Links

• TARP was an abysmal failure. Who knew?
• Green regulation and ‘tin whiskers’.
• How to get the guts to buck a trend
• Women’s gymnastics as pixie contest: “Adult women are built more for comfort than speed.” Heh.
• Chris Bertram says that the badminton scandal illustrates why ‘sometimes we need to punish the technically innocent but morally culpable’, for stuff like tax evasion. Or something. Turns out to be another entry in the widespread consensus that seems to be forming among elites, left and right, that the Rule Of Law is just dumb and who needs it. Instead we need to empower elites more, giving them wider latitude in whom to choose to prosecute. Expect to hear more on this subject in the coming years – from elites.
• The video of the guy who recorded himself harassing a nice Chick-Fil-A employee is hilarious on multiple levels. One of the subtexts that’s gone largely unnoticed is that this is essentially the laziest corporate-protestor ever. Consider the form he chose his protest to take: 1. Drive through the drive-in (i.e. the protest he has chosen doesn’t even require him to get out of his car). 2. Order nothing, but get a free water. 3. Yap at the poor captive employee over nothing. 4. He also comments a couple times that he sees some ‘college-age’ kids somewhere (barely visible on video) and he ‘hopes they’re going to be doing a sit-in’, musing that he ‘might join them later’. (I don’t know if Hoping Some Other People Are Going To Do A Sit-In is a chapter in Rules For Radicals, but if it isn’t it oughta be.) 5. Conclusion: “I just did something really good, I feel purposeful.” Comedy gold! In any event, the employee deserves a commendation for how she handled it. Also I love the part near the end where he assures her he’s a ‘nice person’. Rule of thumb: genuinely nice people don’t have to assert they are nice.

About these ads