Techdirt. Think of it as a Darwinian mechanism to weed out the stupid people. It reveals the inner lives of those who are inadequately socialized.

Much like this blog.

Steve Sailer points out that some minorities appear to be more minor than others.

Read it. This forest fire and massive environmental catastrophe brought to you by your local chapter of … the environmental movement.

NYT.

The mayor of Minneapolis cautioned that Minnesota transportation officials’ swift timetable to replace the collapsed Interstate bridge could overlook safety and the unique elements necessary to make it a memorial.

Truly, you cannot make this stuff up.

NYT. Guess it didn’t work.

NYT. Earmarks will get you if you don’t watch out.

NYT. Let that be a lesson to us all.

PowerLine. Sometimes politics can be the best amusement going.

NYT. Prediction: The conclusion will be that humans suck and it’s all our fault. Any takers?

Read it.

Lutheran — probably.

Evangelical — probably not.

Confused — without a doubt.

Read it. No, it’s not about Congress this time.

NYT. Yeah, it’s called a green light. It’s not as efficient as it might be.

This book was originally published by Wiley and then “depublished” when they caved to political pressure. Unfortunately for the People of the Crust, it’s now available for free on the web. Jerry Pournelle points out that, with the Internet, the “gatekeepers” now have a gate to a hunk of Swiss cheese. This is a great time to be alive.

NYT. And yet nothing about Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Fatah. Or Cuba or Zimbabwe, for that matter. Boy, those guys from “Human Rights Watch” are really watching, aren’t they?

LGF.

We’re about to witness what happens when a country is governed by the “progressive” Kos mentality. And it’s going to be ugly.

Techdirt. An even more interesting issue is the “TV license” that Britons have to pay just for owning a TV; this is what is used to fund the BBC. If people can watch American programs over the Internet, and get them quicker and without needed to pay a license fee, who’s going to buy a TV any more?

NYT. Makes me wonder why they didn’t think of this before.

WSJ. But, but, that’s how we buy votes!

NYT. It’s not really necessary to make any comment, is it?

Engadget.

It’s encouraging to see NASA following Jerry Pournelle’s advice about holding contests with prizes for technological advances.

It’s disappointing to see them concentrating on ancient technologies like “go real fast with wings and you can fly”, because such toys run into the same problem as e.g. the Segway — something that might work well in a country with few people in it won’t survive the regulatory process (and would be inherently unsafe if it did) in the Real World.

All it’s going to take is one “FUI” accident and the whole scheme will get so loaded down with bureaucracy and limitations that nobody will use it.

NYT. An excellent trend. I notice that most resorts are in blue states; very few people move to New York or L.A. in order to spend more quality time with their families.

NYT. Review of The World Without Us, which I look forward to reading.

Mr. Weisman speaks to the darkest parts of our collective imagination as well as some of the strangest.

Well, no, he speaks to the darkest parts of the Brahmin imagination; those of us in Flyover Country don’t spend a lot of time worrying about these things. No doubt the People of the Crust would point to this as being a major component of the problem; those of us who compose the Filling merely see this as evidence of the eternal truth that those who want to borrow trouble usually have an unlimited credit line.

Read it. All of the interesting information is in blogs nowadays, anyway.

Read it. I particularly like this giveaway:

A large part of that inability has to do with GM’s dramatically higher labor costs–apparently the total labor cost for a GM hourly worker ( including health, pensions etc.) is about $146,000 per year. They’re competing against Toyota and Honda who pay $96,000 per year–on equally American workers in American factories. Much of this disparity is in health care costs, something that would be fixed if the government took over that burden.

Well, no it wouldn’t — it would merely shift the burden to the taxpayers. This might perhaps “fix” it from GM’s standpoint, but the problem would remain. And it would be subject to political manipulation … well, even more than it is now, anyway. That’s the perennial problem when the government “takes over” something; the people whose problem it would solve are loud proponents, while those who are getting shafted on down the line typically don’t know or don’t understand what’s coming for them.

Engadget. Oh, it’s lovely out in the woods tonight….

Read it. Probably not, but you never know.

PowerLine just noticed what LanguageLog pointed out earlier.

The House legislation funnels money to favored hospitals by treating them as if they are in high wage areas even though they aren’t.

NYT. They, however, rarely make the news.

Steve Sailer points out that it’s the government’s ease-credit-requirements-for-fashionable-minorities policies over the last 20 years that’s to blame for our present mortgage market problems. Not that anybody can remember that far back, of course.

NYT. Of course textbook prices are outrageous. What would you expect from something invented in the 16th century?

Of course, the solution is to get rid of them, and the factory-model school that requires them. But that would mean actually thinking about how education is done these days, and it’s much more convenient to do the same-old same-old.

Read it. Then realize that this person actually got paid real money to write this, and it was published in a major newspaper.

EconLog. Apparently they all have less economic knowledge than your average frog.

NYT. Another nomenklatura pathway back to the pre-modern world.

LanguageLog. An illustration of how much government legislation (can you say the Internal Revenue Code?) contains language that is vague and appears to be of general application but actually goes to fit the very limited set of beneficiaries (can you say lobbyists?) that fit the apparently “vague” description.

Congress is full of lawyers. They do this sort of thing for a living. (And, in Congress, for fun & profit.)

FuturePundit. Yeah, sure, it’s all our fault….

Christopher Hitchens on Harry Potter. Does it get any better than that?

NYT. Yeah, who was this Vespucci guy, anyway? And why isn’t the continent named after Columbus?

NYT. The evolution of language, like everything else, causes fights.

NYT. Ah, yes, obsessive-compulsive know-it-alls — my kind of people. (What is an “environmental graphic designer”? Wouldn’t you love to have that job? If it is a job, and not just a political position….)

Safire on language.

WT. Another of the many reasons I don’t fly.

Of course, if he had been tortured by Saudi police, the ACLU would be okay with that.

Cringely is on the case.

Now, bear in mind, the guy works for PBS, and so has a bias against business and a blind spot when it comes to government responsibility. But he’s got good reason to bitch — bleeding the American taxpayer is an ancient and venerable tradition, and any number can play.

EconLog. See the politician. See the politician dodge. Dodge, politician, dodge.

As Bryan points out, some hypotheticals are relevant, and some aren’t. If a candidate faces one that isn’t, it’s no shame to say, “That’s a stupid and irrelevant question, and I refuse to answer it.” That would show backbone; I would vote for such a candidate. But to dodge a relevant hypothetical, one that would illuminate either the candidate’s character or the candidate’s qualifications, is … well, just a dodge. I would avoid voting for such a slimeball.

LGF. Well, I guess AlGore will shut up now. (NOT)

LGF. I guess the patron saint of jounalists is P. T. Barnum.

PowerLine. Wisdom about journalists and what they do.

But there have been, especially since the sixties, disturbing trends in journalism. Just as Hollywood, in its hiring practices, has replaced talent with education, journalism is in danger of replacing experience with report cards. Journalism is not a profession. There is no specific body of knowledge required, and there is no licensing. What is needed is a sharp set of skills, high powers of observation, and a humility about how much we can understand quickly, and these come only from experience. But when you’ve gone through Yale or Stanford, when you’ve been told how smart you are, when you got 700s on your SATs, you start to believe what mom has whispered in your ear. You start to think that you “know.” It’s a kind of self-inflicted grade inflation. I’m bright, therefore I’m right.

As somebody who’s gone through Yale and gotten 700s on his SATs, I can vouch for it. In fact, I’m still prepared to argue that I’m smarter than you. I guess I ought to have been a journalist. *sigh* I’m just a victim of bad career choices. Surely there is a government program for such a victim as I….

Read The Whole Thing.

LanguageLog.  The “snowclone” phenomenon is discussed here.

Read it.

LGF. Religion of peace, sure.

UR. Another bizarre disquisition from the amazing Mencius Moldbug.

For example, what do we make of someone who describes herself as a “responsible journalist” whose mission is to “speak truth to power”? Can she succeed just by speaking to herself, like a bag lady? It would certainly save on newsprint.