SLOWER, PLEASE: Study confirms that some people age more slowly. “People really do vary in how fast they age, and the divergence starts in young adulthood, a new study suggests. The researchers found that by the tender age of 45, people with a faster pace of “biological aging” were more likely to feel, function and look far older than they actually were. And that relative sprint toward old age began in their 20s. . . . It turned out that, indeed, people varied widely in biological aging: The slowest ager gained only 0.4 ‘biological years’ for each chronological year in age; in contrast, the fastest-aging participant gained nearly 2.5 biological years for every chronological year. And by age 45, rapid biological agers were already showing some health indicators normally associated with old age.”
Archive for 2021
March 28, 2021
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Transgender Female Complains TSA Scanners Set Off Alarms for the ‘Anomaly Between My Legs.’
ROGER KIMBALL: Christopher Lasch vs. the Elites of Our Time.
Lasch takes great pains to encourage us to abandon both pessimism and optimism for the more modest virtue of hope. There is much to recommend this. In any robust sense of the word, optimism involves turning a blind eye to the “odious facts” of the world around us just as pessimism involves a monstrous ingratitude in the face of the unearned blessings we receive. Both involve a culpable distortion of reality.
Yet it is not clear whether Lasch himself ever overcame the temptations of pessimism. Moral passion was doubtless his greatest asset. Addicted to what the historian Herbert Butterfield described as “the luxury and pleasing sensuousness of moral indignation,” he was never less than earnest. He raised central questions, discussed them articulately, yet often failed to persuade. Perhaps this was because his diagnoses were so sweeping and historically one-sided. Perhaps it was because, having discarded one left-wing view after the next, he nevertheless was unable to discard the Left’s animating hatred of the free market. In any event, his attack on progress represents not a triumph of hope but an unusually dour form of populist pessimism (he would, I feel sure, have approved of Kafka’s quip that “there is hope, but not for us”).
But what is perhaps most noteworthy is the way Lasch attempts to salvage some margin of religious commitment from the stern diagnosis he offers. Traditionally, of course, religion has functioned in part as a source of existential consolation. Lasch would have us downplay that aspect of religious teaching, eager, as always, to combat the tendency to “make people feel good about themselves.” For Lasch “the spiritual discipline against self-righteousness is the very essence of religion.” A person with “a proper understanding of religion,” he says, would see it not as “a source of intellectual and emotional security,” but as “a challenge to complacency and pride.” There is of course something to this. For pride is assuredly the enemy of religious life. But how touching, how sad, really, that even here, even when it was a matter of life’s ultimate mysteries, we find Lasch arguing against the possibility of consolation or solace.
Lengthy, but well worth a read.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: A Hunger Inside You: Your Vibrator Can Now Update You On The Status Of Your Food Delivery.
HOWIE CARR: FBI whiffs again on Colorado mass shooting suspect.
So now it turns out that the FBI knew all about the accused Boulder shooter, but paid no attention to the obvious warning signs until police say the rabidly anti-American immigrant from Syria murdered 10 U.S. citizens in the supermarket.
“The suspect’s identity,” the New York Times reported, “was known to the FBI because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the bureau, according to law enforcement officials.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
The Famous But Incompetent FBI likewise knew all about accused shooter Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa’s fellow Muslim immigrants who committed mass murder, like the Tsarnaev brothers — but did nothing until those welfare-collecting “asylees” blew up the Boston Marathon.
The FBI also had early warnings about the Muslim terrorists who shot up the gay nightclub in Orlando, the Christmas party in San Bernardino, Fort Hood, the cartoon-drawing contest in Texas … and yet the G-men sat on their soft hands until scores of Americans were murdered in cold blood.
But it’s not only foreign Muslim terrorists the FBI can’t be bothered lugging. It’s domestic killers as well.
For instance, in 2018 the FBI’s national tip line got a 13-minute-long earful from the aunt of the Parkland High shooter Nikolas Cruz — but did nothing until 17 people were gunned down.
Read the whole thing.
HOSANNA! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD. For Christians, Palm Sunday marks Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Yet in only 5 days, he would die in the the most infamous unfair trial in all of history. Lots of lessons in this, of course, but it’s noteworthy how 2000-year-old repression and injustice doesn’t look all that different from today. Even on Palm Sunday itself, those representing the authorities of the time demanded Jesus stop his followers from spreading the word about “the mighty works” they had seen: “And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.'” He refused: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
An example worth following.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Nobody Tells You About the Alamo and the Texas Revolution of the 1830s.
THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE CORPORATIONS.
THIS IS CNN: CNN slammed for questionable tweet that refers to murder as an ‘accident.’
In a car jacking attempt, two young teenage girls fought an Uber Eats delivery driver, leaving 66-year-old Mohammad Anwar, dead as he was flung from the vehicle.“Two girls murdered a man after car jacking him. Fixed it for you,” one Twitter user wrote responding to the tweet.
“They murdered him. The teens murdered the driver. You are allowed to say that,” another user wrote.
“CNN is run by apologists for brutality,” Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld wrote, quoting the CNN tweet.
The suspects, who police say are ages 13 and 15, have been charged with murder in the death of Anwar.
One of the girls told D.C. police officers that they had set out with a stun gun to steal a car on Tuesday, according to court testimony from homicide unit Detective Chad Leo.
Nice girls: Teen girl worries about her phone, which is still in the car of the Uber Eats driver she carjacked and killed.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Sorry, perps are the wrong race.
#StopAsianHate.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: James Madison University hires seven new faculty for ‘diversity cohort.’ “According to The Breeze, the new assistant professors’ interests run the gamut from Latinx studies and ‘racial justice’ to Islamic studies.”
INDIANA MASK MANDATE WILL END APRIL 6, GOVERNOR CHANGES IT TO ADVISORY:
Gov. Eric Holcomb announced Indiana’s mask mandate will end April 6, a decision that comes after mounting pressure from within his own Republican party.
Holcomb will join the leaders of six other states who have lifted mask mandates, a move that goes against the advice of the Centers for Disease Control, which still recommends masks to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
I’m curious to learn how the Republican party applied pressure to Colorado’s Democratic governor: Colorado prepares to lift its COVID mask mandate.
WE NEED TO STOP OVERLOOKING ONE POLITICALLY INCORRECT COVID-19 DEATH FACTOR:
The United States has the 13th highest COVID-19 death rate relative to population. Many different factors shaped death rates in the pandemic. But there’s one uncomfortable reason that the U.S. likely experienced more COVID-19 deaths that has largely been ignored because it’s politically incorrect.
Out-of-control obesity rates and the “body positivity” movement predating the pandemic have left the U.S. population disproportionately vulnerable to COVID-19 compared to other countries. The U.S. ranks No. 12 in obesity worldwide, one of the highest rates among developed countries. One study found that 90% of worldwide COVID-19 deaths occurred in countries with high obesity rates.
Sounds like advice the media should take. However, as Iowahawk likes to say:
GEORGE LEEF: On “Panics and Persecutions: 20 Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age.“
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Border tour: Senators heckled by ‘coyotes,’ Biden officials tried to block photos.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Harvard is the hotbed of anti-Asian-American hate.
THE DUKE LACROSSE TEAM’S FAKE RAPE SCANDAL IS 15 years old today.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? US Special Operations Command welcomes aboard its new chief of diversity and inclusion (who compared Trump to Hitler):
Oh yeah, there’s that Facebook post that’s still up comparing Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump:
As you can see (as could Facebook’s fact-checkers), the “Bible” was obviously Photoshopped into Hitler’s hand, so it’s fake too.
Exit quote: “Well, at least we’ll be destroyed in an intersectional way.”
TAKE YOUR KIDS OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Education Secretary: It’s Too Soon to Say If Schools Can Reopen by Fall.
ENDLESS LOCKDOWNS ARE UNNATURAL: Child Suicide is Becoming an ‘International Epidemic’ Amid Restricted Pandemic Life, Doctors Warn.
I just saw a Very Special Covid Episode of The Conners, and it already seemed so dated.
(Classical reference in headline.)
HOW IT STARTED: Los Angeles City Council votes to cut LAPD budget by $150 million.
—ABC7 Los Angeles, July 2nd, 2020.
How it’s going: Los Angeles County ups police funding by $36 million after rise in crime.
—The Post Millennial, yesterday.
THE SIXTH CIRCUIT IS HARSH BUT FAIR: “Traditionally, American universities have been beacons of intellectual diversity and academic freedom. They have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated. And they have tried not to stifle debate by picking sides. But Shawnee State chose a different route: It punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue. And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment. The district court dismissed the professor’s free-speech and free-exercise claims. We see things differently and reverse.”
Plus:
Meriwether approached the chair of his department, Jennifer Pauley, to discuss his concerns about the newly announced rules. Pauley was derisive and scornful. Knowing that Meriwether had successfully taught courses on Christian thought for decades, she said that Christians are “primarily motivated out of fear” and should be “banned from teaching courses regarding that religion.” R. 34, Pg. ID 1473. In her view, even the “presence of religion in higher education is counterproductive.”
Sounds like a civil rights violation right there.
ACTUALLY, THIS HEADLINE IS TOTALLY BELIEVABLE: Blockage Cleared, Ships Moving At Record Speed As Chick-Fil-A Workers Put In Charge Of Suez Canal.