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The most effective male birth control pill is a zipper.

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God help anybody with brain activity like mine.

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So that those in Flyover Country who are condemned to live somewhere than on a Left Coast can still pretend and have a rich fantasy life.

Ponder the fact that nobody needs ‘transit directions’ for their personal car. What does that tell you about ‘transit’?

I would venture to suggest that, whatever else the American Dream might contain, a part of it is to live in a place where there is no ‘transit’, nor any need for such.

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

I can think of some Democrat public officials for which jewelry made from smog would be an improvement.

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If your mother was a hamster, this will no doubt be of interest to you.

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That would be entertaining, as well.

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Actually, that would be very entertaining.

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If you need any reason to dislike it other than how it turns people into obnoxious assholes.

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And the Great Sorting proceeds apace.

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Researchers at Washington State University have developed algorithms that scan a tree for individual branches, then determine what bit of each branch to grasp and shake to extract the most cherries—up to nearly 90 percent of them. Sure, that’s not as dramatic as the machine-driven apocalypse. But at least it gives us an intriguing vision of a robotics-fueled agriculture industry.

If the idea of a tree-shaking robot seems a bit oddball to you, know that you’re the reason it may soon exist. Americans don’t just want a lot of produce; they want a lot of flawless produce, free of dings and bruises and discoloration. And you can’t have flawless cherries if you’re using a giant machine to shake a tree trunk willy-nilly, flinging fruit all over the place. (Though that method works fine with hardier fare like almonds.)

Bond will be pleased.

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

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To use Tetra, all you need to do is place it anywhere it can plug into a standard electrical outlet — no special installation or plumbing reconfiguration necessary. After that, you just fill the first compartment in the base with approximately half a gallon of tap water and some dish detergent, insert your dishes, and start it up. Voilà! In about 10 minutes, your tableware will be thoroughly clean. Once it’s finished, you just drain the dirty water.

My first apartment after college was one room with an alcove that served as a kitchen. The refrigerator was smaller than the one I had in my dorm room. I would have loved something like this.

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This will either be huge or a huge flop.

Wonder how well it will cope with a ‘flash mop’ of black slum teenagers cleaning the place out.

Not well, I suspect.

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Well, I thought it was interesting.

Come to think of it, I have yet to encounter an actor whose accent wasn’t distinct and strange. That’s what makes them memorable, I guess.

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What we know and how we know it.

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Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in the US have developed a test that screens for eight common forms of cancer and helps identify the location of the disease.

The test, called CancerSEEK, looks for mutations in 16 genes and evaluates the levels of eight proteins usually released by cancer sufferers.

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An alligator and a Burmese python were locked in a cold-blooded battle to the death as a crowd watched in shock at a golf course in Naples, Fla., last week.

Remind me to stay away from Florida.

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And, of course, it COULDN’T be because of Donald Trump. It Just Couldn’t.

UPDATE: And the Usual Suspects are Triggered by it — North And South Korea Will Field A Joint Olympic Team, And A Lot Of People Are Unhappy About It

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

Before he retired from McGill University, Pieter Sijpke used to give his architecture students some pretty cool homework. He once told the class, “I want to be drinking in a snow bar by Friday.” His students went outside and got to work, and sure enough, “we had 50 people inside the snow bar by Friday afternoon.”

One of the neat things about being a professor is you have lots of students who will do stupid stuff for you just for a grade.

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A team of scientists from University of Toronto, University of California, Berkeley and the Canadian Light Source (CLS) successfully managed to work out the ideal conditions for converting carbon dioxide to ethylene.

…

The researchers were able to design a catalyst and identify the precise conditions that maximise ethylene production during the reaction, while minimising methane and carbon monoxide production.

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The commanding officers for two American warships crippled in fatal accidents are facing military criminal charges ranging from negligent homicide to dereliction of duty.

An unusual step that underscores the seriousness of this situation.

Cmdr. Bryce Benson, the former commander of the Fitzgerald, together with three junior officers, face military criminal charges including dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide. Cmdr. Jessie L. Sanchez, former commander of the McCain, faces the same charges, according to USNI News.

Typically officers involved in incidents such as these are merely put somewhere that it’s obvious they have no future in the Navy. They then either retire or resign, depending on how much service they’ve got.

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The founders of the state are appealing to Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution and plan to bring legislation to the California legislature in the next 10 to 18 months to legally divide the state in two, CBS Sacramento reported Monday. West Virginia was created by the same method in 1863. The founders say that high taxes and poor government have forced the rural counties to take action against the more wealthy coastal areas.

This will go nowhere, of course, because the Left Coast needs these Other People’s Money to support their incipient socialist state. But it’s a noble effort.

“Well, it’s been ungovernable for a long time. High taxes, education, you name it, and we’re rated around 48th or 50th from a business climate and standpoint in California,” founder Robert Paul Preston. “There’s something wrong when you have a rural county such as this one, and you go down to Orange County which is mostly urban, and it has the same set of problems, and it happens because of how the state is being governed and taxed.”

When this fails, there’s plenty of room for you guys in Texas. C’mon down!

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That’s a lot more impressive than ‘Raise my taxes!’

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Well, now. Ain’t that special. Wonder what Nancy Botox has to say to that.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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And why not? A state that will send an imbecile like Joe Biden to the Senate for thirty-six years will not shrink from electing a convicted felon pervert.

Good luck for it getting a seat on any Senate committee that needs a security clearance.

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From what I’ve seen of it, I wouldn’t mind living at The Continental. Don’t have a lot of gold coins to spare, unfortunately.

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Carbon fiber is the Superman of materials. Five times stronger than steel and a fraction of the weight, it is used in everything from tennis racketsto golf clubs to bicycles to wind turbine blades to passenger airplanes to Formula One race cars. There’s just one catch: Carbon fiber is made from oil and other costly ingredients, making the end product exceptionally expensive. That’s why carbon fiber shows up in race cars but rarely makes it into minivans.

That could change. Scientists say it may soon be possible to make carbon fiber from plants instead of petroleum, driving down costs, making the material more widely available for use in cars, planes and other vehicles.

Carbon fiber is made from a chemical called acrylonitrile. Currently, producers make acrylonitrile from oil, ammonia, oxygen and an expensive catalyst. The process produces a lot of heat and yields a toxic byproduct. And, because acrylonitrile is made from petroleum, the cost of carbon fiber tends to rise and fall with the price of oil

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

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Good riddance, I’d say.

No worries, mate, the government will just import more Pakistanis and Somalis to make up the difference. (Hey, it worked for Tony Blair….)

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Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes … well….

He’s going to look pretty badass once those heal up, though.

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Hey, if you had no access to modern toilet paper, you’d walk differently too.

Recorded in Germany’s History Park Bärnau, an open-air museum that explores life between the 9th and 13th centuries, this video by Roland Warzecha illustrates the mechanics of movement in Western Europe prior to 1500. (Warzecha runs a martial arts school devoted to historical European swordsmanship in Hamburg.)

Think Jar-Jar Binks.

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Damn that reality! It keeps interfering with our agenda!

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California state senator Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, has introduced Senate Bill 827, which would effectively void all local zoning rules in “transit-rich” areas, meaning areas within a half mile of a rail station or a quarter mile of a stop on a frequent bus route. Wiener’s goal is to allow the construction of high-density housing in those transit-rich areas, thus simultaneously providing more affordable housing and encouraging more people to ride transit.

Unfortunately for Scot Wiener, one of the distinguishing characteristics of SWPL proglodytes is hard-core NIMBYism, and so turning San Fran into some sort of Left Coast Houston has absolutely no chance of going anywhere.

Good thing, too, since we’ve already got a Houston here in Texas and it’s got its arms wide open for anybody priced out of their California dreamin’.

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Just looking at his picture, I’d say it’s no great loss.

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Sounds scary to me. Women and minorities hardest hit, obviously.

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Get up, make money, go to bed. Easy peasy.

“You can change the world with an idea, but you have to think of it first.” — Simon Mendelssohn

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After 10 years running Sungevity, I recently completed a tour visiting solar companies in and around the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. I am pleased to report the residential solar industry is thriving around the world — everywhere except right here in the U.S.

The reason for this is startlingly simple: American consumers are being charged over two times more for solar than is the average consumer overseas. That’s USD $10,000 more for a typical 5-kilowatt residential solar system. The panels are the same — so what on earth is going on?

The answer: red tape.

Here in the land of technology leadership and free-market enterprise, American regulation has more than doubled the cost of solar.

This is why the Democrats keep shrinking. They want the government to run stuff, and (as the Post Office and TSA demonstrate) whenever the government runs stuff they suck at it.

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We have the technology.

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But you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his first year in office.

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This will be entertaining.

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But you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his first year in office.

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In Ohio, in case you’re not the political wonk they expect you to be. They could do a lot worse.

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What we discovered from the structural MRI scanning was remarkable. Numerous regions in the brains of the pandits were dramatically larger than those of controls, with over 10 percent more grey matter across both cerebral hemispheres, and substantial increases in cortical thickness. Although the exact cellular underpinnings of gray matter and cortical thickness measures are still under investigation, increases in these metrics consistently correlate with enhanced cognitive function.

Turns out that rote memorization is actually good for your brain. Sometimes the old ways are best.

Cue teacher-union heads exploding.

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AlGore must have gone there on vacation.

Who’ll be the first to blame Trump? Clock is ticking….

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I want one of those.

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Room-temperature superconductors would be a singularity-level discovery.

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

I am not making this up.

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I’m impressed.

Cue feminist outrage.

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There you go: Politically Correct Fat (brown good, white bad).