Safire on language. Always worth reading.

NYT. Ever notice how poor people love to write about rich people, but rich people tend not to write a lot at all, much less about poor people?

Scratch any journalist and you’ll find a heapin’ helpin’ of wealth-envy. “These people couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag! How come they have oodles of money and I don’t?” Well, they concentrate on counting rather than writing, for one thing….

Engadget. This is an excellent idea.

I blame John Scalzi.

Engadget. And of course the “civil libertarians” will no doubt attempt to get this evidence suppressed as an invasion of the perp’s privacy.

Cringely. If that doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will.

LGF. The “Palestinians” don’t have a culture, they have a syndrome.

Engadget. Now, this is just cool.

Engadget. We seem to be making steady progress toward the day when we can take ground-up plastic waste and create new products to order in the home cheaply. Jane Jacobs was of opinion that modern trash would be an effective source of raw materials once technology advanced to the stage where we could take advantage of it, and she was confident that the day would come. As am I.

PowerLine. It has always astounded me that a “profession” that consists largely of fussbudgets and busybodies has this notion that they’re the smartest people in the room. And those that are the first to poke their noses through your curtains are at the front of the line to denounce the government trying to do the same with terrorists.

Peggy Noonan.

Young recruits are often middle class, and their interest is often sparked by an immediate or protracted crisis–the loss of a job, a change in family circumstances. They do not necessarily come from anything particular lacking in the family, but they have nothing to hold onto until this absolute thing, this fundamentalist belief, and its grievances, comes by. Their rage is tended and encouraged by spiritual and operational leaders who offer a sense of community, of belonging and of approval.

Not to mention the fact that they are constantly bombarded by their teachers in school and the headlines in the newspapers that America sucks, and white people suck, and people who are actually working for a living are a bunch of oppressive slavemasters, and the fact that they are pathetic losers isn’t actually their fault.

Techdirt. The buggy whip manufacturers are a pitiful sight, aren’t they?

LanguageLog. Not that anyone in his right mind would look to George W Bush as a model for how to speak.

NYT. That’s the thing: If they were worth watching, people would be happy to watch them. That’s why they have the big to-do about the SuperBowl ads. The problem is that most ads are crap. (Can you think of anything more boring and puerile than the typical automobile ad?)

NYT. It’s not a problem unless you’ve got something to hide. They could fly aircraft over and do the exact same thing, and that would be neither unlawful nor unconstitutional.

NYT. Those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

NYT. And, of course, there’s the ineveitable agenda.

And who is responsible for the deaths it left: individuals who made decisions that ended badly, or the government, whose flood-protection works proved to be nothing of the kind and whose evacuation plans were so sketchy?

No doubt it’s all Bush’s fault.

FuturePundit.

WSJ. The more I see of diversity, the more I long to live surrounded by people just like me. Blame my native indolence.

StrangeMaps. I can vouch for it.

UR. We got yer democracy … right here.

Can you imagine a 21st-century post-demotist society? One that saw itself as recovering from democracy, much as Eastern Europe sees itself as recovering from Communism? Well, I suppose that makes one of us.

A fairly obvious truism:

The main difference between fascism and communism was not in mechanism, but in origin – fascist elites tended to be militarist, communist elites intellectual. But the one-party state is a clear case of convergent evolution.

A really inconvenient truth:

 A political party is a political party. It is a large group of people allied for the purpose of seizing and wielding power. If it does not choose to arm its followers, this is only because it finds unarmed followers more useful than armed ones. If it chooses less effective strategies out of moral compunction, it will be outcompeted by some less-principled party.

Steve Sailer explores the wonderful world of modern education.

Read it. The Communist Chinese are forbidding reincarnation without government authorization.

Where the personal is really political.

Engadget. Not a bad idea these days.

LanguageLog. And the tight sphincters win another round.

NYT. More evidence that high school teachers really want to pretend they’re college teachers more than they want to teach high school.

NYT. Sorry, but if it’s “planned” then it isn’t a community.

Why not just let people live wherever they want to? Oh, no, can’t have that.

NYT. This is what comes of using the tax code for social engineering.

Freeman Dyson is smarter than you and me put together.

In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems. Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers. The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”. The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed.

Believe it.

Read it. Couldn’t agree more.

NYT. “Rules?! In a knife fight?!“

LGF. Turn on the light, and the roaches scuttle.

Pogue. Speed the day….

LGF. It’s hard to tell which is the more moronic: The terrorists who come up with this crap, or the “journalists” who publish it.

Engadget. Pretty clever. Wonder if it would work in home or car air conditioners?

Engadget. How long would it take to remove the RFID chip and sell it on the black market? Take a guess.

NYT. This is like taking military advice from the French. Any brief read of British newspapers will reveal that their schools suck even worse than ours.

NYT. When in doubt, sue somebody. It’s the American way.

NYT. Put him somewhere between Mugabe and Castro.

NYT. Everybody gets a world of his own.

NYT. Guys, it’s a bridge. Put up a plaque, or something. In the mean time, people need to get across the fargin river.

“I think the public is asking for a distinctive bridge,” Councilwoman Diane Hofstede said. “This is a bridge that got international attention and was the scene of a terrible tragedy.”

Woman, the public is asking FOR A WORKING BRIDGE. A distinctive bridge is one THAT CARRIES TRAFFIC ACROSS THE RIVER.

This is the sort of bureaucratic bun-fight that is delaying the replacement of the World Trade Center in New York. Every two-bit politician has to get to pee in it before they like the taste.

Read it. Hey, I thought there was something fishy about that age.

Researchers found that it takes men until they reach the age of 65 to start enjoying life as much as they did in their late-teens and early-20s.

Yeah, and I can’t wait.

LanguageLog. Confirmation that computer software is designed for computer software designers rather than real users.

LGF. Forward into the past in the Dar al-Islam.

NYT. Apparently political thinking has intruded so far into the workplace that even socialist coups are fair game.

Techdirt. My, that certainly surprises me. Doesn’t that surprise you?

LGF. Well, there you have it. From the dog’s mouth, so to speak.

LGF. People forget that they leave tracks in this electronic world.

LGF. Truly, you cannot make this stuff up.

LGF. An interesting question. I suspect we would find the answer entertaining.