OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds
October 13, 2025
THAT’S NICE, BUT HOW ABOUT WE BRING BACK SOME FRESH ONES? Scientists open untouched Apollo 17 lunar samples from 1972 — they may hold clues about the moon’s violent origins.
A SUCCESSFUL STARSHIP TEST FLIGHT:
Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting eleventh flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/llcIvNZFfg
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 14, 2025
NOW THEY TELL US: Alzheimer’s May Not Actually Be a Brain Disease, Reveals Expert.
SPACEX FLIGHT UNDERWAY:
Super Heavy has splashed down in the Gulf of America, gathering data for the next generation booster pic.twitter.com/o72ciKBZYm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2025
Watch live here.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY BYSTANDERS DIDN’T BEAT HIM BLOODY: REPORT: Man Hauled Out Of St. Peter’s Basilica After Urinating On Altar.
JON MANCHIP WHITE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Earth’s Crust Is Breaking Apart off the Pacific Northwest.
White was a University of Tennessee colleague of mine. Aside from Crack in the World, he was a script doctor on Day of the Triffids, and wrote episodes of The Avengers. My friend Doug Weinstein took his screenwriting course in college and liked it very much.
SKED FOR 7:15 PM ET TONIGHT: Watch SpaceX launch its Starship Flight 11 megarocket test flight today.
WE NEED NEW ANTIBIOTICS. AND PHAGES. WHERE’S MY PHAGE RESEARCH? WHO warns of surging levels of antibiotic resistance.
Actually, there is some progress being made in phage research and clinical applications.
THEY STILL HAVE THOSE? Cars That Cost Less Than $20,000.
WELL, WHEN HAS THE WOKE LEFT TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING?
Woke Left: ‘He’s the new Hitler.’ https://t.co/Od8ixpysII
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) October 13, 2025
REMEMBER WHEN RUSSKIS WERE ANTI-CAPITALISM? Putin OKs plan to turn Russian spacecraft into flying billboards.
HMM: Brain test predicts ability to achieve orgasm—but only in patients taking antidepressants. “Researchers have discovered that the ability to have an erection or to orgasm is related to the levels of serotonin in the brain, but this relation only applies to depressed patients taking SSRI antidepressants.”
GOOD NEWS FOR CARWASHES: Billion bird night recorded this week as 1.25B birds flew across U.S.
#JOURNALISM:
Every single one of these networks spent weeks covering a Republican aide who criticized the Obama kids’ outfits.
But a statewide Democrat candidate wanting to murder kids just doesn’t register.
Makes sense. https://t.co/13A9ZBbBaY
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) October 12, 2025
Related:
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:
At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .
Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”
Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.
Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:
This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a minuscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.
Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit. (Reposted from 2005, but it still fits.) [Doesn’t this leave you vulnerable to charges of recycling too? –ed. I prefer to think of it as “They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way.”]
I post this every year, as it’s evergreen. The original link to Bennett’s column seems to have succumbed to link-rot, but I believe this is it.
Meanwhile, SpaceX and the other new space companies are doing their best to step into the role of Columbus in regenerating our culture. I hope it works. We need it.
Related:
Columbus did not interrupt a prelapsarian paradise.
AS WITH COVID, PAIN IS NOT SPREAD EVENLY:
Oh, so while our troops are lining up at food banks, Democrats are lining up for wine tastings in Napa. 🍷 Nothing says “public service” like a $1,100-a-night shutdown soiree. https://t.co/Dan7de2pZI
— Lisa McClain (@LisaForCongress) October 12, 2025
KURT SCHLICHTER: The Well-Deserved, Utter Humiliation of Palestinian Terrorists and Their Friends.
Related:
Hamas did not "bravely endure genocide" OR "escape with victory."
They started a stupid war, and lost badly. Bunch of deaths on both sides. They are now going around killing their country-men. Just nothing to admire here, at all.
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) October 12, 2025
DON SURBER: This is the best Democrats can do? “Looking to replace Newsom next year, Democrats have rallied behind Katie Porter who is leading in the polls in California. She is raking in millions from donors. She already has union endorsements. She is a horrible person.”