Carolina 68 - Louisville 78

Congrats to Louisville. I kinda thought it was over at halftime. Strange game. Carolina gave up an 18-point lead in the second half, and simply seemed to stop scoring completely at the end of regulation and in overtime. I will note for the record that Carolina was assessed 33 personal fouls for the game, Louisville 16...and there certainly were some peculiar individual calls and no-calls--e.g. Jackson getting absolutely hammered in the open floor with no foul called... I wasn't too happy about the effect that had on the momentum...  Anyway, I'm not objective, and bitching about the officiating is bad form.

No Mittens In '16

link

Try to remember that life goes on.

Ghostbusters Reboot (w/ All Female Cast)

See now, was that so hard?
Though, on the downside, the original seems like an almost impossible act to follow...so I'll predict that this will be a big-time flop... Still, it's the right idea.

Michelle Obama Forgoes Headscarf In Saudi Arabia

I believe the relevant phrase would be "deal with it"...

Carolina 93 - Syracuse 83

Congratulations to Syracuse on a great game. Rakeem Christmas is an absolute beast...

After a disastrous first half (13 TOs), Carolina got it together and controlled most of the second half. Nate "Shooty McBuckets" Britt was completely and totally out of control, dropping in 3s like they were going out of style. Some nice work from Joel James and Isaiah Hicks. Paige was excellent, as usual. Roy absolutely really wrecked the Syracuse zone. All in all, a fun game. 

Carolina 78 - FSU 74

   Congrats to FSU for hanging in there. Carolina just couldn't shake 'em...mostly because of an insane game by Xavier Rathan-Mayes, who had 35 points. A really telling moment came with about a minute to go. XRM dribbled up to the 3 line yet again, and Paige went up with him and put a hand right in his face. Ball goes in and Paige throws his hands out, palms up, shrugging with a look on his face that said whelp, if you're going to hit that, I'm not sure what else I can do...  

   Really nice game by Brice, also, incidentally.

   If we hadn't lost Pinson for the season, I'd be getting pretty optimistic right about now...

Theo Pinson Breaks Foot, Out Indefinitely

   This sucks. First, it sucks for any college athlete to get hurt. But Theo is really something special. He hasn't gotten a lot of minutes yet, and hasn't figured out how to meld with the offense, but this kid is great. Like a lot of Heels fans, I love Pinson's game and love his amazing athleticism. More importantly, he's obviously a great kid with a big, awesome personality.
   Oh, and then there's: in my own view, if Carolina was going to go from good to great this year, it was going to largely be a result of Theo getting more comfortable in the offense and giving us more minutes. This is a team full of great kids, but personally I'm a little skeptical that they're going to get all the pieces fit together properly in the time remaining in the season...and without Theo exploding off the bench, I'm even more skeptical about it.
   Get well soon Theo! We all wanna see you play!

Anti-Vaxxers: Lefty Nuts Or Righty Nuts?

This coheres with my prejudice about the matter...
But, y'know, consider the source... The argument is not entirely without merit.

The Devastating Effect of Anti-Vaxxers On Measles In One Chart

Contra the title at the Post, this chart, of course, only shows the effect of anti-vaxxers on measles...
I have nothing to add.

Fake Sudafed Every Bit As Effective...

...as a placebo.
Out of laziness, I started buying that "PE" crap. When I went back to actual pseudoephedrine--which here in the OD requires going tot he pharmacy counter, showing ID, and signing some crap that lets the government track your sinus medicine purchases--the difference was striking. The fake stuff, so far as I can tell, doesn't do anything at all. Not for me, anyway...nor for most people in the linked study, apparently...
I've been buying so much of the real stuff that I'm probably on a DEA watchlist by now.
Stupid sinuses.
Possessed by the devil or something...
Jebus, why am I blogging about this? Next post: which socks I prefer!* Stay tuned!

(*Spoiler alert: Dickies FTW*)

(*Jebus. I gotta start sleeping more or who knows WTF is going to happen around here...)

Jeb vs. Mittens vs. Miscellaneous Loons 2016

For the love of God somebody just shoot me now

Mt Holyoke Cancels The Vagina Monologues Because It Excludes "Women Without Vaginas"

link
   So the reasoning is:
       Some women do not have vaginas
       Therefore: It would be wrong to perform The Vagina Monologues
   Well, what you have there is a false premise and a conclusion that does not follow from it.
   I mean, Brown is right: it's stupid to say that a play "excludes" a tiny group simply because no member of that group is explicitly represented in the play. But she's wrong about the other stuff, as her commenters indicate.
   But, in a way, I'm happy for the left to be facing such vexations. They've made their own tangled...uh bed...web...whatever...by insisting that everyone must assert that men who simply "identify" as women are women.
   I don't think that people should be seriously hassled for dressing and acting in non-traditional ways. If you're female and want to dress and act like males have, then, well, you go girl. But that does not mean that you're a man. A man is an adult, male human. It is false that anyone who "identifies" as a man is a man. And the attempt to employ moral condemnation against those who refuse to except a bizarre and false "constructivist" metaphysics is idiotic and morally wrong. I'm basically on the side of people who want to buck tradition in order to live their lives in a more authentic way...but I won't be bullied into believing false things about them.

Carolina 81 - State 79

Praise Jebus

Go Tar Heels

Beat the Pack

That is all

Carolina 72 - Louisville 71

   Whew!
   Louisville is freaking good.

George Zimmerman Yet Again Or: When You're Wrong You're Wrong Or: I'm An Idiot

   Jesus Christ that guy.
   It's mind-boggling and maddening that this psycho is roaming around scot-free. I can't believe I thought that asshat was innocent.

Carolina 70 - ND 71

   Very enjoyable game, IMO. ND was really impressive. They shoot a lot of 3s, but manage not to be boring about it. Carolina had plenty of chances to win it, and the ball actually bounced their way a lot in the last two minutes, but they just couldn't score. The last decision, to pass to a triple-teamed Marcus Paige instead of a wide-open Justin Jackson, was not a good one. But that's the way it goes.

   Lots of great pieces in this team, and I expect Roy to get the puzzle put together a bit better in a few weeks. Sucks to lose at the DES, but ND is just a good team and they played a good game.

Leiter: 2014: The Year The Philosophy Profession Went Mad

   I think this is basically right.
   Too busy to write anything about it now, but this stuff is basically why I was skeptical of the anti-Leiter jihad. I don't have any particularly pro-Leiter sentiments. I try to basically ignore the People-Magazine-like attention to the "profession" that obsesses so many. But Leiter doesn't sound to me like a particularly nice guy. OTOH, I had this vague sense that the anti-Leiter campaign was being conducted for largely political reasons, and largely by the SJW wing of the philosophy profession. Leiter's to the left of me so far as I can tell, but I had slowly come to suspect that he was considered insufficiently leftward by certain people. Not coincidentally, it started to seem as if there were a kind of Daily Nous vs. Leiter Reports aspect to the thing--and the Daily Nous seems downright nuttily/creepily SJW-friendly with some regularity.
   Such anyway were my hunches... I hope they were wrong...but I'm really starting to think they weren't...

Back

Back from holiday travels to MO and Los Angeles, and Philadelphia for the APA. Been kind of taking a break from the internet, too.
That's all I got