HBO is apparently so high on Mike Judge's new comedy, Silicon Valley, that they're letting you watch the first episode for free on YouTube.

Instapundit must not have actually watched it, or else he would have noted the fierce attack on modern-day college occurring near the beginning of the show.

The character who delivers this diatribe at a TED talk is called "Peter Gregory," who is obviously based on tech titan Peter Thiel. Thiel, famously, is a strident critic of what college has become, and actually offers people $100,000 if they will quit college to pursue their tangible, possibly-useful dream. (I assume Thiel has to first approve of your dream before you get the money. So, you know, don't just quit college and then show up at his door with your hand out.)

In the show, the Thiel-analogue is noted to have made just exactly this offer himself, and then gives that TED talk rant at about 8:25 in the below link.

There are two things about this that are interesting for conservatives, who have long suspected Judge of having conservative (or libertarian, or at least liberal-skeptical) positions:

1. This Thiel analogue is the more attractive character of the two tech titans depicted. The Thiel analogue is helpful towards the heroes, wheres the Thiel analogue's rival seems to want to cheat the hero out of his invention.

The rival tech titan is a Blazing Douchebag who smugly propounds upon his devotion to "social justice." The Thiel analogue hasn't revealed his politics, but Peter Thiel himself is a conservative-leaning libertarian.

2. Mike Judge permits someone in the audience to talk back to the Thiel analogue, and say that his ideas are "dangerous," but that guy is a rumpled old hippie, and he is humiliated in verbal sparring by the Thiel analogue. He's left only to sputter "Fascist," impotently, as he leaves the auditorium.

This is probably the most mainstream reference to the idea of a growing Bubble in Higher Education and the current wretechedness of the college system (particularly when one factors in costs and benefits).

Worth a watch. Skip to 8:25, as I say, and watch the minute long second exchange.

I watched the show earlier today on YouTube. Overall, it's pretty good. It's plainly a Mike Judge production, with his sense of humor and sensibility obvious in the script.

Oh, being a Mike Judge production, and being on HBO, you should know there is some objectionable material here, all of the adult potty mouth sort. Though the minute I'm recommending is clean.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (242)
Post contains 439 words, total size 3 kb.

Welcome, gardening morons and moronettes! Today's thread is brought to you by unclear on the Concept:

Your co-host, WeirdDave, has returned from his tropical vacay with the lovely Gingy. I'm sure we're all very eager to find out what he has in store for us this week. Take it away, WeirdDave!
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:32 AM | Comments (103)
Post contains 549 words, total size 5 kb.

But remember: Inquisitors don't necessarily wish to burn you at the stake.

Their real goal is to get you to recant, and promote their favored orthodoxy.

Burning at the stake is the threat, but their actual goal is to compel you to repeat the approved dogmas.

So let's see if they accomplish their goal.

The Daily Caller reported five days ago:

Sam Yagan, who is currently CEO of the Match Group, which controls OkCupid [and was a cofounder of OKCupid -- ace], donated $500 to Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 back when he still opposed gay marriage.

While president of the tech company Metamachine, Yagan also gave $500 to Republican Utah Rep. Chris Cannon. In 2006 Cannon voted in favor of the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman in the Constitution.

This story got big play today because it got past the Gatekeepers of the Leftist Information Fortress and was reported in Mother Jones.

See, when the Daily Caller reporter a fact, exclusively, it didn't matter, but now Mother Jones reports it and it officially Matters.

AllahPundit had speculated earlier today about Yagan's next steps vis-a-vis his Inquisitors:

He’s going to say one of two things in his defense (or both) once OkCupid comments on this. One: His donation to Cannon wasn’t about gay issues, it was about something unrelated — tech policy or whatever....

Two: HeÂ’ll claim that heÂ’s changed his mind on gay rights, just like Obama but (apparently) unlike Brendan Eich. (Yagan also donated to Obama in 2008, back when O was dutifully posing as a traditional-marriage supporter.) Eich never renounced his donation to Prop 8; Yagan will, presumably, happily renounce his Cannon donation now to avoid the dreaded charge of hypocrisy.

How did AllahPundit do?

Nailed it.

Today, the heretic recants, and affirms his belief in the One True Faith of Gay Marriage.

“A decade ago, I made a contribution to Representative Chris Cannon because he was the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee that oversaw the Internet and Intellectual Property, matters important to my business and our industry. I accept responsibility for not knowing where he stood on gay rights in particular; I unequivocally support marriage equality and I would not make that contribution again today. However, a contribution made to a candidate with views on hundreds of issues has no equivalence to a contribution supporting Prop 8, a single issue that has no purpose other than to affirmatively prohibit gay marriage, which I believe is a basic civil right.”

What a fascinating statement. Forgive me for reading it thus:

I didn't donate to Chris Cannon for his politics, of course. I just donated in order to buy some influence with him.

It is preferable to say, in 2014, that you are merely farming Congressmen for political favors than that you once thought that gay marriage was a little bit weird.

OKCupid

Whatever happens in private between two consenting adults and their political donation is no one else's business.

Two points I think I should make:

The fact that people have to donate to Congressmen for favors (or just to be left alone) isn't really the donors' fault -- it's Congressmen's fault, and voters' fault, for empowering government so much that people are forced to pay a defensive tax just to curry favor with legislators and presidents.

And I don't want Yagan fired, either, for the heresies of his own youth.

Although his cowardly failure to stand up for freedom of belief makes this a closer case than it would otherwise be.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (382)
Post contains 618 words, total size 4 kb.

Welcome to your Weekend Travel Thread.

Today's thread is brought to you by "Are you gonna eat that?"
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:24 AM | Comments (206)
Post contains 465 words, total size 4 kb.

Quick story I stole from Hot Air.

It's a small story, but I do find the bias sad and typical.

As is often the case, it's not what gets reported -- but what doesn't.

The article implies several possible motives -- from simple juvenile pranks to a right-wing plot against Greenies. It fails to consider another obvious motive.

Vandals Flip Over Smart Cars in San Francisco

Someone's been vandalizing compact Smart cars in San Francisco, flipping the tiny vehicles on their front and rear ends in the city's streets.

...

A fourth Smart car -- a small white one with a faded "Obama-Biden" bumper sticker -- was discovered Monday about 9 a.m. at Coso and Prospect avenues between the Mission District and Bernal Heights. Shelley Gallivan was babysitting her friend's Smart car after it was left to her by her late father, and was shocked to find it flipped on its right side.

"Whoever is doing this just has misdirected anger," Gallivan said.

The article goes on to quote one uninformed man suggesting this is all just a "prank."

Very well. But why does the reporter include that bit about the Obama-Biden sticker? Is there any evidence at all that that's relevant to the case in any way?

And wouldn't most smart cars feature such stickers? Especially in San Francisco?

In fact, what's more interesting is that three of the tipped cars didn't have pro-leftist bumper stickers, isn't it?

Now, so long as we're speculating about motives, as this reporter is doing by including a meaningless detail about an Obama sticker, let's look at another possible motive -- one that should have occurred to this reporter, as she (presumably) lives in San Francisco.

A motive surely as plausible and likely as the "Cruel Vandals Hate Obama" motive inserted into the story for no good reason.

There are leftwing malcontents in San Francisco who have been pushing an anti-tech message for months now.

For example, and these are just a few of the many stories discoverable by a simple google search:

Item: Anti-Tech Protesters Target VC With Vulgar Flyer

Anger toward the tech upper class continues to simmer in the Bay Area. We've seen multiple protests against the Google Bus, and in an incident that happened just last week, protesters vomited aboard a bus for Yahoo workers.

The tension revolves around the high cost of living and the argument that tech millionaires and billionaires are driving up the cost of housing and destroying the Bay Area's traditional quality of life.

The latest incident targets one tech employee directly.

And the flyers get vulgar towards the end.

Item: Voices: An anti-tech backlash in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley has its own version of Occupy Wall Street.

This culture war lacks rampant arrests, bursts of violence or national media coverage. But the dissent of anti-gentrification groups over income and housing is creating a stir just the same.

Every week or so this year, protesters have blocked buses from Google and Facebook carrying workers to their jobs outside the city. A few dozen protesters, chanting "Stop evictions," surrounded the buses and prevented them from moving. Someone plastered one coach with a sign, in a Google-type font, that read, "Gentrification and Eviction Technologies."

...

For some, the buses that transport employees from Google, Apple, Facebook and others to Silicon Valley have become symbols of income disparity.

...

"Companies are making billions of dollars; they can give a small percentage of that back," says Benioff. "The homeless, child care and public schools are logical philanthropic targets for tech."

Item: Silicon Valley backlash: Protesters VOMIT on Yahoo workers' bus []

A protester so aghast with Silicon Valley's impact on the Bay Area has gone as far as to vomit on a Yahoo shuttle bus.

The mystery demonstrator was among a group of protesters picketing the buses that ferry employees of the big tech corporations to work, deeming them indicative of everything wrong with the hyper-gentrified Silicon Valley.

On Tuesday, the group blocked an intersection in San Francisco's Mission area, and protestors consisted of dancers in clown suit onesies.

But Valleywag.com reported that in Oakland, almost 50 'rebels' blocked a pick up zone for tech buses and one apparently vomited on the windshield of a Yahoo bus from its roof.

There are also vulgar and sometimes menacing anti-tech-worker messages being left in the streets as well, but I think I've made my point.

Do I have any evidence that these Anti-Tech Occupy Silicon Valley types are behind the vandalism of the smart cars?

No, apart from the not-so-tiny coincidence that the Occupy Silicon Valley types have a pattern of attacking the vehicles used by tech workers.

But I do think this:

If this reporter thought it was relevant to include that "Obama-Biden" bumper-sticker detail, surely this months-long vandalism of Google's and Yahoo's buses merited a mention as well.

Perhaps she thought that it would be unfair to make the connection.

Unfair to speculate about the Occupy Silicon Valley types, then.

But not quite so unfair to wonder, a la Brian Ross, if the vandals had Tea Party Connections.

Why is it fair to suggest a possible right-wing motive by inclusion of the "Obama-Biden" sticker, the only detail that speaks to possible motive in the whole piece?

Zombie Opines...

Ph come on, I've been following the car-tipping story and the vomit-on-google story for weeks.

There is a 100% chance that the car-tippers are the same anti-tech protesters blocking and attacking google buses. No question.

They dress like the same anarcho/Occupy idiots that do all the same kind of shit every day. They are filled with irrational hate toward tehcnology -- essentially they are Luddite anarchists. There are thousands of them around here.

Everyone knows this. The Obama bumpersticker is a ridiculous and irrelevant detail. Hell, ALL OF GOOGLE is pro-Obama, and the protesters have been protesting Google itself. Ooooh, does that meant they're right-wingers?

The media's attempt at bias here is feeble and ignored. Everyone in the Bay Area knows these anarcho types. They cause about 75% of the problems.

JEM, though, thinks my bias-detection sensors are overreating:

Seriously, though...it's a big stretch to detect real bias in the Smart-tipping piece.

Well, let me respond.

I understand that there is a technique in reporting (or writing a novel) called "the telling detail." You don't overwhelm a reader with details; you instead choose one poignant detail, or a detail that suggests other details, thus avoiding having to write all those other details out.

Perhaps this reporter thought the Obama-Biden sticker was a Telling Detail.

But she's wildly wrong about that. I think it's as close to a simple acknowledged fact that 80% of all Priuses, Leafs, and Smart Cars are going to be fairly littered with pro-Obama, pro-Hillary, anti-nuke, and pro-COEXIST bumper stickers.

This is a detail which is not telling at all.

It's like reporting the car also had a license plate and four wheels.

So what's it doing in there? Why are the political affinities of the victim relevant?

I can only think of three reasons for the relevance:

1. To suggest a motive for the vandals.

2. To suggest the innocence of the victims, which I find even more abhorrent, as that would suggest that we should feel empathy for the victim of vandalism so long as he is a progressive in good standing, and maybe not so much for the other victims (whose cars were assumedly not festooned with MSNBC merch).

3. To suggest the fading of the Obama vision of a united America and, who knows, the fraying of the Progressive/Radical/Liberal coalition. This one is, I guess, not really "biased" all that much, though it is still a political message being snuck into a straight news article.

This one would also require some backstory to even make sense -- to wit, the backstory that these attacks on tech workers' vehicles are being carried out by the Anarchist/Occupy Silicon Valley malcontents.

I suppose I don't know why this reporter chose to include such a non-evocative detail in her piece. Perhaps she's just a cub reporter and can't yet separate the Telling Details from the Tell-You-Nothing Details.

But I do think this story reads a bit strange without the background information on the increasing vandalism in San Francisco.

And if her goal was Possibility 2 -- to humanize the victim, to add a touch of human poignancy to the story -- I guess I'd want to know why being an Obama voter is humanizing, and I guess I'd like to ask if being a Sarah Palin fan would be humanizing as well.

Or the exact opposite of humanizing.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (327)
Post contains 1458 words, total size 10 kb.

First of all, I'm sorry to be posting so late.

I got up late -- first strike. But since then I've been writing a long piece. As Hour One turned into Hour Two and that turned into Hour Three, I realized I had better put up some filler post in the meantime.

This is that filler post.

The optimism that bubbled up over the weekend when an Australian navy ship detected pulses that appeared to signal the nearby presence of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's so-called black boxes had subsided somewhat by Tuesday, as continuing listening efforts yielded nothing.

Searchers are still scouring the waters, but their optimism is "more cautious," said U.S. Navy Cmdr. William Marks. "As hours pass," he said, "our optimism is fading away, ever so slightly."

His restraint contrasted with the cheers that erupted Saturday when the team aboard Australia's Ocean Shield detected a possible signal from the plane's flight data recorder or its cockpit voice recorder. A second possible signal was heard soon after.

The signals, detected about 1,100 miles (1,750 kilometers) northwest of Perth, Australia, were consistent with those sent by a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said. They were heard in seawater about 14,800 feet (4,500 meters) deep.

...

The first signal, detected by the towed pinger locator dragged behind the Australian ship, continued for more than two hours; the second for about 13 minutes. But since then, there's been silence.

The black boxes' batteries have enough power to ping for about one month.

Flight 370 had been missing for about one month as of the weekend. Thus, this could be, maybe, that the last signals from black boxes were heard just as the batteries failed, and now we'll hear nothing from the black boxes ever again.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (192)
Post contains 342 words, total size 2 kb.

Big article that I'm still reading, actually.

APRIL 7--When friends and family members gathered recently at the White House for a private celebration of Michelle ObamaÂ’s 50th birthday, one of the invited partygoers was a former paid FBI Mafia informant.

That same man attended FebruaryÂ’s state dinner in honor of French President Francois Hollande. He was seated with his girlfriend at a table adjacent to President Barack Obama, who is likely unaware that, according to federal agents, his guest once interacted with members of four of New York CityÂ’s five organized crime families. He even secretly taped some of those wiseguys using a briefcase that FBI technicians outfitted with a recording device.

...

The former mob snitch has become a regular in the White House, where he has met with the 44th president in the East Room, the Roosevelt Room, and the Oval Office. He has also attended Obama Christmas parties, speeches, policy announcements, and even watched a Super Bowl with the First Family (an evening the man has called “one of the highlights of my life”). During these gatherings, he has mingled with cabinet members, top Obama aides, military leaders, business executives, and members of Congress. His former confederates were a decidedly dicier lot: ex-convicts, extortionists, heroin traffickers, and mob henchmen. The man’s surreptitious recordings, FBI records show, aided his government handlers in the successful targeting of powerful Mafia figures with nicknames like Benny Eggs, Chin, Fritzy, Corky, and Baldy Dom.

...

Most importantly, he has the ear of the President of the United States, an equally remarkable and perplexing achievement for the former FBI asset known as “CI-7,” the Rev. Al Sharpton.

The article goes on to detail (what it claims is) Sharpton's history as a "Mafia associate," Confidential Informant 7, whose background information was used in many warrant applications for eavesdropping on mafiosi. Sharpton's testimony was never directly used at trial to convict anyone, only for information purposes, and for purposes of securing warrants (with which the FBI would gather evidence they could produce at trial).

Sharpton "vehemently" denies having ever been an FBI informant, and claims that his only intersections with the FBI occurred when he was seeking their help to clean drugs out of minority neighborhoods, or their help in protecting the rights of black recording artists.

He also repeatedly denied being “flipped” by federal agents in the course of an undercover operation. When asked specifically about his recording of the Gambino crime family member, Sharpton was noncommittal: “I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no.”

But the article claims he was "flipped" by the FBI to become an informant only when he himself was caught in an FBI sting regarding drug dealing:

During one meeting with Sharpton, the undercover agent offered to get him "pure coke" at $35,000 a kilo. As the phony drug kingpin spoke, Sharpton nodded his head and said, “I hear you.” When the undercover promised Sharpton a 10 percent finder’s fee if he could arrange the purchase of several kilos, the reverend referred to an unnamed buyer and said, “If he’s gonna do it, he’ll do it much more than that.” The FBI agent steered the conversation toward the possible procurement of cocaine, sources said, since investigators believed that Sharpton acquaintance Daniel Pagano--who was not present--was looking to consummate drug deals....

While Sharpton did not explicitly offer to arrange a drug deal, some investigators thought his interaction with the undercover agent could be construed as a violation of federal conspiracy laws. Though an actual prosecution, an ex-FBI agent acknowledged, would have been “a reach,” agents decided to approach Sharpton and attempt to “flip” the activist...

Despite the weakness of the FBI's case against him, TheSmokingGun.com reports that they succeeded in "flipping" him to turn informant on the mob.

It's an interesting read, to say the least. Obviously I have no insight into whether TheSmokingGun is right or not.

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (220)
Post contains 680 words, total size 5 kb.

• Holder: We Want To Explore Gun Tracking Bracelets
  
• Americans On Medicaid Exceed Population Of The UK
  
• House Turns Up Heat On Lerner, Pursues Criminal Charges
  
• How Vox Makes Us Stupid
  
• Long Island Nursing Home Hired Strippers For The Elderly Residents
  
• Jeb's Gibberish
  
• Yahoo And Microsoft Plan To Make TV Shows
  
• Clueless Krugman
  
• Why Obama's Presidency Has To Be All About Race Now
  
• The New Thought Police
  
• Critical Crypto Bug Opens Two-Thirds Of The Web To Eavesdropping
  
• A Terror Way Beyond Falling
  
• The Truth About Chicago's Crime Rates
  
• Kim Jong Un Has Nork Official Executed By Flamethrower
  
• How Much Does Obamacare Actually Cost?
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:30 AM | Comments (463)
Post contains 114 words, total size 3 kb.

Happy Tuesday.

HHS makes more arbitrary changes to Obamacare to help Democrats in November.

Kathleen McKinley, who in a previous incarnation was our very own RightwingSparkle, has a piece over at the Houston Chronicle on Jeb Bush's immigration comments.

Oh, my. It seems OkCupid has a CEO problem of its own.

Folks get bent out of shape over lack of limes on airplanes. Really.

A film reboot of Battlestar Galactica is in the works again.

"I don't know why you would want to do that," says man of the expensive, but funny and easy to accomplish vandalism. No idea.

Third time in a month the WaPo's Fact Checker has given four Pinocchios to an ad for Senate Majority PAC.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (198)
Post contains 140 words, total size 2 kb.

Well due to power and network issues I'm cut off from my prepared ONT and usual links. Which means you get the detritus that I just happen to have open at the moment. Enjoy!

Richard Fernandez: The Cold Civil War Has Begin

Much of the shock following the removal of Brendan Eich from the position of Mozilla CEO came from the realization that, in a manner of speaking, America was now at war. True it's a culture war, not a physical conflict. But if you were waiting for the moment when the Cold Civil War actually begins, this might be it.

Well if you want a culture war, I'll give you a culture war. And you will not like it.

Don't mistake my indifference towards your cause as acceptance or tolerance in any way, shape, or form of your fascist means.

Mozilla Has Rights. Just Like Hobby Lobby.

Thank You Michelle Obama!

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:46 PM | Comments (518)
Post contains 615 words, total size 8 kb.