Archive for 2020
September 13, 2020
AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: Hollywood Elites Rush To Normalize Pedophilia Before They’re All Outed By Ghislaine Maxwell.
OPEN THREAD: Rejoice in each other’s company.
ROOM TEMPERATURE STARS: Citizen Scientists discover bizarre new brown dwarfs near our Sun. “Although the discovery of brown dwarfs is not a new phenomenon, the ones discovered in the recent study have a weird property — they are colder than the boiling point of water. Some even approach the temperature of the Earth and are cool enough to harbor water clouds.”
UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!
ROGER SIMON: Good-bye to the Lakers: Confessions of an Ex-Fan.
When I first moved to Los Angeles in the late sixties I became a paleo-Laker fan.
Those were the days of Happy Hairston, but things quickly improved with the arrival of Magic and Kareem and Kobe and Shaq (or Shaq and Kobe, if you prefer). …
It was “SHOWTIME!” Rooting for the Lakers was like rooting for the 1927 Yankees. You knew they were going to win. …
With Jack Nicholson ensconced in his floor seat, the success of the Lakers mirrored the success of the city. It was the place to be. Who cared about the national anthem? We had ours—Randy Newman’s “I Love LA.” (“From the South Bay to the Valley/From the West Side to the East Side/Everybody’s very happy/’Cause the sun is shining all the time/Looks like another perfect day/I love LA”)
Unfortunately, as another, even better, song goes: “Those were the days, my friend/ We thought they’d never end.”
There’s a reason that song, originally Georgian and Russian, has been popular in multiple languages since it first appeared in 1925.
As for LA, we all know what happened. A picture [of the homeless] is indeed worth a thousand words. …
For that and other reasons, as some of you know, I left. …
NEVERTHELESS I WATCHED THE PLAYOFFS, LA-HOUSTON:
Although the game was a blow-out by the Lakers, I took no pleasure in it. Quite the contrary. All I could see were the endless “Black Lives Matter” t-shirts on the players and coaches and the same words emblazoned on the hardwood floor.
“Education Reform” was printed on the back of the familiar purple and gold jerseys. Reform how and for what wasn’t clear.
I wasn’t watching a basketball game. I was being propagandized by the NBA and ESPN.
Meanwhile, that night, only a few miles off in Compton, two LA County sheriff’s officers were shot in the head while sitting in their car. Reportedly, they are currently “fighting for their lives.”
Also being reported is that “Black Lives Matter” protesters appeared at the hospital, blocking the entrance so, presumably, the officers couldn’t be treated.
According to a tweet from the L.A. County Sheriffs, these protesters were yelling “We hope they die.”…
I don’t think Black Lives Matter is going to turn out to be a good brand.
THE ONLY RACE AND RELIGION THAT CAN BE TARGETED FOR CRITICISM: Professor blames ‘white Christian privilege’ for slavery, genocide. Spoiler: That’s not what privilege looks like.
HMM: Site of male sexual desire uncovered in brain. Not sure how much to trust this writeup, since aromatase is an enzyme, not a gene.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot: Straight Outta Marxism: BLM Protesters Take Over Grocery Store to Protest Lack of ‘Access’ to Grocery Stores: “Black Lives Matter activists occupied a Trader Joe’s in Seattle this week, claiming to be protesting ‘lack of access to grocery stores’ and explaining to patrons ‘how capitalism exploits the working class.’”
—Bryan Preston, PJ Media, today.
Chaser: Black People in Portland Said No to a Trader Joe’s to Keep White People from Moving In. “A black community organization in Portland successfully kept a Trader Joe’s from being built in the predominantly African American northeast area of the city. They claimed that the grocery chain would attract ‘non-oppressed’ individuals.”
—Vice.com, February 14, 2014.
THE LEFT IN 2020: Slate calls people being offended by pedophilia “creepy!”
Roger Simon has noted for years how reactionary the left has become; because conservatives are (correctly) up in arms about Netflix streaming Cuties, the left believes they’re forced to defend it. As with their previous defenses or buddying up with Roman Polanski, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein, it won’t be forgotten:
Related: For a sense of where we are in the cultural revolution, compare the above with this. Prior to Netflix losing the streaming rights to Gone With the Wind to HBO Max, it displayed this message, which is still visible on its cached page in Google:
It’s known for a few other things as well, alas.
THE MAN CAN’T BUST OUR LEGGINGS! Retailer Lululemon Mocked For Urging Customers To ‘Resist Capitalism’ While Selling $120 Leggings.
Reeling from the backlash, Lululemon insisted that the event did not represent the company’s beliefs on the subject of economic policy.
“We recently shared on our social channels an upcoming event organized by one of our ambassadors. This is not a Lululemon forum and it does not represent the company’s views,” the brand’s spokesperson told media.
Oddly enough, “woke” Lululemon has been accused of racism. Back in April, the brand was forced to apologize after one of its art directors made a social media post linking to a tee shirt featuring the words, “Bat Fried Rice,” an allusion to what was, at the time, the suspected origin of the novel coronavirus.
Business Insider also notes that the brand’s founder reportedly chose the name “Lululemon” because it was difficult for Japanese consumers to say.
“It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter ‘L’ because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics,” the founder said in an interview in 2009. “By including an ‘L’ in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic.”
If they’re “resisting capitalism,” does this mean that Lululemon is offering support to the In Defense of Looting author? Steal these leggings!
Classical allusion in headline:
THANK YOU FOR NOT RECYCLING: Let’s Hold On to the Throwaway Society. Why did the most affluent society in history turn into a mass of neurotic hoarders? I’ve been writing for decades about the folly of the recycling movement, but I didn’t fully appreciate its stupidity — or the inanity of the anti-plastic movement — until I looked into the history of the supposedly evil “throwaway society.” From Dixie Cups to Cellophane to plastic grocery bags, disposable products were embraced because they made life better. As I write in City Journal:
Disposable products aren’t merely more convenient than the alternative; they’re also safer, particularly during a pandemic but also at any other time. And they have other virtues: the throwaway society is healthier, cleaner, more economical, less wasteful, less environmentally damaging—and yes, more “sustainable” than the green vision of utopia.
These are not new truths, even if it took the Covid-19 pandemic to reveal them again. The throwaway age began because of public-health campaigns a century ago to control the spread of pathogens. Disposable products were celebrated for decades for promoting hygiene and saving everyone time and money. It wasn’t until the 1970s that they became symbols of decadent excess, and then only because of economic and ecological fallacies repeated so often that they became conventional wisdom.
If you’re guided by history or “the science,” it’s clear that agonizing over what goes into the trash is not a universal moral imperative — and it’s not exactly a sign of spiritual enlightenment, either.
NANCY STILL WANTS TO GIVE WAR A CHANCE: Pelosi: Trump Negotiating Peace Between Israel and Arab Countries Is a ‘Distraction.’
I FEEL LIKE IT SHOULD COME WITH AT LEAST 10-ROUND MAGAZINES: First Look: Escort SD-X Versatile Tactical Shotgun.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Antarctica is still free of COVID-19. Can it stay that way?
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A SMALLER BLOG. Howie Carr: Joe Biden continues to lose notes, mind.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Tall tales about election polls.
In his presidential address a couple of years ago to the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Timothy Johnson said: “If you’re like me, seldom does a day pass when you are not obliged to correct the declaration of a friend, an acquaintance, or a university administrator that ‘the surveys got it wrong in 2016.’ This is going to be with us for a long time.”
Nationally, the polls were pretty close, in aggregate, thanks to Ms. Clinton’s wiping out Mr. Trump in California. She carried the Golden State by more than 4 million votes, a margin that erased Mr. Trump’s popular vote advantage in the rest of the country and gave Ms. Clinton an overall lead of 2.1 percentage points. According to the final pre-election compilation of Real Clear Politics in 2016, the national polls overall placed Ms. Clinton ahead by 3.3 points. So the national polls overall didn’t deviate greatly from the final result.
But there’s more to the story of the polls in 2016 than the misunderstood popular vote. In decisive states the polls clearly misfired, especially so in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and to a lesser extent Michigan. Mr. Trump defied the polls in those states and won them all narrowly. Had Ms. Clinton carried Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — as had been expected — she would have won the Electoral College and the presidency.
Anyone who takes more than passing interest in election surveys surely has heard the tale that pollsters were so confident Republican Thomas Dewey would win the presidency in 1948 that they stopped taking surveys weeks before Election Day. The blunder, it is said, caused them to miss a late surge of support for President Harry Truman.
It’s a plausible excuse for what was an epic polling failure. But it’s not entirely true.
Read the whole thing; Campbell’s new book is Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections.