Do not challenge the SJW, for they are fierce

Lorrie Goldstein is a writer for the Toronto Sun, one of those cheesy conservative tabloids that features half-naked “girls”, and rages against liberalism and science and those terrible transgender people. He tweeted out a challenge: Next time a Social Justice Warrior tells you “science is settled” on global warming, ask them to explain the science. Then watch the fun.

Yes, do. I knew this was coming. And it was quite fun to watch @karengeier lop off his ass and carve it into itty-bitty pieces. It’s so beautiful.

Another reason to dread the Trump regime

It’s time once again for the nightly Twitter bluster from our embarrassing president-elect.

What do we learn from this, other than that Trump can’t spell? What we should learn is that the world now thinks that America is weak. That was not a science vessel: it was a military ship probing submarine access points to and from Chinese ports. This was in international waters, so I’m not defending the Chinese seizure…but I can understand it, and most importantly, isn’t it obvious that China is confident the US will do nothing about it? They know we are soon to be lacking a serious head of state, with a clownish buffoon who is the product of foreign meddling in our politics, and so hey, sure, let’s poke the dull-witted twit a bit.

Expect more of this. It isn’t just terrorists — established world powers have been annoyed at American dominance for the past century, and they don’t mind tormenting the world’s biggest bully.

Rogue One is a movie

It has a beginning and an end. It has many characters (maybe too many characters). It has conflicts. Many of the conflicts are resolved.

It is a science fiction movie. There were many special effects. There were aliens and robots. There were many strange planets (maybe too many planets). There were gigantic slow motion explosions. There were space battles.

It benefitted from a large special effects budget, and from the 40 years of Star Wars resonances constantly humming under the hood. Aside from those, though, it seemed more like a Roger Corman imitation of a Star Wars movie. The fact that the music was just slightly off from the expected John Williams score made that even more gratingly apparent.

However, it was a perfectly serviceable, if unexceptional science fiction movie. Much more upscale than you’d get on SyFy, but otherwise it would have fit in well with other genre movies on cable TV.

New York’s culinary reputation is suffering

I get to spend a day in New York City on Monday. Where should I go for a nice classy New York dinner?

The Trump Tower Grill, maybe?The reviews aren’t exactly stellar.

I reflexively want to be generous in my assessment of what the post-election Trump Grill says about the Trump presidency. Perhaps it’s a sign that Trump is in over his head, and a shallow, mediocre man who runs a shallow, mediocre business empire (and restaurant) would sink and implode, crushing the expectations of millions of his hopeful supporters. But watching Trump parade his enemies through the nearby lobby, taunting them with prestigious appointments only to cruelly humiliate them, I had to look over at the human cattle herd at the Trump Grill, overwhelming a well-meaning staff with their dreams of a meal fit for a president, and wonder if he cared about any of them, either.

Nah. I can probably find a food truck run by immigrants that will get the job done.

Oh, no, I had a horrible thought flit through my head: does this mean Guy Fieri will be the next president of the US?

Join the Rebel Alliance

I didn’t make it to the midnight showing last night, so don’t worry, no spoilers here. I did run across this poster though, which for some reason speaks to me.

rebelalliance

Never mind the goofy movie, sign me up to rebel against tyranny.

I’ll probably get to the movie tonight, though, and I’ll probably be disappointed, because the whole damn universe has been disappointing lately.

“I’m saying people have gotten things wrong throughout the 5,500-year history of our planet.”

An advisor to Trump and member of the transition team just bare-faced asserted that the Earth is less than 6000 years old. This was after Anthony Scaramucci tried to invalidate modern science by arguing that scientists once argued that the Earth was flat and that the universe rotated about it. Never mind that those ideas preceded modern science and were relatively rapidly dispelled as evidence was acquired.

Watch those irony meters, gang.

Scaramucci wasn’t convinced. Later in the conversation, he said the Trump team simply wanted common sense solutions. Non-ideological.

Some of the stuff that you’re reading and some of the stuff I’m reading is very ideologically-based about the climate. We don’t want it to be that way, he said.

This has become the latest insult from the deeply ignorant: “You’re ideological!” Always said as they espouse some stupid ideological position of their own.

Rebecca Watson addresses this latest Trumpery more entertainingly.