Archive for 2022
April 28, 2022
MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Biden ‘Not Concerned about Recession,’ Touts ‘Enormous Growth’ after Economy Shrinks in First Quarter.
President Biden attempted to allay concerns about the performance of the U.S. economy on Thursday after the Commerce Department announced that the economy shrank over the first quarter of 2022.
“I’m not concerned about a recession,” Biden told reporters at a press conference at the White House.
“I mean, you’re always concerned about a recession, but the GDP, you know, fell to 1.4 percent,” Biden added. “But here’s the deal: we also had last quarter consumer spending and business investment and residential investment increase at significant rates,” and “unemployment’s the lowest rate since 1970.”
Biden said that the U.S. was seeing “enormous” economic growth alongside Covid disruptions.
Earlier: How Bad Will the Biden Recession Be?
(Classical reference in headline.)
OUR RULING CLASS IS COMPOSED OF SORRY SPECIMENS OF HUMANITY:
The insecurity and outright envy on display are not pretty, but are centerpieces of their ideology.
IT’S NOT AN EYESORE IF IT’S GREEN-APPROVED: They’re Paneling Paradise to Put Up Solar — a Lot. “The pathway to a green future involves taking millions of acres of pristine wilderness and turning them into fields of windmills and hot expanses of glistening panels.” I remember Jerry Pournelle calculating how many square miles you’d have to cover to generate significant amounts of solar, and it was a lot.
I actually think windmills are kind of pretty, but solar panels are just ugly.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Poll: A third of U.S. college students consider withdrawing due to stress.
When are we going to do something about this toxic industry, which by its own account is a repulsive stew of sexual assault, racism, and breakdown-inducing emotional stress?
UPDATE: From the comments:
What percentage normally consider that?
Though, for the record:
I’m a professor and I tend to make fun of this stuff as much as anybody else here. But there’s definitely something weird going on with the students at my university. I mean: more than usual. They’re not coming to class, for one thing, and they’re missing exams at a phenomenal rate, and not doing the work. We just had our second (or third, depending on how you count it) suicide of the academic year.
And: no need to barrage me with silly stuff like “well, you should be more of a hard-ass” or whatever. I actually am. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Other colleagues I know and trust report the same thing. Now, profs always complain about how slack and entitled their students are…but this is, honestly, like nothing I’ve seen before.
I agree. I’m not seeing that at the law school, but I’m hearing the same thing about undergraduates here — lots of anxiety, depression, and just poor executive function. Much more than was normal for college students, prepandemic.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: David Spade’s Cancel Culture Fears Will Make You Scream. “Oh my god, why am I doing a special when all eyes are on every comic at all times? It’s almost like I’m looking for trouble, but this is my profession.”
MEGAN FOX AND HER SUBSCRIBERS are live-streaming the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial.
DALLAS INTERNATIONAL GUITAR FESTIVAL RETURNS APRIL 29: Oldest & Largest Guitar Show In The World Returns to Dallas’ Market Hall.
Dallas International Guitar Festival (DIGF) returns to Market Hall April 29-May 1 to celebrate the 44th anniversary of the oldest and largest guitar show in the world.
DIGF blends musicians, fans, collectors and celebrities together into one huge musical extravaganza. Visitors can buy, sell, trade, or just browse among the thousands upon thousands of new and vintage guitars. The show also features basses, amps, banjos, mandolins, straps and strings, effects pedals, music memorabilia and more.
Visitors enjoy live music throughout the festival. There are performances by over 60 artists on four concert stages at Dallas Market Hall. A highlight of DIGF each year is the Texas 10 under 20 stage, with bands featuring musicians 20 years old or younger performing throughout the festival. The 10 under 20 contest is held Sunday morning. The winner receives valuable prizes to help further their musical career.
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The Guitar Festival is open Friday from 12 noon to 7 p.m.; Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For tickets and updated information including performance schedules for the 44th Dallas International Guitar Festival please visit guitarshow.com.
Here’s my after-action report (with photos) from last year, which was the first, somewhat tentative, year back after the COVID lockdown.
(Bumped.)
BYRON YORK: Will the Babylon Bee get out of Twitter jail? The Babylon Bee’s CEO, Seth Dillon: “I care a lot about the preservation of freedom and the restoration of sanity. What we did in all of this was just to refuse to delete a tweet. We refused to delete a tweet, and look what has come about as a result of that — possibly, at least, we played a role in it. That’s pretty remarkable. Hopefully, other people see that, and we’ll have more people joining the ranks of those who are refusing to go along with the insanity and standing up for reason and truth and freedom. And we’ll start to see the pendulum swing back the other way. We’ll be in that fight until the fight is over, which is, I guess, until we die.”
WHY WOULD YOU NEED SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT? Night Driving Sunglasses. #CommissionEarned
CANCEL CULTURE INCLUDES SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY THAT IS QUASHED: Physicist and Professor Eric Heiden explains during a presentation at the recent Dallas Conference on Science and Faith what happened when the Cancel Culture stifled academic freedom at Ball State University, deep in the heart of conservative Indiana.
This is a longer video (43 minutes+) than usual for HillFaith, but the issue and analysis present concrete challenges to all of us who profess to support academic independence and free thought about the most important issues.
Also, be aware that in the center of his presentation, Heinden includes a moving meditation on the crucial role of forgiveness, that most difficult of all the virtues. And don’t miss his discussion of the uniqueness of the human recognition of and appreciation for beauty.
AT 39 POUNDS OF BOOST I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Twin-Turbo Dodge Viper Making 3100 HP Sounds Predictably Insane.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE OUR “INTELLECTUALS” ARE SO AWFUL: Study: Anti-intellectualism has become an identity for some rural Americans.
WHY THE LEFT IS SO FREAKED OUT BY MUSK BUYING TWITTER: It’s really pretty simple and, according to Dan O’Donnell, a now rarely discussed story in Time Magazine in February 2021 makes it clear — Twitter is an essential cog in the Left’s censorship machine that shaped independent voter perceptions of the 2020 presidential election, to Joe Biden’s advantage and Donald Trump’s disadvantage.
BURN THE HERETIC: Kansas Lawmaker Denounced for Feeling Discomfort at Sharing a Bathroom With Transgender Colleague. “Is Helmer supposed to pretend that having a biological male in the bathroom is perfectly natural to her even though it isn’t? And is she just supposed to keep her mouth shut if she’s uncomfortable?”
SCIENCE! Believe in Science? Bad Big-Data Studies May Shake Your Faith.
Today, the problem is not the scarcity of data, but the opposite. We have too much data, and it is undermining the credibility of science.
Luck is inherent in random trials. In a medical study, some patients may be healthier. In an agricultural study, some soil may be more fertile. In an educational study, some students may be more motivated. Researchers consequently calculate the probability (the p-value) that the outcomes might happen by chance. A low p-value indicates that the results cannot easily be attributed to the luck of the draw.
How low? In the 1920s, the great British statistician Ronald Fisher said that he considered p-values below 5% to be persuasive and, so, 5% became the hurdle for the “statistically significant” certification needed for publication, funding and fame.
It is not a difficult hurdle. Suppose that a hapless researcher calculates the correlations among hundreds of variables, blissfully unawarethat the data are all, in fact, random numbers. On average, one out of 20 correlations will be statistically significant, even though every correlation is nothing more than coincidence.
Real researchers don’t correlate random numbers but, all too often, they correlate what are essentially randomly chosen variables. This haphazard search for statistical significance even has a name: data mining. As with random numbers, the correlation between randomly chosen, unrelated variables has a 5% chance of being fortuitously statistically significant. Data mining can be augmented by manipulating, pruning and otherwise torturing the data to get low p-values.
Science still works. It’s just a shame so few “scientists” practice it.
WHITE WOMEN ARE THE WORST. ALSO, FIGHT RACISM AND SEXISM! White women can never truly be antiracist — because they’re white, feminist scholar argues.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Trump Judges Are Doing Their Jobs, and Axios Is Triggered. “Other judges are making their mark too, and the liberal media is up in arms about it. And Axios seems to think these judges are simply showing off to ‘audition’ for the Supreme Court.”
Rick Moran: Tit-for-Tat-for … BOOM! “Russia has decided to cut off natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria — two NATO countries on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. Putin is trying to drive a wedge into NATO’s weak flank by starving the two countries of fuel.”
Yours Truly: Ron DeSantis Has the Best New Video for the Best New Yard Sign. “DeSantis has had a busy year, tending to his wife Casey’s cancer recovery, helping lead the way out of COVID madness, taunting Democrats, taming Disney’s wokesters, and preventing Christina Pushaw from taking over the world the way she’s taken over my heart… you know, the usual.”
MAYORKAS HAS A SIX-POINT PLAN: But career Border Patrol officers interviewed by Washington Free Beacon’s Joseph Simonson see it as a steaming pile of BS. One of the officers summed it all up in one succinct, ripe graph:
“The plan looks like an absolute load of bullshit. Mayorkas is filled with excuses and his solution is to let them in. If you look at the plan there is an inordinate amount of focus on processing ‘vulnerable migrants’ compared to the lip service of securing the border. This administration has always been set to release as many migrants as possible and then make excuses as to why illegal aliens continue invading our country.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student paper apologizes for publishing column critical of ‘inappropriate sexual events.’
OURS, TOO: The Left Has Created Their Own Misery.
Everything is awful and it’s just getting worse. The progressive left created this misery for all of us, all by themselves.
They used a combination of the legal system, social media censorship and mainstream media bias (and maybe even more sinister means) to wrestle the 2020 election into submission. They gave us a President no one really wanted, one who wasn’t ready for “that 3a.m. call” and in fact was barely lucid most of his campaign. America did not want Joe Biden, and the chaos you’re seeing now is the manifestation of the collective consciousness of 325 million Americans who have the sinking feeling that something’s not right.
Progressives got cocky after January of 2020. They and their Democrat overlords genuinely believed that they could permanently squash all opposition and end the Republican Party and conservatives forever. It is an astounding ignorance, given that this country is and pretty much always has been split right down the middle politically speaking. Politics are cyclical, which has been a saving grace of American governance. We are currently looking at what happens when one side believes the cycle is over.
No one likes it.
Kira Davis, so read the whole thing.
BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE A GRAND? Here’s a Fun Way You Can Stick It to Putin.