SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:31 P.M. ET:

FULL EQUALITY – From Yahoo:   The skies weren’t so friendly on a recent Delta Air Lines flight. After two female flight attendants got into a fist fight on flight 2598 traveling from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, the captain decided to make an unscheduled landing in Salt Lake City.  According to the Aviation Herald, the flight attendants had a disagreement over work issues on the Jan. 22 flight. A third woman on the plane tried to break up the fight and was also hit by the brawling flight attendants. At that point, the captain made the decision to land the Boeing 757. The plane was flying just south of Salt Lake City when the fight broke out.
We are approaching full gender equality.  The women are just as adolescent and violent as the men.

HELLO YOUNG LOVERS – From the College Fix:   The old adage “a kiss is just a kiss” may not stand up to scrutiny anymore.  On Thursday, the University of Southern California’s student government hosted a “Consent Carnival” that aimed to teach students how to properly hook-up under the “yes means yes” state law that requires so-called affirmative consent throughout any sexual encounter.  With that, a “Kissing Booth” at the event offered Hershey Kisses glued to little sheets of white paper that essentially explained how to properly kiss without committing sexual assault. The five-step checklist states on the front “what exactly does it mean to … ‘consent’ to a kiss?” and on the back states that “consent is”: For the answer, go here.  It's the rest of the piece, and a remarkable example of the infantilization of college students.

FREE AT LAST – From BBC:  A huge vulture detained in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel has been returned home after UN peacekeepers intervened, Israeli officials said.  The bird, which has a 1.9m (6ft 5in) wing span, flew over the border from an Israeli game reserve and was caught by Lebanese villagers on Tuesday.  They became suspicious as the griffon vulture had a tracking device attached to its tail.
It is part of a conservation project to reintroduce raptors to the Middle East.  Wildlife officials say the vulture was brought from Spain last year and set free about a month ago in the Gamla Nature Reserve in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.  Tel Aviv University is involved in tracking the bird, and as well as a GPS transmitter, it had tags on its wings and an engraved metal ring on its leg saying: "Tel Aviv Univ Israel".
The UN finally did something useful.  It should stick to getting vultures out of trouble.

January 31,  2016