MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Notes on the Asylum Where I Was Raised: In Which I Visit the Harvard Protests, Among Other Things.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Advisory committee recommends moving FAA commercial space office out of the agency.

PLUTO WILL ALWAYS BE MY PLANET NINE: ‘Strongest Statistical Evidence Yet’ For Planet Nine Has Been Found, Scientist Says.

#NeverForget

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue: “When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t.”

Well, that’s comforting.

SO YOU MEAN MILK DRINKERS PREFER ACTUAL MILK? More people prefer cow’s milk over plant-based milks, new Yahoo/YouGov poll finds. Here’s what nutritionists think about that.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Georgia Governor Kemp Signs Law to Protect Financial Data of Gun Buyers.

DEER KURU: Consumption of contaminated venison suspected in cases of deer hunters with prion disease.

THIS IS BAD: Vancomycin may be losing effectiveness against C. diff.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: My husband and I quit our teaching jobs to start our own school – we’re challenging the lies our kids learn.

PROBABLY: Is the legend of Gavin Newsom’s baseball career a tall tale?

For their 2004 home opener, the San Francisco Giants invited a special guest to throw the ceremonial first pitch: Gavin Newsom, then just a few months into his first term as mayor of San Francisco.

As Newsom took the pitcher’s mound, wearing dress shoes and a button-down shirt underneath his custom Giants jersey, the announcer informed the crowd that “he played first base for the University of Santa Clara and was drafted by the Texas Rangers.”

The introduction was quickly overshadowed by Newsom nearly hitting a photographer with the ball. But it left a lasting impact on a few attendees that day—a group of former Santa Clara University baseball players who were struck by the glowing treatment of Newsom’s resume.

“It’s kind of the standing joke that Newsom played on the team,” said Vince Machi, who arrived at Santa Clara in 1985, the same year as Newsom, and played baseball for three years. “There’s always been kind of a joke between the guys who stay in touch.” . . .

But former coaches and teammates said that biography, repeated again and again through interviews and glossy magazine profiles and coverage of his 2021 baseball-themed children’s book on overcoming dyslexia, has inflated Newsom’s baseball credentials, giving the impression that he was a more accomplished player than he was.

Most notably, Newsom never played an official game for Santa Clara University; he was a junior varsity recruit who played only during the fall tryouts his freshman and sophomore years, then left the baseball program before the regular season began. He does not appear on the Broncos’ all-time roster or in media guides published by the athletic department to preview the upcoming season.

A deeper look at his recruitment also reveals that Newsom’s admission to Santa Clara University—like so many of his formative opportunities—was substantially boosted by friends and acquaintances of his father, William Newsom, a San Francisco judge and financial adviser to the Gettys, the wealthy oil family. One associate connected Newsom to the baseball program when he was in high school, while his father’s best friend, then a member of the university’s board of regents, wrote him a letter of recommendation.

Mike Cummins, the assistant coach at Santa Clara while Newsom was there, said the governor has “embellished his baseball career a little bit at times.”

“He never played in a varsity game. He may have played in some scrimmages,” said Cummins, who is now the head baseball coach at California State University East Bay.

I’m shocked.

GASLIGHTING: It’s Not Me, It’s You: Blaming the Public’s “Perception of the Economy.”

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! ‘Honors College’ for black students receives $250K from Cal State system.

IN NEWSWEEK, AN ACTUAL GAZAN TELLS CAMPUS PROTESTERS THEY’RE IDIOTS:

You know what would help the Palestinians in Gaza? Condemning Hamas’ atrocities. Instead, the protesters routinely chant their desire to “Globalize the Intifada.” Apparently they do not realize that the Intifadas were disastrous for both Palestinians and Israelis, just as October 7 has been devastating for the people of Gaza.

They should be speaking up for the innocent victims of Hamas—both Palestinian and Israeli. Instead, they endorse Hamas’s ideology with posters announcing resistance “by any means necessary” and chants of “from the river to the sea,” effectively glorifying the Al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’ military wing, whose ideology is entirely based on the elimination of more than 6 million Israelis from the land.

I assumed individuals who initiated these slogans were uninformed about what they were advocating for. I saw the LGBTQ flag frequently flown among people chanting lines from Hamas’s charter, and I initially wanted to educate them, to warn them that the group they are honoring would most likely toss them from the top of a building or murder them like they did to Mahmoud Ishtiwi, a Hamas commander accused of homosexuality. Hamas harasses women who don’t cover their heads. Hamas tortures those who demonstrate against their authoritarian rule, as they did me when I protested.

All of this seems to be lost on the people who have named themselves our allies, to our misfortune.

Hate speech on college campuses starting with the one at Columbia has recently reached a frightening pitch. I’ve seen people yelling antisemitic things at Jewish students, including “Jews go back to Poland” and other horrible phrases. It has deteriorated to the point that Jews are no longer attending university classes due to the current hostile environment, and they are attending their classes online to avoid the demonstrators.

The only conclusion that can be drawn from these demonstrators’ silence concerning Hamas’ atrocities and their antisemitic chanting is that they are not concerned with protecting Palestinians. They are out in their tents because of a hatred of Jews and Israelis.

Well, that, and also because they’re morons. Or quite frequently both.

Campus protesters have been given a spurious moral legitimacy since the 1960s. But that’s not because they’re morally superior, or even moral. It’s just because they’re useful for the left.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Kink’ instructor teaches Northwestern students that US is an ‘empire of white supremacist imperialist policing.’

OUT NEXT WEEK: From Cheryl Mendelson, Vows: The Modern Genius of an Ancient Rite. A look at marriage and commitment through time.

HMM: What Uncle Sam Can Do About Our Baby Bust.

INSURRECTION: Harvard Protesters Raise Palestinian Flags On University Building, In Spot Reserved For American Flag: Harvard protesters chanted ‘Shame!’ when university staff removed the flags.

Related: Netanyahu Decries ‘Anti-Semitic Mobs’ Overtaking American Campuses.

WAPO OP-ED: Punish Columbia Professors, Not Student Protesters, For The Intellectual Degeneration On Campus.

Related: Education Apocalypse Now?

ABOLISH THE IVY LEAGUE: Antisemitic Left-Wing Activists Are Showing Who Is Really in Charge on Ivy League Campuses.

PLAUSIBLE:

Ilhan Omar Paraglides Into Columbia Campus To Lead Protests https://t.co/dw9VL2IkzE pic.twitter.com/0xXer2c974

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 27, 2024

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Court Upholds #TheyLied Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress Award Against Student Who Accused Professor of Sexual Assault.

OPEN THREAD: I do it all for you.

BACK WHEN I WAS ON THE NASA PLANETARY DEFENSE SUBCOMMITTEE, THIS WAS PART OF OUR PURVIEW: ‘Astrobiodefense:’ Thinktank calls for defending Earth from space bugs.

WELL, GOOD: Common Blood Pressure Drug Increases Lifespan And Slows Aging in Animals. I hope it works in humans.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Astronauts Gear Up for Boeing Starliner’s Groundbreaking Test Flight.