Loose Ends
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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August 16, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Way to go, Biden Administration: Record Numbers of Migrants Arrested at Southern Border, With Two Million Annual Total in Sight Record numbers of migrants are being arrested while crossing the southern U.S. border with Mexico, a sustained surge of single men and families from across Latin America either seeking asylum or work, according to new figures Monday from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Border Patrol agents have made about
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August 11, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• What do the Danes know that we don’t? Denmark bans COVID vaccine for youth under 18 “Children and adolescents only very rarely become seriously ill from COVID-19 with the omicron variant. Therefore, from July 1, 2022, it will no longer be possible for children and adolescents under the age of 18 to get the 1st [shot], and from September 1, 2022, it will no longer be possible to get
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August 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• S0—what’d I miss? • Feel good story of the week: Vox Media lays off 39 people amid economic uncertainty Vox Media is laying off 39 people, less than 2% of its total staff of more than 2000, in an effort to get ahead of economic uncertainty, according to a source familiar with the cuts and a memo obtained by Axios. Why it matters: Vox Media is the latest in
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July 24, 2022 — Steven Hayward
A few stray notes from the pub while a line of rain passes through. . . • So the Feds have stepped in and slapped more serious criminal charges on the Democratic nutjob who assaulted New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin after local officials filed minor charges released the perp hours after his arrest. Likely someone high up in the White House recognized what a bad look it is
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June 20, 2022 — Steven Hayward
There’s a whole lot of crazy going on this week, and it’s only Monday. • The latest issue of the New York Review of Books, which I read so that you don’t have to (it’s opposition research) always offer a fill of amusement. There’s a James Mann review of yet another new book on Robert Welch and the John Birch Society, and you can just guess the theme of the
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June 15, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Today in Wokery: The only surprise about this story is that it took two weeks to happen: The World Health Organization will officially rename monkeypox, in light of concerns about stigma and racism surrounding the virus that has infected over 1,600 people in more than two dozen countries. . . More than 30 international scientists said last week that the monkeypox label is discriminatory and stigmatizing, and there’s an
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