April 29, 2024

MEANWHILE, IN GEORGIA:

Criminal trespass is still a criminal act in some places.

Posted at 5:18 pm by Stephen Green

THE HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION: Go State U! Why pay a premium for a ‘polarizing’ degree? “He imagines a hiring manager looking at resumes from a recent graduate of Columbia and a recent graduate of the University of the North Carolina. The Columbia graduate, the manager thinks, is ‘more likely to be coddled, more likely to hold strong political opinions that will distract from their work’ and ‘more likely to have benefited from grade inflation and perhaps dubious admissions policies.'”

All is proceeding as Glenn has foreseen.

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

THURSDAY IN INDIANA: 33 arrested at IU during protest in support of Palestine.

Today in New York:

Developing but, needless to say, you get more of what you tolerate.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

TWO WAPOs IN ONE!

C’mon – it’s 2024. Surely by now, Raichik knows that if you really want to get huge glowing profiles from the Washington Post, the way to do it is by threatening GOP congresspeople! WaPo Runs 5,000 Word Profile Of Man Imprisoned For Threatening Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In 2022, Josh Barro pondered: Are There Any Adults at the Washington Post? As Iowahawk noted around the same time, Barro was clearly asking the question rhetorically:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

MARK JUDGE: Ron DeSantis wants to teach young people about communism. He should use rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock ‘n’ roll is an exciting, popular art form geared toward young people. It also has a proud (and largely ignored) history of anti-communism.

In their book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, who both work for the libertarian outfit Reason, reveal the often hidden history of popular music as a weapon against totalitarianism. In the chapter “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” they detail how the music helped defeat communism.

As Welch and Gillespie note, Vaclav Havel and the leaders of the 1960s revolt against communism in Czechoslovakia were deeply influenced by American rock and roll, particularly the band the Velvet Underground. A group of young Czech hippies formed the group the Plastic People of the Universe, named after a Frank Zappa lyric, and were soon banned by the government. A fan of the Rolling Stones, Havel saw and heard in rock and roll “a temperament, a nonconformist state of the spirit, an anti-establishment orientation, an aversion to philistines, and an interest in the wretch and humiliated.”

* * * * * * * *

In The Declaration of Independents, Welch and Gillespie note an incredible irony. In October 1989, a month before the Berlin Wall was torn down, rock and roll and hippie icon Neil Young released the album “Freedom.” Young meant the title ironically; the title track was about how the world was collapsing with Reagan-inspired greed and violence.  But when the album was received in Central Europe, the newly free young masses took to it without irony.

It’s an exciting piece of history. DeSantis should add it to Florida’s new pro-freedom curriculum.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

Flashback: Welcome to the PMRC, Neil Young.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue.

NASA officials previously said it is unlikely they will need to make changes to the heat shield already installed on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis II, but haven’t ruled it out. A redesign or modifications to the Orion heat shield on Artemis II would probably delay the mission by at least a year.

The charred material began flying off the heat shield in the first phase of the skip reentry. Engineers are looking at how the skip reentry profile affected the performance of the Orion heat shield. NASA wants to understand how the Orion heat shield would perform during each of the possible reentry trajectories for Artemis II.

“What we have the analysis teams off doing is saying, ‘OK, independent of what the constraints are going to be, what can we tolerate?” Kshatriya said.

Once officials understand the cause of the heat shield charring, engineers will determine what kind of trajectory Artemis II needs to fly on reentry to minimize risk to the crew. Then, managers will look at building what NASA calls flight rationale. Essentially, this is a process of convincing themselves the spacecraft is safe to fly.

“When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t,” Kshatriya said.

The heat shield worked during Artemis I reentry but didn’t burn off as expected. SLS is stacked and ready for Artemis II and Starship is coming along…

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

GOOD NEWS FROM POLITICO!

I mean, I think they intend it as good news from their perspective, given their interest in keeping the population down: