I FIND THIS SOMETHING LESS THAN SHOCKING: Evidence Mounts Against Piers Morgan in Phone Hacking Investigation.
Archive for 2014
February 16, 2014
VIDEO: Strickland Stricken. Strickland can go on about “Bridgegate,” but it was his own people who broke the law to circulate dirt on Joe The Plumber in 2008, solely because he dared to ask Obama a tough question. This little bit of thuggery involving abuse of power, corrupt officialdom, and intolerance for dissent turned out to prefigure the Obama Administration quite accurately.
OF COURSE HE DOES. FRANK UNDERWOOD IS ACTUALLY COMPETENT. Kevin Spacey: President Obama probably has Frank Underwood envy.
THEY NEED IT EVEN WORSE THAN WE DO: European Tea Party Movements On The March.
According to The Economist, this “insurgency is doing well partly because the mainstream has done so badly. Governments encouraged consumers to borrow, let the banks run wild and designed the euro as the pinnacle of the European project.” And “in the past five years ordinary people have paid a price for these follies, in higher taxes, unemployment, benefit cuts and pay freezes.” As a result, more Europeans are viewing the modern state as being “designed to look after itself, rather than the citizens it is supposed to serve.”
Uh oh. The rubes are catching on. And the term “global superclass” aptly summarizes the ambitions of transnational progressivism.
MOCKING CHRIS MOONEY FOR TROLLING. When it comes to faith in science, I’ll stand by this:
Regardless, while one should trust science as a method — honestly done, science remains the best way at getting to the truth on a wide range of factual matters — there’s no particular reason why one should trust scientists and especially no particular reason why one should trust the people running scientific institutions, who often aren’t scientists themselves.
In fact, the very core of the scientific method is supposed to be skepticism. We accept arguments not because they come from people in authority but because they can be proven correct — in independent experiments by independent experimenters. If you make a claim that can’t be proven false in an independent experiment, you’re not really making a scientific claim at all.
And saying, “trust us,” while denouncing skeptics as — horror of horrors — “skeptics” doesn’t count as science, either, even if it comes from someone with a doctorate and a lab coat.
After a century of destructive and false scientific fads — ranging from eugenics to Paul Ehrlich’s “population bomb” scaremongering, among many others — the American public could probably do with more skepticism, not less.
Just sayin’.
COMEDY: Who tells the best jokes? Neurotic, aggressive jerks. Comedians are often awful people.
WITH THE CREATION OF BREITBART LONDON, Andrew Breitbart’s war of ideas comes to Britain.
COMPLAINTS ABOUT failures in the Grand Jury system.
This is part and parcel of the problems I describe in Ham Sandwich Nation.
SAFETY WORRIES ABOUT DRUGS MADE IN INDIA, but here’s the buried lede: “The United States has become so dependent on Chinese imports, however, that the F.D.A. may not be able to do much about the Chinese refusal. The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China.”
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): A Record Number of College Grads are Living in Their Parents’ Basements.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Cooling Kills: Governments Must Shift to Cold Preparation. “Humans suffer much more during extreme winters than hot summers. . . . Of particularl concern are the warnings from solar scientists that over the next three decades, we are headed toward significant global cooling as the sun weakens into a grand minimum. The last time the sun was as weak as solar experts predict will occur starting after 2030, the Earth was in a particularly cold phase of the Little Ice Age that lasted from about 1350-1850, a period when there was great misery around the world.”
LONG-TERM TEST REPORT: 2013 Volkswagen Passat TDI. “As temperatures dipped below zero in early January, some staffers wondered if our long-term 2013 Volkswagen Passat TDI would be crippled by the cold. But just as it bucks the notion that diesel power means smoky emissions and gutless performance, our Passat started reliably even as temperatures dropped below minus-10 degrees Fahrenheit.”
MORE ON what’s going on in Venezuela.
A 21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIP CRISIS: He Won’t Put My Picture On His Facebook Page.
DANA LOESCH meets a childhood favorite.
ROAD AND TRACK: Video proof that the 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S is unbreakable.
“There is no limit.”
That’s what Porsche chief propeller-head Wolfgang Hatz said when someone asked him how many violent, Bugatti-quick launches the 911 Turbo S can perform before grenading itself. Frankly, I was surprised at his answer.
Computers and oil-cooling are key.
REPLACING PLANNING WITH RULES: Termite-Inspired Robots Don’t Need Blueprints to Build a Castle.
NEWS FROM THE SOCIALIST PARADISE: Police seek Venezuela opposition leader as he tweets defiance.
IN THE MAIL: From Dave Barry, You Can Date Boys When You’re Forty: Dave Barry on Parenting and Other Topics He Knows Very Little About.
TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 283.
IT ALWAYS MAKES ME HAPPY when I make Twitchy!