FRIDAY!!

Hawaii law allows undercover police officers to have sex with prostitutes.

Daily Caller's Alax Pappa's had a sit down with Sen. Paul. Among a great deal of discussion about civil liberties and the NSA, he'd like folks to know that he does not have identical positions as his father.

Obama at Democratic fundraiser: "In midterms, we get clobbered."

I just this week came across this. Why didn't somebody tell me? more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (355)
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The Vela Incident

While the search for MH370 continues in the Southern Indian Ocean, it's a reminder that this area of Earth is quite remote from...well anywhere. It's far from any major populated areas, doesn't get much shipping traffic and has deep waters. Which makes it perfect for doing things that you'd rather not have anyone find out about.

This could be disposing of a passenger jet or say testing something out that you'd like to keep hush-hush. Like say a nuclear test.

The Vela Incident - sometimes referred to as the South Atlantic Flash - was an unidentified "double flash" of light detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on September 22, 1979, near the Prince Edward Islands off Antarctica, which many believe was of nuclear origin. The most widespread theory among those who believe the flash was of nuclear origin is that it resulted from a joint South African and Israeli nuclear test. The topic remains highly disputed today.

...The "double flash" was detected on September 22, 1979, at 00:53 GMT, by the American Vela satellite 6911, which carried various sensors designed specifically to detect nuclear explosions that contravened the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The satellite reported the characteristic double flash of a small atmospheric nuclear explosion of two to three kilotons, in the Indian Ocean between The Crozet Islands (a very small, sparsely inhabited French possession) and the Prince Edward Islands which belong to South Africa at 47°S 40°E. The previous 41 double flashes the Vela satellites detected were all subsequently confirmed to be nuclear explosions.[7]

Despite the official US declaration that the satellite's detection was inconclusive, it's widely believed that the flash was in fact a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test that was stronger than expected and produced a detectable flash.

Author Richard Rhodes also concludes the incident was an Israeli nuclear test, conducted in cooperation with South Africa, and that the United States administration deliberately obscured this fact in order to avoid complicating relations with South Africa.[2] Likewise, Leonard Weiss offers a number of arguments to support the test being Israeli, and claims that successive US administrations continue to cover up the test to divert unwanted attention that may portray its foreign policy in a bad light.[3] In the 2008 book The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman stated their opinion that the "double flash" was the result of a joint South African-Israeli nuclear bomb test.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:50 PM | Comments (453)
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• The Weak Side Of History
  
• Echoes Of The Past
  
• 50 States Of Obamacare Victims
  
• This Story Sounds Like Complete BS
  
• Man Uses Selfies To Protect Himself From The IRS
  
• CNN Breaks Down Zombie Plane Theory
  
• Ukrainians And Venezuelans Need Guns To Be Free
  
• Our Criminal Justice System Has Become A Crime
  
• Please Let SMOD Strike Earth Before This Happens
  
• The Hitler Model
  
• Young Invinceables Are Killing Obamacare
  
• Is This Illinoiss' Scott Walker
  
• Diplomas Vs. Dirty Jobs
  
• Which One Of You Did This
  

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:00 AM | Comments (470)
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Paul Ryan said, in an interview with Bill Bennet, “We have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities, in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”

For saying this, the left and the media (but I repeat myself) have been insisting he's a racist for ten straight days.

Rich Lowery has dug up some more racist quotes.

What notorious racist said the following? “Fewer young black and Latino men participate in the labor force compared to young white men. And all of this translates into higher unemployment rates and poverty rates as adults.

“In troubled neighborhoods all across this country—many of them heavily African American—too few of our citizens have role models to guide them.”

“We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households…. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.”

“We know young black men are twice as likely as young white men to be ‘disconnected’—not in school, not working.”

Have you figured out which incorrigible dog-whistling racist made such vicious comments about inner city dysfunctions?

Hint: His initials are "BHO," and when he said things like this, he was hailed as a truth-telling, post-partisan Savior of Mankind.

Related: David Harsanyi questions the reductive, racial claim made by progressives that Asians vote Democratic mostly because they're upset by "microaggressions" that people they psychically know to be conservative lodge at them, "microaggressions" sometimes taking the form of the question, "Where were you born?"

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (309)
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Via @doreenhdixon.

That's a lot of dogs. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:11 PM | Comments (433)
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Remember this guy? He skipped out of work constantly, and, at one point, collected a steady paycheck despite not showing up for work for a year and a half.

Between 2000 and 2012, Beale skipped work for at least 616 days. But his fraud wasnÂ’t discovered until last year when it was found out that he was still getting paid for a year and a half but hadnÂ’t shown up for work in that whole time. Under McCarthy, Beale missed at least 18 consecutive months of work, costing taxpayers more than $239,000.

He covered his absences by claiming he was working for top men in the CIA.

Who?

Top. Men.

But despite his chronic absenteeism, he did manage to do Big Things when he troubled himself to show up at work.

A report by Senate Republicans contends that the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory “playbook” was written by known agency fraudster John Beale, who put into place major air quality regulations that set the stage for “the exponential growth of the agency’s power over the American economy.”

...

“This report will reveal that within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), some officials making critically important policy decisions were not remotely qualified, anything but neutral, and in at least one case — EPA decision making was delegated to a now convicted felon and con artist, John Beale,” wrote Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

...

“Together, Brenner and Beale implemented a plan, which this report refers to as ‘EPA’s Playbook,’” the senators continued. “The Playbook includes several tools first employed in the 1997 process, including sue-and-settle arrangements with a friendly outside group, manipulation of science, incomplete cost-benefit analysis reviews, heavy-handed management of interagency review processes, and capitalizing on information asymmetry, reinforced by resistance to transparency. Ultimately, the guiding principal behind the Playbook is the Machiavellian principal that the ends will justify the means.”

By the way, Beale got his job through a friend.

It's nice and friendly to have nice and friendly friends working nicely in the government.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (393)
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Eh, kind of fun.

All the site does is to take the IMDB ratings for each episode of a show, and plot those ratings on a graph, noting the trendline (increasing, decreasing, or stable viewer ratings) season-by-season.

But it's kind of fun to see a new way of presenting Things You Already Know.*

For example, I already thought Person of Interest did a very good job of building to each season's mid-winter break and end-of-season climax. The usual season has about eight episodes about the building meta-plot of the season (the so-called "Big Bad"), and maybe twelve crime-of-the-week episodes. The crime-of-the-week episodes vary in quality, as you'd guess, but overall, people aren't watching the show for them. At best they're good, but not great. (At worst, they're a big waste of time, but that's true of any tv show.)

People are watching for the Big Developments about the characters and the escalating conflicts with long-running villains on the show.

The graph shows you what you already knew: Yup, the shows get better through each season, getting very good indeed before the winter break and then the end of the whole season.

And the graphs also tell you that Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which, I think, created the "Big Bad" structure of a season) also managed the same escalation, year in, year out.

The graphs tell you other things you already knew, like the fact that Seinfeld peaked in season 3, stayed pretty good for a number of seasons, and then really fell off in quality in the last season and especially that hated last episode.

Like I said, it's fun to learn things you already knew. So much more fun than learning new things.

But sometimes the graphs surprise you. @benk84 notes a show that was cancelled just as it was getting ready to take off into the stratosphere.

* I've long said there should be a specific word for "the somewhat shameful pleasure in 'learning' facts you already knew." Like, take Shark Week. Is there any shark fan out there who doesn't know that the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias) is sometimes called "the white death"?

And yet, we all watch Shark Week every year to hear the same basic things we already know.

There's a little thrill -- it's kind of shameful, but it's real -- in knowing the narrator is going to say "sometimes called 'The White Death'" in the next five minutes, and another shameful thrill in hearing him say it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (321)
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Like they say: Look around the table and see if you can spot the mark. If you can't find the mark, you're the mark.

When asked about this, Jay Carney denied being given questions in advance.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is denying a television news reporter's claim that reporters often 'provide the questions to him in advance,' before his daily briefings, and that he sometimes provides answers on paper before taking the podium.

'If only this were true,' Carney told MailOnline Thursday morning.

Jay Carney really knocked that answer out of the park with his cheeky, ironic answer.

But then again, he was given that question in advance, So.

[T]he White House was quick to dismiss her account of what Carney said. Carney himself tweeted a second denial after this report was first published.

Well, that's the end of this story then. Lord knows the White House has never lied to me before.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (437)
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Gabe mentioned this on the podcast last night.

Volokh discusses it.

First, the assault itself, as reported by the Santa Barbara Independent:

Joan said that at around 11 a.m., Dr. Mireille Miller-Young — an associate professor with UCSB’s Feminist Studies Department — approached the demonstration site and exchanged heated words with the group, taking issue with their pro-life proselytizing and use of disturbing photographs. Joan claimed Miller-Young, accompanied by a few of her students, led the gathering crowd in a chant of “Tear down the sign! Tear down the sign!” before grabbing one of the banners and walking with it across campus.

Joan said she called 9-1-1 and Thrin started filming, and that the pair followed Miller-Young and two of her students … into nearby South Hall. As Miller-Young and the students boarded an elevator, Joan said that Thrin repeatedly blocked the door with her hand and foot and that Miller-Young continually pushed her back. Miller-Young then exited the elevator and tried to yank Thrin away from the door while the students attempted to take her smartphone. “As Thrin tried to get away, the professor’s fingernails left bloody scratches on her arms,” Joan claimed. The struggle ended when Thrin relented, Miller-Young walked off, the students rode up in the elevator, and officers arrived to interview those involved.

This video shows some of the incident, but not the beginning. The video picks up after Miller-Young has already stolen Joan's sign, and walks off with the spoils of war flanked by two Harpy Robots. But later in the video, the woman recording all this on her cell phone follows them into an elevator, and that woman is pushed out of the elevator by Miller-Young.

A police report (viewable at Volokh) explains the proposed legal defense:

At about 1500 hours, I spoke to Miller-Young by telephone. I recorded my conversation with Miller-Young on my digital voice recorder.

In essence, Miller-Young told me that she felt “triggered” by the images on the posters. Miller-Young stated that she had been walking through the Arbor to get back to South Hall. Miller-Young said she was approached by people who gave her literature about abortion. Miller-Young said that she found this literature and pictures disturbing. Miller-Young said that she found this material offensive because she teaches about women’s “reproductive rights” and is pregnant. She said an argument ensued about the graphic nature of these images.

Miller-Young said that she situation became “passionate” and that other students in the area were “triggered” in a negative way by the imagery. Miller-Young said that she and others began demanding that the images be taken down. Miller-Young said that the demonstrators refused.

We actually discussed the theory of "triggering" two weeks ago on the podcast ("triggering" was the reason we innovated the Chill Groove Infotainment Format). Apparently it has become de rigeur among the academic left to include big WARNING SIGNS on all articles or images which may "trigger" an emotional response in the highly emotional. For example, an article about the practice of cutting may "trigger" a response from someone with a history of cutting; an article about rape may "trigger" a response from a rape victim.

But even feminists are complaining that this practice has been taken too far and become oppressive, as some highly-wound students are demanding "trigger" warnings even for class syllabi.

Trigger warnings in online spaces, though, have expanded widely and become more intricate, detailed, specific and obscure. Trigger warnings, and their cousin the "content note", are now included for a whole slew of potentially offensive or upsetting content, including but not limited to: misogyny, the death penalty, calories in a food item, terrorism, drunk driving, how much a person weighs, racism, gun violence, Stand Your Ground laws, drones, homophobia, PTSD, slavery, victim-blaming, abuse, swearing, child abuse, self-injury, suicide, talk of drug use, descriptions of medical procedures, corpses, skulls, skeletons, needles, discussion of "isms," neuroatypical shaming, slurs (including "stupid" or "dumb"), kidnapping, dental trauma, discussions of sex (even consensual), death or dying, spiders, insects, snakes, vomit, pregnancy, childbirth, blood, scarification, Nazi paraphernalia, slimy things, holes and "anything that might inspire intrusive thoughts in people with OCD".

...

College, though, is different. It is not a feminist blog. It is not a social justice Tumblr.

College... is, hopefully, a space where the student is challenged and sometimes frustrated and sometimes deeply upset, a place where the student's world expands and pushes them to reach the outer edges – not a place that contracts to meet the student exactly where they are.

Which doesn't mean that individual students should not be given mental health accommodations.... But generalized trigger warnings aren't so much about helping people with PTSD as they are about a certain kind of performative feminism: they're a low-stakes way to use the right language to identify yourself as conscious of social justice issues. Even better is demanding a trigger warning – that identifies you as even more aware, even more feminist, even more solicitous than the person who failed to adequately provide such a warning.

Well, sure, it's about that; it's also simply about controlling other people, asserting a privilege which creates an obligation in other people to behave in certain way.

All these different mutations of leftwing theorizing claim different bases and chains of (such as it is) reasoning, but they all are in service of the exact same conclusions:

1. Some people are privileged and have greater rights, and also have greater levels of civic/social obligations owed to them by other people.

2. Some people are disfavored and have lesser rights, and also are owed less in terms of civic/social obligations. (Apparently you can even commit a low-level assault against them if the whim strikes you, for example.)

3. The Privileged have the right and power to use the machinery of all institutions, governmental, private, or in-between, to enforce their curious and quixotic sense of reality upon the Disfavored.

It is this last one that keeps institutions from, for example, prosecuting people for filing fake, fraudulent police reports alleging "hate crimes" of one sort or another. They're entitled to do this, you see.

All of these arguments have a very simple goal: To prove that we're not equal in the eyes of the law, or, as the man once said, some of us are more equal than others.

This is the first time, though, that I've seen this new four-legs-good-two-legs-better theory called "triggering" used to justify both a physical assault as well as an assault on someone's first amendment rights.

Updates: "#BanBossy" suggested by "Seems Legit."

Brak also notes that we don't need this new word "trigger." We already have a perfectly good word for "the reason someone commits a crime." That word is "motive."

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (410)
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The Right Scoop's headline is precious: CNN Smears Black Holes in Latest Bout of Wild Speculation.

The only thing I can say in Don Lemon's defense is that he was... well, he said he was trying to respond to viewer questions. Apparently some people inquired about what I will call "The Black Hole Theory of the Crime." I guess you could say he was trying to inform people or something.

Of course, as usual, he was asking a non-expert to offer her expert opinion on the question. The woman he asked this question of opined that a black whole would swallow "our entire universe," which is... well, metaphorically true, I suppose, but only that. She did not note that there are theorized to exist microscopic black holes. If you remember, there was some fear that the Large Hadron Collider would produce some of these microscopic black holes, and do significant damage to the earth. (Spoiler alert: It didn't happen. And btw, I have no idea what the destructive potential of a microscopic black hole would be.)

I mean, if you're going to "explore the question" or whatever, then explore it. It's a silly idea, but if you're going to disabuse people of silly theories about black holes swallowing planes, then have an actual expert on black holes on to explain, as a scientific matter, "Nah, bro."

Meanwhile, Australia has announced "new and credible" information about large objects floating at sea which are possibly wreckage of the plane, spotted by satellite. They've deployed planes to take a closer look.

"Verification might take some time. It is very far and it will take some time to locate and verify the objects," the source said.

Watch out for the black holes, mate. Some say there's a swarm of them.

An ABCNews report on the search for the objects, stolen from Hot Air, below.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (418)
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