I have nothing to say about Penn State.

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It was unclear where the foetuses, some of them six inches long, had come from. A local prosecutor said they were biological material left over after abortions and appeared to originate from at least four different hospitals and clinics. However, other reports suggested they were the result of stillbirths and miscarriages. Police said they were investigating tags attached to some of the foetuses which had reference numbers and surnames on them.

Perhaps Planned Parenthood ran out of space in the back room.

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A Web site monitoring spyware said statements from Iran suggest nuclear plants were hit by a virus causing computers to play music from rock band AC/DC.

Read it.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Monday said the White House appears to be responsible for leaking classified national security information.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Not that anybody in the government gives a shit.

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There’s been a lot of noise on the internet recently about the fact that the Windows-based software being used in the remote control system of drones use by the American military has been hit by a virus and this has caused the Department of Defense (DOD) to use GNU/Linux which is a more secure option. This has, predictably, caused raised eyebrows and demands by some that any military organisation should be prevented from using GNU/Linux in offensive weapons systems.

Thanks, guys, I needed a laugh. Just how do you plan to stop them? Call the U.N.? Join the Folksong Army?  Occupy Leavenworth?

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, puts the boot in.

But why don’t you – as, presumably, the owner of your own business – raise the wages that you pay to your employees?  You’re perfectly free to do so.

You’ll reply that such arbitrary increases in wages by individual employers put firms that so raise their wages at a competitive disadvantage relative to firms that don’t raise their wages.  That is, you understand that there’s a cost to arbitrarily raising wages – and it is a cost that you seek to shove off of yourself and onto others by having government oblige all firms to pay a higher minimum-wage.

Why, though, should I endorse a policy that shifts much of cost of arbitrarily raised wages from you to other people?  A rise in the legislated minimum-wage will oblige your customers to pay higher prices (given that firms will be unable to gain competitive advantages by hiring workers at wages below the minimum).  A big chunk of the cost of such an arbitrary hike in wages, therefore, will be shifted by legislation from you to consumers.  Worse, to the extent that such cost-shifting is avoided, a higher minimum-wage will likely condemn many low-skilled workers to the hell of longer periods of unemployment.

Read it.

A student club from the University of Washington has not only used 3D printing to build a boat – it’s taken the boat to second place in the university’s annual Milk Carton Derby at Seattle’s Green Lake.

Even better than that: the 3D printer had to be set up to use HDPE – milk carton plastic – to print the boat, a material which mechanical engineering professor Mark Ganter says is “horrible … it shrinks, it curls, it doesn’t want to stick to itself”.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Just to repeat the obvious, since a lot of people seem oblivious to it.

Smitty at The Other McCain points out the reality-free zone in which the Obamassiah lives.

Read it.

The Sun, a British tabloid, has done the kind of investigative reporting that the larger papers can’t seem to manage: it busted a ring of corrupt Pakistani officials who were selling passports and visas that would allow buyers to enter Britain along with Pakistan’s Olympic team, and perhaps even gain access to the Olympic stadium.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

In 2006, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, told the New York Times that Episcopalians were not interested in “replenishing their ranks by having children.” Instead, the church “[encouraged] people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”

Is it possible to nominate an institution for a Darwin Award?

Since 2000, the Episcopal Church has lost 23 percent of its members. At this rate, there will be no Episcopalians in 26 years.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Read it.

As a telepresence robot, it’s designed to allow doctors to check in on patients remotely. It therefore provides access to some diagnostic devices like ultrasound machines, and it also has an electronic stethoscope built-in. Finally, InTouch Health’s “Telemedicine” system allows for access to patient records.

The last great fields of human activity that haven’t been significantly automated are education and health care. This appears to be a step, although a small one, in the right direction.

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Then again, maybe it was just constipated. You never really know.

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British Boffins from Cambridge, University College London and The Royal Veterinary College have used an Australian farm to research flocking behaviour in herd animals and feel they have validated theories about how herds of animals protect themselves from predators.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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“It can be difficult in this economy to have the flexibility and financial resources to teach yourself new skills,” Mr. Bezos writes. Under a new program, Amazon warehouse workers can receive tuition assistance as long as it is in an Amazon-specified field. Aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies and nursing meet the criteria.

In the old days, lots of companies had training programs designed to take people with a high school education and make them useful technical workers. Then those programs went away as management gurus saw them as a cost rather than as an investment. It’s all about next quarter’s results! And of course modern technical companies don’t train you; it is to laugh! They expect you to get an expensive college education on your own, going massively into debt if necessary, and then with that and the right semi-autistic personality type, they might deign to give you a job (but only if you’re a ‘ninja’ or ‘rock star’).

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Putting this announcement on the home page seemed to direct it less to potential employees than current customers, some of whom may have vaguely heard about difficult working conditions in Amazon warehouses through newspaper series in Pennsylvania and Seattle.

‘Vaguely heard’? I don’t live in Pennsylvania and Seattle, and I heard about it. How about ‘getting beaten up in the activist media for keeping their workers in Foxconn-like conditions’ as being a bit more accurate.

Sucharita Mulpuru, the retail analyst for Forrester Research, was unimpressed. “It seemed self-congratulatory,” she said in an interview. “Most companies, when they treat their workers well, that’s just what they do. They don’t say, ‘This is a reason you should do business with us.’ ”

And I, in turn, am not impressed with Sucharita Mulpuru — I guess the new rule is that other people can publicize accusations of treating your employees badly and shout ‘This is a reason not to do business with Amazon’, but you’re not allowed to publicize where you treat your employees well and say ‘This is a reason to do business with Amazon’. Perhaps I need a new Category, Einbahnstrasse.

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When deficits are high, Congress has even more incentive than usual to indulge in unfunded mandates. That way it can deliver the spending programs and other government goodies that voters like, and without adding to the deficit. Of course, this is because states and the private sector bear the burden instead.

Fred Thompson, upon being elected Senator: ‘To show you how new I am in Washington, the other day I went out and by mistake spent some of my own money.’

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This is the new political America, where bullying runs rampant. Chick-Fil-A had never discriminated against gay and lesbian patrons or employees. There are no allegations that it had. But that won’t stop people from invading its places of business to make political statements. And that won’t stop liberal heavy-hitters from discriminating against it using the power of government.

It is not enough, for the Left, that you act morally, even according to their standards. It is equally vital that you publicly acknowledge that their standards are correct, and that you agree with them. Anything less is not enough.

No wonder the Left loves Islam. They have the same approach to life.

Gordon Crovitz speaks out.

It’s an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.

Responsible Opposing Viewpoint:  here.

Moral: Don’t believe everything you read.

Read it.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Read it.

More than 100 people were killed in a wave of bombings and shootings across Iraq, as the country suffered its worst day of violence for two years.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Read it.

And no, this is not a joke lock, this has an actual working five-lever tumbler mechanism and only opens with the correct key (or by lockpicking).

We have the technology.

Read it.

Our nation is saddled with a tiny cadre of Leftists who, unfortunately, hold many key positions both inside and outside of government. These Leftists assert with great, though completely unfounded, authority that they know best how private businesses should do their thing.

Leftists think they know exactly how every little facet of the giant, endlessly faceted private economy works, which is remarkable, considering their enormous disdain for it.

CNN has a video of him at Science Camp in 2006.

The turd in the beer of the Chattering Classes during this affair is the utter lack of the Usual Suspect Influences. A cornerstone of the ‘progressive’ mindset is that people are born blank slates, and if they turn out bad it was because they were bent the wrong way by their parents or their teachers or various nefarious social influences. So when somebody like James Holmes comes along, they can’t cope. There’s nothing that they can point to and say ‘Aha! You see? You see?’

Jim Goad sums up modern American life.

In the wake of Friday morning’s bloodbath at a Colorado movie theater, America struggles to figure out who or what to blame.

They’ve obviously ruled out the shooter.

Dymphna looks at mass murder as seen through the prism of modern journalism.

Breivik emerged from the dark, demonic side of nice, nice Norway, and he terrifies them for that very reason. Not given to much in the way of introspection, they have no clue as to how to prevent another mass murderer from popping up out of the woodwork. The political elites’ refusal to permit a public discussion of Norway’s cultural pressures prevents the larger world from granting them full respect. It also guarantees another murderous breakout by some seriously disturbed soul.

Norway hardly has the only violent male who commits mass murder in cold blood. America has plenty of them. Here, the kabuki theatrics by the media are different: first, the mad dash to find his connections to conservatism — the Big, Bad RightWingExtremists. No particular conservative has to be demonized, though. There is no special Fjordman slot in America. The closest we come to demonization is finding some connection to that infamously violent hate group, the Tea Party.

It is beside the point that the Tea Party is responsible for zero murders, no mayhem, and doesn’t advocate violence in behalf of its quest for smaller government and fewer taxes. Whatever. “Everyone knows” they’re evil.

But surely he was a Republican? And a White Supremacist?

As a matter of inconvenient fact, the Colorado killer had registered as a Democrat at one point. So there goes that narrative.

Well, shucks. But surely he was a loner, shunned by a society that he in turn rejected, oppressed by a normality into which he could never quite fit?

… in fact, he’s already been identified as having a normal high school experience, complete with high academics and success at athletics. His advisors in college noted his high IQ and the fact that he captured honors in science before going on to graduate school. A quiet fellow. Didn’t bother anyone, but no one seemed to know him.

Boy, the Voices of the Crust don’t have a lot to work with, here.

Read it.

The New York Times is receiving pushback from its constituents for having the audacity to explain that changes in marriage patterns are playing a huge role in the growth of income inequality.

‘Step outa line, the man come, and take you away….’

Katie Roiphe pushes back in a piece for Slate. She characterizes the piece as “another puritanical and alarmist rumination on the decline of the American family disguised as a straight-news story.” Presumably, Roiphe believes that income inequality is a legitimate story topic, but its causes aren’t, unless they conform to the feminist narrative.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised. (Slate really ought to be renamed Prate.)

Read it.

No shit, Sherlock. Spending money like a drunken sailor didn’t help, either.

Read it.

In the debate over natural gas drilling, the companies are often the ones accused of twisting the facts. But scientists say opponents sometimes mislead the public, too.

Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air pollution, and cancer risks, and there are still many uncertainties. But some of the claims have little – or nothing- to back them.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

And don’t forget Aunt Zeituni.

Read it.

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for “betting against America,” and accuses you of having a “less-than-reputable” record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

An Informative Chart.

William Jacobson adds a little perspective.

A mass murder like Aurora, Colorado, naturally grabs the headlines and attention, as it should.  A presidential recognition of the murders is appropriate.

Yet more than twice as many people have been murdered this month in the president’s hometown of Chicago than were killed in the Aurora shooting.  They are just statistics for whom there will be no presidential visits or flags flown at half staff.’

Most of them weren’t white people. Perhaps that made a difference. The Crust always worries a lot more when white people die — after all, they’re mostly white people (and their pet black people) — than when non-white people die, unless there’s some political juice to be extracted, as in the Trayvon Martin case.

Read it.

Read it.

No government officials should be penalized for their inaction while they watched an online al-Qaida organizer persuade U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to murder twelve of his fellow soldiers at Foot Hood in 2009, says the final report of an independent panel.

Your tax dollars at work: That much whitewash must have cost a bundle.

The report says Hasan yelled the Islamic war-cry — “Allahu akbar!” which means “Allah is supreme” — as he shot his fellow Americans in Fort Hood.

So obviously it had nothing to do with Islam … or jihad.

Read it.

That’s if you’re interested. A lot of people, many of whom have written extensively on the subject, aren’t.

Katherine Mangu-Ward takes exception.

Actually, most traditional classrooms contain more monologue than dialogue already. (“Anyone? anyone?”). But dozens of for-profit companies (and nonprofits) are working right now to solve that problem by offering products that make it possible for teachers to get feedback from their students in real time. Weekly quizzes, midterms, or final papers are crude tools to gauge whether anyone in the room has any idea what the teacher is talking about. A bunch of kids sitting at computers can be tested twice a day, twice an hour, or twice a minute to make sure they are following the lesson. If they’re not, a human teacher can intervene—by chat, email, phone, or in person—or the program can just serve up pre-crafted remedial modules that have helped kids with similar problems in the past. Edmundson may be right that the very best, top of the line education experience should have a face-to-face component. But for an awful lot of students, an automated program may be able to offer more of a dialogue than in-person profs have the ability or inclination to do.

If this guy had a case, then movies would never have pushed out the live theater.

Read it.

And if you object to that, then you’re a dirty Islamophobe, so there!

Read it.

But of course they’re nasty racist sexist bigot homophobes because they oppose ‘gay marriage’ so eating there makes you a moral leper.

Read it.

Hey, let’s do things the European way!

Cecile Duflot, the country’s 37-year-old housing minister, was subjected to the barrage of abuse while wearing a flowery summer dress in the National Assembly in Paris.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Ms Duflot, adding: ‘Obviously, more gentlemen than ladies’. Leering and shouting accompanied her every word, along with ‘phwoooaarr…’ noises.

Ms Duflot infamously wore jeans at a cabinet meeting earlier this year, but her dress was a conservative one.

She said after her ordeal: ‘I have worked in the building trade and I have never seen something like that. This tells you something about some MPs. I think of their wives.’

Uh … maybe not….

A convenient shopping list.

Blue Bell Ice Cream – a Texas tradition.

Read it.

Follow the money.

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Long before the age of government-mandated low-flush toilets and low-wattage light bulbs, William F. Buckley captured the essence of modern nanny-state liberalism with his comment that a liberal is someone who wants to reach in and turn down your shower.

But God help you if you even think about touching his. This is why Hollywood liberals feel no pain criticizing other people for their environmental sins while driving around in Hummers, lighting their mansions with enough electricity for a small city (Hey there, Algore!), and jetting across the country and around the world to attend ‘climate change’ events.

I get the idea behind “smart meters,” and like them in the abstract.  But a lot of people understand that smart meters may be the first step to enabling the Thermocrats to dial back your power usage remotely if they think you are using “too much” electricity to, say, keep yourself cool during hot summer afternoons.  Utilities already try to persuade people to volunteer to allow them to cycle off your appliances remotely during periods of peak demand in return for a slight discount on your bill.  But things that start out voluntary have a way of becoming mandatory with liberals, and smart meters are a step to enhancing the power of environmentalist Thermocrats.

That this is in the back of their minds is readily apparent from the fact that installation of the meters is mandatory — as is the extra charge for said meters on your monthly bill.

The Other McCain piles on.

The unemployment applications exceeded forecasts by 21,000 and that’s just “typical,” eh? Unemployment is just “somewhat elevated,” eh?

And by the way, does anyone remember the Labor Department’s unemployment numbers being revised downward during this administration? Or am I correct in suspecting that the initial report pretty much always understates the numbers, and then they come back to “revise upward” later on when they think we won’t notice?

Read it.

Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals. He’s a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. His feints toward open-mindedness are transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy. Sorkin has spent years fueling the delusional self-regard of well-educated liberals. He might be more responsible than anyone else for the anti-democratic “everyone would agree with us if they weren’t all so stupid” attitude of the contemporary progressive movement. And age is not improving him.

Not the sort of thing you expect to find in Salon, which is usually a reliable Voice of the Crust. But  I guess there are limits.

Oh, you can easily substitute pretty much any obnoxiously liberal actor’s name — Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, Susan Sarandon, Morgan Freeman, Barack Obama — for Aaron Sorkin and it’s still accurate.

Read it.

Voter fraud in a city run by Democrats? Why, that’s just The American Way! Who could object to that?

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It’s official: The name of the British ‘Conservative’ Party is now as much of an oxymoron as that of the American ‘Democratic’ Party.

An amazing achievement.

Steve Sailer examines a Voice of the Crust.

For Mehl and Schmader, this was the smoking gun that an insidious psychological phenomenon called “stereotype threat” was at work. It could potentially explain the disparity between men and women pursuing science and math careers.

Few people are better than the fashionistas of the left in coming up with fancy names for reasons why everything is the fault of people they don’t like.

Steve Sailer ponders leftist doublethink about racism.

But what strikes me as more interesting is that nobody in the press seems to think that there is anything objectionable about Chinese racial bias in favor of Lin.

Keep in mind that this isn’t Chinese nationalism at work. Lin was born in America and his parent are from Taiwan. This is Chinese racialism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Gee. Imagine that.

I think a couple of things are going on. While nobody has a problem with Chinese rooting for an American-born Taiwanese out of sheer racialism, practically zero American whites will admit even to themselves that they would find it cool to see a foreign white do well in the NBA just because they are white.

On the other hand, white Americans in the Obama Age are slowly, quietly getting a little tired of blacks. So, a Chinese-American “victim of stereotypes” makes an ideal proxy for white fans who are horrified by the thought of themselves being even a little bit racialist (but who, deep down, are). The only thing that could have made Lin more perfect for them is if he were also gay.

And there you have it. Asians are honorary SWPL white people. Just in case you were wondering.

Dymphna explains precisely how Senator John McCain is an incompetent asshole.

Senator John McCain’s ill-advised and uninformed intrusion into a subject he has failed to examine is alarming in the extreme. Sad to say, this behavior on Senator McCain’s part is an example of the Republican Party at its stumbling worst — rampaging inside the tent instead of performing the due diligence required for our country’s security.

And that is pretty much everything you need to know about John McCain.