Nov
23
2018

URLs du Jour

2018-11-23

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  • Minnesota is famous for being Nice; there's even a Wikipedia article. And it's true! A number of my cousins live there, and they are all nice! QED!

    But…

    The not-so-nice undercurrent is a willingness to push people around to accomplish your social goals. At Reason, Christian Britschgi provides a data point: Minneapolis' Healthy Foods Mandate Screws Over Ethnic Grocers.

    Minneapolis is putting to the test the notion that people don't eat healthy foods because businesses refuse to stock them. So far, it is failing.

    In 2014, the city passed its Staple Food Ordinance which requires all grocery stores—barring a few exceptions—to keep on hand fresh produce, and other healthy foods they were not devoting enough shelf-space to.

    The Other Twin City, St. Paul, had no such ordinance, so it was relatively easy to test the effects. Unsurprising: a lot of food waste, inflexible and arbitrary stocking rules, widespread noncompliance, no measurable effects on actual public health. And, perhaps most amusing, the ethnic grocers to which the headline refers point out loudly that the rules are tilted toward what we'll call a standard Norwegian diet. Too bad, Asians and Hispanics!

    Our Amazon Product du Jour: a t-shirt featuring a phrase my dad used a lot when I was a kid, usually because of something I did.

  • At the Federalist, David Harsanyi petitions (a department of) his government for a redress of greivances: Dear TSA, Please Stop Molesting Kids At The Airport.

    The other day, after slogging through a check-in line at one of the nation’s busiest airports, dutifully removing my shoes and belt and checking my bag and pockets for other potentially dangerous items (water and loose change), I was pulled aside by a crack Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent so he could further investigate the contents of my carry-on. While waiting, I took this picture of what looked to be a ten-year-old boy being molested by a 250-pound man.

    Now, normally I would have reported this incident to the proper authorities. Inappropriate contact with a child, inside or outside his clothing, is a criminal act. But, in this case, the proper authorities were the ones feeling up the kid and the father had already protested the frisking—although, like all of us, he probably understood that no matter how vociferously he objected to this bit of state-sanctioned criminality it wasn’t going to change anything.

    David's picture at the link, but you can probably imagine. His bottom line, and mine: there has to be a better way.

  • A front-page article in yesterday's local paper, Foster's Daily Democrat had the tantalizing headline: UNH student’s arrest inspired by Ocasio-Cortez.

    Emma Chinman-Hatton, a 21-year-old University of New Hampshire student, was in Washington, D.C., last week when she decided she wanted to get arrested.

    While driving to D.C., Chinman and New Hampshire Youth Movement members decided it would be too risky to make getting arrested part of their mission to demand action on climate change in a protest at the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic U.S. House minority leader. Chinman’s mind was changed after hearing inspirational words from Democratic Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York during a training session a day before the Nov. 13 protest, designed to push party leaders to take immediate legislative action.

    You will not be surprised to learn that Ms. Chinman-Hatton is a younger version of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, earnest, self-righteous, and ignorant. Eh, she's young.

    There's less excuse for making this a "news" story, but it's something Foster's does these days. It is a puff piece, undisguised advocacy for the so-called "Green New Deal", something that's been rattling around progressive/Marxist circles for over a decade. It's little more than the latest scheme to use "climate change" as an excuse for dictatorial government control over the energy sector.

  • We've previously posted this evergreen tweet:

    Well, "a new study shows" that you shouldn't trust what new studies show. At the Atlantic, Ed Yong points out that Psychology’s Replication Crisis Is Running Out of Excuses.

    Over the past few years, an international team of almost 200 psychologists has been trying to repeat a set of previously published experiments from its field, to see if it can get the same results. Despite its best efforts, the project, called Many Labs 2, has only succeeded in 14 out of 28 cases. Six years ago, that might have been shocking. Now it comes as expected (if still somewhat disturbing) news.

    I don't want to encourage you to only believe "studies" that reinforce your prior beliefs. I'm only saying that I wouldn't blame you a bit.

  • [Amazon Link]
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    At NR, Kyle Smith looks at a recent celebrity memoir from Eric Idle: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. No, Really.

    Eric Idle’s dad survived an especially dangerous World War II gig — tailgunner in the RAF — only to get killed in a truck accident while hitchhiking home after the war. Eric was two years old. It was Christmas Eve. Perhaps, he writes, “That’s why I wrote the song, ‘F*** Christmas.’”

    If you can muster wit for this degree of tragedy, you can muster wit for anything, and Idle did, writing the world’s jauntiest crucifixion ditty. “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” the title of that Monty Python song from The Life of Brian and of Idle’s new memoir, turns out to be a fairly helpful directive for getting by, and Idle has stuck to it these last 75 years. He calls himself a “failed pessimist.” The book is hilarious, so you need not burden yourself with the task of trying to learn from it, but Idle’s rose-tinted spectacles are available for the borrowing. He’s an existential optimist.

    Interesting tidbit: Idle's "Nudge Nudge" sketch was a favorite of Elvis Presley.

    I went through a period of reading celebrity memoirs to see if I could gain any insight into creative genius. I didn't have a lot of luck, but I might try again for Eric Idle. And maybe Roger Daltrey. And…


Last Modified 2024-01-24 3:16 PM EDT