Loose Ends
December 8, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Lately I’ve been saying “Things are going to get worse before they get worse,” and while I still think that is true, today the stars have aligned to bring us a bunch of cheering news. • Starting with a strike today by 1,000 New York Times employees, which can only improve the product. One of the striking employees is Nicole Hannah-Jones, impresario of the egregious 1619 Project, but how can
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December 4, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• John Yoo, currently back over in Italy—again—for yet another academic junket, passes along the following story by email from Rome: I was sitting in the Lufthansa lounge in Munich airport on my way to Rome just now. Up comes a tall German-looking fellow. Q: Are you John Yoo? John: Yes. Q: I listen to your podcast! John: Really? In Germany? Q: No! In Finland! John: What??? How??? Q: I
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November 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• I didn’t think any other politician (except perhaps John Fetterman) could make Joe Biden sound like a MENSA member, but behold Canada’s Justin Trudeau, at a recent parliamentary hearing: “Using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worrisome” • Guess what’s racist now? Fossils. The rise of scientific racism in palaeoanthropology A forensic anthropologist unmasks insidious interpretations of fossil finds. . . . The
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November 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Some questions about the whole FTX implosion. There is likely to be a new rush for Congress to enact some kind of regulation of the crypto world. But maybe we should look first to see what existing laws and regulations either failed or were flouted. After the Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate catastrophes back around 2001, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, imposing strict new regulations on accounting and corporate financial
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November 1, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• It’s still early in the morning out here on the Left Coast, but I declare David Deeble to be the Winner of the Day on Twitter: If you’re a fan, don’t be a free-rider: hit up David’s tip jar at BuyMeACoffee. • It turns out that even The Simpsons understands the joke of “renewable” energy (2 min long): • This is either some kind of Twilight Zone LARPing, or
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October 31, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• So in an utterly predictable development, the radical feminist lawyer Gloria Allred has brought forth a woman who claims that Herschel Walker drove her to an abortion clinic after she got pregnant. But given that few people are more fervently pro-abortion than Allred, I don’t see what her problem is. • Lemme get this straight: the same people who have been screaming for the last six years that Trump
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October 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• So another group of climatista goons have attempted to deface a painting in a museum, this time a Monet in Germany: Activists who just threw food on a Monet painting say we won’t be able to feed ourselves in 2050 bc of climate change, but the best-available UN science predicts *higher* yields — unless we stop using fertilizer, which is what the activists are demanding pic.twitter.com/f893ZNfvuN — Michael Shellenberger
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October 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Isn’t Brandon having an ice cream cone redundant, since he obviously suffers brain freeze already? • One of these days you’d think our culture would get over seeking out celebrities and entertainers as sources of how to think about. . . well, anything. As Stan Evans liked to joke, “Whenever there is a new and urgent political issue, I want to know what celebrities think. I want to hear
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October 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• This will be a stale visual by next Saturday’s TWiP, so here it is now: • More seriously on the sports front, the current expanded major league baseball playoff format is providing a grand example of why the Burkean disposition against innovation (sorry Lucretia!) is sensible. The teams that got first-round byes because of their winning records (such as the Dodgers with 111 wins) have fallen ignominiously in the
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October 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Can someone explain to me the difference between “lived experience” and “experience”? Isn’t all experience “lived”? Is “lived experience” some kind of extra-super-dooper kind of experience, special to that extra-special class of people known as “millennials”? Isn’t this ubiquitous phrase redundant—yet another example of linguistic inflation that turns a clear term like “library” into “learning resource center”? I earnestly wish “lived” experience would die. • October turns out to
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October 4, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• I never really gave close attention to when OPEC became OPEC+, and don’t really understand why the + was added. Why not just expand OPEC and be done with it? Is OPEC+ the fossil energy equivalent of LBGTQ++? If the + indicates some indeterminate status for OPEC members, maybe OPEC should change its name to “Organization of Prevaricating Equity Consultants”? That at least would get them welcomed at faculty
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October 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Last week the California Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that bees are “fish” for purposes of the Endangered Species Act and other water regulations. This is what happens when you appoint jurists who are not biologists. • Are we already headed into a worldwide recession/depression? —News item: OPEC+ is set to consider Wednesday its sharpest production cut since the start of the pandemic to help prop up
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September 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Like the best comedy, there’s a serious point behind this David Deeble observation: No doubt the expert explicators of the hermeneutics of neoliberalism will have an explanation for this. Or perhaps leftists are just plain crazy. • Speaking of predictable leftist twitter mob actions, the New York Times reports on the about-face of the film world when an acclaimed documentary film with a sympathetic portrayal of jihadist detainees at Guantanamo,
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September 19, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• I have to begin with a personal note today, about the passing of Mal Kline. Mal was (I think) the last senior editorial director for M. Stanton Evans at the National Journalism Center, and was one of the most useful sources for my recent biography of Stan. He had gone on from NJC to run Accuracy in Academia, where he invited me to speak several times back when I
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September 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• What could be worse than a documentary about . . . the Lincoln Project? How about a five-part documentary about the Lincoln Project! That’s what Showtime is bringing us, and I know you just can’t wait for this undoubtedly riveting production. Directed by Fisher Stevens (“Dirty Money”) and Karim Amer (“The Vow”), the five-part docuseries explores how the Lincoln Project, the fastest-growing super PAC in America made up of
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September 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Such a lot going on right now: another racism hoax, dubious baseball rules changes, the collapse of Western Civilization . . . in other words, the usual. Time for a quick roundup. • Oberlin College is finally going to pay up the $36 million it owes to Gibson’s Bakery. There isn’t the slightest hint of an apology from Oberlin in their statement announcing that they have decided to honor a
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August 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• One small bit of good news: A federal judge has permanently enjoined the Biden Administration’s attempted lawless revocation of oil and gas leasing on some federal lands: U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump nominee, ruled late Thursday that the federal government may not stop issuing leases on federal lands and waters in accordance with the pause Biden ordered during his first week in office. Doughty’s order said federal
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