Archive for 2014

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Epic Hypocrisy of Tom Steyer. “Today, he is a bitter opponent of fossil fuels, especially coal. That fits with his current economic interests: banning coal-fired power plants will boost the value of his solar projects. But it was not always thus. In fact, Steyer owes his fortune in large part to the fact that he has been one of the world’s largest financers of coal projects. Tom Steyer was for coal before he was against it.”

SO WHEN CEOs WRITE HUGELY PROMOTED BOOKS, I should sell the stock. Noted.

SEXISM IN THE NEWS: So on ABC’s This Week, as people talk about single motherhood, abandoned kids, and so on, we get this interchange:

ROBERTS: — the reason the numbers have changed so dramatically on this, first of all, that ideal isn’t true in all kinds of families that (INAUDIBLE) being what it is and the abandoned mothers.

But it is also true — I mean, if we got — if we got better men, we’d be in better shape.

But the —

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No disagreement there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No disagreement here either.

If a male reporter said that we need better women — which is just as true — would female journalists fall all over themselves to express agreement? Nope, they’d pile all over the man who said it. But supplication-of-females is the media way, now.

UPDATE: A reader in the comments says that it’s time to plug my wife’s book again. Good point.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Cliven Bundy and the Rural Way. “To paraphrase the ancients, sometimes we’d rather be wrong with Cliven Bundy than right with Harry Reid.”

Plus: “So we are not threatened by the likes of Cliven Bundy. Instead, the scary lawlessness extends to the bureaucracy itself. . . . The point is Mr. Bundy is no Rahm Emanuel, Al Gore, or Jay Carney. He is no Jay-Z or Sean Penn. He is a world away from the Kardashians and the BMW meets Mercedes crowd of the California coastal corridor or the psychodramas of brats at Dartmouth. Bundy does not have the white privilege that those who have it — mostly liberal, wealthy, and seeking an apartheid existence — damn in others.”

A TEMPORARY LIFE: Just Visiting: The Neverending Job-Hunt Grind. “Little did I realize that graduate school would turn out to be yet another lesson in the school of hard knocks. Here’s the hardest lesson of all: from the moment you begin graduate school until you’ve actually earned tenure, your position is contingent, your future success is precarious, and your battle for economic security feels unending.”

AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Big asteroids hit Earth far more than we’re told, say astronauts. “This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts. It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare — but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought.”

A 335 WORD GRADUATION SPEECH that’s awesome.