THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Picard Season Three — Franchise Savior, Or Too Little Too Late? (Video.)

RIP GERALD FRIED, Emmy-winning composer of Star Trek’s famous “fight music,” 93. “Born in New York in the 1920s, Fried graduated from Julliard in the 1950s and quickly fell in with Stanley Kubrick, serving as the composer on many of the director’s early films (including their final collaboration, Kubrick’s 1957 military drama Paths Of Glory). Working frequently in genre film and TV, Fried contributed scores to Westerns, crime thrillers, horror flicks, and more over the next several years, while also making significant (and, eventually, significantly lucrative) inroads into the world of TV…Fried attained his most prestigious TV credit in 1977, when the producers of Roots—apparently worried that original pick Quincy Jones was missing deadlines—brought him on to write a large portion of the music for the later episodes of groundbreaking miniseries Roots. Jones and Fried would share the Emmy win for the series’ score, and Fried would return to the franchise for follow-ups The Next Generations and The Gift.”

NORFOLK SOUTHERN: Too much greed, too little care. “As a matter of fact, over the past ten years, incidents involving Norfolk Southern and its transporting of hazardous materials skyrocketed nearly six fold. The Daily Mail reported that in 2012, Federal Railroad Administration showed that 105 cars carrying noxious materials were involved in accidents. By 2022 that number had jumped to 654 cars. However, not every railroad has experienced the same rise in accidents as Norfolk Southern. In fact, over the same time period, BNSF — the largest railroad in the US — saw a decrease in damaged hazmat cars. So did Union Pacific, the second largest.”

SHE’S NOT WRONG: North Korea Defector Compares ‘Woke’ Education in America to Regime She Escaped: “At Columbia University they were literally saying that all the problems that we have is because of capitalism, because of white men, and the solution for all these problems is a communist revolution in the name of equity.”

ARE YOU ‘PRO-CHOICE’ OR NOT?: Rand Paul presses Johns Hopkins dean on COVID vaccine mandates.

HMMM:  “Four Reasons that Heterodox Academy Failed.“

BREAKING: Jimmy Carter, 98, Receiving Hospice Care.

CHAOS THEORY: George Soros Takes an Integrated, Long-Game Approach to Destroying Gun Rights.

BE PREPARED: AstroAI Tire Inflator Portable Air Compressor. #CommissionEarned

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: East Palestine Sees Real Estate Surge From Californians Seeking Better Quality Of Life.

Related:

DO YOUR PART! Reduce Your Standard of Living.

JACK DUNPHY: Another Journalistic Disgrace at the Los Angeles Times: a Continuing Series.

As is often the case in these stories, Park seeks to support the accusation of police racism with a veneer of academic credentialism. He quotes Nicholas Shapiro, an assistant professor of biology and society at UCLA and director of the Carceral Ecologies Lab. “The higher the proportion of Black population,” says Shapiro, “the lower the altitude of the helicopter.”

Park writes: “Shapiro said the groups had found that in every census block of L.A. County that is more than 40 percent Black, the median elevation of helicopters was below 1,000 feet, the “minimum safe altitude” for congested areas as set by the Federal Aviation Administration.” The online version of the story links to the FAA’s Guide to Low-Flying Aircraft, which indeed says that aircraft operating over a “congested area” maintain “an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.”

Alas for Times writer Park and the Oxford and Bard College-educated Shapiro, they failed to thoroughly read the very document they present as proof that police helicopters are operating in a racist manner over Los Angeles. If they had, they would know the 1,000-foot minimum altitude rule applies to fixed-wing aircraft. Had they bothered to read a mere two paragraphs beyond the point where the 1,000-foot rule is mentioned, they would have learned that helicopters are explicitly exempted from this rule, and that helicopter pilots are directed to “comply with routes or altitudes specifically prescribed by the [FAA] Administrator.”

Keep rockin’!

HMM: Responsible use of AI in the military? US publishes declaration outlining principles.

SECOND LOOK AT AI? Microsoft Trying To Rein In Bing Chat After AI-Powered Bot Called AP Reporter Ugly, A Liar, And Hitler.

GOOD LUCK, GUYS: NASA, Boeing target April for manned Starliner test flight. “During the uncrewed orbital launch last May, Nappi said there was an issue with thrusters being ‘deselected’ by sensors. He said some minimal tweaks were done to correct that issue, and NASA believes some debris caused the sensor issue but it’s unknown what the debris was.”

AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ADVISES, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: DeSantis team rips Andrea Mitchell’s claim he does not want slavery taught: ‘Maliciously intent on deceiving.’

NEWS FROM 2008: Staring at screens could strain cervical spine, cause ‘tech neck.’

FOLLOW THE MONEY: “Isn’t it strange that Greta Thunberg never goes to Beijing and that so many in the climate movement want to let China off the hook for leading the world in carbon emissions?”

WILLIE WONKA AND THE MEMORY HOLE FACTORY: The hundreds of changes made to Roald Dahl’s books to suit a new ‘sensitive’ generation.

But in recent years Dahl has become an increasingly divisive figure – not only accused of racism and misogyny, but anti-Semitism too. The latter was so apparent in his writing and private life that in 2020, the Dahl family issued an apology.

“The Dahl family and the Roald Dahl Story Company deeply apologise for the lasting and understandable hurt caused by some of Roald Dahl’s statements. Those prejudiced remarks are incomprehensible to us and stand in marked contrast to the man we knew and to the values at the heart of Roald Dahl’s stories, which have positively impacted young people for generations. We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words.”

The Dahl estate owned the rights to the books until 2021, when Netflix bought them outright for a reported $686 million, building on an earlier rights deal. The American streaming service now has overall control over the book publishing, as well as various adaptation projects that are in the works. These are the first new editions since the deal, but the review began before the sale.

“The current review began in 2020, before Dahl was acquired by Netflix,” said a spokesperson for the Roald Dahl Story Company. “It was led by Puffin and Roald Dahl Story Company together.” (When approached for comment, Netflix directed The Telegraph back to Puffin.)
Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company made the latest changes in conjunction with Inclusive Minds, which its spokesperson describes as “a collective for people who are passionate about inclusion and accessibility in children’s literature”. Organisations such as Inclusive Minds have sprung up to help publishers navigate these newly choppy waters.

It’s a safe bet that this is merely the beginning of classic authors having their language “revised” to keep the social media rage mob (hopefully) at bay.

UPDATE: And speaking of Orwell:

(Updated and bumped.)

SOUNDS LIKE IT’S TIME FOR A PURGE OF THE ABA COUNCIL: After ABA House Of Delegates Rejected Proposal To Let Law Schools Be Test-Optional, 21-Member ABA Council Votes To Resubmit It With Only One Dissenter: ‘There Is More Education To Be Done.’

At any rate, the ABA should have no role in accreditation. It’s politicized and self-interested.

FINALLY: After 50 Years, One Guy Built the Datsun 240Z Wagon Nissan Wouldn’t.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Is Your Baby ‘Nonbinary?’ Social Workers in Pennsylvania Are Now Required To Say.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Balloon Payment Edition.

MCCARTHY CONCLUDES IT’S IMPEACHMENT TIME: Former federal attorney Andy McCarthy is a careful and conservative thinker in the best sense of the latter adjective, so it’s important to take note of the fact he has concluded that the time has come for House Republicans to begin impeachment proceedings as the only effective response to the border crisis.

“Congressional Republicans seem to grasp that, at this point, the only solution is impeachment, the position advocated by three former government officials and top Heritage Foundation analysts — Hans von Spakovsky, Lora Ries, and Steven G. Bradbury — in a recent Fox News op-ed. But my friends are aiming too low — specifically, at Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security (as applied to him, an Orwellian title if ever there was one),” McCarthy writes at NRO.

True, the Senate is controlled by Democrats who will never support impeachment of one of their own in the Oval Office. But that sad reality is not the end of the matter, according to McCarthy:

“The Senate votes are not what matter right now. Biden does not want to bear the historic stigma of House impeachment articles, especially as he gears up to seek reelection. Moreover, an impeachment over the border catastrophe would not remotely resemble the aforementioned impeachment of Trump a year before the 2020 election.

“The Ukraine episode was a trifle, the impeachment was driven by nothing more than partisanship, and the whole exercise was so flippant that it was barely mentioned in the ensuing presidential campaign — even at the Democratic convention. In stark contrast, the destruction of the southern border is an existential national crisis that is already inflicting harm on millions of Americans.”

Concludes McCarthy:

“It’s that simple: Either Republicans use the only tool available to them to force Biden’s hand, or they are aiders and abettors. There is no middle ground.”

And you, Instapundit reader, how do you vote on this historic question?

DEAL OF THE DAY: Keurig K-Café SMART Single Serve Coffee Maker. #CommissionEarned