a doddering old man drool his way through a presidential campaign last year promising to be the Great Covid Slayer. Unfortunately, the braindead Democrat masses bought Biden’s story. Now he’s been in office for almost a year and we’re still canceling sporting events and talking about wearing masks on airplanes forever.”

THAT’S NICE. NOW WHAT ARE WE GOING TO USE TO CHARGE ALL THOSE BATTERIES? 13 battery gigafactories coming to the US by 2025 – ushering new era of US battery production.

Previously: Elon Musk Says EVs Will Double World’s Need for Electricity.

YOU’D NEVER KNOW IT FROM THE MEDIA TREATMENT: 75% SAY ONLY TWO SEXES.

DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN 2022: The (Crappy) Year We Just Lived Through.

(Classical reference in headline.)

MY FRIEND J. STORRS HALL REVIEWED IN THE WSJ: ‘Where Is My Flying Car?’ That’s the title of his new book, too, which I blurbed. It’s excellent.

Excerpt:

The author gives several reasons for this dispiriting phenomenon. The first is the “Machiavelli effect.” In “The Prince,” Machiavelli wrote that innovators are opposed by “all those who have done well under the old conditions.” In scientific research, the academy tends to be full of people who have done well under the old conditions and resent novelty. They’re protected by a centralized funding system that rewards incumbents and “makes it easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of a field.” These established players “are resistant to new, outside, not-Ptolemaic ideas. The ivory tower has a moat full of crocodiles.”

There are also what Mr. Hall terms “failures of nerve” and “failures of the imagination.” Failures of nerve happen when the facts are known and the challenge clear, but somehow an experiment risks yielding a result that seems outlandish—a flying machine, a rocket, factories the size of a pin. Failures of the imagination occur when we assume we know everything and rule out the vast possibilities of the unknown. Without accepting the limits of our knowledge, we will never exceed them.

Mr. Hall also blames a work-shy culture nourished since the 1960s, when Americans became so complacent about the satisfaction of their basic needs that they began to denigrate the value of technological progress. He argues that environmentalism has “essentially superseded Christianity as the default religion of Western civilization, especially in academic circles,” and has “developed into an apocalyptic nature cult, centered around climate change.” Skeptics are treated like heretics, an attitude that has frozen the science.

Another major obstacle to innovation has been regulation. The rise of product liability in the 1970s essentially killed the manufacture of private planes. Even as accident rates fell, product liability costs rose, limiting the growth of the business and killing the possibility of flying cars. Mr. Hall quotes Wilbur Wright, who said that “if you are looking for perfect safety, you would do well to sit on a fence and watch the birds.” Had the Wright Brothers had to deal with today’s Washington, D.C., they would likely have never tackled the improbable.

He has some ideas on fixing that, though.

BUY YOURSELF A POST CHRISTMAS GIFT: Atomic Bear Paracord Bracelet (2 Pack) – Adjustable – Fire Starter – Loud Whistle – Perfect for Hiking, Camping, Fishing and Hunting – Black & Black+Orange. #CommissionEarned

LIE OF THE YEAR: ‘I Will Shut Down The Virus.’

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS: VP Kamala Harris says she does not ‘ever wanna be in a bubble when it comes to being … in touch with what people need.’

‘FLABBERGASTING PARADOX:’ That’s what triple-dimension physics PhD Michael Guillen — and former Harvard professor and ABC News Science Editor — calls the Quantum Vacuum (QV) that is simultaneously nothing and potentially everything.

Guillen explains the role of the QV in his journey to writing “Believing is Seeing,” the one book you should read if you only read one in 2022. Be sure and buy it from Amazon, so Instapundit benefits. This excerpt on HillFaith should do the trick for all who love science and who love faith.

I WISH I COULD FEEL BETTER ABOUT THIS: Google is dethroned as world’s most popular website.

The tech giant was pushed into second place as TikTok took the No. 1 spot as the most popular website in 2021, according to cybersecurity company Cloudflare.

In 2020, Google took the No. 1 spot while TikTok came in at No. 7, making the feat of reaching No. 1 by jumping six spots all the more noteworthy.

In September, TikTok hit a new record, reporting 1 billion monthly active users.

TikTok is CCP spyware masquerading as a social media site.

NOT BY THE PANDEMIC, BUT BY THE GOVERNMENT/MEDIA RESPONSE TO THE PANDEMIC: Surgeon General alarmed by rise in child suicides triggered by pandemic. “A big problem is a lack of social contact with friends, classmates, and teachers. One in five young people reports experiencing symptoms of depression and one in four suffer from anxiety. Their lives have been turned upside down at a crucial time in their development. Given that we know that children do not suffer from the same problems from COVID-19 as adults do, the harm being done to children is all the more tragic.”

I was talking to a couple of freshman advisors from UT, and they noted that our freshmen had crucial years of their educations and development done online, which leaves them socially and intellectually behind in many ways. And the mental health problems, already bad pre-pandemic, are much worse.

AIRBRUSH ALERT: CBS Edits Out Own Reporter Slamming School Closures Causing Mental Health Crisis.

Longtime CBS reporter and chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford went viral on Sunday and Monday on social media following comments, meant to air on Sunday’s Face the Nation, that slammed our elected officials and public health experts for “the crushing impact that our COVID policies have had on young kids and children” and the subsequent mental health crisis. However, CBS News kept her comments out of the actual show.

Instead, CBS relegated Crawford’s stinging rebuke — which took place during the show’s year-end reporters roundtable — to Face the Nation’s Facebook and Twitter pages, a CBSNews.com transcript, and a YouTube video of the full roundtable.

In the full video, Brennan pivoted away from hopes of congressional Democrats advancing their agenda to asking: “Well, I want to get to underreported stories as well, Jan?”

Crawford responded without hesitation that it was something “my kids hear me rant about…every day, so I might as well tell you guys.”

“It’s the crushing impact that our COVID policies have had on young kids and children. By far the least serious risk for serious illness,” she began, adding that “a healthy teenager has a one in a million chance of getting, and dying from COVID, which is way lower than, you know, dying in a car wreck on a road trip.”

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and the memory holing makes perfect sense.

Evergreen:

IT’S OFFICIAL: More Americans Have Died from COVID Under Biden Than Under Trump.

MY COMMENT: THAT’S STUPID. Cleveland State Law School Seeks Comments On Removing Chief Justice John Marshall From Its Name.

A friend notes: “FYI: the dean is the former Democratic Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General of Ohio. He lost bids for Governor (to Bob Taft) and U.S. Senate (to Rob Portman).”

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Barbarella #6   #CommissionEarned

She is known only as “the Lady.” Her identity, her origins, even her rise to power, are shrouded in utter mystery. And make no mistake, that’s purely intentional. That she rules increasingly larger portions of the galaxy with an iron grip and a wave of fear is not remotely in question. Why she wants to wipe out every human is. And why Barbarella is targeted to be the first and most important human to die is the deadliest question of all!

(For some reason, the blurb leaves out that this issue is about Vix, Barbarella’s fox-pet. And it was an amazing amount of fun to write. No, really. Trust me.)