URLs du Jour — 2014-10-02

  • Sean Davis has done admirable work in exposing Neil deGrasse Tyson's unfortunate habit of fabricating quotes and yarns in order to paint people he disfavors as ignorant yahoos. Sean's latest is an analysis of Tyson's latest weasel-worded effort to "explain" how he came to make up a Dubya quote. Sample:

    I still find it shocking the lengths to which Tyson went — up to and including repeated and obvious fabrications about the president of the United States — to make such a pathetically bad point. His story is the Rube Goldberg machine of stupid stories: completely pointless, and hopelessly fragile. You’d think somebody intent on pointing out a massive internal contradiction would, oh, I don’t know, spend some time researching whether there was actually an internal contradiction. But then again, you’d probably think that somebody would make sure a quote actually existed before repeating it as gospel.

    Sean's history of Tyson-related posts are here. My advice: unless Tyson's talking about the radial velocity distribution and line strengths of 33 carbon stars in the Galactic bulge or something similar, it's unsafe to assume he's not just making shit up.

    Also see Rich Lowry joining the well-deserved pile-on.

  • Jonah Goldberg's article from the current issue of National Review is worth your while. (As pretty much everything from Mr. Goldberg is.) It's a lengthy takeoff from a Barackrobatic tic:

    We’ve heard a great deal lately about the “wrong side of history.” It is one of the president’s favorite ways to describe whatever side he isn’t on, and it’s been a phrase on the lips of progressives for quite a while. Among the myriad problems with the notion of a “wrong side of history,” as many critics (including me) have long argued, is that in the domestic sphere it is a call for one’s opponents to surrender to the inevitability of defeat, and in the international sphere it is deployed rhetorically to avoid deploying anything real.

    It's a good news/bad news situation for "champions of freedom" (Jonah's term): defeat's not certain, but neither is victory. (But I'd add: there are reasons to be optimistic.)

  • Cato has released its FISCAL POLICY REPORT CARD ON AMERICA’S GOVERNORS 2014, just in time for elections. New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan got a D. And that D is for "Depressing", because most polls have her leading her GOP opponent by double-digits.

  • Frank J. Fleming opines: "Now Is Not the Time to Turn the Country Around". Revel in the inspired lunacy.

    Now, I want to note that I don’t mean this analogy to be disrespectful to President Obama. But I think most historians will back me when I say his presidency is the equivalent of a dumb child running into tables.

  • For your informed amusement: 12 informative [animated] GIFs.

    I especially liked "worldwide flight patterns"; it looks like the US and Europe are fighting a super-soaker war. (And to a lesser extent, the mainland US and Hawaii.)


Last Modified 2017-11-29 5:46 PM EDT