GEORGE LUCAS APOLOGIZES FOR ‘WHITE SLAVERS’ REMARK ABOUT DISNEY:

Lucas has expressed conflicting feelings about selling the “Star Wars” franchise to Disney for $4 billion in 2012.

He and Disney had different visions for the future of the franchise, which helped him make the decision to move on, though he still refers to the “Star Wars” movies as his “kids.”

“I loved them, I created them, I am very intimately involved in them,” Lucas told [Charlie Rose] about the franchise.

Lucas then quipped: “I sold them to the white slavers that takes these things, and…” Lucas trailed off with a laugh and didn’t finish his sentence.

Gee, as opposed to your kids being conscripted into the Vietcong, the inspiration for the original Star Wars?

Related: Man who pockets four billion dollar golden parachute bemoans evils of “capitalist society.”

MILO YIANNOPOULOS: “I can’t help but share this amazing anonymous smackdown of the odious cult of social justice with readers. It’s currently doing the rounds on Twitter and reddit.”

AMAZON PRIME VIDEO ADDS THE WORLD AT WAR: I’m not sure when the 26-part 1973 series was added to the free programming available to those with an Amazon Prime account, but I noticed it on the roster for the first time while clicking through the Amazon video applet on the Roku box earlier this month. 20 years before the launch of the History Channel, the World At War played frequently on American TV in the mid-to-late 1970s. But for those who’ve never seen it, it’s arguably the best video introduction to World War II that’s ever been released. Produced by Thames Television beginning in 1969, the series featured the sonorous narration of Lawrence Olivier, powerful background music, loads of newsreel footage, and most importantly, interviews with all sides — soldiers who were still only in their 40s, and surviving former world leaders and politicians. (Contrast that with today’s History Channel documentaries, which struggle to find surviving WWII infantrymen who are now in their late 80s and 90s.

We’re very lucky that the World At War has been grandfathered into today’s world of PC history — just imagine how today’s SJWs and their love of both the airbrush and Black Armband History would have told the story of WWII. As I wrote back in 2013 in my introduction to Civilisation, another landmark British TV documentary series produced shortly before The World At War (and equally impossible for the left to make today):

The World At War was made at the perfect time — television documentary techniques were sufficiently developed by 1969 when production on the series began to tell the story properly, and it was only a quarter century after WWII concluded, and enough survivors were still around, still sharp, and able to appear on camera. But of equal importance is that it was made before political correctness had sapped the cultural confidence of the West. If the BBC or Thames’ successor network were to remake the The World at War today, it would have a very different tone to it, probably far closer to Oliver Stone’s “Springtime for Hitler and Stalin” Showtime series than the BBC would care to admit.

Also, the interviews and the contemporary non-newsreel footage were shot in color. We take that entirely for granted now, but when the show first went into production, color TV was still a new phenomenon to many English viewers; BBC2 had only begun broadcasting in color in 1967, and BBC1 not until 1969. It’s tough to conceive of something like Monty Python‘s Flying Circus as being shot in black and white, but as late as 1967, its immediate predecessor, a show with the classic title of At Last, the 1948 Show, was a monochrome production.

Of course, the one problem with The World At War is that those who need to see the series the most will likely never watch it:

I ASKED STEPHEN GREEN ABOUT THIS AND HE SAID, “WATER?” Should You Filter Your Water? “Using the right water filter can help further reduce pollutants like lead from old water pipes, pesticide runoff in rural areas and byproducts of chemicals like chlorine that are used to treat drinking water. Radon, arsenic and nitrates are common pollutants in drinking water, and trace amounts of drugs including antibiotics and hormones have also been found. Certain filters may help remove these impurities as well.”

IT’S ABOUT JUSTICE DON WILLETT, NATCH: Tweeter Laureate rocks social media from judicial post.

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARENTHESES STATES: California, Leading from Behind, Victor Davis Hanson writes:

California somehow has managed to have the fourth-highest gas taxes in the nation, yet its roads are rated 44th among the 50 states. Nearly 70 percent of California roads are considered to be in poor or mediocre condition by the state senate. In response, the state legislature naturally wants to raise gas taxes, with one proposal calling for an increase of 12 cents per gallon, which would give California the highest gas taxes in the nation.

Because oil prices have crashed, state bureaucrats apparently believe that the public won’t notice the tax increase in their fill-up costs* – even though special California fuel mandates already help make gas prices 25 percent higher than the national average.

Consider California’s upside-down logic.

The state wanted to discourage driving and promote hybrid vehicles by upping taxes on carbon fuels. It worked, though it cost the public dearly. People drove less and bought more fuel-efficient cars. But now, because less gas is burned, fewer taxes are collected. So the state wants to reward motorists for their green sacrifices by raising their taxes even higher to make up for missing revenue. If state motorists drive even less and cram into two-seat commuter cars, will California further reward them with even higher gas taxes?

Meanwhile, in the other big blue parenthesis state, “Cigarette tax revenue plunges as smokers buy outside New York:”

New York state cigarette tax collections have plunged by about $400 million over the past five years…sales of taxed cigs in New York are off by 54 percent in the past decade, which is also cutting into the profits of local store owners peddling smokes. In that same period, about 19 percent of New Yorkers stopped smoking, a pace well below the huge sales dip.

“The Germans call it ‘schadenfreude’ when you take pleasure from another person’s misfortune,” noted Dan Mitchell, a tax expert at the Washington DC-based Cato Institute, commenting on the New York smoking tax fiasco.

Mitchell added, “I confess that I get a certain joy from this story because politicians are being punished for their greed. I like the fact that they have less money to waste.”

To paraphrase VDH’s conclusion, both states have governments that ultimately serve one purpose — reminding Americans what not to do.

*And they’re counting on their Democrat operatives with bylines not to point that out — who are all too eager to follow their marching orders.

YESTERDAY’S POST ON EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS BROUGHT THIS RECOMMENDATION FROM A READER: Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country: How to Save Your Home, Business, and Life.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

● “Obama: Nihilist or Just Incompetent?”

—Victor Davis Hanson, October 4th, 2015.

● “Obama to Seinfeld: ‘I Always Wanted To Be In a Show About Nothing.’”

—Tammy Bruce.com, yesterday.

“IT’S TIME TO SAY NO TO OUR PAMPERED STUDENT EMPERORS* — The Rhodes statue row can be blamed on a generation raised to believe that their feelings are all that matter,” British columnist Harry Mount writes in the London Telegraph:

The little emperors have grown up. The babies of the late 90s – mollycoddled by their parents, spoon-fed by their teachers, indulged by society – have now reached university. Some of the brighter ones are now at Oxford, demanding that the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel should be torn down, because of his imperialist, racist views.

We shouldn’t be so surprised. If you’ve had a lifetime of people saying “yes” to you, of never being told off, you remain frozen in a permanent state of supersensitivity. I wasn’t offended by the Rhodes statue when I was at Oxford 20 years ago. But, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have thought my wounded feelings should be cured by tearing apart the delicate fabric of a beautiful university.

Universities are reaping the whirlwind of two decades of child-centred education. That whirlwind has imported imbecilic trigger warnings – when academics have to warn students that western European literature, from the Iliad on, is full of sex and violence. It has also brought the pernicious idea of “no-platforming” – when students refuse to give a stage to anyone who doesn’t fit with their narrow view of the world.

Read the whole thing.

Related: “Remy: Students United! Collegians everywhere are asking tough questions: Why is our tuition so high? Where are our jobs? Can’t you see your words hurt me, you dumb piece of sh*t?”

* Personally, I prefer Iowahawk’s “Screaming Campus Garbage Babies” description, but perhaps that’s too provocative a characterization for the Telegraph.

“THAT’S NICE [SINCE] SHE HELPED DESTROY THEIR COUNTRY:” “Samantha Power, United States ambassador to the United Nations, wants to welcome refugees into the country with open arms. The next time you think you’re being clever by asking Power how many Syrian refugee families she’s taken in, keep in mind that she’s taken in one family more than you have — for dinner and a photo-op — and just might have them back for her Super Bowl party.”

DUBAI INFERNO: FLAMES SHOOT UP 63-STORY HOTEL. “As some million people packed Dubai for the emirate’s notoriously spectacular New Year’s fireworks displays, an inferno lit up a 63-story luxury hotel downtown,” Bridget Johnson writes at PJM. “Witnesses said the fire broke out at about 9:30 p.m. local time on the lower third of the building and spread quickly. The hotel was evacuated and there were no immediate reports of injuries.”

No victims? Well, that’s what they want you to think, Allahpundit conjectures. “From what I saw, the blown-out parts ran around 10 stories high and a good 10 or so windows across. (The hotel is 63 stories tall and not quite 1,000 feet high.) Unless literally everyone inside the hotel was out on the streets celebrating New Year’s Eve, there are victims.”

So what caused it? “One Twitter user captured an image showing only a very small fire at the start; local authorities tell CNN that it started on the exterior of the 20th floor. Could fireworks from the ground have misfired? Stay tuned,” he writes, adding in an update, “One reason to think this might be accidental rather than arson is that the hotel is near the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. If you were a terrorist or pyromaniac looking to maximize the impact of your crime, wouldn’t you target the Burj instead?”

In February, a fire devastated another Dubai skyscraper, a 79-story residential structure with 676 apartments carrying an unfortunate moniker — “The Torch.”

As Nathan Wurtzel remarked on Twitter concerning the two fires, “We can make one assumption, but don’t rule out the sh**ty construction assumption.”

SPACE: Speculation on Spacex Mars Colonization Transport.

I DON’T WANT YOU DYING IN A FIRE: At Amazon, Deals on Kidde Products. I have, by the way, a CO₂ fire extinguisher for my kitchen, because the dry-chemical kind make a mess.

Also, New Year, New You.

REMEMBER THE 1990s? IT WAS IN ALL THE PAPERS:

Shot: Hewitt Schools [CNN's Don Lemon] on Need for Trump, GOP to Educate Millenials on Bill Clinton Sex Scandals.

—Headline, NewsBusters, Tuesday.

Chaser: “‘Is that right? Fourteen??’ That’s Alisyn Camerota, 1:21 into the video clip. The shock and incredulity in the voice of the CNN host is stupendous! Yes, who could possibly imagine that, as CNN commentator Errol Louis stated, there are 14 women who could potentially make allegations of improprieties against Bill Clinton.”

—NewsBusters, today.

MARK RIPPETOE: The First Three Questions.

TWO STEPS CLOSER TO A QUANTUM INTERNET.

I WON’T SAY THAT BIOETHICS IS AN ENTIRELY USELESS FIELD, BUT THE EVIDENCE LEANS THAT WAY: Standing Athwart Science, Yelling ‘Whoa’: I’m a bioethicist, and I am here to help slow down scientific and medical progress.

21ST CENTURY RESEARCH: Sex in the name of science: what we can learn from studying intercourse. “Who volunteers to have sex in a laboratory? I was struck by this question when reading about an experimental study of ideal sexual positions for men with back pain. For the purpose of the research, couples were filmed using motion capture and infra-red technology while they had sex.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Playing the ‘Bill card’ against Hillary: It’s what she gets for playing the ‘war on women card’ against Trump.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITORS OF STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. “The thing about having so many characters with masks on, is that even without re-shooting, you can change the content of the scenes with new lines [recorded after the original shoot and dubbed in]. And with characters who are CG or motion capture, you can change what they’re saying.”

IN THE MAIL: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime: Comfort Classics, Freezer Food, 16-Minute Meals, and Other Delicious Ways to Solve Supper!

Plus, today only at Amazon: Save 64% on P90X Base Kit.

And, also today only: $5 Magazines: As Low as $.50/Issue.

Plus: Save 35% on these Sony Noise-Canceling Wired Headphones.

And: 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime, Up to 80% Off Select Titles on Kindle.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 966.

PRIORITIES: Just after worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11, Obama tapes show with comedian. “The two taped the segment at the White House on Dec. 7 — the day after Obama delivered a televised prime-time address on terrorism. Though Seinfeld taped footage around Washington for two days, the president never actually left the grounds of the White House with him.”

RACISM: From NYC to Harvard: the war on Asian success.

The outrage is that instead of embracing the example of these Asian families, school authorities and non-Asian parents want to rig the system to hold them back. It’s happening here in New York City, in suburban New Jersey and across the nation.

As a group, Americans need to take a page from the Asian parents’ playbook. American teens rank a dismal 28th in math and science knowledge, compared with teens in other countries — even poor countries. Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are at the top.

We’ve slumped. For the first time in 25 years, US scores on the main test for elementary and middle school education fell. And SAT scores for college-bound students dropped significantly.

Could changes in these tests be to blame? That convenient excuse was torpedoed by the stellar performances of Asian-American students. Even though many come from poor or immigrant families, they outscore all other students by large margins on both tests, and their lead keeps widening.

Here in New York City, Asian-Americans make up 13 percent of students, yet they win more than half of the coveted places each year at the city’s selective public high schools, such as Bronx Science and Stuyvesant.

What’s at play here? It’s not a difference in IQ; it’s parenting. That’s confirmed by a recent study by sociologists from City University of New York and the University of Michigan, which showed that parental oversight enabled Asian-American students to far outperform the others.

No wonder many successful charter schools require parents to sign a pledge that they’ll supervise their children’s homework and encourage a strong work ethic.

That formula is under fire at the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District in New Jersey. The district, which is 65 percent Asian, routinely produces seniors with perfect SAT scores, admissions to MIT and top prizes in international science competitions.

Why are Democrat-run institutions and cities such hotbeds of anti-Asian racism?

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: IRS Employee Whose Job Was Assisting Victims Of Identity Theft Charged In $1 Million Identity Theft Tax Fraud.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

THERE IS NO RACIST LIKE AN ANTIRACIST, writes Theodore Dalrymple. “That is because he is obsessed by race, whose actual existence as often as not he denies. He looks at the world through race-tinted spectacles, interprets every event or social phenomenon as a manifestation of racism either implicit or explicit, and in general has the soul of a born inquisitor.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

THE 2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS “TRULY TOOK A VILLAGE:” New York magazine interviews Michael Burry, “the economic soothsayer portrayed by Christian Bale” in the film adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short. Kate McMillan of Small Dead Animals linked to his interview via the sentence we’re also quoting above in the headline:

The postcrisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it. And if I take it, I better understand all the terms, because there is no such thing as free money. That is just basic personal responsibility and common sense. The enablers for this crisis were varied, and it starts not with the bank but with decisions by individuals to borrow to finance a better life, and that is one very loaded decision. This crisis was such a bona fide 100-year flood that the entire world is still trying to dig out of the mud seven years later. Yet so few took responsibility for having any part in it, and the reason is simple: All these people found others to blame, and to that extent, an unhelpful narrative was created. Whether it’s the one percent or hedge funds or Wall Street, I do not think society is well served by failing to encourage every last American to look within. This crisis truly took a village, and most of the villagers themselves are not without some personal responsibility for the circumstances in which they found themselves.

Was that last sentence a Freudian slip, or a deliberately underplayed comment referencing both the administration who gave the dominoes the biggest push and the woman who is now running for her husband’s old office?

Add the 2008 crisis to Clinton letting Osama bin Laden go a decade earlier and ABC doing its damnedest to bury this story, and much of the past 14 years can be seen as a hangover from the excesses of the Clinton administration — or at least it would be, if the MSM had any desire whatsoever to craft that narrative.

COLLEGE SPORTS BOOM, MINORITIES HARDEST HIT: Mother Jones: Racists Hate the Idea of Paying College Athletes.

I’m in favor of paying them, but I’m in more favor of simply abolishing college athletics. If the NFL and NBA want farm teams let the build their own.

TOP 6 MILITARY MISSTEPS OF 2015: “The U.S. military rightly remains one of the most respected of American institutions — our armed forces are as professional as they come. But let’s be honest, over the last year, the stewardship of the service has had its share of missteps.”

Read the whole thing.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: In Dallas, Armed Libertarians Openly Defy Law To Feed, Clothe Homeless.

TRUMP AND SANDERS BREAK THE MOLD FOR POPULIST POLITICIANS, Jonah Goldberg writes. “Populism is typically born in places like Nebraska, Louisiana, Kansas, and the other places given short shrift in that famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cartoon showing the view of the world from Ninth Avenue. It’s not supposed to hail from Brooklyn or Queens, never mind Burlington, Vermont, or midtown Manhattan. But that’s where the two reigning populists of the 2016 cycle call home.”

But there is some overlap in the two men, who share a few of leitmotifs sounded by the left-leaning “Progressive” populists of old:

If you can ignore the fact that he’s a billionaire who brags about having been part of the corrupt political system he promises to overthrow, Trump resembles some of the great populists of yesteryear. He’s a nationalist who promises to restore the country to the greatness his followers nostalgically desire. He’s a nativist whose one core issue is stopping illegal immigration — and now any immigration of Muslims, “temporarily.” And he’s a consummate panderer — or, if you prefer, “fighter” — who channels and validates his supporters’ frustrations. As the fictionalized Huey Long character Willie Stark says in the novel All the King’s Men: “Your will is my strength. Your need is my justice.” Long promised to make “every man a king.” Trump promises to make everyone a winner.

Sanders, meanwhile, is all about populist economics — literally. With the exception of his pacifism, he is almost incapable of talking about anything else. But his worldview would be totally recognizable to William Jennings Bryan or Long or even Father Charles Coughlin. According to populist economics, the rich exploit the poor and the middle class intentionally. They leech off their hard work, and they send them to war.

The proper role for populist-run government is to make the puppet masters pay, literally and figuratively. Our economy is “designed by the wealthiest people in this country to benefit the wealthiest people in this country at the expense of everybody else,” Sanders insists. The “billionaire class” has rigged it all, and he’s so angry about it, he often seems more interested in tearing down the rich than building up the poor. (To borrow a Seinfeldian phrase, Sanders sounds like an old man sending back soup at a deli.)

This is one place where Sanders and Trump overlap. They want to make the people ruining this country pay. Sanders wants to impose a cartoonish “speculation” tax on Wall Street; Trump wants to make the Mexicans pay for the wall that will keep them out.

But as Glenn has written in USA Today, as with the rise of the populists of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century, “Trump and Sanders are just symptoms. The real disease is in the ruling class that takes such important subjects out of political play, in its own interest.”

BUT IT PROBABLY WON’T BE, UNTIL 2017 AT THE EARLIEST: Why ISIS Needs to Be Destroyed Now.

JESSE SINGAL: Why Some of the Worst Attacks on Social Science Have Come From Liberals:

This should stand as a wake-up call, as a rebuke to the smugness that sometimes infects progressive beliefs about who “respects” science more. After all, what both the Bailey and Chagnon cases have in common — alongside some of the others in Galileo’s Middle Finger — is the extent to which groups of progressive self-appointed defenders of social justice banded together to launch full-throated assaults on legitimate science, and the extent to which these attacks were abetted by left-leaning academic institutions and activists too scared to stand up to the attackers, often out of a fear of being lumped in with those being attacked, or of being accused of wobbly allyship.

Everyone, of any political leaning, is vulnerable to such pressures. But lefties seem to care more about belonging.

The book is Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, by Alice Dreger.

CLAUDIA ROSETT IS DESPERATELY SEEKING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY TRIUMPHS in her year-in-review article: “It sounds like a simple assignment: list 10 U.S. foreign policy triumphs of 2015. OK, make that five. Can we maybe find three? Two? After all, President Obama has pivoted to foreign policy as the centerpiece of his second term, and Secretary of State John Kerry has logged a gazillion miles of diplomatic travel, punctuated by marathon talks, capped by ‘historic’ deals. So, how’s that working out?”

Just swimmingly, if you ask Kerry or others at the State Department. Those of us in the real world though have a far grimmer view of this administration’s “accomplishments,” sadly.

A TALE OF TWO BILLS: Funny how well today’s New York Daily News cover on Bill Cosby would work just as well, by simply replacing the photo:

Related: The Professor’s latest USA Today column on “Playing the ‘Bill card’ against Hillary — It’s what she gets for playing the ‘war on women card’ against Trump.” And “Mark Steyn: Why Is Bill Cosby Finished While Bill Clinton Is Beloved?”

THE YEAR IN BIOMEDICINE.

WHERE THERE’S LIGHT, THERE IS CIVILIZATION: Tokyo Illuminations.

WHITE PRIVILEGE IN ACTION: From NYC to Harvard: the war on Asian success.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW? THERE IS CONSENSUS AFTER ALL: Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis.

JUXTAPOSITION FOR THE WIN: Feds will ring in 2016 buried in debt of $58,000 per person.
AND: Mele Kalikimaka: Taxpayer’s gift to Obama is $470,000 a day Hawaiian vacation.

AND WHAT WAS IT?  OH YEAH:

WHAT THE PUBLIC THINKS THEY KNOW: The public thinks the average company makes a 36% profit margin, which is about 5X too high.

OF COURSE, THERE IS NO CHANCE: Why Team Obama’s Israel spying should be a major scandal.

DO YOU THINK CLINTON WILL BE GENTLE? This is just the bloodletting the Republican Party needs.

FOR THE GENUINE ONES, THANK POLITICS: Thank Kim Kardashian for all the fake asses out there.

NO LONGER LOST: How a Near-Pristine 35mm Print of Orson Welles’ ‘Chimes at Midnight’ Was Found.

THIS IS GOOD TO SEE: “Mom said no,” “Only if there’s free pizza”: Muslims hilariously respond to ISIL leader’s call for recruits.

THOSE GALS OUT IN ALASKA: First female Caterpillar field mechanic in Alaska.

IS IT ME OR IS THE ATLANTIC BLAMING PRESERVATIONISTS FOR SKY HIGH RENTS IN SAN FRAN? San Francisco’s Self-Defeating Housing Activists.

BEYOND OBAMA’S FLAWED ANALOGIES: Assassin’s Screed.

WORTH CONSIDERING: I can tell you from reading my sons’ books through high school and college, that a theme throughout was “aspire to just enough.  Don’t reach for the stars.” Gaslighting the Middle Class. Of course, partly is how you look at it.  The very technology makes the world interconnected and there’s going to be a painful time of equalizing compensation throughout the world. At the same time the rising ability to work on anything anywhere does represent more individual freedom.

THE ERROR WAS ASSUMING OBAMA WANTED US TO WIN: What It Takes to Win in Afghanistan.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE FOR THE EVENING: Seventy-Five Percent of Americans Dissatisfied with Washington, D.C.

NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY: The secret of ‘Joy’ — how imaginary play can lead to genius.

It’s true that Joy, who is based on Joy Mangano (now a multimillionaire inventor of a variety of bestselling household products) does have a kind of “special power.” Nothing supernatural, though — just a great imagination and the tenacity to harness it.

But if the movie is accurate, she had access to some things that many kids today do not. She had time to herself to daydream and play and the ability to live in a world largely free of electronic distractions.

Though her mother is constantly watching soap operas, Joy is more interested in using household items — paper, tape, crayons — to invent things. Her first invention was a glow-in-the-dark flea collar to make pets more visible to cars at night.

Though Joy came from an ordinary working-class household, it turns out that her childhood shares some elements with many of the world’s creative geniuses.

In their book “Imagination and Play in the Electronic Age,” Yale researchers Dorothy Singer and Jerome Singer note, “Autobiographical reports or direct interviews conducted with eminent writers, inventors and scientists demonstrate that their early experiences with play in childhood . . . are important features of their creative process.”

They describe how we all have fleeting thoughts or daydreams, but the people later regarded as geniuses are able to pay close attention to those fantasies and harness them for innovation.

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly difficult for children to be able to engage in the kind of pretend play that previous generations enjoyed.

In an article in the January issue of The Atlantic, Yale’s Erika Christakis describes how we’re forcing kids to perform academic exercises at earlier ages and taking time away from free-form imaginative play.

Play is work for children. It’s as important as any academic work. But letting kids play on their own doesn’t generate jobs, unionized workers, or self-importance for adults, so it gets short shrift.

CARRIE LUKAS: The Bill Clinton Effect: Why Liberals Treat Women Worse.

Young progressives may only know a whitewashed version of the Clinton scandals, in which rabid conservatives tried to make a mountain out of a consensual-affair molehill. Yet the undisputed facts of the Lewinsky affair reveal a clear and classic example of a powerful man abusing women under his power and creating a hostile work environment: Clinton was a powerful executive having sexual relations with a 22-year-old intern working in his office, whom he rewarded with a taxpayer-financed job and other special treatment. None of the interns working alongside Monica got cushy job offers post-internship. That alone is supposed to be a giant red flag for those concerned about equal treatment and a harassment-free workplace.

But, of course, that was just the tip of the iceberg; Clinton was having his affair with Monica in the midst of an ongoing investigation into his alleged sexual harassment of a state employee (Paula Jones) during his time as Governor of Arkansas. Other women also came forward with allegations of harassment and even assault. Clinton lied about his affair with Lewinsky, at first suggesting she was delusional, both to the public and then when testifying under oath as a part of that sexual harassment suit.

Liberal women’s groups are supposed to frown on men who smear women and undermine the legal process of sexual harassment suits, and take accusations of sexual assault seriously. Yet President Clinton—a good Democrat who supported abortion rights and other feminist sacraments—was largely given a pass. Sure, some feminists murmured their disappointment with Clinton’s behavior and mouthed platitudes about Paula Jones deserving her day in court. But their criticisms were perfunctory at best. Mostly, they stood by Clinton’s side, defending him and remaining silent as he lied and slandered the women who accused him.

Compare this to the treatment of Justice Clarence Thomas. Even if one assumes that every accusation made by Anita Hill is true, Justice Thomas would at most be crass and a little boorish, but very minor-league in terms of sexual harassment compared to Clinton. Yet women’s groups and the liberal media pounded Thomas, almost derailing his Supreme Court nomination, and to this day ensure that his name is synonymous with sexual harassment.

It’s as if this is all about political advantage, not women’s equality.

FLASHBACK: Coulter Lambastes Media Over Epstein Rape Case: This Is What Media Thought UVA Rape Case Was.

SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY VICTIMS CLUB — or Maxwell’s Silver Microaggressions? “When Beatlemania Is a Microaggression…It is time to rejoice, for all our troubles are so far away…,” Nick Gillespie quips at Reason.

Gillespie spots psychology professor Adam J. Rodriguez of California’s Notre Dame de Namaur University, who takes to the Huffington Post* to whine that “My friend, caught in his ethnocentric blindness, could not grasp that somebody would have a different experience and values from him:”

For him, there was a given. The given was that everybody would love the Beatles. My lack of interest in their music could only be understood by him as psychopathology. I was flawed. It could not be understood as a cultural difference. Of course, he has no idea who Oscar Hernandez is, and believes that Carlos Santana wrote Oye Como Va (he didn’t, by the way). But that’s okay. How should I expect him to know these things when they are so outside of his cultural experience?

As always, life imitates Bill Murray in Stripes, who said to his girlfriend at the start of the movie, “Someday, Tito Puente’s gonna be dead, and you’re gonna say, ‘Oh, I’ve been listening to him for years, and I think he’s fabulous.’” But then, as Gillespie — himself no fan of the Beatles** — responds, lighten up, Adam:

There has never been less of a dominant monoculture than ever before and there has never been as open a standing invitation to open people’s minds to what you like, care about, and think is totally fab and gear. Without a doubt, there are people who are convinced and terrified that the world they grew up is in its death throes (watch this if you don’t believe me), which only underscores the point that the mainstream has shrunk since the mid-’90s when we talked with Rodriguez, much less 1970, when the Beatles broke up (thank you for that, Yoko Ono, thank you, thank you, thank you). From that 1994 interview again:

Most people tend to use culture in a static sense—he represents this culture and I represent this culture. I think culture is much more fluid and experiential. I belong to many cultures. I’ve had many cultural experiences. And the notion that I’ve lost my culture is ludicrous. because you can’t lose a culture. You can change a culture in your lifetime. as in fact most of us do. I’m not my father. I didn’t grow up in the state of Colima in Western Mexico. I grew up in California in the 1950s. The notion that I’ve lost his culture is, of course, at some level true, but not interesting. The interesting thing is that my culture is I Love Lucy.

For the perpetually aggrieved, time has stood still as it did for Miss Havisham and they mistake the current moment, which has different problems and advantages and contexts, for a past whose issues and indignities no longer pertain in the same way. The hunt is always afoot not for moving to a future that is open-ended, inclusive, and far more interesting and innovative than the present but for reviving and maintaining grievances, no matter how trivial and inconsequential.

Read the whole thing; no word yet if Rodriguez has any strong opinions on the Rutles.

* In an age when so many global warming experts insist, as they have for the last 45 years, that Mother Gaia only has five years to live, is this really the best use of the Huffington Post’s giant air conditioned server farm to hasten her demise?

** No seriously, how can anyone not love the Beatles?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Is your home earthquake-ready? How to prepare for the Big One.

Thoughts on earthquake preparation, here. Plus, an earthquake preparedness list. But everyone, everywhere, should be prepared for disasters.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Playing the ‘Bill card’ against Hillary: It’s what she gets for playing the ‘war on women card’ against Trump.

ERNIE PYLE WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Reporters claim PTSD from watching violent news. “Most have never left the comfort of their big city offices, but a growing number of reporters and editors are claiming to suffer trauma from watching and posting violent videos on news sites, according to a new study of media and human rights workers.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Playing the ‘Bill card’ against Hillary: It’s what she gets for playing the ‘war on women card’ against Trump.

GIANT SQUID SURFACES FROM THE DEEP in Japanese harbor. Can Godzilla be far behind?

THIS JUST IN: No, Jesus Was Not a Palestinian.

NEWS YOU CAN USE from Kurt Schlichter, on What Conservatives Need To Know Before They Go On Mainstream Media Outlets:

Sometimes the host is going to be hostile to you, though the bookers and behind the scene staff are always very nice. That’s OK – your host is almost certain to be a liberal and does not want you to be able to get out your message if it is not what he’s looking for. Many feel that coherent, capable conservative commentators have to be disrupted, confused or cut off before they can make their points. But you can’t back down. You’re under no moral obligation to agree with the host just because you’re a guest. If you think he’s wrong, tell him. He might not like it, but he’ll like the attention the hit gets on the web afterwards.

No matter how well a conservative does, you’re going to get every commie, pinko, and left-wing loser in sight saying that you were incoherent, deranged and/or embarrassing. Ignore them. Their vitriol is your measuring stick in assessing how well you did. The angrier they are, the better your hit.

Remember, there’s no hypocrisy in going on the mainstream media to make our case. They need us, and we need their podium to get our ideas out. But understand that you’re at cross purposes. What they want from you is either ratings or help taking down a Republican. Your goal is to be an articulate, interesting advocate for conservative views. Get out into that alley and start preaching.

Speaking of which, “A week after he cut the mic of conservative guest Kurt Schlichter for bringing up Bill Clinton’s history of sexual misconduct, CNN’s Don Lemon found himself trying to shut down another guest” on Monday. Instead, Hugh Hewitt “Schools Lemon on Need for Trump, GOP to Educate Millenials on Bill Clinton Sex Scandals.”

CONTAINED: Brussels Cancels New Year’s Eve Fireworks Due To Threat. “Brussels was home to four of the radical Islamic attackers who killed 130 people in Paris Nov. 13. The week, Belgian authorities arrested two people in connection with another suspected plot to attack police, soldiers and popular Brussels sites during the holidays.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Heads Up. California Starts No Notice Gun Confiscation On January 1.

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT SPACE WEATHER.

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WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? Man charged with setting Houston mosque fire was a devout attendee. “According to a charging instrument released by the Harris County District Clerk, Moore told investigators at the scene that he has attended the mosque for five years, coming five times per day to pray seven days per week.”

With a jihadi beard. You know, the good news is that without fake hate crimes, we’d hardly have any hate crimes at all.

BURGLARS JUST WANT TACOS — brilliant repurposing of security camera footage as a restaurant commercial.

Best part — the thugs who broke in must be steaming about being mocked so badly, and this witty video going viral only increases their chances of being caught.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN JURISDICTIONS SUCH HELLHOLES OF FINANCIAL INSOLVENCY? Puerto Rico Says It Will Default on Some Bonds.

IT’S A SHOW ABOUT NOTHING: Barack Obama’s last year in office as TV satire (as if it wasn’t already), as scripted by Stephen Miller:

There are really only so many times you can show the main character of a long-running series going golfing before the audience stops caring and jumps to something new. Already there is talk of how producers can possibly insert Obama as a supporting character into future spinoff shows, including the upcoming 2016.

Season Seven, aptly titled “The Fu**-It List” in reference to a line of dialogue recited by the president (played by Barack Obama), started out with promise. We saw him jamming out in front of a podium wearing Dr. Dre’s “Beats” line of headphones and sitting down with some kooky new characters, possibly in an attempt at gaining viewers from the coveted 18–24 demographic.

As the season continued, its plot became fixated on a catastrophic refugee crisis, though scriptwriters bizarrely opted out of having the president (played by Barack Obama) deal with it head on, choosing instead to show the audience a simpler story of him trekking through Alaska.

The cinematography of those episodes last season was no doubt breathtaking, but the writers once again chose to rely on the overused past plot device of having him pull out a selfie stick instead of undergoing real character development. It’s almost as if the character of the president (played by Barack Obama) has become a one-line caricature simply hoping to ride out the final season of the show.

​As falling ratings have shown, audiences are tired of the same old shtick and are ready to move on.

I know I am — and pace Miller’s comments above, I’m praying that industry showrunners won’t try the Fred Silverman-esque stunt of plugging Barry Stinson into another spin-off.

FREE-RANGE KIDS, LOS ANGELES 1938: This video, made to support plans for sidewalks, shows kids from Samuel Gompers Junior High School—back then it was apparently uncontroversial to name a school for a labor leader—walking home or, in a few cases, riding doubled-up on bicycles.

BEST TV OF 2015: Reason‘s Glenn Garvin ranks his favorite shows and explains why so few network programs got canceled.

BILL COSBY FACES SEX ASSAULT CHARGES IN PENNSYLVANIA’S MONTGOMERY COUNTY, NBC’S Philadelphia affiliate reports:

Cosby was charged Wednesday with sexually assaulting a woman at his suburban Philadelphia home 12 years ago — the first criminal charges brought against the comedian out of the torrent of allegations that destroyed his good-guy image as America’s Dad.

Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman charged Cosby, 78, with three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault, including that Cosby assaulted his victim while she was unconscious and without consent, according to court documents.

“Upon examination of all of the evidence, today we are able to seek justice on behalf of Mr. Cosby’s victim,” said incoming District Attorney Kevin Steele, who currently serves as first assistant district attorney.

It’s the first criminal case against Cosby over his conduct with women, which has received new scrutiny in the past year. The case sets the stage for perhaps the biggest Hollywood celebrity trial of the era and could send the 78-year-old Cosby to prison in the twilight of his life and barrier-breaking career.

Related: Rob Long on “The Cosby Mysteries” from the April issue of Commentary. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE [from Glenn]: Seeing a lot of this kind of thing on Twitter today:

UPDATE [From Ed]: Further thoughts on the charges against Cosby today, and background on the likely complainant, from Ed Morrissey.

IN 2015, the commercial spaceflight industry had a great year.

YOU LIKE US, YOU REALLY LIKE US: Veteran blogger Doug Ross’s annual “Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners” lists InstaPundit as a winner of his “Best All-Around Blogging” and the recently redesigned PJ Media as one his “Best Op-Ed Blogs,” and we wanted to say thanks.

(Thanks to Glenn for letting me sit in on the best jam session on the Internet and for the Insta-readers for their perceptive comments to my posts. And also thanks to lead editor Aaron Hanscom for making the trains run so smoothly at PJM.)

I’M NOT SURE THAT ANYBODY — STEPHEN GREEN, EVEN — COMBINES LOVE FOR ALCOHOL WITH GEEKINESS ENOUGH FOR A BB-8 Ice Mold.

MY BROTHER WORKED AT WENDY’S WITH A GUY WHOSE LIFE GOAL WAS TO OWN A FIERO. HE ACHIEVED IT! The Pontiac Fiero Was a Misunderstood, Misfit Love Letter to American Backroads.

AT AMAZON, trade in your old video games for credit.

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers see promising results in treating age-related decline in muscle mass and power. “Myostatin inhibits skeletal muscle growth. The humanised monoclonal antibody LY2495655 (LY) binds and neutralises myostatin. We aimed to test whether LY increases appendicular lean body mass (aLBM) and improves physical performance in older individuals who have had recent falls and low muscle strength and power.”

NO, BUT WE’RE GETTING CLOSER: We’re still not really in the space age. “If it meets its design goal the SpaceX Falcon 9 will cost $250 per lb to put into low Earth orbit (LEO). That is about a tenth of the price of competing alternatives. Suppose Elon Musk succeeds in getting the price done that far. Suppose he goes even farther and hits $100 per pound. Will we be in the space age yet? Nope.”

The more progress we make, the more progress we will make next.

JOHN PODHORETZ: This Is Just The Bloodletting The Republican Party Needs. “Now they’re making news, and in the right way — by airing their differences when it comes to policy.”

IN THE MAIL: The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 70% Off Select Transcend Storage.

And, also today only: 74% Off “Rocky: The Undisputed Collection.”

And: Over 10 books by New York Times best-selling authors Rosamunde Pilcher and Linda Castillo, $2.99 today only.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 965.

TRUMP’S IDEAS: FROM CRAZY TO POLICY IN JUST A MONTH. GOP moves to pause refugee acceptance over background checks.

A group of Senate Republicans wants to largely pause the acceptance of Syrian and Iraqi refugees until the administration meets a wide-range of hurdles aimed at bolstering background checks.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) has introduced legislation that would block the administration from accepting or resettling the refugees until the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Director of National Intelligence have determiend that each refugee has passed a background check ensuring that they aren’t a national security threat and haven’t supported a terrorist organization.

Kirk also wants the DHS inspector general and the comptroller general of the United States to, separately, review the certifications and give their findings to Congress. and for DHS to give a quarterly report to Congress on the number of refugees who tried to enter the United States and how many were given certifications.

Kirk’s legislation—which is backed by five other Senate Republicans—comes after an end-of-year spending bill didn’t address the refugee issue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pledged to move legislation on the refugee acceptance program during the first quarter of next year, though it’s unclear what proposal he would have the Senate take up.

Kirk’s legislation would also require the FBI, the DHS and the Director of National Intelligence to clarify within six months how the administration plans to enhance its screening for refugee applicants, including reviewing social media. He also wants to know if any changes were made after two al-Qaeda supporters entered the United States in 2009 as Iraqi refugees.

Stay tuned.

DON SURBER: Pundit Of The Year: Dilbert Creator Scott Adams.

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ROGER SIMON ON SEX, LIES, CLINTON, AND TRUMP:

More importantly, times have changed and morality with it. I don’t think Bill, and certainly Hillary, would want Juanita Broaddrick brought up at a time when, on our campuses,  even an unwanted kiss is legally considered rape, thanks to Title IX. Can you imagine how many instances of what is called “unwanted touching” could come out of the woodwork now if Bill started to pick a fight with Trump? It’s hard to imagine Clinton making it through Georgetown or Yale Law under today’s rules, or even through his freshman year.

The truth is Bill’s relationships with women are the product of another era, one that is fading remarkably fast in the rear view mirror.  There is little tolerance these days for his kind of behavior — no more winking — not in the USA anyway.  Clinton’s well known hypocritical wagging of the finger at the television to swear to us that he “never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” may not have looked terrific back when he did it, but today it would seem downright repellent.  Imagine it being played again and again next to a Hillary commercial.

Doubtless Donald Trump has not been a saint, but there is a big difference between him and Bill.  The Donald may often be rude.  He may be a thin-skinned bloviator.  But he’s not a creepy hypocrite.  In that sense he’s the opposite of the Clintons, both of them.

Lastly, what if Trump were to raise the Jeffrey Epstein case?…. whoa.

Read the whole thing.

Related: I haven’t watched Sex, Lies, and Videotape since it was first released on home video, but as I recall, Steven Soderbergh’s debut was noted for the long dramatic pauses in its dialogue. And whatdayaknow: “Liberal Guest On FOX Speechless When Asked If Bill Clinton Has Abused Women (Video).” Everything old is new again!

WE PRINTED AN OBVIOUS LIE, WE HURT PEOPLE, BUT WE DON’T WANT TO PAY DAMAGES: Rolling Stone wants lawsuit over debunked gang-rape article dismissed.

Rolling Stone Magazine’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit by three former members of the fraternity maligned by the publication in a now-retracted article alleging a gang rape.

The three former members of the University of Virginia chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity claim in their lawsuit that they were easily identified as potential rapists in Rolling Stone’s expose. The students claim their names and hometowns were listed online following the article, and that their “names will forever be associated with the alleged gang rape.”

Attorneys for Rolling Stone dispute this, writing “No reasonable reader would understand from the article and the proffered extrinsic evidence that plaintiffs are identified as the perpetrators.”

The article didn’t provide the real names of any of the alleged attackers (the main perpetrator turned out to not even exist). But the fraternity members allege that enough identifiable information was provided that friends, family members and other students were able to figure out who might have been the rapists.

One of the suing students had the bedroom at the top of the first flight of stairs at the fraternity house, which was deemed “the mostly likely scene of the alleged crime,” according to the lawsuit. The three students say they were interrogated and harassed by the people they knew (as well as reporters and online commenters) after they were identified. . . .

Barely a month after the article was published, it was retracted with an editor’s note. In April 2015, the Columbia Journalism Review released its findings into what went wrong in the reporting.

Since then, three lawsuits have been filed against the magazine. One from the three fraternity members, one from a U.Va. dean who was named in the article and one from the Phi Kappa Psi chapter as a whole. The fraternity house was vandalized in the wake of the article.

I hope this ends like in The Verdict, where the jury comes back to ask the judge if it can award more in damages than the plaintiff asked for.

BETTER CALL SAUL: Protesters gather outside Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home, call for him to resign.

It will be interesting to see how Rahm reacts, considering the home protest is a tactic straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — and Alinsky’s son praised Obama in 2008 for his mastery of dad’s techniques:

Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.

And now his former chief of staff may learn a few lessons as well — couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Why Equality And Diversity Departments Should Only Hire Rich, Straight White Men. “In an age of grievance politics, where victimhood is currency, only those outside the game of Oppression Olympics can properly adjudicate between aggrieved minorities.”

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: US Attorney declines prosecution of former VA execs.

Federal prosecutors have decided not to press criminal charges against two former executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs who were accused of manipulating the agency’s hiring system for their own gain.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said Thursday it has declined a referral from the VA inspector general for criminal prosecution of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves.

The inspector general said in a report this fall that Rubens and Graves forced lower-ranking regional managers to accept job transfers against their will. Rubens and Graves then stepped into the vacant positions themselves, keeping their pay while reducing their responsibilities.

Rubens had been earning $181,497 as director of the Philadelphia regional office for the Veterans Benefits Administration, while Graves earned $173,949 as leader of the St. Paul, Minnesota, regional office. Before taking the regional jobs, Rubens was a deputy undersecretary at the VA’s Washington headquarters, while Graves was director of VBA’s 14-state North Atlantic Region.

Rubens and Graves were accused of obtaining more than $400,000 in questionable moving expenses through a relocation program for VA executives, the inspector general’s report said.

The U.S. Attorney’s office said it has “referred the matter to the VA for any administrative action that is deemed appropriate.”

Rubens and Graves were demoted in November, but their demotions were rescinded this month after a paperwork mix-up.

Tar. Feathers.

GOOD: ‘I will not stop talking about this’! NRO’s Katherine Timpf won’t let Hillary off ‘feminist’ hook.

FREE SPEECH UPDATE: How Three Professors Banded Together to Beat Back a Free Speech Threat at Clemson.

More like this, please.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: California Laws: On January 1st, Students Won’t Have to Pass High School to Receive Diploma. To be fair, now that public schools are about warehousing and indoctrinating kids, why worry about whether they’re learning anything?

If only someone had warned us.

FROM TEHRAN, WITH LOVE: U.S. Carrier Harry S. Truman Has Close Call With Iranian Rockets:

The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman came about 1,500 yards from an Iranian rocket in the Strait of Hormuz last week, two U.S. military officials told NBC News on Tuesday.

As the Truman was transiting the strait, which connects the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, Iranian Revolutionary Guards conducted a live-fire exercise right near the U.S. carrier Saturday, officials said.

Related: “On Thursday night as the ball drops in Times Square, millions of Americans watching on TV will join the revelers in Manhattan to celebrate the new year. For other Americans, alas, the arrival of Jan. 1 will mark only the beginning of another year behind Iranian bars. It’s long past time to bring these men home.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. When You Believe In Nothing, Islam Becomes Something:

France is a country that has lost much of its religion and national pride. They have become increasingly a people without desire, direction, or heart.

Christopher Caldwell points out in his similarly prescient 2009 book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, that Europe has engaged in self-shaming for so long that it reviles everything about its own culture, idolizing minority culture instead, as a kind of mea culpa for their colonial sins against the Third World. Perhaps the French today are so full of multicultural idealism, but lacking a pride in their own culture, that they would indeed go along with a religious takeover—so long as the pay is good, the wives are pretty, crime goes down, and a stable system is put into place.

Earlier: The crisis of character — Brendan O’Neill on Identity politics and the death of the individual.

ROBBIE SOAVE: Silencing Students: The 8 Most Loathsome Campus Censors of 2015. Normally, I wouldn’t give away who wins the #1 slot, but this year it’s hardly a surprise:

In George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece 1984, an agent of the authoritarian state tells the soon-to-be-brainwashed protagonist, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” Student-journalists, meet your very own boot-stamper: Melissa Click, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Missouri, who easily captures the #1 spot on this list.

The face of higher education in America: “If you want a picture of what’s to come on college campuses next year, imagine the hate-filled visage of Click as she stomps on a student’s camera—forever.” Note that she’s still employed at Mizzou.