OPEN THREAD: Happy Friday.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
January 12, 2024
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Willow Bark Extract: A Revolutionary Antiviral From Nature. “In Finland, researchers have recently discovered that willow bark extract, a plant known for yielding various medicinal compounds including the basis for contemporary aspirin, exhibits a wide-ranging antiviral effect in laboratory cell studies. The extract worked both on enveloped coronaviruses, which cause colds as well as COVID-19, and non-enveloped enteroviruses, which cause infections such as flu and meningitis. There are no clinically approved drugs that work against enteroviruses directly, so this extract could be a future game-changer.”
MATT TAIBBI: More Lunatic Legal Coverage: Media reports say Donald Trump’s attorney claimed presidential immunity would “extend to political assassinations.” Here’s what he really said. “Again, you can agree or disagree with the immunity argument, but just from a press perspective: the “SEAL Team Six” moment not only didn’t come from Trump’s team, it was never really argued at all. What actually happened was [Judge] Pan spent a ton of time fishing for that sound bite, didn’t get it, and finally moved on.”
Should judges be fishing for sound bites?
ANOTHER WIN FOR THE NCLA: In NCLA Amicus Win, Supreme Court Will Hear Case Against NLRB’s Odd Prelim Injunction Standard.
WE ARE GOVERNED BY A MIXTURE OF THE EVIL AND THE BRAINDEAD:
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1745900473524122008
With some overlap.
UPDATE: Lol, no. Is President Biden a Super-Ager? “It’s no secret that at 81, President Biden is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history. And whether the current frontrunners for either party win the election later this year, Biden or Donald Trump would be the oldest president on record. Many people have raised concerns about the candidates’ ages and whether they are too old to run for president. However, a recent op-ed published in The Hillopens in a new tab or window weighed in on whether President Biden is actually a super-ager — someone generally older than 80 who has cognitive and physical function higher than their peers, more akin to people decades younger — and argued that framing Biden in particular as ‘too old’ is both ageist and politically motivated.”
Puhleez. You know what’s politically motivated? This sort of interference-running by alleged scientists. And people wonder why science has lost trust with the public.
UPDATE (From Ed): I’m not sure why the above tweet was deleted, but for now, here’s the video it references: Watch: Biden Tells Voters ‘I Work for the Government in the Senate.’
(Updated and bumped.)
A CENSORSHIP ADVOCATE SPREADING MISINFORMATION? SHOCKING. Jesse Singal: There Are Major Factual Issues With Jonathan M. Katz’s ‘Atlantic’ Article, “Substack Has A Nazi Problem.” “It turns out Katz almost entirely fabricated what is perhaps his most damning anecdote about Substack’s approach to extremism.”
What will the Atlantic do? There must be accountability.
Plus: “Katz, who had a Substack himself until he announced his departure today, is apparently a well-regarded author. But he is also, in my brief and exceptionally unpleasant interactions with him, an erratic and toxic individual, at least when it comes to hunting down and attempting to punish his perceived enemies of justice. My most memorable run-in with Katz occurred when he screenshotted a tweet of someone saying that my death should be toasted with champagne, and described it as ‘one of the truest things ever written’ on Twitter.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Car insurance cost rose 20% in December, biggest jump in decades.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Companies Are Still Cutting White-Collar Jobs.
NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: 180 Days for a SpaceX Starship Moonbase.
THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: FDA approves importation of syphilis drug from France.
THE SPACE INDUSTRY AND THE DANGERS OF OVERREGULATION. “There was a time when visionaries and dreamers alone imagined humanity could find great knowledge, riches and adventure in outer space—and were routinely belittled by mundane society for doing so. Now that entrepreneurs are making space more accessible and tapping into its potential, everybody seems to want a piece of the action. Government agencies are elbowing themselves to the head of the crowd to manage a burgeoning industry they once neglected, even benignly.”
Benign neglect is ideal.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Stanford Law Appoints Its Third Dean in Four Months: Paul Brest. Well, he’s tried and true.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor says ‘suppress’ Joe Rogan, Douglas Murray to ‘counter terrorism’: report.
I remember when support for higher ed was justified as promoting a more open and tolerant society.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UChicago Professor Sounds Alarm Over Troubling University Finances. “Assuming that the University nets $60,000 in revenue from each undergraduate, Ando calculated that the tuition of more than 3,300 undergraduates—nearly half the number in the College—would be needed to just service debt every year.”
EVERYTHING’S GOING SWIMMINGLY: Biden ignoring Pentagon, defense spending at pre-World War II levels. With our diplomacy and preparedness, those will one day be known as “pre-World War III levels.”