Tuesday tossed salad (and Open Thread)
Oh, my gosh! There is an embarrassment of riches out there this morning when it comes to thought-provoking, interesting, informative, or funny articles and videos. Here are my favorites, in no particular order:
I pointed out here that terribly flawed, infantile, dangerous, and very non-scientific reasoning supported a study purporting to show that all the scientists in the world agree with anthropogenic climate change. I didn’t have data, I just had common sense to back me up. The data is now in, though, and it too shows how dreadful these “everybody believes in AGW” studies are. No wonder Patrick Michaels is writing at Forbes that the age of science may end, as people view once-respected scientists as little more than ignorant shamans shaking sticks at the climate gods. (My words, not his.)
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For a little bit of real science, this approach to sealing gunshot wounds is wonderful. Think of all the lives that will be saved in Democrat-run cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, where Democrat voters routinely shoot each other.
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Will it surprise you to learn that Richard Hofstadter, one of the darlings of Progressive academics, was full of it? No? Well, it didn’t surprise me either. (Link corrected.)
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“Zero tolerance” is one of the worst things ever to hit the Western world. Before the dawn of that noxious notion in the West, zero tolerance was reserved for tyrannies: Nazis had zero tolerance for Jews, gays, and gypsies; Iranians had zero tolerance for gays; Singaporeans had zero tolerance for spitting on the street; Saudis had zero tolerance for school girls with uncovered heads trying to escape burning buildings; etc.
Zero tolerance is never allied with either intelligence or human decency. At about this time last year, in schools across America, zero tolerance was the justification for suspending elementary school kids possessing pizza slices or pastries that they’d chewed into gun shapes or little girls with water pistols that they never even brought to school.
Now, Canada has gotten into the act: a retired Army sergeant made a wrong turn in Vermont and found himself at a border crossing. Rather than letting him turn around as he requested, they interrogated him, searched his car, found his wife’s gun, ignored his concealed carry license, arrested him, and are now threatening him with three years in jail. Obama’s State Department seems to be staying out of this one — no doubt because it’s thrilled to see Canada take the type of stand that Obama wishes he could.
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I wrote just yesterday that I wasn’t surprised that Philip Seymour Hoffman was a junkie who died of a heroin overdose. To my mind, there was always something off about him. Both Kevin Williamson and Jonah Goldberg look at the “off-ness” that lies the heart of heroin addictions.
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Here’s another addiction, one to which sick cultures always turn: anti-semitism.
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Rob Miller (aka Joshuapundit) has another wonderful article up at The Times of Israel, this one about Israel’s reality — dealing with boycotts, lies, and intimidation.
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One wonders if the kids are getting a better or a worse education in a school captained by a principal with a great sense of humor. I like to think that humor helps everything. (But keep in mind that Jerry Seinfeld is being pilloried for suggesting that humor is not about skin color.)