JAZZ SHAW: It’s not red state vs blue state. It’s city vs country. As I’ve mentioned before, perhaps it’s time to revisit Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims. It’s anti- (small r) republican for people to be ruled by groups with whom they have little in common. When huge states are controlled by small-but-dense population centers, something is out of whack.
Archive for 2015
April 12, 2015
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Why Is Hillary Clinton Even Running? “That is not as stupid a question as it first sounds.”
SARAH HOYT: The Architecture Of Fear.
I can’t push you and I won’t. If you want to keep your opinions — left, right, moderate, libertarian, anarchist — hidden, it’s your job. I am not the keeper of your soul.
However, I want you to think of the dark and dank place that fear and that suspicion and the constant spying lead.
And then I want you to think of how good it would feel to get off your knees, stand on two, look your tormentors in the face and say “No more. I’m free. My thoughts and my opinions, my beliefs, my tastes, my friends are my own. You have no power over me. Not now, and not ever again.”
That’s all. I just want you to think.
It feels great, BTW.
TO BE FAIR, LOTS OF THINGS SEEM MORE BELIEVABLE LATELY: The Passion of Jesus seems much more believable these days.
PERHAPS PEOPLE FEARED CHARGES OF RACISM IF THEY INTERFERED: Troy University students charged in Florida spring break gang rape filmed on cell phone.
STREET ART: Anti-Clinton Posters Hit New York, Las Vegas.
Hundreds of posters criticizing Hillary Clinton have begun cropping up in areas around New York City and Las Vegas, according to numerous photographs obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The ads depict Clinton’s face in black and white and are accompanied by numerous phrases critical of the presidential contender’s high-profile efforts to ban reporters and others from using certain words such as “secretive” and “ambitious” to describe Clinton.
Heh.
DARRYL SAVAGE: Is the Birth-Control Pill Creating A Race of Eunuchs? “Look at the above photo, of the staff of Vox celebrating their one-year anniversary.”
WELL, “BULLIES” DOES FIT BETTER THAN “WARRIORS,” DOESN’T IT? Social Justice Bullies: The Authoritarianism of Millennial Social Justice. “This particular brand of social justice advocacy assaults reason in a particularly frightening way — by outright denying it and utilizing fear-mongering to discourage dissent. There is no gray: only black and white. One must mimic the orthodoxy or be barred forcibly from the chapel and jeered at by the townspeople. To disagree with the millennial social justice orthodoxy is to make a pariah of oneself willingly. Adherence to the narrative is the single litmus test for collegiate (and beyond) social acceptance these days.” Like all bullies, though, they’re cowards. Punch back twice as hard, as a famous man once said.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: “So, basically, my butt refuted The New York Times.”
DOES POPE FRANCIS READ SAMUEL HUNTINGTON? “Pope Francis set off a diplomatic storm yesterday when he referred to the genocide of the Armenians at a service in St. Peter’s Basilica this weekend. The Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced the remarks as baseless and unfair, and summoned the Vatican’s Turkish representative to appear for a tongue lashing. By the standards of Vatican diplomacy, this was an explosion. Conscious of the vulnerability of Christian minorities around the world, popes are usually circumspect when touching on controversial diplomatic topics. Francis’ words will certainly provoke a harsh response from Turkey where, despite very slow and painful progress at coming to grips with the legacy of violence and persecution that shaped modern Turkey, it remains illegal to refer to the Armenian massacres as a genocide. . . . Pope Francis, who is well aware that Christians across much of Africa live in the presence of something that is beginning to look like a fully fledged if relatively low-intensity religious war, seems to have decided that a strategy of silent conciliation is no longer adequate given the rising threat. His denunciation of a century-old genocide isn’t just about ancient history. It is an intervention in contemporary politics, and a warning that the danger of religious conflict continues to grow.”
Onward, Christian soldiers?
DANA LOESCH is on the cover of Guns and Ammo.
She was signing her book at the NRA convention and drew a huge crowd: Bigger than anyone else I saw.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s a breakdown of every scandal swirling around Hillary.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: Iran And The Bomb: The Social Consequences Of Obama’s Withdrawal.
I CERTAINLY HOPE SO: Reince Priebus: We deserve better than Hillary Clinton.
WHY ARE THE DUTCH getting taller? “Today, the Dutch are on average the tallest people on the planet. Just 150 years ago, they were relatively short. In 1860, the average Dutch soldier in the Netherlands was just 5 feet 5 inches. American men were 2.7 inches taller. Since 1860, average heights have increased in many parts of the world, but no people have shot up like the Dutch.”
SMART MARKETING: Too drunk to drive? Uber will give you a free ride.
SAMPLING THE MICROBIOME ON A MACRO LEVEL: Smart Sewers Will Reveal What’s in Cambridge Citizens’ Guts. “Eventually, with robotic samplers placed below the streets, Cambridge may have a ‘smart sewer’ that will let public health officials study the city’s collective microbiome—the communities of microorganisms that live in humans’ guts…. The MIT team will also test for drugs—both illicit and pharmaceutical—but they plan to go much further. Led by Eric Alm, a computational microbiologist, and Carlo Ratti, an architect and engineer, the Underworlders will screen for viruses, such as influenza and norovirus, to detect incipient outbreaks in Cambridge. They will sequence the DNA of bacteria to identify food-borne pathogens. And they will search for biomarkers, or biochemical indicators of various aspects of human health and disease.”
I’ll be interested to learn about the levels of estrogens from birth-control pills. I assume they’ll test for that, too.
TEST DRIVE: 2016 Mazda 6 i Grand Touring.
A WHILE BACK I MENTIONED THAT I WAS STARTING QUERCETIN AS AN ANTI-AGING SUPPLEMENT, but I’ve noticed an additional side-effect: It’s made my allergies better. In fact, I went several weeks without taking a sudafed — unheard of during peak East Tennessee allergy season, when pollen stalks the earth like zombies in a horror movie, with similar effect — and only took one the other day when I had forgotten to pack it for Nashville. I knew that some people take it for allergies, but didn’t really think about that until I noticed that mine were getting inexplicably better. And their return upon missing a dose suggests that it really does do some good, at least in my case.
IF YOU OVERPUMP AQUIFERS, you permanently damage their storage capacity. If California had a bunch of nice, clean nuclear plants, they could be desalinating.