Read it.

Don’t think that there isn’t anyone making money off of the ‘refugee crisis’, chiefly at taxpayers’ expense.

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And just a touch of fennel and a dash of oregano….

That’s why the Mediterranean people’s rule the world! Oh, wait….

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I have a Casper mattress. It is superb.

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Yet another reason to avoid flying.

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When they tell you America is steeped in a history of racism, you can’t help but check the tag on the racists they’re talking about. It said “Democrat: Do not remove under penalty of law,” but someone tore it off.

…

Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism eloquently documents the “secret history of the American left from Mussolini to the politics of change.” Thomas Jefferson wanted to free all the slaves but the 200 he owned. Andrew Jackson saw America as a “country for white men.” The KKK was all Democrats. The segregationists were Democrats. The Civil War was Democrats vs. Republicans, and Lincoln was a Republican. FDR put Japanese Americans in internment camps. He appointed many racists to the Senate and made KKK member Hugo Black a Supreme Court judge. President Truman said, “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a nigger or a Chinaman.” They were all Democrats.

Jim Goad turns over a rock.

I’ve seen such behavior from African, Indian, Mexican, and Asian immigrants to America, and it only seems to be intensifying. What’s baffling is the fact that even though I’m supposed to be a rude insensitive xenophobic intolerant racist dick, it would never occur to me to move to Africa, India, Mexico, or Asia and act with anything beyond respect, gratitude, and even caution. I certainly wouldn’t start running my neck about how the culture of my new host nation sucks and how it needs to be tossed into the dustbin of history and how the majority needs to quickly become a minority or justice will never be served. I simply can’t find it within myself to be that much of an asshole. And I certainly wouldn’t expect my new hosts to tolerate five seconds of such behavior.

Yet many if not most native-born white Americans not only put up with this nonsense, they feel it’s their moral duty to be as obsequious, masochistic, and suicidal as possible. It doesn’t matter if their standard of living is noticeably worse than it was for their parents. Doesn’t matter if full-time jobs with benefits are harder to come by. Doesn’t matter if their country’s media and educational institutions insult them incessantly and openly gloat about their demographic extinction. You’re supposed to suck it up and smile while they’re laughing and kicking you in the teeth, or else you’re a bad person.

Read it.

I can understand that. He certainly acts like one.

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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As Puerto Rico grapples with crippling debt and double-digit unemployment, a far-fetched idea to tackle the US territory’s economic woes may be gaining modest traction – one that would see Puerto Rico break off from the United States to re-join Spain.

“By returning to Spain, we’ll have autonomy,” said José Nieves Seise, who in 2013 founded the group Reunification of Puerto Rico with Spain. “With autonomy Puerto Rico could have sufficient powers to boost the economy and attract foreign investment.”

I like it.

Better yet, give it to Cuba.

“The secret to happiness is low expectations.” — Patrick Rothfuss

Read it.

A useful piece of journalism from the Huffington Post. I guess even a blind pig can find an acorn now and then.

Can the government treat some people differently than others on the basis of sheer favoritism? It seems like an obvious question, but decades’ worth of unwarranted judicial deference in constitutional cases have made the answer uncertain. This week, a federal judge gave a rousing negative answer, holding that the Secretary of Health and Human Services could not exempt organizations designated as “religious” by the government from an Affordable Care Act mandate to provide contraceptive coverage without also exempting non-“religious” groups that object to certain contraceptives on the basis of their moral convictions. In refusing to treat the so-called rational basis test–the default standard of review in constitutional cases–as a “rubber stamp” and invalidating a government classification that made “no rational sense,” Judge Richard Leon demonstrated the kind of judicial engagement that is necessary to protect all Americans from regulatory favoritism.

Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Has the Presidential candidate’s wife learned English well enough in her 40 years of marriage to be interviewed in English without pre-arranged questions?

I, personally, have never found video of the former First Lady of Florida being interviewed in English. I have found video of her uncomfortably reading a two-minute speech in English. But that’s all I’ve found so far.

It’s often said of Columba in the media that she’s a very shy person, and that’s why she avoids giving interviews in English. Yet, I’ve found video of her being charming in a Spanish-language interview. I’ve found video of her giving a speech on national television on the floor of the Republican National Convention … in Spanish. I’ve found video of her doing a TV commercial with her father-in-law, with her speaking Spanish.

I would hope she’s learned English well enough to converse in it in her 40+ years of marriage to Jeb. But I just don’t have evidence of that yet.

The most fundamental issue in politics is “Whose side are you on?” Jeb, who is not a particularly slippery individual, has given us much evidence that primarily he’s on the side of Mexicans, not Americans.

That strikes me as an honorable position, just not one I’d want in my President.

Read it.

In 2013, more than 200,000 people on net fled states with Democrat governors for ones run by Republicans, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by Americans for Tax Reform.

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

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Harvey Mansfield remarked a while back that “the job of conservatism is to save liberalism from liberals.” The left may be giving us an unintended assist with this project.  One of the best things to happen to political discourse in recent years is that many leftists stopped calling themselves “liberal,” and adopted “progressive” instead. Even Hillary Clinton for a time, back around 2007, said “I’m not a liberal—I’m a progressive.” And on the leading edge of the left, as on college campuses and other dens of Naomi Klein books, “neo-liberalism” is the avowed main enemy, which can’t be good for un-hyphenated liberalism. Welcome to a world where even John Rawls isn’t left enough.

The Other McCain intrudes science into what was a nice political argument.

Feminists have been fighting this war for more than four decades, and you will be accused of misogyny (woman hating) if you express skepticism about their project of creating an androgynous “equality” by eradicating male/female differences. These arguments about gender roles show how, in so many ways, feminists are trapped in the past, forever fighting battles rooted in the adolescent frustrations experienced decades ago by women who never successfully adjusted to normal adult roles that most people take for granted. The tomboy, the lesbian, the awkward bookish girl who felt marginalized in the high-school popularity competition — we may grant that their grievances against the “system” are real without endorsing their intellectual assault on the social order.

…

A movement that began in rebellion against society as it existed in 1968 is ill-suited to address the problems facing young women in 2015 and it may be added that, insofar as feminist ideology originally had any basis in science, that science is now as obsolete as Ozzie and Harriet.

Read it.

Exercise — no matter how many gym memberships you buy or how often you wear your Fitbit — won’t make you lose weight.

…

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that exercise alone has almost no effect on weight loss, as two sports scientists and I described in a recent editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. For one, researchers who reviewed surveys of millions of American adults found that physical activity increased between 2001 and 2009, particularly in counties in Kentucky, Georgia and Florida. But the rise in exercise was matched by an increase in obesity in almost every county studied. There were even more striking results in a 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found that people who simply dieted experienced greater weight loss than those who combined diet and exercise.

…

It’s calorie intake that is really fueling the obesity epidemic. But it’s not just the number of calories we’re eating as how we’re getting them. The sugar calories are particularly bad. Stanford University researcher Sanjay Basu recently led an analysis of 175 countries that evaluated the amount of sugar in each nation’s food supply. As sugar availability increased by 150 calories per person per day (the equivalent of a can of cola), there was a 1.1 percent rise in the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in the population — an increase that was 11 times larger than if people consumed 150 more calories from nonsugar sources — independent of average body mass index and physical activity levels. The experience of Timothy Noakes, a leading sports and exercise medicine scientist, exemplifies those results. Despite being an almost daily runner and completing more than 70 marathons in his lifetime, Noakes developed Type 2 diabetes in his late 50s, which he attributes to his excessive consumption of sugar and other refined carbohydrates.

Two words: Eat. Less.

If it’s longevity you’re after, note that elite athletes in high-intensity sports don’t live any longer than top golfers.

And they have much less attractive tans.

Read it.

What do they know that you don’t?

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Unlike many economists, who would confine “revenues” to “user fees,” business people don’t care where the revenues come from. They are just as happy to count tax dollars and loans as revenues. On the other side of the equation, where economists count all costs, both internal and external, business people are perfectly happy to shift costs on to others and then only count the costs that they themselves (or their companies or government agencies) have to pay.

Thus, someone who promises to “run a government like a business” isn’t promising to end deficit spending or stop ridiculous projects whose costs are far greater than their benefits. They aren’t even promising to cut costs by doing such things as renegotiating union contracts or streamlining environmental regulations. After all, businesses see unions and regulations as just a “cost of doing business,” and so long as the costs apply to everyone, they actually benefit big businesses that can more easily absorb them than small ones and thus reduce competition.

Let us just keep that in mind.

Ross Douthat has an interesting take.

THE Donald Trump phenomenon is a great gift to pundits because it can be analyzed and criticized in so many different ways. But two shorthands seem particularly useful. First, Trump is essentially using the Republican primary to run a third-party campaign, not a right-wing insurgency. Second, Trump’s appeal is oddly like that of Franklin Roosevelt, in the sense that he’s a rich, well-connected figure — a rich New Yorker, at that — who’s campaigning as a traitor to his class.

Read it.

For decades the medical profession has largely treated addiction as as a chronic brain disease. The US government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse characterises addicts as compulsive drug seekers and users who continue taking drugs despite harmful and unwanted consequences. “It is considered a brain disease,” the institute says, “because drugs change the brain; they change its structure and how it works.”

Dr Marc Lewis, a developmental neuroscientist – perhaps most famous for detailing his own years of drug addiction and abuse in Memoirs of an Addicted Brain – strongly refutes this conventional disease model of addiction. His new book, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is not a Disease, argues that considering addiction as a disease is not only wrong, but also harmful. Rather, he argues, addiction is a behavioural problem that requires willpower and motivation to change.

Odd to see this in the Guardian, Voice of the Crust and bastion of ‘progressive’ thought.

Read it.

Just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years to your life, according to health experts.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Personally, I don’t see that the way things are trending in the world makes it worth all that much effort to extend my stay.

Read it.

Can’t say that  I mind.

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Some of the anti-glutenists argue that we haven’t eaten wheat for long enough to adapt to it as a species. Agriculture began just 12,000 years ago, not enough time for our bodies, which evolved over millions of years, primarily in Africa, to adjust. According to this theory, we’re intrinsically hunter-gatherers, not bread-eaters. If exposed to gluten, some of us will develop celiac disease or gluten intolerance, or we’ll simply feel lousy.

Most of these assertions, however, are contradicted by significant evidence, and distract us from our actual problem: an immune system that has become overly sensitive.

Read it.

Yet another attempt to use technology to perform an end run around evolution.

Steve Sailer points out some inconvenient truth.

A general assumption of the moderate conventional wisdom over the last half century is that average black performance is dragged down by specific impediments, such as poverty, crime, culture of poverty, parental taciturnity, lead paint, or whatever. One would therefore expect blacks without those impediments to score equal with whites.

But a close inspection of the social science data suggests that the world doesn’t really look like that. For example, above is the 2013 federal National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for 12th graders in Reading. Blacks who are the children of college graduates average 274, which is the same as whites who are the children of high school dropouts.

‘Progressives’ are all about science, except when it disagrees with their preconceived notions, in which case RACIST!

Read it.

Well, think about it.

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On this day in 1928 damned near every country in the world signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, promising to eat Raisin Bran for breakfast ‘outlawing war as an instrument of national policy.

And, of course, since that time we haven’t had any wars. Way to go, world.

Read it.

After the trial, the couple, who own the post office in Llangernyw, near Abergele, both said they would do the same thing again. Mr Baines, 44 said: “I wouldn’t let them get away next time.”

His wife, 43, added: “I hit one of them with the bat then my husband took it from me. I just wish I’d hit him harder.”

Even Brits can act like Americans when the chips are down.

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People silently struggle from all kinds of terrible things. They suffer from depression, ambition, substance abuse, and pretension. They suffer from family tragedy, Ivy-League educations, and self-loathing. They suffer from failing marriages, physical pain, and publishing. The good thing about politeness is that you can treat these people exactly the same. And then wait to see what happens. You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t need to make a judgment. I know that doesn’t sound like liberation, because we live and work in an opinion-based economy. But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.

Read it.

Even the most conservative estimates predict that 15–40% of living species will be effectively extinct by 2050 as a result of climate change, habitat loss and other consequences of human activities. In the face of such drastic losses, scientists are debating the pros and cons of various, and often controversial, interventions. These include moving populations to help track hospitable habitats, and reinstating keystone species — those that have a large effect on ecosystem structure and function, such as top-level predators — into areas where they have long been absent. Even the revival of species that have recently gone extinct is being explored.

So far, an increasingly viable (and potentially less risky) option, which we call facilitated adaptation, has been little discussed. It would involve rescuing a target population or species by endowing it with adaptive alleles, or gene variants, using genetic engineering.

Read it.

Gee, I wonder why?

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Is there a more Crustian name than Brent Scowcroft? Maybe Strobe Talbot. Or Stansfield Turner.

Read it.

Food has replaced music at the heart of the cultural conversation for so many, and I wonder if it’s because food and dining still offer true scarcity whereas music is so freely available everywhere that it’s become a poor signaling mechanism for status and taste. If you’ve eaten at Noma, you’ve had an experience a very tiny fraction of the world will be lucky enough to experience, whereas if you name any musical artist, I can likely find their music and be listening to it within a few mouse clicks. Legally, too, which removes even more of the caché that came with illicit downloading, the thrill of being a digital bootlegger.

Once, it felt like watching music videos on MTV was a form of rebellion in plain sight. Nowadays, the channel doesn’t play any music videos. Instead, we have dozens of food and cooking shows, even entire channels like The Food Network dedicated to the topic. Chefs have become elevated to the status of master craftsmen, with names that have risen above the status of their restaurants, and diners revere someone like Jiro of Jiro Dreams of Sushi fame the way a previous generation worshipped the guitar sound of a rock god like Jimi Hendrix.

The food scene today offers a seemingly never-ending supply of scarce experiences, ingredients, and dishes. Cronuts you have to wait in line for a few hours to get your hands on. Pop-up restaurants that serve only on a few nights a week for a few weeks, then disappear forever. Restaurants that you have to sacrifice a goat to just to get a reservation, and then they’ll actually take that goat you killed and prepare your entire dinner from it, nose to tail. A white truffle add-on that tacks $80 on to a single piece of cured hamachi, and oh, the truffle is only available for four weeks a year and came over on a gondola from Alba, Italy, and the hamachi is one of the last of three members of its species so you know, you should probably try it before…oops, sorry, the chef says someone just ordered the last of it. Yep, it’s that couple at the corner table, and that’s the last plate that she’s Instagramming right now.

Foodies are the new Cool Kids, or want to be.

Read it.

Not to mention everyone else … but we’ve learned not to expect miracles from Democrites.

Hey, GOP primary losers, you better get out there fast with a real immigration plan, because right now you are losing to Donald Trump and that makes you the epitome of loserdom. But unlike Trump, you should be serious about ending the illegal immigration nightmare. His supporters are. Hell, his opponents are, too. Yet some of you haven’t just flirted with amnesty – Rubio tried yet couldn’t score, but donor class puffball Jeb Bush has gotten to third base with amnesty and is trying to round home.

Which pretty much reflects my thoughts on the subject.

HOWEVER, there are other viewpoints — one such is that of David Henderson, who (as with the other George Mason University economists that I follow) is usually pretty sound on most issues. I would recommend that you read it in order to have a good grasp of both sides of the question.

Read it.

Maybe they know something we don’t.

We have a similar system in this country — the women are from HR, and promise that they’ll clean out your cubicle for you once they’ve escorted you from the building.

Read it.

“Income inequality” is one of the populist issues du jour, even if there is a certain logical incoherence in believing that the growing income of rich people is somehow necessarily bad for poor people.

A new economic study suggests that, actually, we can calculate when a billionaire’s riches harm the poor and when they’re helpful. The “bad” billionaires aren’t the ones who flood the marketplace with cheap goods and jobs that some folks want to blame for all our ills. Those billionaires help the poor (by providing cheap goods and jobs, obviously). It’s the billionaires who get and keep their riches because of their connections to the government and through crony capitalism who create the most harmful consequences of income inequality.

It is diverting to speculate why such care is devoted to the breeding of dogs and horses while the human race prefers to reproduce itself in a largely indiscriminate and haphazard fashion.

— Randolph Spencer-Churchill

Well, Margaret Sanger did what she could….

Glenn Harlan Reynolds (The Instapundit) points out what markets are good — and not good — for.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb recently tweeted: “The free-market system lets you notice the flaws and hides its benefits. All other systems hide the flaws and show the benefits.”

This drew a response: “The most valuable property of the price mechanism is as a reliable mechanism for delivering bad news.” These two statements explain a lot about why socialist systems fail pretty much everywhere but get pretty good press, while capitalism has delivered truly astounding results but is constantly besieged by detractors.

That’s it, in nutshell.

At the same time, markets deliver the bad news whether you want to hear it or not, but delivering the bad news is not a sign of failure, it is a characteristic of systems that work. When you stub your toe, the neurons in between your foot and your head don’t try to figure out ways not to send the news to your brain. If they did, you’d trip a lot more often. Likewise, in a market, bad decisions show up pretty rapidly: Build a car that nobody wants, and you’re stuck with a bunch of expensive unsold cars; invest in new technologies that don’t work, and you lose a lot of money and have nothing to show for it. These painful consequences mean that people are pretty careful in their investments, at least so long as they’re investing their own money.

Bureaucrats in government do  the opposite, trying to keep their bosses from discovering their mistakes.

Which is why it’s pretty much always a mistake to put government employees in charge of anything.

Markets make people better off, but they don’t provide sufficient opportunities for politicians to extract bribes and intellectuals to feel better about themselves. This explains why they’re unpopular with politicians and intellectuals. The real question is why anyone else listens to the self-interested claims of politicians and intellectuals. Maybe because the subject of what works and what doesn’t in economics is mostly written by journalists?

Read it.

Read it.

Come to think of it, most bachelors’ degrees these days are a form of microcredential.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, draws a distinction.

A Typical Entrepreneur: Someone who, spotting exploitable profit opportunities – that is, spotting currently existing but exploitable failures of the market to operate as productively as possible – puts his or her own money where his or her mouth is to take productive and voluntary actions that make the market operate better than before….

An All-Too-Typical Academic: Someone who, unduly impressed by his or her own academic studies and methods, concludes that the market does not work in reality as well as his or her academic studies and ruminations suggest that it should work.  This academic, however, is both too incompetent and too cowardly to act in the real world by staking something of his or her own.  He or she instead wishes to convince people with guns – government officials – to force other people to take his or her findings seriously….

‘My wife and I listen to a lot of Public Radio, because we’re middle-aged white people living in California.’

— Merlin Mann

Think about that for a bit.