FuturePundit. Gotta say, rats seem to be on the cutting edge of medical technology these days.

FuturePundit. I can’t imagine any version of reality in which I’d want to know this, but here you are.

Engadget. This is way cool.

Read it. Only a socialist would complain about no vegetarian choices at a free lunch.

Read it. Only if they decide to hire Scooter Libbey.

How did the Bush administration follow up? Faced with the politically explosive challenge of indicting our country’s leading newspaper, it did nothing at all. It was rewarded for its forbearance by another New York Times sensation, a front-page story in May 2006 revealing the details of a second highly classified counterterrorism program that worked through the European banking consortium SWIFT.

If you reward bad behavior, you only get more bad behavior.

NYT. I don’t know where these guys shop, but if you hit Wal-Mart or Kroger you get plastic whether you want it or not. Why? Because plastic is thin and strong and easier to store and use for its weight – same reason stuff is made out of metal rather than wood. And it’s cheaper; and in the absence of laws making people do things the government way instead of their way, cheaper wins.

If they were to come up with some way to process and recycle common plastic bags, they wouldn’t need all of this bureaucracy. Hey, maybe that’s why they haven’t…?

John Fund points out how much our legislators could use some adult supervision.

It underlines what I’ve always said: All the rules in the world don’t matter if the people charged with enforcing the rules choose to ignore them.

NYT. Guess these guys never heard of “federalism”. You’d think that the states were Iraqis being abandoned to their fates.

“States will act in a vacuum,” said Leticia Van de Putte, a Democratic state senator from Texas who is the president of the conference this year.

Note: No federal law = a vacuum. That tells you all you really need to know about these people.

The Times. I’ve always suspected as much….

Read it. Apparently it is not a pretty sight.

NYT. Just when you think the Times has reached the limit for partisan drivel, something like this comes along.

One part of the Justice Department mess that requires more scrutiny is the growing evidence that the department may have singled out people for criminal prosecution to help Republicans win elections.

Oh, as if Democrats haven’t been doing that since the time of Tammany Hall? Certainly prosecuting voter fraud will help Republicans win elections, but that’s because Democrats are the one who are mostly responsible for trying to steal them. The Florida 2000 debacle is all you need to know on that subject.

NYT. Well, if it’s “quick and painless” they want, there’s always the guillotine. Yeah, it’s messy, but it’s quick and painless. And certain.

Why do I suspect a hidden agenda here? Hm?

NYT. Every now and then the Times prints something from an outside contributor that makes obvious what a bunch of dimwits their normal staff must be. The fact that it doesn’t appear to have any impact on the rest of the paper suggests that even the people who publish the Times don’t read it.

These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles.

Oh, yeah, I really think so….

LanguageLog. I swear, these guys have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.

Read it. This is a discussion on the Immigration question from Scott Adams’s blog that I found quite interesting. (Thanks to an anonymous commenter on Steve Sailer’s blog, whom I would thank if I knew who it was. Memes travel interesting paths in the Modern World.)

One of Scott Adams’s non-virtues is that he tries to be Dave Barry and can’t quite pull it off.

On the other hand — many of the commentors need to have their meds adjusted.

In any event, it shows several of the dimensions of the problem.

NYT. I don’t know, I find this charming and silly at the same time. But it certainly fits my preconceived notions about Italians. Is that a bad thing? Hard to say.

NYT. Why is it that people have such a hard time realizing that just passing a law is not enough to solve a problem?

We see this all the time. There are umpteen different laws on the books addressing problem X, which has not gotten any better, and so they want to pass umpteen more. Hint: Unless you change the culture, the law will not be enforced. Laws that are not enforced might as well not exist. (Actually, that’s not true: It reduces respect for all laws, even the good ones.)

Prohibition is the poster child for this concept, but the immigration “reform” issue is as fresh as yesterday’s headlines. To solve the problem, we don’t need new laws; we just need people to enforce the laws we have. But the ruling class doesn’t want to do that: They don’t want to spend the money, and they like having cheap illegal immigrants to mow their lawns, pick their crops, and mind their children, and besides if we make them citizens they’re so stupid they’ll vote for us.

Sheesh.

NYT. Ostensibly a review of Lee Harris’s The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West, this is about as close to intellectual honesty as we can expect from a member of the Brahmin caste.

Lee Harris is one of the most underappreciated thinkers of our day; get his books (all of them) and read them.

Jeremy Wagstaff is one of those tiresome people who have to answer a ringing phone.

I don’t have that problem.

NYT. Why does this remind me of the scene in The Time Machine with the Eloi and the Morlocks?

LanguageLog. Some people have entirely too much time on their hands.

NYT. Of course, being an author has always been more about ego than money.

LanguageLog. Nerds as an oppressed minority group? Uh, I dunno….

Steve Sailer has more to say on the subject; some very useful stuff, too. Apparently he’s been pondering this for some time.

Ross Douthat is apparently unfamiliar with the fact that the Brahmin caste use the term “working class” to mean people who actually work for a living, i.e. not of the Brahmin caste. To them, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are “working class”.

Hyper-inequality is part of the story here, no doubt; on the other hand, I’m pretty sure there have always been people who are rich by any normal standard, but want to live the lifestyle of the super-rich and find themselves scrambling to keep up. And my interest in/sympathy for their plight is … limited.

You got that right.

WT. I’m curious just what differentiates “neoconservatives” from “traditional conservatives”. It sounds to me that it just means “conservatives who embrace positions I don’t like”.

WT. Perhaps someone should point out to him that he’s not the boss here.

LGF. Let’s wait for The Usual Suspects to chime in about “racial profiling” etc.

ParaPundit. Is anyone surprised? Not anyone who has been paying attention.

LGF. No surprises here.

PowerLine. I don’t care who you are, these are funny.

LanguageLog. The new hero’s journey: A tale of curse and recurse.

LanuageLog. Apparently the cultural transmission of professional knowledge within journalism is breaking down.

StrangeMaps. This is delightful.

NYT. Surprisingly, an important topic surfaces where one would least expect it. Unfortunately, it’s only treated from the Inside Politics level, not as a serious issue.

NYT. Great — cheating the public has become the new Washington status symbol.

NYT. I guess history isn’t taught any more. There was a “Mediterranean union” until the Muslims came through and ripped it apart 1300 years ago. Good luck trying to integrate Muslims into a polity that is directly contrary to their religion.

NYT. I have a hard time feeling sympathetic.

“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to.

I guess not.

Engadget. One day CIC will occupy the entire 03 level, and everybody will spend his day in the dark.

LanguageLog. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog — but many suspect the truth, even if you look deceptively like a human in person.

Read it. Perhaps global warming will be a net improvement. It’s not like anybody is considering it.

UR. Tacitus makes Mencius waxes philosophic.

Sine ira et studio. I doubt these words were idly chosen, and we kids these days could do a lot worse than to imitate them. No one gives a rat’s ass about Tiberius now. But I see no shortage of either ira or studio.

Read it to find out what all this has to do with Rhodesia.

Today’s Europeans simply cannot understand why Republicans, at least populist Republicans, are allowed to exist within the American political system. They look at it rather the way you’d look at someone who kept a pet leopard in his closet.

And what it has to do with us.

NYT. The book reviewer as zoologist: Who are these strange people called “conservatives”? And why are they so inexplicably successful in connecting with our proletariat?

What he doesn’t realize is that, while clinging to the Liberal Label, he’s just as conservative as the right-wingers he detests; just about different things. This illustrates the primary defect of “conservative” as a political category.

I especially love the little tag at the end:

Stephen Metcalf writes the Dilettante column for Slate and is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

Somehow I’m sure of it.

NYT. The Universalist view: If people are hungry, we are obliged to feed them; the only argument is about how.

NYT. Doesn’t say anything new about the illegal immigration problem but it says a lot about the biases of the New York Times and its ilk.

NYT. I agree — I don’t think I’ve taken more than a week of “vacation” since I graduated from high school.

William Safire on language. Always worth reading.

Today the manager of the campaign is often merely the person who handles the nuts and bolts and the nuts who bolt.

NYT. Good old Unintended Consequences.

ParaPundit. Let that be a lesson to us all.

And once again Steve Sailer nails it.

Techdirt. Two words: Paper. Ballot. Works every time it’s tried.