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Monday, March 5. 2018

Roger Bannister, first to run mile in under 4 minutes, dies

Athlete-hero. Then became distinguished physician

Stephen Hawking Says He Knows What Happened Before the Big Bang

Was he there at the Creation of time and space?

Did Homo erectus speak? Early hominins who sailed across oceans left indirect evidence that they might have been the first to use language

How Billy Graham made Israel kosher to evangelicals

Prozac: Pro and Con

David Brooks: How Progressives Win the Culture War

Political Bias on Guns: Gap between movie review and audience scores is huge for Bruce Willis’ “Death Wish”

COWARDICE IN THE UCLA FACULTY LOUNGE

" There's nothing like the government. It doesn't just deprive us of our freedom. It also breeds ridiculous levels of corruption, incompetence and dysfunction. Meet the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument Authority."

Dear California: Call Me When the Commies Leave

California Dems’ hard-left turn could be the whole party’s future

Facebook Co-Founder: Government Should Pay $500 a Month to Workers Making Under $50K

Public-Sector Unions Deserve to Be Destroyed - Mandatory fees are an assault on free association.

Normalizing Insanity: Lessons from California’s Crazy, Crazy Politics

Andrew Cuomo’s war on energy

Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Jared Kushner — Nobody Was Spared From Trump’s Jokes Last Night

A few jokes on himself and his family too

Trump wants to change the trade rules

Trump and our pop culture

A Week Of Policy Surprises Leaves Even Trump’s Supporters Confused

The media continues to ignore Trump’s presidential leadership

NYT REPORTS SWEDEN CRIME PROBLEM IT CRITICIZED TRUMP FOR DISCUSSING

From Poland, Democracy Won’t Defend Itself; We Have To

Steyn and Tucker: Decadence and Neo-Apartheid

France's Marine Le Pen Charged Over Islamic State Tweets

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:36 | Comments (25) | Trackbacks (0)

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Off topic, I hope Maggies Farm will do a thread on this.
Joel Kotkin: How Silicon Valley Went From “Don’t Be Evil” To Doing Evil.
Once seen as the saviors of America’s economy, Silicon Valley is turning into something more of an emerging axis of evil. “Brain-hacking” tech companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, as one prominent tech investor puts it, have become so intrusive as to alarm critics on both right and left.

The techie vision of the future is one in which the middle class all but disappears, with those not sufficiently merged with machine intelligence relegated to rent-paying serfs living on “income maintenance.” Theirs is a world in where long-standing local affinities are supplanted by Facebook’s concept of digitally-created “meaningful communities.”

#1 Exasperated on 2018-03-05 07:29 (Reply)

Trump on steel and aluminum. I confess that I am ambivalent about this effort. During the campaign I wondered if Trump might have an interest in bringing back steel. I even asked a friend, What is he on about, does he think he can bring back steel, but just what if......what if he can? I expect he knows quite a bit about North American steel and its implosion, given that structural steel was integral to his career and he witnessed its demise up close and personal. Of course, everyone here knows it is antithetical to the agenda of the Davos caste, K Street, and their minions, expect them to undermine any attempt. But, I ask you, why couldn't the Great Lakes Basin be a major player?
Full disclosure, all I know about the demise of the Integrated Steel Mill, I learned from Clayton Christensen's work on the corporate myopia of the steel industry, as year after year, the integrated steel mill gave up more and market share to their foreign and domestic competitors, at the behest of K Street. They justified their decisions to shrink, based on the belief that they were dumping low margin products in favor of high margin products til there was none. This is one of the best dissections of the modern business dilemma, that I have see, and can be extrapolated across all industries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5FxFfymI4g

#2 Exasperated on 2018-03-05 07:38 (Reply)

Much of America's problem is caused by bad management and incompetence. Here in Hawaii, we know that when a local company is taken over by an American one, it is likely the company will die within 2 years.

American companies have no customer service ethic or any concept of excellence. Contrast that to Asian companies which put both at the top.

#2.1 Jim on 2018-03-05 12:52 (Reply)

Hey! When did you guys secede, anyway? How's it working out for you?

#2.1.1 Aggie on 2018-03-06 00:37 (Reply)

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has considerable experience in the steel industry and he is leading most trade negotiations. He has brought out the fact that China is dumping on the international market and primarily dumping in the US by using the tariff free conduits of Canada and Mexico. Free trade isn't close to being free...what Trump wants is fair trade. Nafta is likely to go by the wayside and the US with negotiate individual trade pacts. The Last Refuge blog gives fairly clear explanations for Trumps trade policy.

#2.2 indyjonesouthere on 2018-03-05 14:32 (Reply)

The free trade argument is empty without a thorough understanding of currency pegging. Which is happening nowhere.

#2.3 Meh on 2018-03-05 15:34 (Reply)

Hawking can never get enough publicity. He seems unsure of what time is and what nothing means. His 'hypothesis' ultimately explains nothing, but that is not its intention, which is to avoid admitting a First Cause, by a ruse to endlessly kick the can down the road.

#3 DeGaulle on 2018-03-05 07:56 (Reply)

Stephen Hawking Says He Knows What Happened Before the Big Bang

As other commenters have noted, bullshit. There's so much wrong with that piece it's laughable, not the least being the big bang known as Tyson.

The Standard LCDM Model is falling apart fast enough to be its own black hole.

https://youtu.be/fllqgFicLO4

#3.1 Meh on 2018-03-05 08:54 (Reply)

Maggies is going down to click bait status. Did they even read the Hawkings story? Hawkins admitted at the end that it wasn't possible to know what came before the big bang, so why have the story? Is it to ridicule Hawkings and Tyson? Don't we already do that?

#3.1.1 Alex on 2018-03-05 09:56 (Reply)

I don’t understand the ridicule for click bait. What difference does it make? I can’t believe it is easy to come up with dozens of interesting clicks, day after day after day. It’s not like we pay for the service. I don’t even see a tip jar.

#3.1.1.1 B. Hammer on 2018-03-05 11:08 (Reply)

There was no big bang. Put more "scientifically", there's no reason to hypothesize one, especially as we approach its centennial.

How the damn thing caught on as a tenet of Christian(ese) thought escapes me ... except for how it was a Catholic priest who aimed it more or less in Aquinas' general direction as the prime event or something. From there it's all been downhill.

It is falling on harder and harder times and still we refer to it as if it were a fact. It's not a fact.

#3.1.1.2 Meh on 2018-03-05 11:39 (Reply)

The Big Bang is increasingly reliant on 'dark matter' and 'dark energy', both of which have conveniently never been detected, to sustain it. Nevertheless, although increasingly implausible, it replaced the even more implausible 'Steady State' theory. The ever more frequent tendency of cosmological theory, not to mention Darwinism, to crash and burn should encourage a little more humility among scientists. Yet, many seem to get ever more arrogant.

#3.1.1.2.1 DeGaulle on 2018-03-05 13:36 (Reply)

Agreed, except for the BB being somewhat more plausible. Either way, both models violate the purported natural law against spontaneous-energy in the extreme. And most of standard model cosmology can't be tested, making it conjecture.

Also interesting is how gravity coalescence is said to power everything when gravity is such a weak force.

#3.1.1.2.1.1 Meh on 2018-03-05 14:10 (Reply)

"Stephen Hawking Says He Knows What Happened Before the Big Bang"

No, he doesn't.

Note how I was able to answer that authoritatively without reading any further than the headline.

#4 JJM on 2018-03-05 08:09 (Reply)

I have always failed to see the appeal of David Brooks. Typical empty suit. But the last paragraph of that column got obliterated here (deservedly so):

https://jeffro.wordpress.com/2018/03/03/why-conservatives-have-zero-cultural-power/

And if anything remained, it was incinerated here:

http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/03/zero-cultural-power.html

#5 DrTorch on 2018-03-05 09:28 (Reply)

Death wish: I don't go to many movies anymore. I don't enjoy the new movies. I'm too old for comic book hero's and don't understand movies like the water thingy that just won oscars. Someone mentioned Death Wish over the weekend and I checked Fandango and sure enough it's here. Will see it today. Looking forward to it. How could it possibly be bad; Bruce Willis and a good plot! Oh I suppose they could screw it up by putting Oprah Winfrey or Ellen Degenerate in it or maybe putting some black lives advocate in it to preach to us about how mean we are and we need to give them more free stuff or they will kill us. But unlike almost everything out of Hollywood today I don't think they did any of this.

#6 GoneWithTheWind on 2018-03-05 09:36 (Reply)

Good ol' fun movie..Seen it last night.
Pretty well done thing of killing the bad guys!

#6.1 RL on 2018-03-05 10:16 (Reply)

Late night here,thought I'd throw this diddy in for fun.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0_QSmxKJ8M

#7 RL on 2018-03-05 11:04 (Reply)

Facebook is worth billions. They can't spare adding an additional $500/month to any of their employees who make less than $50K? Why is it the government's job to do anything about someone's income? If you think your poor workers are so underpaid, Facebook, then cough it up. Put your money where your mouth is. Maybe your founder could sell his new estate in Hawaii to pay for it.

Do you really believe, Facebook, that we can't see through your BS? We watch the stock market. We see your share price go up every single day. I really don't want to hear your crap on this. Okay?

#8 MissT on 2018-03-05 12:58 (Reply)

Yes, Facebook could put its brave words into action by proposing to assist federal/state governments through plowing a substantial (i.e., majority) amount of its profits into a shared central fund from which that $500 a month could be drawn.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! I slay myself with these crazy ideas sometimes!

#8.1 JJM on 2018-03-05 13:08 (Reply)

It must be easy to tell the government what to do for poor people while at the same time refusing to pay state or federal taxes.

I agree with the others here that if FB REALLY cared about the poor they could spend a little of their massive profits to fund their schemes.

#8.1.1 Dangerous Dean on 2018-03-05 15:32 (Reply)

They want, or at least this FB person wants, the people, by way of the government, to subsidize their business profits.

#8.2 steve walsh (Link) on 2018-03-05 13:58 (Reply)

$500 a month will buy a lot of pot, cigarettes and booze.

#9 Mark on 2018-03-05 20:18 (Reply)

Or, for diligent parents, better food and clothing and maybe a small vacation with the offsprings.

However, given who's suggested it, is obvious he expects it to come out of taxes paid by those who are just above the $50,000 threshold and who aren't finding it that easy to provide the better food, clothing, the occasional extracurricular activity and - perhaps - a very small vacation with offsprings.

#9.1 Frances on 2018-03-06 23:30 (Reply)

A Week Of Policy Surprises Leaves Even Trump’s Supporters Confused

Real TRUMP supporters just sit there with a bemused look on their faces, realizing the at what he says for public consumption is far different form what he actually does....Art of Deal, if you will.

#10 B48 on 2018-03-05 23:05 (Reply)

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Monday, March 5. 2018

Monday morning links