In The Mailbox: 08.07.20

My lifelong policy — as a matter of principle, really — is to avoid lawsuits. Specifically, I take to heart the advice Andrew Jackson got from his mother: “Andy, never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue for slander, settle those cases yourself.” Or as has been quoted elsewhere: “Never bring a suit in law for assault and battery or for defamation. The law affords no remedy for such outrages that can satisfy the feelings of a true man.” In general, I don’t like being in courtrooms for any reason, and cannot imagine why anyone would choose to be a plaintiff in a lawsuit, if he could possibly find any other remedy for a situation..

Unfortunately, we live in an age when litigiousness is encouraged by our culture — all those TV courtroom dramas where justice always triumphs and lawyers are portrayed as heroes — so as soon as anyone gets their feelings hurt, their automatic response is, “I’ll sue you!”

Well, today, boys and girls, let’s learn about a few helpful legal phrases, including “fair use” and “malicious intent”:

On Aug 25, 2017, [YouTube comedian Akilah] Hughes filed a copyright infringement claim in New York federal court against fellow YouTube content creator Carl Benjamin [a/k/a “Sargon of Akkad”] alleging that he violated fair use principles when he used selections of Hughes’s video entitled “We Thought She Would Win” to make his own video entitled “SJW Levels of Awareness” cut and edited from the original work posted by Hughes. The judge ruled that the video met three of the four fair-use standards and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice. Benjamin filed a motion dated February 18, 2020 requesting attorney’s fees and costs. . . .
On August 5, 2020 Judge Richard J. Sullivan ruled against Hughes and awarded Benjamin over $38,000 in attorney’s fees, finding that Hughes’ claims were “objectively unreasonable” and that this was “clear from the face of the complaint and the videos at the heart of the dispute.” He also noted that because of Hughes’ public messages on Twitter promising to “bankrupt” and de-platform Benjamin, she displayed clear malicious intent, which was another criterion for awarding legal fees.

Noted legal scholar Ace of Spades offers this scholarly commentary:

$38,000, bitch.
She’s currently chain-slandering Sargon on Twitter, repeatedly calling him a “white supremacist.”
He should sue her ass for that, too — he’s now playing with house money, after all.
She’s also attacking the judge. The judge who repeatedly warned her she had no case and that if she pursued things, she was doomed to lose and might wind up having to pay the other party’s attorney fees.
But she’s an SJW — she’s special. She can ignore the law.
Or maybe not.
As Ya Boi Zach advises: “Ignore ’em when you can, sue ’em when you can’t.”

The “fair use” window in U.S. copyright law is very large, especially when it comes to online content. If you publish something on the Internet, and someone wishes to mock or criticize what you have published, any competent attorney would advise you against suing for copyright infringment, because the “fair use” doctrine certain includes quoting what you said or as in this case, showing a video clip of you saying what you said. But perhaps Akilah Hughes doesn’t know any competent lawyers. Maybe she should seek advice from Bill Schmalfeldt.

Here is the 2-minute edit Sargon did of Akilah’s stupid video:

Sargon’s title, “SJW Levels of Awareness,” is entirely apt, and this dimwit SJW doesn’t seem to have gained any higher level yet.

20% of my work was unacceptable. Keep in mind the express purpose of this white supremacist was to arouse his hoard of 4chan white supremacists into harassing me. After all, this was a video of me earnestly saying I was surprised Hillary lost. Because I was.

— Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) August 5, 2020

Notice her use of “white supremacist” (defined as anyone who disagrees with a liberal) and her use of “harassed” to mean criticized.

If you vote Republican, you are a “white supremacist,” according to Akilah Hughes, and if you use your Twitter account to say anything negative to Akilah Hughes, she calls that “harassment.”

Also, she doesn’t know the difference between hoard and horde, but please tell me again how “ignorant” Trump voters are.

Category: Culture, Racism

‘Climate Scientist Explains …’

Posted on | August 6, 2020 | No Comments

When I was in school, back in Ye Olde Ancient Tymes, we were taught that skepticism was necessary to science. That is to say, our teachers emphasized the distance between theory and proof, teaching an experimental approach to the scientific method — trial and error, etc.

During the past several decades, however, the emphasis on skepticism and logical processes of research has apparently been abandoned, largely because education bureaucrats were determined to eradicate Christianity from the classroom. Bible believers kept raising doubts about the scientific basis of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, and so it was that indoctrinating students to accept evolution as proven fact — no skepticism permitted — became a core goal of curriculum and pedagogy. Having purged from the classroom any criticism of Darwinian theory, these education bureaucrats thereby paved the way for the promulgation of other official dogmas, including “climate change,” i.e., anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Not long after skepticism of AGW was declared heretical — “The science is settled!” — a new official dogma was introduced to the curriculum; now anyone who dissents from Third Wave Gender Theory is denounced as a transphobic bigot who is anti-science.

You can ask Colin Wright about this. He is an accredited evolutionary biologist, who has been mocking Christian creationists since he was a teenager. After he got his Ph.D., however, Dr. Wright became increasingly irritated by dogmatic Gender Theory proponents. As a result of his criticism, Dr. Wright became persona non grata in academia, and has been smeared as a “racist,” to boot. The science is settled!

God moves in mysterious ways, and has a profound sense of irony, too.

So this morning, I received an email promoting the work of another scientist, Dr. Peter Langdon Ward (Dartmouth College, BA 1965, and Columbia University, MA, 1967, PhD 1970), who spent many years working for the U.S. Geological Survey, and who could be called a dissenter from the AWG “consensus”:

In a 2009 paper, Ward suggested that “large volumes of SO2 [sulfur dioxide] erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid warming.” In addition, he noted that sulfur dioxide is a strong absorber of visible light. He proposed that the rapid increase in global warming during the 20th century was caused by these mechanisms as a result of the rapid increase in sulfur dioxide emitted by the burning fossil fuels. Since 2009 Ward has been arguing that Climate Change is caused by ozone depletion and not human-derived CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions, a hypothesis that is not supported by referred literature.

Dr. Langdon’s speciality is volcanos and earthquakes, and his theory (at least as I understand it, as a mere amateur) is that the impact of volcanic eruptions on the atmosphere has been underestimated by those fixated on carbon dioxide emissions. You see that Dr. Langdon’s scientific expertise, however, has had no impact on the “consensus,” because anyone who criticizes the official dogma is ostracized as a heretic.

Anyway, the email I got this morning:

ONCE UPON A TIME ALL HUMANS
HAD DARK SKIN
Climate Scientist Explains Global
Variables to Evolving Skin Color
Since the mid-18th century, skin color has been the single most important physical trait used to define human groups, including variously named varieties, races, subspecies, and species.
Humans are a colorful species, yet all modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa. Once upon a time, all humans had dark skin. Variations in human skin color we know today are adaptive traits that correlate closely with geography and the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
“For thousands of years, human skin was the sole interface between our bodies and the environment,” says Dr. Peter L. Ward, 27-year veteran of the U. S. Geological Survey.
Human skin evolved to absorb just enough ultraviolet-B radiation long before clothes were available. The dosage of ultraviolet-B radiation reaching human skin is greatest in the tropics, least around the poles, and varies with climate change.
Around 1.2 million years ago, in response to climate change killing trees, hominins moved out of tropical rain forests into sunny savannas where they lost body hair, evolved more efficient perspiration, and evolved short, curly, Afro-textured hair to protect the thermosensitive brain from bright sunshine. The loss of body hair led to heritable increases in melanin, a pigment that blackens the skin and darkens the eyes of people living in intense sunlight in equatorial regions.
Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa and were originally dark skinned. As humans migrated out of equatorial Africa to higher latitudes, where sunshine is less intense, they evolved over hundreds of generations lower levels of melanin, leading to lighter skin and lighter eye color so that they could absorb adequate ultraviolet-B radiation to have healthy levels of vitamin D. Humans evolved straighter hair that provided increased warmth. Eskimos in the Arctic kept dark skin perhaps because of nearly 24-hour sunlight half the year and because they absorb large amounts of vitamin D from their diet primarily of fish, seals and other animals.
“Thus, the existence, health, and even skin color of humans living on Earth is determined by having just the right Goldilocks balance between how much solar ultraviolet-B radiation is absorbed by the ozone layer versus how much reaches Earth’s surface.” says Dr. Ward.

Very interesting, as a theory.

My early education in scientific skepticism requires me to point out that, however much evidence there is for humans originating “1.2 million years ago” in “tropical rain forests,” this is nevertheless a speculative theory, rather than a fact proven by science. My own belief — and it is merely a belief, which I cannot prove — is that human life began approximately 10,000 years ago. Thus, the racial differences among mankind are of rather recent origin and, as best as I can determine from the Bible, originated with Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Of course, it is impossible to prove my belief, but my observation of human differences (one of my five grandchildren is playing with his toys about 10 feet from my desk as I write this) suggests that if, like Noah, you had three sons married to three daughters-in-law, there might be tremendous variation in the appearances of your grandchildren. If these three families of your descendants went their separate ways — Noah’s sons repopulated the entire earth — it strikes me that within a few hundred years there might be remarkable differences between your remote descendants. Whatever the evidence may be for Dr. Ward’s assertion that “all modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa,” I do not believe that such a lengthy amount of time was necessary for the “evolution” of racial differences.

Well, I suppose we must agree to disagree on this topic, but I must insist on pointing out the dangers inherent in the demand for a scientific “consensus” in areas of inquiry where our knowledge is imperfect. Totalitarian regimes in the 20th century sought to impose an “official” view of science, which led to Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union and to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. We should hope that old-fashioned skepticism and intellectual freedom can make a comeback.

Category: Culture, Education, Intellectuals, Religion, Science

‘After Being Denied Tenure …’

Posted on | August 5, 2020 | No Comments

How many readers recall Deborah Frisch, the former psychology professor who eventually went to prison for harassing Jeff Goldstein? Frisch was the original inspiration for my oft-repeated observation that Crazy People Are Dangerous. We haven’t had occasion to mention Frisch since she was arrested in December for violating terms of her parole, and we may hope she’s now in a padded isolation cell with no Internet access, so there won’t be any new updates on her case for a while.

What brought Frisch’s name to mind today was a story about a former Vanderbilt University assistant professor who got busted for creating a fake sockpuppet account on Twitter. Researching the long, sad story of BethAnn McLaughlin, I noted these sentences on her Wikipedia page:

After being denied tenure in 2017, she sought to have the decision overturned. The decision to deny tenure was upheld and her employment at Vanderbilt ended in July of 2019.

Ooohh! Shades of Deb Frisch! Readers familiar with Frisch know that her downward spiral into madness seems to have started when she was denied tenure at the University of Oregon, where she had been on the faculty since 1988. She left Oregon after 2001 and took an adjunct position at the University of Arizona, which is where she was working when she began using her university account to harass Goldstein in 2006. That resulted in her resigning from the university, and thereafter she went further and further into psychotic derangement.

So, what happened to #MeTooSTEM activist BethAnn McLaughlin?

It might be the nail in the coffin for a polarizing figure in the MeTooSTEM movement. Beyond the person at the center of the apparent death hoax, the weirdness that recently overtook science Twitter says something about this already strange time in academe — and the country, too.
Where to begin? Probably on Friday, when BethAnn McLaughlin, founder of the advocacy group MeTooSTEM, announced that a friend, @Sciencing_Bi on Twitter, died from COVID-19.
“She was a fierce protector of people,” McLaughlin wrote on her account, which has since been suspended. “No one has ever had my back like that.”
Sciencing_Bi, who always remained anonymous but identified as an anthropologist at Arizona State University and member of the Hopi Tribe, made a “million first nations Indigenous contacts for MeTooSTEM,” McLaughlin added. . . .
McLaughlin later held a small online memorial service for Sciencing_Bi, and that’s when things begin to unravel. Some in attendance sensed holes in McLaughlin’s account of her friendship with Sciencing_Bi. Others, wanting to hold Arizona State accountable for the death of a faculty member due to teaching-related COVID-19, could find no death announcement or any other public clues about who she was. The institution is huge — in retrospect, the perfect place to situate a fake ally — but the total silence rang alarm bells.
Arizona State eventually put out a statement saying, “Unfortunately, this appears to be a hoax. We looked into this over the weekend and were unable to verify any connection with the university. We were in touch with several deans and faculty members and no one was able to identify the account or who might be behind it.”

Twitter suspended McLaughlin as a consequence of her sockpuppetry. More importantly, what this tawdry episode of online deceit appears to reveal is that McLaughlin is fundamentally dishonest and therefore is undeserving of holding any position of trust. And this, in turn, leads us back to Vanderbilt’s decision to deny McLaughlin tenure. In 2015, McLaughlin’s tenure application was paused “while a three-member Faculty Investigation Committee conducted a disciplinary probe of her for allegedly posting anonymous, derogatory tweets about colleagues.” When the investigation was completed and the tenure review process resumed, the dean called attention to “allegations of violations of the Faculty Standards of Conduct” by McLaughlin, and she was denied tenure on a split decision. Many in the academic community supported McLaughlin’s claim that she was the victim of retaliation after she testified against a former colleague who was accused in 2014 of sexual harassment. However, that colleague, neuroscientist Aurelio Galli, was ultimately found innocent of wrongdoing, which raises the question of whether McLaughlin’s testimony against him was credible.

Having been busted for inventing an indigenous queer professor, and then having killed her invention with COVID-19, McLaughlin seems well on her way to the kind of personal meltdown that overtook Deb Frisch.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

Category: Education

In The Mailbox: 08.04.20

Posted on | August 4, 2020 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Malicious software or best kouhai? Who knows with BB? From the Summer Event on Fate/Grand Order.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: So How Should The Elderly Defend Themselves?
Red Pilled Jew: Random Thoughts
EBL: What Happened In Beirut?
Twitchy: Sen. Hirono Walks Out Of Ted Cruz’ Hearing, Refuses To Denounce Antifa
Louder With Crowder: Ted Cruz Wants To Hold Liberal Politicians Accountable For Antifa Riots
Vox Popoli: The Lede, Buried, also, Facebook Has Corporate Cancer

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Gutting The Suburbs
American Conservative: Make America Fun Again, also, Joe Biden Is Not A Nice Guy
American Greatness: Obama Defends Mob Rule, also, Nevada Approves Mail-In Voting
American Power: Riots & Demonstrations From Portland To Jerusalem
American Thinker: The Real Reason Democrats Are Pushing For Mail-In Ballots, also, The Democrat Elite Is Aging, Becoming Demented
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Vaccine News
Babalu Blog: Cuban-Americans In Louisville Fight Back Against #BLM Extortion
BattleSwarm: Eric Weinstein & Bret Easton Ellis Discuss Why Trump Keeps Beating The Left, also, Joe Rogan Interviews Ben Shapiro (Again)
Cafe Hayek: Some Links
CDR Salamander: Are We Living In The Twilight Of American Seapower Dominance?
Da Tech Guy: Want Accountable Government? Vote Trump, also, Report From Louisiana – I’m Armed With A Spray Bottle & A Rag
Don Surber: Democrats Are Paying For The Mueller Report, also, Why Biden’s VP Pick Is Delayed
First Street Journal: Being #Woke Means Never Having To Think Things Through
The Geller Report: MSNBC Producer Quits, Calls Network A “Cancer” Stoking Racial Division, also, Portland Riots Grow More Violent As Feds Step Back
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Unexpectedly!
Hollywood In Toto: HBO’s The Swamp Sticks The Knife Slowly Into Three GOP Stars, also, Why The PG-Rated Tourist Trap Is As Creepy As Freddy, Michael Myers
JustOneMinute: Biden’s VP Pick
The Lid: After Lewis Eulogy, Tucker Carlson Slams Obama As “One Of The Sleaziest” Political Figures Ever
Legal Insurrection: Media Documents NYC Mail-In Voting Fiasco But Won’t Admit Trump Is Right, also, Federal Court Rules No Qualified Immunity For Mass. Judge Who Helped Illegal Alien Evade ICE
The PanAm Post: Alex Saab Used Mexican Companies To Help Maduro Evade Sanctions, also, U.S. Plans To Relocate Factories From Asia To Latin America
Power Line: Did Lockdowns Work? Evidence Says No, also, The “Abject Failure” Strikes Back
Protein Wisdom: Progressive Authoritarianism & Its Discontents
Shark Tank: Rubio Rejects Castro Sympathizer/VP Hopeful Bass’ Excuse
Shot In The Dark: The New Kulaks
The Political Hat: Joe “Bad Touch” Biden’s Plan To Destroy Small Businesses With Wokeness
This Ain’t Hell: It’s Not Quite The Inquisition They Wanted, also, Some New Endorsements For POTUS
Victory Girls: Ivanka Spearheads Human Trafficking Survivor Grants, also, Praetorian Media Calls For No Presidential Debates
Volokh Conspiracy: Extramural Speech At Auburn
Weasel Zippers: Teen Who Rallied To Remove Police From Chicago Public Schools Shot To Death, also, Federal Judge Orders NYS To Count Previously Invalidated Mail-In Ballots
Megan McArdle: We All Have A Stake In SpaceX’s Success
Mark Steyn: I’ll Never Smile Again, also, A Baroness On Barrenness

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Florida Man Strikes Again

Posted on | August 4, 2020 | No Comments

In the annals of American journalism, one thing is forever certain. No matter what happens, “Florida Man” is always in the headlines:

A Florida man fatally shot an Orlando Burger King worker Saturday night after his friend’s drive-thru order took too long to complete, according to a report.
Kelvis Rodriguez-Tormes, 37, is accused of gunning down Desmond Joshua, 22, in the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant on East Colonial Drive about 7:30 p.m., according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
“You got two seconds before I shoot you,” Rodriguez-Tormes told the victim, who had only been recently hired, before pulling the trigger, WKMG reported, citing deputies.
Rodriguez-Tormes had earlier stormed to the Burger King at the behest of a woman who made a scene over a long wait time at the drive-thru.
The unidentified woman was refunded $40 and told to leave after she got out of her car and screamed she was going to get “her man” to come to the eatery, according to an arrest record.
She drove away, but soon returned with Rodriguez-Tormes, who targeted Joshua, demanding the employee fight him.
Rodriguez-Tormes placed Joshua in a headlock before a witness separated the two, records show.
But moments later, Rodriguez-Tormes returned from his truck with a gun and shot Joshua, police said.
The employee was taken to an area hospital and pronounced dead.
Rodriguez-Tormes was charged with murder, destruction of evidence and weapons possession.

The victim was black, but because the killer is Hispanic, nobody is calling this a “hate crime” or planning a protest march, so it’s just one more sad headline in the long, tragic history of Florida Man.

Category: Crime, Florida

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In The Mailbox: 08.07.20

In The Mailbox: 08.06.20 (Evening Edition)

In The Mailbox: 08.06.20 (Afternoon Edition)

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

‘Climate Scientist Explains …’

‘After Being Denied Tenure …’

In The Mailbox: 08.04.20

Florida Man Strikes Again

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