THE NEW SPACE RACE: Northrop charges on lunar Gateway module program reach $100 million.

THE CRITICS CAN LUMP IT: People Are Paying Big For Moon Burials And It Could Be Crossing a Concerning Line. “Legal and ethical maze?” Maybe a manufactured one.

THE SUPERMODELS OF MY YOUTH ARE NOT IMMUNE TO THE YEARS: Paulina Porizkova to get hip replacement.

ALSO, TRY FEEDING THEM LESS. Probiotics might help dogs lose weight, study finds.

PRAISE THE LORD, AND PASS THE AMMUNITION: Determined Would-Be Murderer Meets the Power of Prayer… and a Pistol.

YESTERDAY: Andrew Cuomo plots comeback with border attacks on Biden.

Also yesterday: DOJ says Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 13 women.

Cuomo’s a scumbag, sure, but still, I question the timing.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Buying a new or used car is still shockingly expensive.

HMM: Border Patrol Says Agents Will Not Remove Texas Razor Wire Barriers. “In defiance of the Biden Administration’s wishes, senior figures within Customs and Border Protection have stated that there are no plans to have Border Patrol agents remove razor wire barriers erected along sections of the border by the Texas National Guard.”

LONGEVITY: Biohacker spending $2m a year to reverse his age beaten by man paying just $30,000 a year.

THE PERILS OF OVERHYPE: COVID-19 pandemic perceived as less serious than other health problems, suggests 7-country survey.

HMM: Strange vision problems may indicate Alzheimer’s disease. “The condition is called posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). It involves a sudden difficulty in performing vision-related tasks — for example writing, judging whether an object is moving or stationary, or easily picking up a dropped item. Everyday tasks like these become difficult despite the fact that a person’s eye exam comes out fine.”

TRUE: No Task Force Can Save Harvard.

Harvard is the Boeing. 737 MAX of higher education. A great American brand is squandering the public’s trust. Failures of quality control are damaging its market dominance. Like any corporation, Harvard is looking for new management and working to burnish its image. Unlike most corporations, Harvard has no idea what it is doing. Boeing still has engineers; Harvard has only professors. When the wheels came off at Chrysler in 1978, the company brought in Lee Iacocca. Harvard has brought in Derek Penslar.

Mr. Penslar is a professor of Jewish history. He calls Israel a “settler colonial” state and compares the Jewish state’s establishment to France’s colonial takeover of Algeria. In August he signed an academic petition called “The Elephant in the Room.” It endorsed the conspiracy theory that the Netanyahu government’s proposals for judicial reform mask a plan to “ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.” It asserted that Israel imposes a “regime of apartheid” on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and accused the country of “Jewish supremacism.”

“Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question” is the name of a book by white supremacist David Duke. If you go far enough left, you go far right without knowing it. Mr. Penslar leads Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies and has been named a co-chairman of the university’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism. The latter appointment was an “unforced error,” Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, told the Journal Wednesday.

The spontaneous campus celebrations after Hamas’s massacre, rape and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 meant that Harvard could no longer ignore its problem with Jews, and especially the Jewish state. Prodded by donors and shamed by the media, the university’s then-president, Claudine Gay, commissioned a committee.

Then Ms. Gay told lawmakers that calling for the genocide of Jews was sometimes acceptable at Harvard, depending on the “context.”

It’s a toxic member of a toxic industry.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professors rip Haley’s, Ramaswamy’s ‘colorblindness’: gives credence to white supremacy.

HOW’S THAT RECRUITMENT CRISIS GOING? No diploma? No problem! Navy again lowers requirements as it struggles to meet recruitment goals.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Virgin Galactic launches 1st Ukrainian woman to space  —  and 3 others  —  on Galactic 06 suborbital flight (video).

IT’S LIKE A WHITE JURY AND A BLACK DEFENDANT IN 1940S ALABAMA: Jan. 6 lawyer says suspects ‘can’t get a fair trial’ in DC.

That prejudice alone is grounds for pardons from some future president who cares about justice.

JAMES LILEKS: The Extraordinary Ordinary of Traveling.

HAHA:

Oopshttps://t.co/ddldcxkeqV

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) January 27, 2024

IF YOU WANT AVERAGE PEOPLE TO GO TO COLLEGE, COLLEGE STUDENTS WILL BE AVERAGE PEOPLE: College students aren’t all that smart: IQ average falls to 102.

SHOCKER: DHS knew risks of mail-in voting but continued censoring concerns anyway: Lawsuit.

LEARN TO CODE: Mass Layoffs at LA Times and Taylor Lorenz Worries About the Trend.

Flashback: The Coming Symbolic Analyst Meltdown.

Related (From Ed): As America’s Newspaper of Record noted in 2021: Laid-Off Journalist Trying To Learn To Code Horrified To Discover The Code Is Binary.

ELITISM MARCHES ON: SCOTUS Law Clerk Signing Bonuses Hit $500,000. “The clerks are like many former aides across Washington — whether on Capitol Hill, at regulatory agencies or in the White House — whom law firms value because of their time spent in proximity to power and relationships with influential officials.”

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Japan’s SLIM achieved pinpoint moon landing with just one working engine. The mission didn’t fully succeed, but for a first effort it was actually pretty impressive. No doubt they’ll learn from their mistakes.

HMM: Weight Loss Drugs Like Ozempic Could Have a Surprising Effect on Drinking Habits. Not sure about the methodology here, which is clever but questionable.