Read it.

A new report, “What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security”, by Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, describes the extent to which terrorists disguised as migrants have entered the European Union to commit terrorist attacks.

After 40 Years of Hunting, Scientists Identify a Key Flaw in Solar Panel Efficiency

Are House Republicans Undermining President Trump’s Climate Policies?

Waiting for Thwaites

Plausible scenarios for climate change: 2020-2050

NY Times Delivers Page One Climate Lecture, Demanding Radical Change in Australia  I’d love to see Australia demand radical change at the New York Times.

If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.

Read it.

Best. President. Ever.

UPDATE: Media Accuse Trump of Politicizing Daytona 500 NASCAR Race

This was Trump telling working-class Americans ‘I AM YOUR PRESIDENT’. I can see why the ‘media’ would have a problem with that.

A Democrat would be complaining that they were contributing to Global Warming and ought to be driving electric cars and, hey, how come half of your drivers are Women of Color? Trump just tells them that they’re great Americans and that they ought to enjoy living in the greatest country on Earth.

Guess who they’re going to vote for.

Read it.

Harry Flashman was the ‘school bully’ in Tom Brown’s School Days, a classic of early Victorian literature.  George MacDonald Fraser took this guy and made him the protagonist (hardly ‘hero’) of a series that are the best adventure books since Rider Haggard. Read the article for a flavor of what’s going on and then READ THE BOOKS.

Read it.

From Hollywood to kids’ cartoons, to sappy inspirational Facebook posts, entertainment culture is full of advice on how to live our lives. Imagine the consequences of taking this wisdom seriously. Actually, you don’t need to imagine: our culture is littered with living examples of men and women who embraced the subtle and not-so-subtle popular messages. Still, it would be interesting to flip through a book called A Year of Living Hollywood. Here is some of the most common propaganda of social media, celebrities, and movies:

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As am I.Once the Soviet Union came undone, the reason for NATO vanished. Russia is not the threat that the Soviet Union was, and probably never will be. The rationale for including Turkey in a North Atlantic treaty organization is nonexistent, and only gets us into one of those entangling foreign alliances that George Washington warned us against.

Read it.

So what? I can’t name the President of Mexico.The last one whose name I knew was Vicente Fox, and I’m sure that was a while ago. I’m sure both of them could name the Prime Minister of Canada, as can I, because Kid Trudeau is always in the news on account of some gaffe or other. The fact that two serious contenders for the Democratic Presidential nomination can’t name the President of Mexico speaks rather to that guy’s successfully keeping his name out of the news rather than to their cluelessness. We learn of things when they are brought to our attention or when we research them; knowing the name of the President of Mexico might be a thing for the Secretary of State but I’m not convinced it’s all that important for a President.

Think of the world leaders whose names you actually know. Why do you know them? Typically because they are in the news, and that typically because they are causing trouble for the United States.

Human Activity in China and India Dominates the Greening of Earth, NASA Study Shows

Hawaiian residents will suffer greatly from new ‘climate saving’ carbon taxes

The media REALLY wants Trump to be a homophobe

Unsettled Climate Science: 30 Years Apace

Climate Prediction: “Take-off distances will get longer as the climate warms”

Read it.

Scott Adams has a bug up his butt pretty constantly about this issue.

Severian lays out some wisdom.

The incorrigible ye have always with you, as somebody must’ve said. Social science types slice it different ways, call it different things — the free rider problem, the tragedy of the commons, etc. — but they all amount to the easily-observed fact that some folks just can’t play well with others. Not “won’t play well with others;” can’t play well with others. Any given population of sufficient size is going to have its unmanageable knuckleheads who are always working at cross-purposes against everyone else, who seem to just get off on causing chaos.

Bad news for climate alarmists: global carbon dioxide emissions flatlined in 2019

We Just Endured Hottest January on Record, US Scientists Say  Tell Texas – it’s 39 degrees outside my window right now.

Hot on the trail of cold fusion as a solution to the climate crisis The Guardian.

Earth just had hottest January since records began, data shows  The Guardian.

Earth just had its hottest January in recorded history  NBCNews.

Global Warming In a Few Charts

Is Recycling a Waste of Time? As currently run, I would say so.

MSNBC Cherry Picks, Botches Data on Record High Temps in Antarctica

Read it.

Something funny has happened since the rise of New Urbanism as an architecture and design movement in the 1980s and 1990s. The New Urbanists’ resurrection of traditional pre-WWII American built forms—the walkable neighborhood main street with shops along the sidewalk and apartments above; the narrow, shady residential streets; the foursquare home with a quaint front porch—proved popular with the public. People gravitate to traditional design, not only for nostalgic reasons but because it follows principles evolved to meet humans’ basic psychological needs.

What hasn’t proven so popular among developers is actually challenging the basic spatial logic of suburbia, in which different land uses are strictly separated and everyone drives everywhere, on wide stroads that connect one pod-like “development” to another. This logic is wired into our zoning codes through things like parking minimums and subdivision regulations.

And so, the look and superficial feel of New Urbanism is increasingly just co-opted by developers of run-of-the-mill suburbia to make consumers feel like they’re being sold something other than run-of-the-mill suburbia. Call it Movie Set Urbanism.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

I watched the Democrats in New Hampshire so you didn’t have to. It was painful: hours of angry folks painfully reciting leftist talking points. It was like watching the Oscars except with old ugly people.

…

If you have not watched any of these sad displays called the “Democrat primaries,” let me sum them up for you. All the candidates try to top each other in identifying various victim classes. They tell the “victims” how much government money they will give them if elected, and whom they will get back at for them.

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

After decades of Democrats and their fellow travellers complaining about rich Republicans of trying to ‘buy an election’, a guy is actually trying to buy an election — and it’s a Democrat.

Read it.

Say’s Law, as explicated by the great liberal political economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), is the principle that supply constitutes demand, with the corollary that aggregate supply always equals aggregate demand. There’s no more important principle in political economy to get perfectly right – and assiduously avoid getting wrong – than Say’s Law.

Innovation always comes from the supply side, not the demand side. As Henry Ford famously said, ‘If I had asked customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.’ Have you ever walked into a store looking for the thing you don’t know you need until you see it? Hardware stores are like that, as well as places like The Container Store.

Read it.

It always strikes me when I run into a friend who is amused that I am a Costco member. For someone who grew up in a suburban area, even with the nearest Costco being a 45-minute drive from our house, shopping there was a no-brainer for my family. The reasons why Costco made sense for us are probably not dissimilar from the reasons of its ~100 million other members. Since its founding in 1983, the store has consistently delivered on providing value by selling almost any kind of product at competitive prices (among other things). In a ‘late-stage-capitalist’ landscape riddled with examples of, at worst, blatant greed, scams, and ripoffs, and at best, inadvertent marginalization from platforms, shopping at Costco is one of the few places that, according to its loyal customers, “feels like winning.”

If it has what you’re looking for (never guaranteed), Costco can’t be beat.

Read it.

Sidewalk Labs, the architecture and urbanism arm of Google parent company Alphabet, has unveiled a digital model for what would be the world’s tallest mass-timber building, reaching 35 storeys.

Global Warming Blamed For Evaporating Great Lakes; Now Blamed For High-Water Levels In Chicago’s “Climate Emergency”

Climate Lawsuit: UNSW Law Professor Sues Own Retirement Fund

Could a mini ice-age soon impact Earth?

Climate change may not claim as many species as we thought

An autopsy of the climate policy debate’s corpse

Victor Davis Hanson.

Genius is often defined in myriad ways. One trusted criterion is the ability to do something extraordinary in a field where others could not — and doing something that perhaps will never be done again by anyone else.

Scott Johnson at Power Line has an adventure.

I have a pen and I have notes, to borrow a phrase. I have notes of comments made by President Trump at the White House reception for conservative media on April 24, 2017 on the occasion of his first hundred days in office. I used my notes to write up my account of the reception for Power Line readers in “At the White House with Trump.”

In a scenario out of Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, I was served at home with a subpoena by lawyers for plaintiffs in one of the “travel ban” lawsuits from the early days of the Trump administration. The subpoena would have taken my notes away from me. They were going to let me keep my pen.

Freeberg points out some inconvenient truth.

A scandal about Vindman would necessarily depend on this weird “job-as-property” viewpoint. The idea that once you have a job, it belongs to you, kind of like land. And if you ever lose it then that means someone committed some sort of crime against you. This is the weirdness that is America. Labor unions have indoctrinated us over the course of several generations that whether you’re legitimately fired or not, is up to some “for cause” verbiage in a rule book, not your boss. We’ve accepted it as normal that if the verbiage can be twisted and teased and interpreted the right way, then like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone you become the rightful sovereign, and possessor of that ultimate coveted prize: A regular paycheck provided by someone who really doesn’t want to give it to you.

We definitely need to have some kind of conversation about this.

Anti-Pipeline Protestors Block Major Bridges In Canada

A huge iceberg just broke off Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier OHNOWEREALLGONNADIE.

Shock Discovery: Some Plants can Adapt to Climate Change

Fungi That Absorbs Radiation Has Been Growing All Over Chernobyl Power Plant

Nanny McPhee star turned Extinction Rebellion activist Raphael Coleman dies aged 25  A short life but a scary one.

Global Warming Threatens Luxury Lifestyles Of The Rich  They don’t seem all that worried.

According to Predictit, per Audacious Epigone.

Read it.

The Republican Party has earned a reputation as the anti-science, anti-fact party — understandably, perhaps, given the GOP’s policy of ignoring the evidence for global climate change and insisting on the efficacy of supply-side economics, despite all the research to the contrary. Yet ironically, it is now the Democratic Party that is wantonly ignoring mounds of social science data that suggests that promoting centrist candidates is a bad, losing strategy when it comes to winning elections. As the Democratic establishment and its pundit class starts to line up behind the centrist nominees for president — like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg — the party’s head-in-the-sand attitude is especially troubling.

This is Voice of the Crust Salon so it’s undoubtedly biased. But you might find it interesting.

Steve Sailer does a review.

The energetic media tycoon Ezra Klein has a book out titled Why We’re Polarized. Spoiler alert: One reason is because too many people watch Fox News instead of reading Klein’s properties like Vox. Another cause is because somebody imprudently spilled the beans to “white Christians” that they are being demographically doomed to defeat while they still have a chance to do something about it.

Read it.

I’ve always thought so.

Read it.

Rather than outlawing virtually all private coverage and replacing it with a single government plan, as Medicare for All does, public option proposals would create a government health plan to compete directly against private health plans. Yet, the economic and political dynamics of a public option would still lead to a single government-controlled health care system. One needs only to repeat the words of then-Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who, during the debate on Obamacare, said “I think that if we get a good public option, it could lead to single payer and that is the best way to reach single payer.”

We looked at six leading public option legislative proposals. The bills differ in design, but all these proposals would tilt the playing field in favor of the public option, drive out existing private health coverage options and ultimately leave the government plan as the dominant, or only, health plan in the insurance markets.

Hydrogen not the magical answer to zero-carbon prayers

What happens to all the old wind turbines?

Whales are vital to curb climate change

Climate Change is not a problem: Unless we make it one.

Climate science does an about-face: dials back the ‘worst case scenario’

New Hampshire Voter Mocks CBS Host Over Climate Change: ‘You Gotta Be Kidding Me’

Too much climate research money being spent on science… AEUHHH???

Read it.

If your dishwasher or busboy is getting money from the government, then that’s money you don’t have to pay them. And they have to vote for Democrats to keep the money coming. Win-win for the Crust.

Read it.

The virus that has spread through much of China has yet to be confirmed in Africa, but global health authorities are increasingly worried about the threat to the continent where an estimated 1 million Chinese now live, as some health workers on the ground warn they are not ready to handle an outbreak.

The ‘Skeptical Science’ Kidz go a bridge too far with blacklisting

SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall – Part 5: Bending the Trend

Unlike in Europe, the US approach to climate change is actually working

‘Overwhelming and terrifying’: the rise of climate anxiety  The Guardian.

Why Antarctic heat record is more worrying than new coronavirus  To certain people.

A Climate Blacklist That Works: “It Should Make Her Unhirable In Academia”

We must fight climate extremists before they upend society

Media’s Horribly Dishonest Antarctica Propaganda

The Green Oscars: A high-fashion nightmare!

Read it.

I’d like to think so.

Read it.

That’ll clear ’em out fast.

Climate Activist Leaves Environmentalist Movement Because It’s “Too White”  Indeed, I was thinking very much the same thing myself. (Although the Filipina in question would have no problem ‘passing for white’ herself….)

Revolutionary New Recycling Method for Plastic and Waste is Killing Two Birds With One Stone

Climate change: Why are US senators wearing this symbol?  Because they’re hip, and trendy.

Claim: Climate Change is Speeding Up Global Ocean Currents

Breaking Down The Last Decade Of “Terrible” Climate-Change In 7 Narrative-Busting Charts

Shocker: study finds global warming may be net beneficial for the global economy  Drowning the Left Coasts would certainly by a good start….

Read it. And watch the video.

“I would accuse my party at this point of having engaged in three years of fantasy football politics,” Jones told CNN’s “SE Cupp Unfiltered” on Saturday. “Where we said, ‘don’t worry, Trump is never going to be seated, because the Electoral College will not seat him.’ Remember that?

“‘Don’t worry, Bob Mueller is going to take him out of the White House in handcuffs.’ Remember that? ‘Oh, don’t worry, he’s going to be impeached and removed.'”

Joel Kotkin speaks the trend.

Blue-state boosters insist that talent will cluster only in elite places like San Francisco, New York, West Los Angeles, or Seattle, but companies seeking to recruit educated workers increasingly flock to places like Dallas–Fort Worth, Orlando, Nashville, and other affordable red-state metros. The movement of corporate offices has been particularly marked, with an estimated 1,800 firms leaving California for the Lone Star State in just one year. These companies are not just low-wage employers but high-paying firms like Toyota, Nissan, McKesson, Bechtel, Jacobs, Parsons, and Sanford Bernstein. Once a jobs magnet, California has emerged as the largest sender of jobs to Texas. Between 2000 and 2013, the Golden State was the source of more than 51,000 jobs, about one-fifth of all jobs moving to Texas. The most recent survey for Chief Executive Magazine ranks Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Indiana as more business-friendly, while blue bastions California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut stood at the bottom.

Read it.

If travel bans to and from the infected parts of China turn out to have been justified then one country in particular may be worth watching, Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s Bole International airport is the main African gateway to and from China. On average 1500 passengers per day arrive from China every day. Ethiopia scans them all for symptoms which essentially means taking their temperature.

Read it.

DNA is not a blueprint: it’s a recipe coding for thousands of different proteins that interact with each other and with the environment, just like the ingredients of a cake in an oven. Whereas a blueprint is an exact, drawn-to-scale copy of the final product, a recipe is just a loose plot that leaves much more room to uncertainty. Open a packet of cookies: each one was made from the same recipe and baked in the same conditions, but there are no two that are identical. Look closely, and you’ll spot hundreds of little differences: a burn here, a chocolate chip there, bumps and lumps appearing in distinct places, all because of chaotic interactions between the ingredients and the environment.

Read it.

Private hospitals are now consulting a secret medical credit score from Experian before you even see a doctor. As a patient you do not have access to this score, nor can you see how it is generated. All you know is that you may be denied care, or receive different care, because of it.

I guess the ‘medical care is a human right!’ crowd will have their hair on fire about this now.

UNSW Psychologist: “We are all Climate Deniers”

Antarctica Appears to Have Broken a Heat Record

Want to Fight Climate Change? Stop Believing These Myths

Climate Activist Plan to Use Dodd-Frank Banking Laws to Force Fossil Fuel Divestment

Study: Climate Change Is Killing Bumble Bees

The World Just Missed a Five Year Paris Agreement Deadline to Raise Climate Ambition

Breaking down the last decade of climate change in 7 charts

Cambridge Professor: “The only way to hit net zero [carbon] by 2050 is to stop flying”

Activist Explains Why Climate Change Movement’s ‘Whiteness’ Drove Her To Stop Saving The Earth  Guess it wasn’t really all that important after all.

Early climate models successfully predicted global warming

Where America’s climate migrants will go as sea level rises

Steven Hayward.

Cast your mind back to 2009, when Democrats, coming off Barack Obama’s convincing victory in the 2008 election, had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a more than ample majority in the House. Happy days are here again! Here comes pro-union card check, higher income taxes, amnesty and open borders, sweeping climate change legislation, and universal health care! It was around this time that James Carville, the impresario behind Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, confidently declared that Democrats were now set to rule for the next 40 years! He even published a book—40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.

Carville had drunk the Kool Aid of the liberal-Hegelian conceit that demographics and “the side of history” had delivered Democrats into the Promised Land, from whose commanding heights it was Progress as far as the mind’s-eye could imagine. Well, that glorious 40 years quickly became a fast one-way trip to the wilderness, as it didn’t even last 40 months. All liberals got out of that heavily Democratic Congress was . . . Obamacare? And oh what a success that was. No card check for labor unions, no amnesty for illegal immigrants, only a slight increase in income taxes for the very rich, while climate change legislation went down in fossil-fueled flames, as U.S. oil and natural gas production soared. Obama resorted to trying to get some of these things through executive action, but much of that was stymied in the courts or reversed by President Trump, who came to office and said, “Hey look—I found Obama’s pen!” In the 2010 election, the Democrats got creamed, with Republicans achieving their strongest position on all levels in 70 years.

All this came back to mind watching the Democrats’ debate in New Hampshire last night, which occurred conveniently during cocktail hour out here on the Left Coast, so in fact I literally ate popcorn along with adult beverages while I watched the Democratic field show once again that it is running to be president of Twitter more than President of the United States.

Read it.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Read it.

Assuming, of course, that you survive the experience.

Physicist and television presenter Brian Cox and musician Ed Sheeran have both admitted they can get a bit over-emotional when watching movies on aircraft. A survey by Gatwick Airport in London found 15 percent of men and 6 percent of women said they were more likely to cry when watching a film on a flight than they would if seeing it at home.

Perhaps the prospect of sudden death has something to do with it.

The reduced air pressure on airline flights can reduce the amount of oxygen in passengers’ blood between 6 and 25 percent, a drop that in hospital would lead many doctors to administer supplementary oxygen. For healthy passengers, this shouldn’t pose many issues, although in the elderly and people with breathing difficulties, the impact can be higher.

For none of which, of course, the passengers have expressed informed consent. Interesting how airline passengers are treated in ways that under other circumstances would justify a lawsuit.