MORE TROUBLE UP NORTH:  “Canadian Professor Suspended for Asking Questions about Child COVID Vaccines.”  More here.

THEY USED TO CALL IT YERBA BUENA:    As part of the Mexican-American War, the USS Portsmouth sailed into San Francisco Bay on this day in 1846.  Its orders were to capture the town of Yerba Buena (translation: “Good Herb”), which it did without firing a shot.  At that point the town had a population of no more than 500.

Somebody must not have liked the name, since in less than a year it was changed to San Francisco.  By 1849, with the discovery of gold in California, San Francisco’s population had mushroomed to 25,000.

The 2020 Census put San Francisco’s population at 873,965.  But, according to estimates, San Francisco’s population has declined more than any other city in the country since then–alas, not a surprise to anyone who has been there recently.

VOLOKH CONSPIRACY:  “China Kinda Sus.”  Five individuals have been indicted by a federal grand jury for attempting to silence critics of China in the U.S.

MAKES SENSE:  “Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules that a [6’ 5”] Transgender Woman Cannot Change Her Name Because She is a Sex Offender.”  Wisconsin law forbids individuals whose names are on the sex offender registry from changing their names, and there is no exception for changing from a man’s name to a woman’s name.

COLLEGE OF ST. JOSEPH TO LAUNCH:  The tag line for this new school is “Learn a trade, earn a degree and graduate without crippling debt.”  The plan is to combine education in a trade with Catholic teachings.  Not a bad idea.

STANLEY GOLDFARB:  Medical schools have gone mad.

YOU BE THE JUDGE:  “How Low Can NPR Go?“

IF SO, I HOPE THEY GET SOMEBODY BETTER … EVEN THOUGH HE’S KIND OF CUTE:  “Boris Has Failed to Fight Wokeness.”

LET’S HOPE SO:  “Peak Woke?”

BOTTOMING OUT:  On this day in 1932, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its lowest point in the Depression.  (Spoiler alert:  Thing didn’t get better all that quickly.)

MORE WORDS ARE ALWAYS BETTER THAN FEWER?: The faculty of the Cornell University English Department has changed its name to “the department of literatures in English,” apparently because it fears that otherwise they can only teach authors who are from England.  This change is viewed by the faculty as part of the effort to fight racism.

I CAN’T IMAGINE THAT ANYONE IS SURPRISED:  U Wisconsin declines to disclose how much $$$$ it spends on “diversity.”

THE WOKE WAR ON STANDARDS CONTINUES:  Traffic violation edition.

HERE’S TO YOU, MR. OTTO FREDERICK ROHWEDDER:  I didn’t realize it till today, but I am only one generation removed from the advent of commercially available sliced bread.  On this day in 1928 (after the birth of my parents), the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri began marketing pre-sliced loaves of bread.  These loaves were an instant hit, made possible by a bread slicing and wrapping machine invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa.

So popular did these time-saving, pre-sliced loaves turn out to be that they gave rise to the saying, “It’s the best thing since sliced bread.”  Many a great invention has come along since 1928—from the transistor to helicopters to personal computers to gene-editing.  But seldom does anyone say an invention is better than sliced bread.

For a very brief period in 1943, sliced bread was banned by Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard (of Wickard v. Filburn fame).  It’s not easy to come up with a sillier wartime conservation method.   A letter to the New York Times summed up the reaction of many American women (and men):

I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household. My husband and four children are all in a rush during and after breakfast. Without ready-sliced bread I must do the slicing for toast—two pieces for each one—that’s ten. For their lunches I must cut by hand at least twenty slices, for two sandwiches apiece. Afterward I make my own toast. Twenty-two slices of bread to be cut in a hurry!

Initially government officials made threats to take “stern measures if needed” to stop the sale of sliced bread.  But it didn’t take all that long for the ban to be rescinded.

THANK YOU, GOV. YOUNGKIN!  (NOW PLEASE KEEP IT UP):  “Youngkin Appoints ‘Wokeness’ Critic to UVa Board of Trustees.”

It’s shocking to me how many GOP governors with the power to appoint a serious people to the boards of state universities use that power to appoint rich donors who view it as an honor and wouldn’t dream of making waves.  These governors need to appoint people who know something about how the beast works and how it should work. The need to be people who can’t be intimidated.

HAS THE CALIFORNIA GOP FOUND A CANDIDATE WHO CAN WIN A STATEWIDE ELECTION?:  I am a pessimist, but you never know.

THAT TREE HAS TOO MANY BRANCHES:  Charles Lipson on Controlling the Fourth Branch of Government.

HARD HATS DIDN’T JUST FALL FROM THE SKY; SOMEBODY HAD TO INVENT THEM:  Edward Bullard was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during WWI.  He noticed something that was obvious, but it’s funny how many people fail to see things that are obvious:  Helmets work.  They saved the lives of many a doughboy from shrapnel, bullets, and whatever else came flying at them.  When Bullard returned home to San Francisco and to his family’s business, which sold equipment to miners, he wanted develop a helmet that could protect miners, too.  His “Hard Boiled Miner’s Helmet” eventually evolved into the modern hard hat.

Bullard was posthumously inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame just this year.

IS HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLODING?:  “Wages Fell for Professors this Year in Largest Drop on Record, Report Says.“

MATT DeLISI & JOHN PAUL WRIGHT:  “Mass Incarceration Hysteria: Those Alleging that the United States Imprisons Too Many People Rely on Faulty History and Bad Facts.”

A VACCINE FOR RABIES:  Working toward a rabies vaccine, Louis Pasteur and his collaborator Emile Roux had learned to grow the virus in rabbits and then weaken it by drying out the infected nerve tissue.  They had tried the vaccine that resulted from this novel approach on dogs, and it seemed safe.  But at the time 9-year-old Joseph Meister was mauled by a mad dog, it hadn’t yet been tried on human beings.

On this day in 1885, young Meister became the first to be treated with the vaccine (actually a series of vaccines).  He survived.

(Meister went on to be caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.  His story, however, ends sadly.  In 1940, days after the Nazis marched into Paris, he urged his family to flee Paris, but refused to leave his post at the Institute.  Somehow he got it into his head—falsely—that his family had been captured and killed.  He therefore killed himself.  They returned to find him dead.)

SPIKED:  Boris Johnson is finished.  Maybe.

I SURE HOPE THIS STORY TURNS OUT TO BE A FALSE ALARM:  “Washington State School Board Director to Teach Sexual ‘Pleasure’ Class [in her private capacity] to 9-Year-Olds at Sex Shop.”

HOW TO REALLY BE AN ANTI-RACIST:  Teach Black Kids to Read.  (And don’t give me any more crap about the “Whole Language Method” versus the “Phonics Method.”  Go with phonics.)

POST-INDEPENDENCE-DAY THOUGHT:  I know I’ve said this before, but I have a hard time imagining anything more destructive of freedom than  law that makes everything (or almost everything) presumptively illegal.  For employers, there really isn’t anything you can do that can’t get you in hot water.