THE NEW SPACE RACE: China completes new commercial launch pad to boost access to space.

WHY IS THE TV INDUSTRY SUCH A CESSPIT OF SEXUAL ABUSE? Nigel Lythgoe stepping aside as ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ judge after sexual assault allegations.

FLASHBACK: Draft Women? Why Not?

LAW: Supreme Court Will Consider Trump Section 3 Disqualification Case: The justices will hear the case on an expedited schedule, and could potentially consider all the issues it raises.

A disqualification would poison American politics for a generation. Which might be one of the left’s goals.

Related: “I look forward to a quick resolution, and I hope it is unanimous and in Trump’s favor. Let’s get back to deciding the election on the merits, not disqualifying candidates.”

If the Democrats were confident they’d win on the merits, they wouldn’t be trying to disqualify Trump now.

OH NO! ANYWAY . . . Submerging Skylines: Major East Coast Cities Including NYC and DC Rapidly Sinking.

Another reason to dust off my proposal to Tax The Blue Zones!

GIVEN HOW MOST COLLEGE STUDENTS LIVE, THIS IS BAD NEWS: Disrupted sleep in early adulthood linked to memory problems later.

WELL THAT DOESN’T MAKE A STRONG CASE, GUYS: Striking doctors in England say hospitals haven’t shown an urgent need for them to return to work.

WHICH IS GOOD, AS OTHERWISE THERE’D BE NO REASON TO BUY MORE THAN ONE: The Perfect Pistol Doesn’t Exist.

Related:

RACE CARD DECLINED: Claudine Gay Made a Career of Attacking Black Scholars. Don’t Defend Her for Being Black.

The demand that Gay resign stems from the utter lack of moral competency she displayed in her testimony before Congress, in which she said that calling for the genocide of Jews is only against Harvard rules in certain contexts. She also failed to condemn the Hamas atrocities against Israel in real time on October 7, another reason she should resign. There is also now evidence of serial plagiarism. And did I mention Gay has published no books—an unprecedented feat for a Harvard President, unless one travels back in time to the year 1773? . . .

Did you know that Claudine Gay during her Harvard career has repeatedly targeted and disrupted the careers of prominent Black male professors?

As Dean of the College, Gay terminated Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr. as Faculty Dean of the Winthrop House. Professor Sullivan, Jr., a graduate of Morehouse College and Harvard Law School, was the first Black faculty dean of a house in the history of Harvard College.

What was Professor Sullivan’s offense? Sullivan deigned to represent the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein—an act of moral conscience, since all are entitled to legal representation in our legal system. Yet legal conscience mattered not to Claudine Gay, who terminated a race pioneer for doing his civic duty.

You may excuse this heartless termination as a one-off. You would be wrong. Economics Professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr. was next in the sights of Dean Gay. Fryer was a top Black professor at Harvard. After having overcome all sorts of hardship and childhood deprivation, Professor Fryer joined the faculty at Harvard to become the second-youngest professor ever to be awarded tenure at Harvard, and went on to blaze a trail of distinction, including winning the MacArthur Fellowship and the John Bates Clark Medal.

Yet when Fryer undertook research into the killings of unarmed Black men in Houston, Fryer’s research found no racial disparities. He made the mistake of undercutting the racial narrative that the Left has adopted, and as a result, Gay did her best to remove all of his academic privileges, coordinating a witch hunt against him. Fryer survived Gay’s crusade of discharge but Fryer’s lab was shut down, his reputation tarnished.

No one in good faith should defend President Gay because she is the first Black president of Harvard. Even if you don’t agree with me that our racial struggle is in our past, someone who has targeted Black male professors has waived any benefit of the “first Black” defense.

To be fair, no one in good faith is defending her.

END OF AN ERA: Wayne LaPierre announces resignation as NRA chief. Lots of people dislike him, and not without reason, but his era at NRA was also marked by the biggest victories of its history. The challenge for his successors will be to revitalize the organization, which is currently being upstaged by other oufits like the GOA or the SAF.

IF I’M GOING TO HAVE MALARIA, I’LL TAKE MINE ASYMPTOMATIC! Classifying the natural history of asymptomatic malaria.

STILL A FEW BUGS IN THE SYSTEM: ChatGPT found to have very low success rate in diagnosing pediatric case studies.

WELL, GOOD: New antibiotic zosurabalpin shows promise against superbug.

IS IT THAT SURPRISING? The Surprising Reason Airline Crews Dim the Cabin Lights (It’s Not to Help You Sleep).

NONSENSE, NO BAD ECONOMIC NEWS IS ALLOWED UNTIL MID-NOVEMBER: The Latest Jobs Report May Actually Be ‘Catastrophic.’

THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND ART FROM LARRY CORREIA:

My book sales suggest otherwise. 😀

And before the inevitable leftist horseshit about “McDonalds is popular too!” I’ve got lefty critics, lefty authors, and lit professors who think Son of the Black Sword is one of the best fantasy novels of my generation, and then they can’t… https://t.co/uCePTqEFlW

— Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45) January 5, 2024

MARTIN HACKWORTH: Claudine Gay: the great DEI grift exposed.

WHY IS THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SLANDERING ALL ARAB/MUSLIM STUDENTS AS TERRORISTS? Education Dept. investigates university for condemning Oct. 7 Hamas attack. “The Biden administration’s Department of Education opened an investigation into San Diego State University after an administrator sent an email condemning Hamas and offering support after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, according to a school official. A spokesperson for San Diego State University told Campus Reform it received a notice from the Department of Education on Tuesday about a complaint that the school ‘discriminated against Islamic, Arab and/or Palestinian students by sending an all-campus email on Oct. 9.'”

Does the DOE assume that these students are all Hamas sympathizers who would be offended or feel marginalized by criticism of rape, torture, and murder? How bigoted is that?

CHANGE: UMass Boston removes DEI requirements from job listings. “The University of Massachusetts Boston will no longer require aspiring faculty members to submit ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ statements following advocacy from a national free speech group. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told The College Fix it plans to monitor the job postings to ensure UMass Boston follows through on its promise.”

FIGHT THE POWER: Trump Wants Jack Smith Held in Contempt of Court in DC Criminal Case: “All substantive proceedings in this Court are halted. Despite this clarity, the prosecutors began violating the Stay almost immediately.”

DON SURBER: President Nothing: Voters realize Joe Biden is a figurehead for Obama.

ESTABLISHMENT-SANCTIONED INSURRECTIONS ARE FINE: Why No Arrests at the Insurrection in California?

The point of the J6 persecution is to tell righties they can’t expect to get away with what lefties routinely do.

BEFORE THIS IS OVER, MOST WILL VIEW THEM AS MARTYRS FOR DEMOCRACY: ‘Sympathy’ surging for Jan. 6 rioters, 43% agree ‘they had a point.’

UNIVERSITIES MAKING BIG PAYOUTS OVER COVID CLOSURES: COVID class-action splurge continues: GWU university near White House pays $5M for shutting down class.

Class-action lawyers may have frowned when Cornell University agreed to pay just $3 million last fall to settle a lawsuit seeking tuition refunds from its shutdown of classroom instruction early in the COVID-19 pandemic – a far cry from Ivy League peer Columbia’s $12.5 million payout for the same actions two years earlier.

They are likely grinning now that a comparably sized but less prestigious private university, blocks from the White House, has agreed to pay much more than Cornell, raising the prospect of more big payouts for class counsel well into 2024.

They were warned.

Cheering for the litigation and resulting settlement: one of GWU’s most vocal and feisty law professors, John Banzhaf, who pioneered public interest lawsuits against Big Tobacco and has needled the administration on free speech and students’ rights for years.

Banzhaf took a victory lap Thursday after GWU alerted eligible students, noting he publicly encouraged Revolutionaries and students nationwide to sue for refunds from COVID dorm evictions and warned colleges resuming “Zoom U” amid the Omicron variant surge they were legally vulnerable.

He also promoted and celebrated early rulings against universities, such as a Florida federal court’s rejection of Barry University’s argument that in-person and online education were functionally the same, which laid the groundwork for a $2.4 million settlement in fall 2021.

Longterm, though, universities may be better off losing these than having courts rule that their in-class product is no better than Zoom classes. . . .

MEDIA MATTERS HAS ALWAYS JUST BEEN A SELF-HERDING MECHANISM FOR LEFTY JOURNALISTS: Democratic Megadonors Bankroll Media Matters, Leaked Donor List Shows.