Read it.

“We fill the gaps,” explains the 39-year-old Mr. Prince, a former Navy Seal whose title is chairman and CEO of Blackwater. A graduate of Hillsdale College (his Michigan family previously owned the automobile-parts manufacturer Prince Corporation), he equates Blackwater’s emergence to FedEx, which “evolved due to the lack of capabilities and responsiveness of the USPS” [U.S. Postal Service].

The Hog continues to refuse to discuss politics.

It’s really unfortunate that women are allowed to vote. Whatever problems would arise from male-only suffrage, at least we would be safe from socialism and pacifism, and we would always be allowed to defend ourselves and our families.

Won’t even touch the stuff. God and gardening, that’s all he’s doing these days.

The Hog takes a look at some basic tools.

I’m thinking I may reserve the Gerber for pig-slicing. It looks ideal for the job. That saw on the back will make short work of the stubborn bits. If I sharpen the knife edge up, it should slice pork really well. And while I love my 14? Forschner scimitar knife, a machete sends a message a kitchen knife just can’t equal. It says, “Men are eating. Go back in the house until the police come.”

Read it.

If, indeed, you ever knew it in the first place.

Read it.

What’s not to like?

Read it.

What White Person hasn’t worried about protecting that all-important wine collection from the hazards of living on the Left Coast? Well, fret no more — WIRED is on the case.

Watch it.

Not only is this terrifically funny, but I’m fully prepared to believe that Tiger Woods can walk on water to hit a golf ball. He’s just that good.

Read it.

We have the technology, apparently.

Read it.

And, of course, no treatment of Dracula would be complete without reference to Fred Saberhagen’s re-interpretation (which actually makes more sense than Stoker’s).

Read it.

Read it.

Read it.

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

I’d feel better about it if they weren’t so ugly. But that’s me.

Amazing how a simple desire to make money can create a product that, were it the result of a government program, would cost ten times as much, look ten times as ugly, and take ten times as long.

Read it.

We all have dreams.

(Mine is Ted Kennedy in a pine box, between Barney Frank and Chris Dodd similarly arrayed. But I don’t have Shamino’s money.)

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Some good news for a change.

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Sometimes you beat the bear….

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Some good news on the language front.

Read it.

Call me when they install the mind-control lasers.

Read it.

Some people just have no sense of humor.

Read it.

Note that it isn’t a huge publicly-funded university, but a smaller private college, that is leading the charge here.

Read it.

At first sight, the idea seems plausible. True, vertical farming would be a non-starter if urban rents were higher than rural rents. But we all know that land is just as cheap in downtown Manhattan as it is in rural Nebraska, right? One wonders, though, why farming moved off the island a more than a century ago.

Professor Despommier claims that food grown indoors would be pesticide-free, unlike that dirty outdoor produce. Once again, totally plausible. Big American cities are as free of rats and roaches as Ireland is of snakes. The Museum of Natural History has a glass case containing the last rat found in New York City, way back before World War I. (Just don’t look down at the tracks when you are waiting for a subway).

But then if we admit there are millions of rats and billions of roaches, then the crops growing in vertical farms would have to be protected by enough rat and roach poison to kill Xerxes’ army. Fortunately, in rat- and roach-free urban America, that is not a consideration. And even if it were, we would not need to worry that health inspectors would be bribed to overlook the rodent droppings and roach eggs in our tenth-story grown arugula. The civil servants in New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia are known worldwide for their incorruptibility.

Read it.

In other words, he’s scared of America.

Read it.

That’s a great picture of an alpaca. Wouldn’t mind having some of those myself, since my wife is a knitter.

Read it.

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

Intrepid indeed.

Read Kaus every day.

he Refs Dream They’re Being Worked: When McCain’s campaign attacks the press, he’s not “working the refs.” That implies McCain’s strategists still care how the “refs” make calls. I think it’s pretty clear they’re doing something else (and they’re perfectly happy if the refs keep making calls against them). … P.S.: Of course the MSM “refs” like to think McCain’s “working the refs,” because that implies they’re worth working–that their refereeing role is still all-important (as opposed to their role as, say, a totemic focus of political, class and cultural resentment!)

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

The Atlantic takes a look at Stuff White People Like.

Lander’s White People aren’t always white, and the vast majority of whites aren’t White People (he doesn’t even capitalize the term). … Lander, like many of these writers, traces this group’s values to the 1960s, and there’s clearly a connection between a politics based on “self-cultivation” (to quote the Students for a Democratic Society’s gaseous manifesto, the Port Huron Statement) and what Lander defines as White People’s ethos: “their number-one concern is about the best way to make themselves happy.”

Read it.

Give it a taser and I’ll take one.

Read it.

This looks like it will crawl down off the dresser at midnight and go after your enemies.

Read it.

Try to find a cat who would do that.

Read it.

I’m glad to see they got the priority right.

I’d like to wrap this around a number of leftoids, starting with AlGore, with an admonishion to Just Chill.

Apparently Steven Brust doesn’t particularly like Aggies.

Well, I suppose they don’t particularly like him, either….

Don’t know who Steven Brust is? The angels will weep for you. Go to the bookstore and buy a copy of Jhereg. You’ll be glad you did.

Just because Brust’s a communist doesn’t mean he isn’t a great writer, sad to say.

Read it.

This is very silly. But we have the technology.

Read it.

Sort of like a fingerprint for chips.

Roy decides to hop aboard the bandwagon.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Get your scorecards out.

Read it. And watch the video.

This is pretty cool.

The Maker Movement.

Read it.

If Black & Decker made a cell phone, this would be it.

Read it.

Read it.

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Blackwater shows what the government could do if used modern business methods.

Read it.

Oddly enough, that makes perfect sense.

Read it.

Read it.

Needs a machine gun.

Read it.

Doin’ his best to stimulate the economy.