ALIENS: Mysterious New Signals Detected by SETI: Unlocking the Strange Puzzle of Fast Radio Bursts.

FLASHBACK: How Colleges Silence Eccentrics.

I’M NOT SAYING CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL, BUT: Armed Robbery Foiled When Getaway Car Is Stolen by Another Thief.

FIREARMS NEWS: The Gun Debate is Increasingly Academic. “The best part about the gun debate is that it’s increasingly just academic. Our victory is assured. Put aside Bruen, or Heller, or McDonald, or any of the other gun rights victories in courts. Put aside the massive increases in gun ownership, in every demographic.”

MICROBIOME NEWS: The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush.

FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE: Barbie should expand her range of medical and scientific professions, suggests study.

HEALTH: The future of heart health: Researchers develop vaccine to lower cholesterol.

DR. SMITH’S GARDEN: NASA gives update on long-lost space tomatoes.

WOKISM BREEDS RACIAL ENTITLEMENT: Insufferable entitlement behind Wu’s only ‘people of color’ Christmas party.

FIGHT THE POWER: UW La Crosse drops mandatory ‘inclusivity statement’ after YAF legal threat.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF HIGHER EDUCATION: Presbyterian college cancels ‘BDSM 101’ event led by pro-LGBT chaplain.

FROM THE EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM DEPARTMENT: Volcano Near Iceland’s Grindavik Erupts After Series of Earthquakes.

GOOD: Tennessee Attorney General Sues BlackRock For Misleading Investors About ESG Agenda: The suit alleges that BlackRock is ‘deceiving consumers’ about its leftwing agenda.

BOB GRABOYES: Antisemitism, 20% Allies, and Colonel Nicholson: An Open Letter to My Right-of-Center Friends.. “Whenever possible, treat someone who disagrees with you 80 percent of the time as a 20 percent ally—not as an 80 percent enemy.”

CDR SALAMANDER: A New Combined Task Force Builds in the Red Sea …”Prosperity Guardian” … bleh.

Piracy from the southern end of the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa has ramped up significantly over the last couple of weeks, especially over the weekend.

There are a lot of solid updates on the late-breaking tactical developments that I won’t be replicating here. If you are on Twitter/X, there are a few of our favorite accounts that are doing a great job tracking this aspect of this challenge and you really should be following; Sal Mercogliano, John Konrad, Charlie B., and numerous others. I especially like primary source information from industry, and the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) is invaluable in this regard. Their alerts are clicking off faster than you can track over at X/Ttitter or their webpage.

Let’s just spend some time today doing a back-of-the-cocktail napkin review of the larger things in play, but before we do this – let’s set the table on what is causing the recent spot of bother.

Iran’s proxy in the area, the “Houthi” (officially known as Ansar Allah, AKA “Supporters of God”) is a Shia Islamist rebellion organization that evolved from the Saada Governorate of Yemen in the 1990s. They have been a pest off the part of the coast of the Red Sea they control for years, with some success – but generally were not an impediment to trade on the high seas.

After the attacks from Gaza on October 7th, the Houthi decided to support their fellow Iranian proxy Hamas by starting to attack Israel with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and long-range drones. History may reveal their actual goals, but they are from just doing some supporting fires to trying to force a wider war in the area. If they can humiliate Big Satan or Little Satan along the way, all the better.

That is where the USN got involved, indirectly getting involved in the conflict by intercepting what could be heading towards Israel. That quickly progressed to going after Israeli-related shipping passing by their shores, and now it is open season.

The crews of our Arleigh Burke destroyers are doing simply a superb job and the Royal Navy and French Navy have joined the efforts.

The attacks have reached the point that it is starting to impact Suez traffic and international trade – not to mention the physical danger to shipping and the merchant mariners of dozens of nations who transit the Red Sea.

How about Operation Hangman.

HEH: This isn’t really news, unless the news is that Biden is sentient.

WELL, THE U.N.: Revealed: Why ‘UN Women’ took 55 Days to Condemn Hamas Rapes.

LOL, “DEMAND.” Protesters Demand Charges Be Dropped Against Those Arrested for Shutting Down the Bay Bridge. They’re lucky angry commuters didn’t chuck ’em over the side.

CAN YOU BLAME THEM? Major Law Firm Pulls Out of Recruiting at Harvard. “This was good to see and we certainly need more employers to follow in Jay Edelson’s footsteps. Not only the administration at Harvard but the students themselves need to understand that actions carry consequences. You can’t simply spend a few years attending an endless Jew-hating party and then expect to be handed a seven-figure job upon graduation.”

I think an awful lot of employers are also doing this unofficially, and just tossing resumes of students whose interests and activities show telltale signs of wokeness.

FLASHBACK: A common thread in Waukesha tragedy, Kenosha shootings: Government failure.

THE “ETHICS” BOIL DOWN TO AGREE WITH THE BULLIES OR ELSE.

OPEN THREAD: You can learn from my mistakes, but you’re posing in the glass again.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Space Force’s first six missile-defense satellites in medium orbit to cost about $500 million.

I WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS WITH SOME FRIENDS NEXT YEAR: Physicist Discovers ‘Paradox-Free’ Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible.

I think this would addresss Niven’s Law of Time Travel, but I’m not sure.

HMM: Dark Genome Discovery: Researchers Reveal “Ancient Genetic Parasite” Implicated in Human Diseases.