Jessica Mendoza Debuts on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball

Hey, this is great, "Jessica Mendoza draws rave reviews in historic Sunday Night Baseball debut."

But should Ms. Mendoza replace Curt Schilling permanently, after the former Red Sox pitcher tweeted some politically incorrect comments? See the Boston Globe, "ESPN removes Curt Schilling from ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ broadcast."

Plus, at USA Today, "ESPN's John Kruk speaks out on Curt Schilling during broadcast," and Awful Announcing, "SHOULD ESPN PERMANENTLY REPLACE CURT SCHILLING WITH JESSICA MENDOZA ON SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL?"

Classic SuperBreak Backpack by JanSport

Great for back to school!

At Amazon, Classic SuperBreak Backpack: Ultra-functional school backpack/daypack with 600-denier construction.

Plus, from by Ken Robinson, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education.

Kenyan Marxist Interloper Renames Mount McKinley 'Denali', Outrage Ensues (VIDEO)

Frankly, it's just a mountain. If Obama wants to rename it let him rename it. It's not like this is telling us anything new about this fucking Kenyan collectivist interloper. We just need to get him out of there then name it back to McKinley, the way it should be. I mean, it's named after a former president. Screw the Aleutian natives the White House is pandering to, or whoever came up with that idiot name "Denali." Sheesh.

Here's the background, at the Anchorage Daily News, "McKinley no more: North America's tallest peak to be renamed Denali."

And at Politico, "GOP blasts Obama's Denali name change: Republicans are criticizing the president's decision to rename America's tallest mountain." (Via Memeorandum.)

Also, at the Hill, via Memeorandum, "Ohioans fuming over Mt. McKinley name change."

Get Out of My Class and Leave America

"Feel free to use this material if you already have tenure..."

Heh.

From Mike Adams, at Town Hall:

Welcome back to class, students! I am Mike Adams your criminology professor here at UNC-Wilmington. Before we get started with the course I need to address an issue that is causing problems here at UNCW and in higher education all across the country. I am talking about the growing minority of students who believe they have a right to be free from being offended. If we don’t reverse this dangerous trend in our society there will soon be a majority of young people who will need to walk around in plastic bubble suits to protect them in the event that they come into contact with a dissenting viewpoint. That mentality is unworthy of an American. It’s hardly worthy of a Frenchman.

Let’s get something straight right now. You have no right to be unoffended. You have a right to be offended with regularity. It is the price you pay for living in a free society. If you don’t understand that you are confused and dangerously so. In part, I blame your high school teachers for failing to teach you basic civics before you got your diploma. Most of you went to the public high schools, which are a disaster. Don’t tell me that offended you. I went to a public high school.

Of course, your high school might not be the problem. It is entirely possible that the main reason why so many of you are confused about free speech is that piece of paper hanging on the wall right over there. Please turn your attention to that ridiculous document that is framed and hanging by the door. In fact, take a few minutes to read it before you leave class today. It is our campus speech code. It specifically says that there is a requirement that everyone must only engage in discourse that is “respectful.” That assertion is as ludicrous as it is illegal. I plan to have that thing ripped down from every classroom on campus before I retire...

That's great!

Keep reading!

South Coast Cinemas in Laguna Beach Closing Its Doors

End of an era.

At the O.C. Register, "Landmark theater closes in Laguna Beach":

...the theater opened as the Lynn Theatre in 1923 at a cost of $12,000. It was erected three years before the Coast Highway and was dedicated by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. It still has a stage and an orchestra pit.

Sad to see it go, but amazing that it stayed open so long.

Dick and Liz Cheney on CBS 'This Morning'

The Cheneys' new book's out tomorrow, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Miley Cyrus Flashed Bare Nipple to the Camera Before Appearing on Stage at MTV Video Music Awards

Hey, this is the culture nowadays.

At Truth Revolt, "Miley Cyrus Flashes Camera at MTV Video Awards."

Also at PuffHo, "Miley Cyrus Comes Out as Pansexual."

Robert Stacy McCain Blogs 'Tinder Is the Night'

Following-up, "The Tinder Hookup Culture and the End of Dating."

At the Other McCain, "‘Hit-It-and-Quit-It on Tinder’."

'Hit-It-and-Quit-It on Tinder' http://t.co/yiQDHnPIe0 h/t @AmPowerBlog #tcot pic.twitter.com/l7QjocEUDg

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) August 31, 2015

Good Morning!

This photo popped up in the links from my eXTReMe Tracker.

Jordan Carver? She's nice.

More at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

The Mystery of Islamic State

And essay from "Anonymous," at the New York Review, "The Mystery of ISIS."

It's an interesting piece.

Reviewed there are Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, and Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror.

The Tinder Hookup Culture and the End of Dating

"Tinder is the night."

Heh.

At Vanity Fair, "Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”":

Mobile dating went mainstream about five years ago; by 2012 it was overtaking online dating. In February, one study reported there were nearly 100 million people—perhaps 50 million on Tinder alone—using their phones as a sort of all-day, every-day, handheld singles club, where they might find a sex partner as easily as they’d find a cheap flight to Florida. “It’s like ordering Seamless,” says Dan, the investment banker, referring to the online food-delivery service. “But you’re ordering a person.”

The comparison to online shopping seems an apt one. Dating apps are the free-market economy come to sex. The innovation of Tinder was the swipe—the flick of a finger on a picture, no more elaborate profiles necessary and no more fear of rejection; users only know whether they’ve been approved, never when they’ve been discarded. OkCupid soon adopted the function. Hinge, which allows for more information about a match’s circle of friends through Facebook, and Happn, which enables G.P.S. tracking to show whether matches have recently “crossed paths,” use it too. It’s telling that swiping has been jocularly incorporated into advertisements for various products, a nod to the notion that, online, the act of choosing consumer brands and sex partners has become interchangeable.

“It’s instant gratification,” says Jason, 26, a Brooklyn photographer, “and a validation of your own attractiveness by just, like, swiping your thumb on an app. You see some pretty girl and you swipe and it’s, like, oh, she thinks you’re attractive too, so it’s really addicting, and you just find yourself mindlessly doing it.” “Sex has become so easy,” says John, 26, a marketing executive in New York. “I can go on my phone right now and no doubt I can find someone I can have sex with this evening, probably before midnight.”

And is this “good for women”? Since the emergence of flappers and “moderns” in the 1920s, the debate about what is lost and gained for women in casual sex has been raging, and is raging still—particularly among women. Some, like Atlantic writer Hanna Rosin, see hookup culture as a boon: “The hookup culture is … bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence.” But others lament the way the extreme casualness of sex in the age of Tinder leaves many women feeling de-valued. “It’s rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,” wrote Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014.

It is the very abundance of options provided by online dating which may be making men less inclined to treat any particular woman as a “priority,” according to David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in the evolution of human sexuality. “Apps like Tinder and OkCupid give people the impression that there are thousands or millions of potential mates out there,” Buss says. “One dimension of this is the impact it has on men’s psychology. When there is a surplus of women, or a perceived surplus of women, the whole mating system tends to shift towards short-term dating. Marriages become unstable. Divorces increase. Men don’t have to commit, so they pursue a short-term mating strategy. Men are making that shift, and women are forced to go along with it in order to mate at all.”

Now hold on there a minute. “Short-term mating strategies” seem to work for plenty of women too; some don’t want to be in committed relationships, either, particularly those in their 20s who are focusing on their education and launching careers. Alex the Wall Streeter is overly optimistic when he assumes that every woman he sleeps with would “turn the tables” and date him seriously if she could. And yet, his assumption may be a sign of the more “sinister” thing he references, the big fish swimming underneath the ice: “For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. “Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, ‘She’s girlfriend material, she’s hookup material.’ … There is still a pervasive double standard. We need to puzzle out why women have made more strides in the public arena than in the private arena.”

Sorry. Not buying it.

Attractive women have tremendous power. And frankly, if this story's any clue, looks like you're getting a lot of skanky people of both sexes on Tinder. Perhaps there's a few classy babes using the apps (or some real together dudes), but if you're hot and single, it's not like the chances for hooking up were all that bad before all these dating gizmos. Maybe the quantity has gone up, but not the quality. And for some people, that's not going to be an improvement. (But then, what do I know? I'm a fifty-something happily married man in the process of losing a few pounds, heh. I'm not on any dating market, which is kind of a relief.)

But keep reading. It's a kind of juicy piece, heh.

The Circuitous Routes Foreigners Take to Syria and Iraq

At the Wall Street Journal, "Jihadi Trails."

Via Julia Ioffe, "This WSJ project showing the paths of 10 foreign #ISIS recruits is just wow."

Black 'Activist' Podcast Calling for Killing of Cops Gets Pulled After Publicity

Update from the left's race war.

At Weasel Zippers.

New York Post Reporter Goes Undercover as Topless Street Performer

And Instapundit quips, "Under cover? More like uncovered."

More at the Mirror UK, "New York mayor Bill de Blasio to ban 'near naked' ladies from Times Square."

Leftists Blame the Gun, Not the Homo

Heh.

From Anna Maria Perez, on Twitter:

Liberals blame the gun, not the evil, homo, black #racist. Read!👉http://t.co/FiM1Qtphxe #BlackLivesMatter #LGBT #tcot pic.twitter.com/dBbnhdQ4HR

— Anna Maria Perez⭐ (@A_M_Perez) August 29, 2015

Taylor Swift and Scott Eastwood in 'Wildest Dreams' Music Video

The video just dropped, to coincide with tonight's VMAs.

And I noted, "Scott Eastwood is a dead ringer for his dad, damn."

Watch: "Taylor Swift - Wildest Dreams."

And at Us Magazine, "Taylor Swift, Scott Eastwood Gush About 'Wildest Dreams' Music Video."

My oldest boy's at the show, so he'll be telling me all about it later, heh.

Dear Feminists: You Think Too Much

At the Other McCain, "Third-wave feminism requires that males be 'vestigial,' because women must be so 'empowered' that men are either peripheral characters — clowns and tagalongs — or else sinister villains representing the Oppressive Patriarchy..."

Sarah Palin Interviews Donald Trump for One America News Network (VIDEO)

This is why the network's website crashed the other day.

Watch, at One America News Network, "'On Point' with Gov. Sarah Palin and Donald Trump."

BONUS: At Telegraph UK, "Could Sarah Palin join the Donald Trump ticket?"

Plus, more at Memeorandum.

Blonde Bombshell Rachel Mortenson on Horseback

Hmm... This is delightfully unusual.

At Egotastic!, "RACHEL MORTENSON SPILLING CLEAVAGE ON A HORSE."

Mission Beach Bikini Girl

Here's a nice summer video for you.

At SoCal Beaches Magazine, "Swimsuit Model Summer in Mission Beach 'Mission Beach Girl'."