OPEN THREAD: Sorry, thought I’d scheduled this earlier.
Archive for 2024
March 24, 2024
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Boeing’s 1st Starliner astronaut flight test for NASA could launch as soon as May 1.
As they say at Boeing, when one door closes, another opens.
THE CHINESE POSITION IS HELPED BY HAVING BIDEN ON THE PAYROLL:
The Filipinos, clutching the UN judgment and statement of support from allies, are up against the most implacable force on earth, the fiat of a Communist Party. Communist Parties never retreat, admit defeat or give up. It is the nearest thing in history to the Terminator.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) March 24, 2024
WELL, HUMANS ARE PART OF NATURE: Turns Out Nature Didn’t ‘Heal’ While Humans Were in Lockdown.
SO THERE’S HOPE FOR KAMALA? Lack of Focus Doesn’t Equal Lack of Intelligence — It’s Actually Proof of an Intricate Brain.
STEYN ONLINE: War in the Air: Twelve O’Clock High and Masters of the Air.
What I can say from with pure subjectivity is that Masters of the Air is nowhere near as satisfying as Band of Brothers, which depicted camaraderie in the face of horror and death far more effectively. It’s not even as good as The Pacific, which was less successful at the task, mostly because it split our focus between three heroes over its ten episodes, none of which ever share the screen.
That all might be true. But I don’t remember thinking that after watching The Battle of Britain (1969), and that was only a quarter the length of Masters of the Air. Though it did star Michael Caine, Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer, Edward Fox and Ian McShane, and perhaps that’s the problem – there’s a measurable deficit of charisma in too many actors today. I found myself confused by so many young pilots sporting what looked like the same moustache.
The good news is that Masters of the Air improves with a subsequent viewing. The bad news is that it still isn’t as satisfying as Band of Brothers after nearly a dozen. Even worse is that its nine hours, spectacular as they are, don’t have a fraction of the drama of Henry King’s austere wartime story about a man trying to convince the men he commands that their probable deaths serve a purpose they might not understand, in the service of a military doctrine that might not actually work.
Read the whole thing.
IN CAESAR’S BICYCLE, JOHN BARNES NOTES THAT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A MILITARY REVOLUTION IF IT HAD EXISTED IN ROMAN TIMES: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
PROBLEM CHILD SENT PACKING: Ben and Jerry’s Parent Company to Spin Off Ice Cream Brand after Clashes over Chairman’s Anti-Israel Stance.
Unilever is freezing itself out of the ice cream business and selling Ben & Jerry’s after the two companies clashed over Israel.
The company said on Tuesday that the ice cream division of Unilever will become a separate business 100 years after Unilever first began selling ice cream. Magnum, Klondike, Wall’s, and Breyers are among the brands included in Unilever’s ice cream portfolio, which generated $8.6 billion in revenue last year.
In recent years, Ben & Jerry’s has become known for its progressive activism as much as its assortment of ice cream flavors. The company strongly supported defunding the police during the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020 and continues to promote left-wing racial ideology. In addition, Ben & Jerry’s has taken left-wing stances on the environment, LGBT issues, immigration, marijuana, and Israel.
Most notably, Ben & Jerry’s ceased selling its products in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in July 2021 until Unilever ended the boycott nearly a year later by selling the ice cream company’s Israeli business to a local distributor. The rift between Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s over Israel resurfaced because of Unilever board member Nelson Peltz’s affiliation with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights organization.
Perhaps Unilever is tired of dealing with a business that’s built on stolen land: Ben & Jerry’s HQ is on ‘stolen’ Native American land, Vermont chief says. “Ben & Jerry’s has called on the US to give back ‘stolen Indigenous land’ including Mount Rushmore — and now a Native American chief in Vermont said he’d like to talk about the land that’s under the ice cream maker’s headquarters.” As Glenn suggested in July, “Go to the courthouse and file a lien, just for yuks…After all, they’ve basically admitted the land isn’t theirs.”
OLD AND BUSTED: “On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Dog.”
The New Hotness? Jacqueline Wilson’s novel deleted by dog.
Dame Jacqueline Wilson has revealed she almost lost the manuscript of her most recent book after a friend’s dog pressed the “delete all” button on her computer screen.
In an advance on “the dog ate my homework”, Wilson faced telling her publisher that she would not be handing in her 300-page novel.
She recalled the experience during an appearance at the Oxford Literary Festival, telling the audience that it had left her very wary of technology.
The book was The Magic Faraway Tree: A Christmas Adventure, a reworking of the Enid Blyton tales, which was published in October.
The dedication in the front of the book – “To Gary Freemantle, the best technical wizard in the world, with many thanks” – is for the IT expert who managed to retrieve the manuscript.
“I’m not scared of most things but I am scared of my computer. I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me,” Wilson said.
“The most terrible thing happened. We were looking after other people’s dogs and I was being mad enough to try to type on a computer where they could get at me.
“This seems unbelievable but it happened: one dog pressed a button that said on it ‘delete’ and the other pressed ‘delete all’. My actual, almost-finished manuscript disappeared entirely.”
The key phrase is “almost,” fortunately. And it could be worse: As James Lileks once noted after one of his backup sessions, in a post that now appears to be offline, “I remember Anthony Burgess telling a story in an interview: he had finished a book and was heading off to the post office to mail it to his publisher, and a scooter sped by – the fellow on the back grabbed his satchel and they sped off through the Roman traffic. You might doubt the story, since it contains the phrase ‘sped off through the Roman traffic,’ but a scooter can fit between the cars. That was the only copy of his book. So he went home and wrote it again.”
MICROBIOME NEWS: Oral bacteria may speed growth of colon cancers.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Flashback: Purim and My Bangladeshi Friend.
SHOCKER:
Misinformation experts are perhaps not quite unbiased
"Experts leaned strongly toward the left of the political spectrum"
Data from Harvard Misinformation Review, survey of 150 misinformation expertshttps://t.co/J5e3CYu2fQhttps://t.co/lEkZ0OCiss pic.twitter.com/k9SkF4m748
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) March 23, 2024
REVIEW: 2024 Ford Ranger.
READER FAVORITE: Stud Finder Wall Scanner – 5 in 1 Stud Detector. #CommissionEarned
“ANTHROPOCENE EPOCH” JUST ANOTHER GREEN FAIL: No ‘human era’ in Earth’s geological history, scientists say.
GET RID OF THAT OLD BLOOD/PLASMA: Accumulation of ‘junk proteins’ identified as one cause of aging and possible source of ALS.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Embarrassing moment Kamala Harris claps along and smiles to protest in Puerto Rico (before vice president is told what they were ACTUALLY saying).
Kamala Harris joyfully clapped along to a Spanish protest song before abruptly stopping – after the lyrics were revealed to be targeting the vice president and the administration’s foreign policies.
Videos showed Harris clapping and smiling as a group banged on drums and sang in Spanish during her trip to Puerto Rico on Friday.
But her face fell after an aide leaned over to speak with her – presumably to translate the lyrics – and she stopped clapping, lowered her hands and assumed a more serious facial expression.
The song was a protest anthem that questioned: ‘We want to know, Kamala, what did you come to do? We want to know, Kamala, what is going to happen?’
It is the latest in a series of gaffes that have seen the vice president’s approval ratings slide.
Harris was initially enjoying what she thought was a fun song but it appeared she was clued into the translation of the lyrics by Executive Director Mariana Reyes, who accompanied her on the trip.
The song took aim at the vice president, the Biden administration in general and their policies.
A half dozen demonstrators performing on the street in front of the vice president signaled support in their song for the Palestinian people amid conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in Gaza, as well as for Haiti as gang violence threatens to completely collapse the island’s government.
‘Long live free Palestine and Haiti too,’ they say in the song, according to a DailyMail.com translation.
Why is the left such a cesspit of anti-Semitism?
FASTER, PLEASE: It’s a few years late, but a prototype supersonic airplane has taken flight.. “A prototype jet independently developed by Boom Supersonic made its first flight on Friday, the company said. . . . The XB-1 aircraft is a demonstrator intended to test materials and the aerodynamics of a larger commercial supersonic aircraft the company is calling Overture. Boom is one of a handful of companies attempting to revive supersonic commercial air travel since the Concorde’s final flight in 2003. Its planes are intended to carry between 64 and 80 passengers at about twice the speed of conventional commercial jets in service today. Boom says it has received 130 orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines for the Overture vehicle, which it plans to deliver later this decade.”
James Carville, the Democratic political strategist who led Bill Clinton to victory in the 1990s, claimed “too many preachy females” in the party may be to blame for turning voters off to Joe Biden.
Carville spoke with Maureen Dowd for an opinion piece in The New York Times, “James Carville, the Cajun Who Can’t Stop Ragin’.”
“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females” dominating the culture of the Democratic Party, Carville told Dowd. “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’
“If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: ‘Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?’”
Carville isn’t wrong on that last item, but as part of Bill Clinton’s palace guard, he isn’t the best guy to be saying that, especially with this moment from two weeks ago still in many people’s minds: Rep. Nancy Mace bashes ABC anchor for rape-shaming her over Trump support in fiery interview.
Rep. Nancy Mace scolded ABC host George Stephanopoulos and accused him of rape-shaming her during a fiery exchange about allegations against former President Donald Trump.
Stephanopoulos grilled Mace (R-SC) about how she could back Trump despite a jury finding him liable for sexual assault against advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her.
“I was raped at the age of 16. And any rape victim will tell you I’ve lived for 30 years with an incredible amount of shame over being raped,” Mace began on ABC’s “This Week.”
“It’s a shame that you will never feel, George. And I’m not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim. I’m not gonna do that.”
Stephanopoulos countered that “it’s actually not about shaming you,” and said he was trying to understand why she endorsed Trump despite the allegations against him.
Does George Stephanopoulos realize that he’s George Stephanopoulos? “The little guy cut his teeth managing ‘bimbo eruptions’ when Bill Clinton was running for president. His job was to destroy and discredit anyone who could make his boss look bad. (Good thing for Monica Lewinsky’s sake that her scandal broke after Georgie left.)”
I DO LIKE THIS REFORMULATION:
Whoever came up with "Didn't Earn It" as the description of DEI might have saved the world.
Normally, the clever alternative names people use to mock the other side's policy are nothing but grin-worthy.
This one could collapse the whole racist system. It's that strong.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 21, 2024
BIG SPRING SALE: Levi’s Men’s and Women’s Apparel. #CommissionEarned
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Everything You Need To Know About Joe Biden’s New Stability Shoes for Fall-Prone Seniors.
And? Considering the incredible gravitational pull that a paycheck from MSNBC has to produce 180s in its on-air talent and airbrush away their past sins, I’m pretty sure that each new hire has a moment like this classic scene in the first season of Mad Men, when Pete Campbell tries to inform Don Draper’s boss of his desertion during the Korean War:
UPDATE: The Left Has a Meltdown Over NBC Hiring McDaniel, So MSNBC Says No to Ronna.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this resulted in “turmoil among several of the network’s on-air hosts and staffers, people familiar with the matter said,” and “a number of MSNBC anchors and producers have voiced concern.”
So it sounds like someone at MSNBC caved to the backlash.
It’s pretty hilarious that any of these folks are upset about McDaniel, but they’re cool with the things like Russia collusion that MSNBC has spewed out over the years.
Now, MSNBC president Rashida Jones is saying that “according to people familiar with the conversations,” they don’t expect McDaniel to provide commentary on MSNBC.
NBC doesn’t seem to have backed out yet. They’re still planning on having her on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, so the backlash doesn’t seem to have affected her position there yet. We’ll have to see how it shakes out.
They’ll always have Al, though:
Watching liberals melt down over Ronna McDaniel’s NBC gig while they do not care that MSNBC staple Al Sharpton helped create a riot against a “white interloper”—that led to a man taking hostages and killing 8 in a fire in 1995 is just…perfection. https://t.co/4BBPZ4VrfW
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) March 23, 2024