Year: 2015
Mendes Harmónica Trio – Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae.
Obama declares “we have contained ISIS” even as they execute an attack in Paris
Irony alert! Yesterday, in an interview with WABC’s Chief Anchor and Democratic Party operative George Stephanopoulos President Obama declared that ISIS has been “contained” by his policies.
“I don’t think they’re gaining strength,” the president told Stephanopoulos in an interview at the White House Thursday. “From the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria it — they’ll come in, they’ll leave.”
Today, a terrorist attack planned and executed by ISIS took place in Paris across seven different locations, killing dozens, including many of approximately 100 hostages in a concert hall, where the terrorists had been killing them one-by-one. Police moved in ahead of schedule because they had been getting texts from the hostages begging them to attack because they were going to be executed anyway and a police attack was the only way they had a chance of surviving.
Thank god Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama has contained ISIS. Otherwise, we wouldn’t see them do this sort of stuff. And it’s a good thing that France has strict gun control laws so the country is gun-free. Otherwise, how would these terrorists get access to weapons?
Police steal a citizen’s guns and ammo
Theft by police: After securing a citizen’s home after a burglary, police then forced their way into a secure room to seize nine guns and the ammunition for them, all without a warrant.
Officers asked Mr. Bilzerian’s assistant and security guard for permission to break into the room but the aides declined, but the officers accessed it anyway, Mr. Bilzerian said. “They broke into our closet and took them after we were burglarized,” said Mr. Bilzerian’s assistant Jeremy Guymon. “It’s not like we were doing anything wrong.”
The responding officers confiscated nine firearms supposedly under the premise that they wanted to secure the home in case the burglars attempted a second break-in, Mr. Bilzerian said. But strangely, the officers left behind an arsenal of shotguns and a high-powered semiautomatic carbine rifle like the ones used by special operations troops. “The officers told my assistant that they took the handguns because they didn’t want the suspects to come back and get them on a second break-in even though they were unsuccessful at opening the steel reinforced door the first time,” Mr. Bilzerian said. “Essentially they were ‘trying to protect my property and people’s safety.’ This is hard to grasp, when they left my $21,000 FN SCAR17 with thermal optic and shotguns unsecured in that same room.”
After several months, the guns were finally returned but the ammo remains missing, essentially stolen by law enforcement. Read the whole article, as it describes a number of other examples of this kind of theft.
Amherst students demand punishment for those expressing opinions they disagree with
Fascists: A student protest group at Amherst College in Massachusetts are demanding the university punish those who put up “All Lives Matter” and “Free Speech” posters.
A group calling themselves the Amherst Uprising listed 11 demands they want enacted by next Wednesday. Among them is a demand that President Biddy Martin issue a statement saying that Amherst does “not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the ‘All Lives Matter’ posters, and the ‘Free Speech’ posters.” The latter posters called the principle of free speech the “true victim” of the protests at the University of Missouri.
Going further, the students demand the people behind “free speech” fliers be required to go through a disciplinary process as well as “extensive training for racial and cultural competency.”
This group also issued ten other demands, including being excused from classes so they can protest. The other demands are just as absurd and odious.
If the college president agrees to any of these demands the question I ask is this: Why is anyone spending a dime to send their kids to this trash heap? If I had my kids there they would be pulled immediately.
Playwright forces play cancellation for racist reasons
Liberal bigot: A student production of a play was canceled just prior to its first public performance because the playwright didn’t like the ethnicity of the actors.
Marilouise Michel, Clarion University professor of theater and the play’s director, explains what she was told. “On Monday afternoon, I received an email from the playwright telling me that he demanded that we recast the show with Asian actors or shut down our production,” she said.
A lot easier said than done for the primarily white state university. “We don’t have a large population of Asian students at the university,” Michel said. “We opened our auditions to all of the students at the university.”
College students demand professor be punished for expressing an opinion
Fascists: Students at Vanderbilt University are demanding the firing or suspension of a tenured professor for writing an editorial they disagree with.
So far, the chancellor of the university has merely gotten on his knees to apologize to the students, saying “he was sorry if any Vanderbilt students felt hurt or unwelcome” and that some opinions have “no place in this university.” Thus, I expect him to cave to the bullies at some point.
Note that I haven’t mentioned what this professor wrote in her editorial, because it really doesn’t matter. If you think about it you can probably guess, but first, she has the first amendment right to that opinion no matter what it is, and second, the goal of these fascists is to shut anyone up that doesn’t support them blindly, so any opinion they see as a threat will be attacked.
Denial by everyone
Link here. The article is a careful analysis of the new narrative by the press and the conservative establishment in which the presidential campaign is now coming down to a competition between Rubio vs Cruz, while apparently ignoring the fact that Trump and Carson have been dominating the polls for months.
All of which is to say that, yes, a battle royale between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would make for absolutely fascinating political theater, in the best sense of the term. But on what grounds should this possible outcome, for which some in elite conservative circles are evidently yearning, be considered somewhat inevitable, or even all that likely? Donald Trump and Ben Carson have occupied first place in every major national poll since the beginning of July. Since early August, their combined support has hovered around 50 percent, with the other dozen candidates divvying up the scraps. This is not indicative of fleeting, flash-in-the-pan appeal. We’ve now gone months with virtually unchanged fundamentals, as the various spikes and swoons of lower-tier candidates have had little impact on the dominant top two. [emphasis in original]
What I struck me about this however is that it isn’t just the press and the conservative elites who are in denial. As the article also notes, Trump and Carson are clearly “two political novices with strange political instincts and undeniable knowledge blindspots.” The voters seem as much in denial about those blindspots as the elites are about Trump and Carson’s lead.
The voters are justifiably angry. They don’t trust the elites and professional politicians from either party who have lied to them repeatedly. These passions have apparently gotten so strong that the public is now ready to ignore some obvious candidate weaknesses that in the past would have made these same candidates unelectable. Instead, they are ready to put these flawed outsiders in power.
Then again, not one voter has yet voted. When it comes time to actually pull the lever, it could be that the pundits are right and the support for these outsiders will suddenly vanish. To me, this narrative appears increasingly unlikely, but we shall see.
Mysterious piece of space junk burns up over Indian Ocean
Though scientists have not yet identified it, the piece of space junk discovered last month in an unusual orbit with a predictable moment of decay has burned up over the Indian Ocean,
Estimated to measure 1–2 metres across, WT1190F had circled the Earth–Moon system since at least 2009, says independent astronomy-software developer Bill Gray, who has been working with NASA to track the debris. It most likely came off a recent lunar spacecraft, but it is not out of the question that it could have dated to the Apollo era.
In at least one case, scientists were able to image the object as it burned up. The data from this will allow them to determine its chemical composition, which in turn might help them identify it.
Astronomers measure 5,400 mph winds on exoplanet
Category 5! Astronomers have for the first time measured wind speeds on an exoplanet and they are a doozy!
Discovered on the exoplanet HD 189733b, the Warwick researchers measured the velocities on the two sides of HD 189733b and found a strong wind moving at over 5400 mph blowing from its dayside to its night side. Mr Louden explains: “HD 189733b’s velocity was measured using high resolution spectroscopy of the sodium absorption featured in its atmosphere. As parts of HD 189733b’s atmosphere move towards or away from the Earth the Doppler effect changes the wavelength of this feature, which allows the velocity to be measured.”.
This exoplanet was one of the first discovered by Kepler, which means its orbit transits its sun. In this case it does so every 2.2 days, and astronomers have taken advantage of these frequent transits to study the planet’s atmosphere as the star’s light travels through it. The result is that HD 187733b is probably one of the most studied exoplanets.
Next Blue Origin test flight before end of year
The competition heats up: Blue Origin not only intends to launch another test flight of its suborbital New Shepard rocket/capsule before the end of 2015, they hope to begin commercial unmanned flights by the second quarter of 2016.
Manned flights will follow, though they don’t say when. Based on this schedule, however, it appears that Blue Origin, which had hardly been on anyone’s radar for most of the last decade, is going to beat Virgin Galactic and XCOR in flying their first commercial flight.
Copenhagen Phil – Ravel’s Bolero
An evening pause: You really can’t pick a better classical piece for a flash mob performance than Bolero. It builds bit by bit, allowing the performers to slowly gather as if by accident. I also noticed that they seemed to be really enjoying the casual dress nature of this performance, which occurred at Coperhagen Central Station on May 2, 2011..
Hat tip Danae.