KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Which Biden VP Option Would Be Less of a Train Wreck? “Let’s be honest, it’s been heading towards ‘train wreck’ ever since Biden committed to picking a female running mate. He’s now all but obligated himself to picking a woman of color, which probably has all of the ulcers on his campaign staff bleeding double.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
August 5, 2020
HMM: Baby Boomers Are Experiencing Greater Cognitive Decline Than Previous Generations, Study Finds.
Though people do generally lose a step or two in their brain power as part of the normal aging process, the study found there was an improving trend in cognitive function across generations born before and during World War II. The study had data for the following cohorts: Greatest Generation (born 1890-1923); Early Children of Depression (born 1924-1930); Late Children of Depression (born 1931-1941); War Babies (born 1942-1947); early baby boomers (born 1948–1953); and mid baby boomers (born 1954–1959).
While each generation before the boomers had improved later-life cognition compared to the one before it, the boomers showed a decline compared to war babies, breaking the pattern of improvement.
“It is shocking to see this decline in cognitive functioning among baby boomers after generations of increases in test scores,” study author Hui Zheng, professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, said in a statement released by the university. “But what was most surprising to me is that this decline is seen in all groups: men and women, across all races and ethnicities and across all education, income and wealth levels.”
Zheng also tried to account for age-related declines in cognition by looking only at the scores of people in their early 50s. But again, early baby boomers in their 50s on average had lower test scores than did people from earlier generations in that same age group. That likely means that whatever is causing this drop in cognition, the decline started becoming apparent by the time baby boomers were still middle-aged.
If this study pans out, I’d guess the results are due to increases in obesity and/or drug use.
2020 SUMMED UP IN A SINGLE HEADLINE: Popular queer Native American Twitter account turns out to be unpopular straight white woman.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Seattle Police Violated Civil Rights by Defending Themselves, Protesters Claim in Orwellian Lawsuit.
August 4, 2020
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Media Silent As Christopher Steele ‘Hero’ ‘Spymaster’ Narrative Crumbles.
Steele did not personally collect any of the factual information in his reports. The “vast network” was instead a “social circle” of an American-based former Brookings Institute junior staffer, recently identified for the first time as Igor Danchenko. The friends didn’t have well-documented claims so much as rumors, drunken gossip, and outright brainstorming, conjecture, and speculation. Even that information was “multiple layers of hearsay upon hearsay” before it got to Steele, who then hyperbolically overstated it. And the damning claims of “collusion” appear to have been scandalously misattributed or invented out of whole cloth.
With such shoddy information collection and analysis methods, there was never any reason to give credence to any of the salacious allegations in the dossier, whether it was claims of secret deals with Russian oil concerns, secret meetings in foreign capitals, prostitutes urinating on Moscow hotel room beds, files of compromising information, or the careful cultivation of Trump, yes Trump, into the most effective Russian agent in history.
The media have a problem, then, given that they repeatedly led viewers and readers to believe Steele was a master spy.
Read the whole thing.
DETAILS: Massive Explosions Rock Beirut. “An Israeli intelligence research outfit claimed that the explosion was ‘not a coincidence’ because it involved ‘one of the warehouses near the port, which has already been identified as part of Hezbollah’s missile accuracy project’.”
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Washington Post Goes Full Commie.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Why does democracy die in darkness?
Answer: Because the Washington Post likes to do it with the lights off.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap:
• Champagne goes from brut to glut.
• The Left’s new boogeyman? Murder trucks.
• Antifa puts a little spring in its riots.
Plus so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
NOW THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: Virgin Galactic unveils designs for Mach 3 supersonic aircraft.
NEW YORK TIMES FLOATS TRIAL BALLOON: Let’s Scrap the Presidential Debates. “This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests.”
That’s rich.
UPDATE (From Ed): The Times article includes this paragraph:
Perhaps the most substantive televised debate of all was the first one, between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, which Nixon was considered to have won on substance on the radio, while the cooler and more appealing Kennedy won on television. Since these weren’t true debates, the concept of “winning” one of these odd encounters was always amorphous. (To be sure, many questions by panels of journalists were designed less to stimulate debate than to challenge one of the candidates.)
As Joseph Campbell has noted at his Media Myth Alert blog, this is “one of the most delicious, enduring, and often-repeated myths about the American media and politics:”
The myth of viewer-listener disagreement — that television viewers and radio listeners had starkly different impressions of the inaugural presidential debate — was destroyed (or ought to have been) in research published in 1987 by David L. Vancil and Sue D. Pendell.
They noted that reports of viewer-listener disagreement were thin, flawed, and anecdotal, and the few surveys that hinted at a viewer-listener disconnect were too small and unrepresentative to allow for confident assessments.
Vancil and Pendell concluded:
“The relationship of substance and appearance is complex, and the effects of electronic media on political communication surely deserve attention. However, there is little merit in speculation based upon unsupported anecdotes of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate.”
Vancil and Pendell’s research also challenged the notion that Nixon’s haggard look much contributed to views about the debate.
“Appearance problems, such as Nixon’s perspiring brow, could have had a negative impact on viewer perceptions,” they wrote, “but it is also possible for viewers to be sympathetic to such problems, or to interpret them as evidence of attractive or desirable qualities.”
They added: “Even if viewers disliked Nixon’s physical appearance, the relative importance of this factor is a matter of conjecture.”
It’s revealing to note that a good deal of post-debate commentary deemed the encounter a draw.
To paraphrase the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, This is the DNC-MSM, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: The Summer of Love Sure Has a Lot of Violence and Murder. “This is an inconvenient double snapshot of the way life with be all of the time if Babbling Joe gets elected in November. While not all of the cities experiencing spikes in murder rates are run by Democrats, most of them are. Biden has already proven that he’s on board with the BLM cop-hating vibe and it’s a safe bet to assume that whichever commie female he picks for a running mate will be far worse. She will also be president by February of next year, which may make the summer of 2021 even worse.”
SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Nanny State Now Targets Even Moderate Alcohol Consumption.
OH: UPenn Can’t Explain Mystery Donation From Chinese Company. “Public records suggest that the Nice Famous Corporation, which funneled $3 million to the Ivy League school, is closely tied to the Chinese government.”
CYBERSECURITY: George W. Bush Presidential Center Hacked; Ransom Paid To Have Cyber Attackers Destroy Stolen Info. “Included in the stolen data was information on donors to the Bush Center, including names, contact information, and contributions they’ve made in the past.”