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New federal data indicate that, “Last year, for the first time in American history, there were more union members who worked for the government than there were in the private sector, though the private sector workforce is more than five times larger.

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In prehistoric times, these beautiful cats inhabited significant areas of the western United States, but in the past 100 years, there have been few, if any, resident breeding populations here. The last time a female jaguar with a cub was sighted in this country was in the early 1900s. (Jaguars — the world’s third-largest wild cats, weighing up to 250 pounds, with distinctive black rosettes on their fur — are a separate species from the smaller, tawny mountain lions, which still roam large areas of the American West.)

Two well-intentioned conservation advocacy groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife, sued the Fish and Wildlife Service to change its ruling. Thus in 2006, the agency reassessed the situation and again determined that no areas in the United States met the definition of critical habitat for the jaguar. Despite occasional sightings, mostly within 40 miles of the Mexican border, there were still no data to indicate jaguars had taken up residence inside the United States.

Despite the continued evidence, the two conservation advocacy groups continued to sue the government. Apparently, they want jaguars to repopulate the United States even if jaguars don’t want to. Last March, a federal district judge in Arizona ordered the Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit its 2006 determination on critical habitat.

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There we go: A shovel-ready project. Alert the White House.

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You want to see what meaningless, vague generalities look like — as a Palin hater why they have so much hate.

You want to see what compelling, well-thought-out specifics look like, ask an Obama voter why he’s sorry.

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Just in case you’ve forgotten.

House of Eratosthenes is always worth reading.

Reality teevee is starting to look like droopy butt-crack jeans to me: It appeals to morons, it looks (consequently) as stupid as all holy hell, but for reasons nobody can explain it’s just hanging around like a bad smell, year after year and decade after decade. Who thinks this looks cool? Who likes it? Someone somewhere must.

The Other McCain discusses three views of the same tumor.

Here’s a classic example: Disney has a program called Give a Day, Get a Day in which kids can earn a free trip to DisneyLand by doing charitable volunteer work in their community.

Who could be against that? Liberals, that’s who.

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Well, since they’re not allowed to use actual terrorists, apparently this is the next best thing.

But you know it had to happen:

But Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, questioned the use of live animals in military experiments.

Talking to the Sunday Times he said: “These are revolting and unnecessary experiments. Sadly, we are too familiar with the effects of terrorism. It is perfectly possible to find out things we don’t know without blowing up pigs to find out.”

Sure. They could blow up Liberal Democrat MPs instead. I’m sure the honorable gentleman would be glad to volunteer to help his country out in a pinch. Granted, pigs are closer to actual human beings, but we work with what we’ve got.

A spokeswoman for Porton Down said anecdotally there was already evidence that the research was helping to save lives.

Sadly, MPs are immune to facts when they conflict with a political position that might help them get re-elected. They’re a lot like Congresscritters in that respect.

Slow news day.

Lileks.

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It is highly unusual to see a prominent newspaper editorial board publicly change its mind.

The Washington Post supported the Obama administration’s treatment of Christmas day bomber Umar Abdulmuttalab as a criminal rather than as an enemy combatant. In an editorial published yesterday, It has nevertheless retracted its support. The Post writes that it “originally supported the administration’s decision in the Abdulmutallab case, assuming that it had been made after due consideration. But the decision to try Mr. Abdulmutallab turns out to have resulted not from a deliberative process but as a knee-jerk default to a crime-and-punishment model.”

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And it’s just as likely to win a Darwin Award.

Joel Spolsky always has interesting things to say.

Now, we all know that communication is very important, and that many organizational problems are caused by a failure to communicate. Most people try to solve this problem by increasing the amount of communication: cc’ing everybody on an e-mail, having long meetings and inviting the whole staff, and asking for everyone’s two cents before implementing a decision.

But communications costs add up faster than you think, especially on larger teams. What used to work with three people in a garage all talking to one another about everything just doesn’t work when your head count reaches 10 or 20 people. Everybody who doesn’t need to be in that meeting is killing productivity. Everybody who doesn’t need to read that e-mail is distracted by it. At some point, overcommunicating just isn’t efficient.

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And well he might.

Read it. And watch the video.

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Requiring taxpayers to file returns without being told what the government already knows makes as much sense “as if Visa sent customers a blank piece of paper, requiring that they assemble their receipts, list their purchases — and pay a fine if they forget one,” said Joseph Bankman, a professor at the Stanford Law School.

Yeah, well, Visa is there  to make money, the IRS is just there to steal money. If you can legally steal peoples’ money, then you can legally steal their time, too.

Jerry Pournelle has an interesting rant.

The big problem is described by Peggy Noonan in today’s WSJ : people see the parties now as the Nuts — Democrats — vs. the Creeps — Republicans. Both parties have been captured, the Creeps by the Country Club crowd who think they have an hereditary right to rule and to the spoils of election, and the Nuts by a bunch of political theorists who dig Marx or his intellectual descendents allied with the union leaders who just want more and provide much of the ground game power.

Who can blame the union leaders? If the government is going to tax and spend, the logical position is “Don’t tax me, spend on me, and I’ll vote for you.” The problem is that what the nation needs is people who do NOT directly benefit from government, and don’t vote for a party for what they can get out of it, but for what it will do for the country. That’s a hard position to take if you’re unemployed and your health care runs out and you can’t afford COBRA and your kids are sick. Even if you know better, even if you know that in the long run we can’t exist by having government workers be the only people with secure employment and a real income, the temptation to take something from the government — hell I paid taxes for all those years — and vote to continue, or simply to get into the secure employment sector, is enormous.

Mencius Moldbug is at it again.

Professor Hanson is not, of course, a retard, and of course I never suggested that he was. Quite the contrary – he is an American social scientist of the 20th century. This phenomenon, in which non-retards express retarded ideas, is no novelty in that time and place.

The basic problem is that the robber-barons of Silicon Valley, unlike their Victorian forebears, do not realize that, if they want all this science, they will actually have to pay for it – themselves. Instead, they look at their tax forms and think: I gave at the office. But they didn’t. They gave to scientocracy. Now, they need to figure out how to patronize science – or there will be no science. Just scientific Bondo, sanded to perfection and painted with meticulous care.

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Dick Cavett, the SWPL reference standard, meets a Real American.

(Warning: Good friends have refused to believe a word of what I’m about to relate. Your credulity is about to be strained.)

Which tells you all you really need to know about Dick Cavett (disclaimer: He and I both went to Yale, the same physical Yale but not the same sociological Yale) and his friends — and his (assumed) readers.

(‘What’s your name?’ ‘Chan Wen.’ ‘John Wayne? That’s a terrible cowboy name.’)

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Wouldn’t mind having one of these. They probably cost as much as a new car, though. As you can see, it’s designed to be stuck out in the yard, like a garden shed.

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The Kindle game is up, and Amazon knows it. In 2010, the world plus dog will be hawking an E-Ink-based e-reader, and major distribution and publishing houses like Barnes & Noble, Google, and Hearst will be offering their digital content on everything with a screen. That’s why Amazon gave up some royalty money to e-book publishers on Wednesday, and announced a SDK and app store for the Kindle on Thursday.

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The traditional method, which admittedly works better on a group-project basis, is to try some. If you throw up, get convulsions, or die, it’s poisonous. The scientific method, as explained in the U.S. Army Survival Manual, is to memorize the local edible plants prior to getting marooned. Too late for that? The implicit message of the manual is: soldier, you’re hosed. However, it does offer a plan B, namely the 13-step Universal Edibility Test. This boils down to cautiously trying whatever potential edible you have a lot of and seeing if you throw up, get convulsions, or die.

Don’t you feel better now? I know I do.

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Which is almost everybody, of course, but let’s not pick nits.

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Yet another reason not to use Facebook.

‘Put not your trust in princes, [nor] in the son of man, in whom [there is] no help.’

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DO NOT piss off the Men in Black.

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Another good reason not to fly.

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I recommend “PhD Comics” highly.

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I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

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On the other hand, it might not.

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We have the technology.

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Metaphor alert:

Some parents have taken the advice to such an extreme that they’re hesitant to impose any consequences at all on their children. These include the helicopter parents who monitor their children’s every move and the lawnmower parents who mow down any obstacle in their children’s path. They, in turn, have spawned a backlash movement of free-range parents who encourage their children to roam freely and slacker parents (see the books “Bad Mother” and “The Three-Martini Playdate”) who brag about who’s been the most neglectful. It’s a parenting free-for-all.

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I wonder whether he could be persuaded to take Mandela with him.

Well, we can hope.

The move by Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo, King of the Thembu tribe, follows his conviction for multiple crimes including culpable homicide, kidnapping and arson, and a 15-year prison sentence. He was convicted of the offences last year but is appealing and has been granted bail in the meantime.

Yeah, I can see how that would sour relations somewhat.

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Well, maybe then people will stop whining about it.

Look, anybody who reads a newspaper knows that taking a boat within a thousand miles of the Somali coast is like putting cake out for the rats. This isn’t a hundred years ago, and if you get captured by thieving Muslims you are on your own, baby. These guys are probably too old for a Darwin Award but I’d still be happy to recommend them.

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Well, really. What’s the use of being a psychotic dictator if you can’t have a secret military hideout inside a mountain? (Don’t these people every read comic books? Call themselves journalists….)

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Whoda thunkit?

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I don’t even have to say anything, do I?

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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I hereby declare the ACLU to be an anti-American organization.

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How often can people mash up the same Hitler-throws-a-tantrum scene? Let us count the ways….

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Senator John McCain has been forced to issue a statement clarifying his position on gay marriage after his wife Cindy and daughter Meghan posed for campaign posters.

Well, John, as my granny used to day, “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

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Dun-dun-DUN……

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But nary a dinar for Haiti, of course.

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We have the technology.

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The end of an era.

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Every day thousands of Americans vote with their feet on the best places to live and work, and these migration patterns can tell a lot about state economies—and economic policies.

But first the biggest loser, which was Michigan for the fourth year in a row. More than two families left the state for every family that moved in. The fall of GM and Chrysler has obviously hurt. But two-term Governor Jennifer Granholm has also made her state the test case for the policy mix of raising taxes on higher incomes, increasing regulation, and steering taxpayer money at favored programs like job retraining and renewable energy. It hasn’t worked for Michigan, even with the auto bailouts.

Ms. Granholm continues to be a regular economic policy adviser to the White House. Yikes.

As for the biggest winner, well, our readers won’t be surprised to learn that it was Washington, D.C. by a large margin. United Van Lines moved nearly seven families to the federal city last year for every three it moved out. As always when the feds gear up the income redistribution machine, the imperial city and its denizens get a big cut of the action.

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Yeah, Mia Farrow is the first person I look to when I’m looking for advice on how to run the world better.

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Because, after all, who would want science to break out in a middle school?