URLs du Jour

2017-01-11

Seen on Twitter: "You can't spell 'journalism' without 'urinal'." Close enough.

  • Math is hard. From Wired's binge-watching guide to Sherlock:

    Time Requirements: Don’t let the fact that there are only 10 episodes of the show in its first three seasons fool you. Because each episode is a 90-minute movie, those three seasons equal a total of 900 hours of viewing. [...]

    I assume they'll fix that soon.

  • At Reason, Jesse Walker has a request: "Let's Be Clear About Who Drained the Meaning from the Phrase 'Fake News'", This is in reaction to Margaret Sullivan's "let's stop saying 'Fake News'" column in the WaPo that also irritated Pun Salad yesterday. His conclusion:

    Once you've started slapping the "fake news" label on anything that looks like sloppy reporting or ideological bias in the alternative press, you've pretty much guaranteed that people will start flinging it when they think they've spotted sloppy reporting or ideological bias in the mainstream. No media-machine efficiency was required. Ask the right who taught them how to do this stuff, and they can look up from their bed and tell you: You, all right? I learned it by watching you!

    Kids, if the reference in that last bit isn't obvious to you, please click over to have your horizons widened a bit.

  • Speaking of fake news, our state's new US Senator, Maggie Hassan, has only been on the job a few days, and already she's been falling for the "Russkies hacked the Vermont power grid" yarn, as reported both by Granite Grok and the Daily Caller.

    Think on it: of the four people in NH's Congressional delegation, it seems that Jeanne Shaheen is the smart one.

  • In other Hassanic news, the Washington Free Beacon reports: "Hassan ‘Very Concerned’ About Education Secretary Nominee’s Support for School Choice".

    New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan (D.) joined the ranks of Senate Democrats attacking Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, despite her own support for charter schools as governor.

    If you want to keep the teacher-union support, I suppose you have to alter your positions accordingly.

  • Ann Althouse shakes her head in wonderment at a different line of attack on Betsy DeVos: she contributed to FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education! Prof A quotes the Politico article:

    “Ms. DeVos must fully explain whether she supports the radical view that it should be more difficult for campus sexual assault victims to receive justice,” said Sen. Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), a member of the [Health, Education, Labor & Pensions] Committee.

    She wonders (as do I): "When did due process become a 'radical view'?!"

  • At Power Line, Steven Hayward reports: "Fake News Jumps Fake Shark". Bottom line:

    I’ll bet this story falls apart faster than a Dan Rather memo on national guard service.

    I'm kind of irritated that all the journalistic malpractice devoted to smearing Trump and delegitimizing the results of the election are… making me sympathize with Trump! I have to keep reminding myself that he's more of a petulant loose-cannon jerk than you really want the US President to be.

  • Which makes Nick Gillespie's observations all the more relevant: "Thanks, Liberals! You Applauded Obama’s Imperial Presidency, and Now We’ve Got Trump Rex".

    It’s all well and good that Joe Biden is now lecturing us that “the worst sin of all is the abuse of power,” but where the hell was he—and where were you—for the past eight years, when the president was starting wars without Congressional authorization, passing major legislation with zero votes from the opposing party, and ruling almost exclusively through executive orders and actions?

    Perhaps when someone asks Trump where he got the idea he could act this way, he could say "You, all right? I learned it by…". Oh, wait, we already used that today.

  • Back in the dark ages, F. A. Hayek wrote a classic essay: "Why I Am Not a Conservative". I can now add another reason: I'm not good looking enough:

    A recently published study in the Journal of Public Economics concludes that the attractiveness of a candidate does correlate with their politics. They find that politicians on the right are more good looking in Europe, the United States and Australia.

    OK, but are the results significant if you toss out Mitt Romney?


Last Modified 2019-10-23 5:49 AM EDT