British scientists study Hawaiian happy face spider
22nd April 2009
I’ll bet you didn’t know that there was a Hawaiian happy face spider.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on British scientists study Hawaiian happy face spider
22nd April 2009
I’ll bet you didn’t know that there was a Hawaiian happy face spider.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on British scientists study Hawaiian happy face spider
22nd April 2009
Steve Sailer is always worth reading.
Also, as my theory of Affordable Family Formation would predict, Santa Monica is famously liberal — e.g., the joke about it being the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. Jane Fonda’s ex-husband Tom Hayden represented the Santa Monica area in the state legislature for 18 years. Republican “family values” campaign themes don’t go over big in Santa Monica. The people who raise kids in Santa Monica can afford to insulate them with private schools, tutors, and all the rest. They don’t need politicians’ help in making it a little easier to raise their kids.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
21st April 2009
Read it.
All those Commies on the list?
Turns out they were Commies (and Soviet agents) after all.
I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on SPECIAL PREVIEW: I.F. Stone, Soviet Agent—Case Closed
21st April 2009
n September 2006, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, Codie Stott, asked a teacher if she could sit with another group to do a science project as all the girls with her spoke only Urdu. The teacher’s first response, according to Stott, was to scream at her: “It’s racist, you’re going to get done by the police!” Upset and terrified, the schoolgirl went outside to calm down. The teacher called the police and a few days later, presumably after officialdom had thought the matter over, she was arrested and taken to a police station, where she was fingerprinted and photographed. According to her mother, she was placed in a bare cell for 3 1/2 hours. She was questioned on suspicion of committing a racial public order offence and then released without charge. The school was said to be investigating what further action to take, not against the teacher, but against Stott. Headmaster Anthony Edkins reportedly said: “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark. We aim to ensure a caring and tolerant attitude towards pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and will not stand for racism in any form.”
Well. There it is.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »
21st April 2009
Mary Reason, 73, returned home from shopping to find her front door smashed down and a squad of police waiting.
The pensioner was due to give evidence at court but officers became concerned when she failed to contact witness services for three days.
Police broke down the door to her home in Staverton, near Gloucester, then billed Mrs Reason for £100 to pay for the cost of repairing the damage.
Now the pensioner is refusing to pay.
I’m a pensioner who has had a stroke and I shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like this from the police,” she said,
“They had no reason to break in. I get home and I find them in the house. The curtains were open and everything was neat and tidy.
“They could have just walked round and seen there were no problems. I won’t be paying – I shouldn’t have to.”
Well. There it is.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Pensioner refused to pay for door smashed by police
21st April 2009
The brown shirts immediately give them away.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 1 Comment »
21st April 2009
Well, really, it’s a Communist dictatorship. What did you expect?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on China plans to limit names of children
21st April 2009
80 mph and 200 miles is not bad for an electric car.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on There can Bee only One
20th April 2009
Actually, they’re pretty reasonable.
1. From now on, Nancy Pelosi has to wear a mask or ring a bell before she approaches a camera.
Who could say no to that?
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on The Hog Has Demands
20th April 2009
Now that’s comedy.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Chinese craze for English tattoos
20th April 2009
Quite frankly, I’m surprised that they don’t have them already.
Hmmm. Perhaps they do — but just aren’t telling anybody.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »
20th April 2009
The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, has blamed Britain’s asylum and benefits system for “imposing” thousands of illegal migrants on her town.
Mrs Bouchart pointed out that the Calais Chamber of Trade was having to spend £12 million each year securing the port area – money she suggested the French government should pay back.
But it was Britain’s immigration system which was predominantly to blame for thousands of Africans, eastern Europeans and people from central Asia trying to clamber aboard lorries and trains in Calais to get to the UK every day.
“Requesting asylum is easier with them (the British) than in France,” said Mrs Bouchart.
“The asylum seeker is given accommodation and receives £31 to £40 a week according to their case, when the annual salary of the average Eritrean is around $200 (£136).
“That seems enormous and it’s attractive, even if in some places it’s nothing.”
I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Calais mayor blames Britain for immigration problems
20th April 2009
No doubt starring Russell Crowe.
Wouldn’t mind seeing Gwyneth Paltrow in a suit of woad, though.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Eagle of the Ninth to be turned into a Roman war film
20th April 2009
That’s because Mandela is and always has been a Marxist revolutionary, not the South African Martin Luther King that everyone tries to paint him as.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Mandela smiles as Zuma calls for his machine gun
20th April 2009
Your tax dollars at work.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Congress Ponders Cybersecurity Power Grab
20th April 2009
Great. I can blame my grumpy neighbors.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Where you live ‘reflects how grumpy you are’, study claims
20th April 2009
Sales of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s autobiography and apologia for his anti-semitism, are soaring in India where business students regard the dictator as a management guru.
I’ve read Mein Kampf – Drucker would be a better choice, guys.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Indian business students snap up copies of Mein Kampf
20th April 2009
I would have favored his being lowered millimeter by millimeter into boiling oil – it’s traditional – but I suppose waterboarding will have to do.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | 1 Comment »
19th April 2009
We claim that the only requirement for evil to succeed is that good people do nothing. Letting evil go unpunished ipso facto becomes the equivalent of rewarding it.
In its past and present manifestation, Islam is a pluperfect example of the way evil concentrates and does not diffuse. While good works unavoidably distribute their positive influence by increasing the overall quality of life, Islam can only spread itself by the sword. I doubt there exists a single historic example of a non-Muslim culture spontaneously and voluntarily abandoning its original belief system in favor of Islam.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Bonum Diffusum Sui
19th April 2009
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Egypt’s top archaeologist claims Antony and Cleopatra tomb found
19th April 2009
Ha. Told you so.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Environmental benefits of electric cars dismissed as ‘fiction’
19th April 2009
We have the math. And the graphs.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Global Warming: A Classic Case of Alarmism
18th April 2009
“This budget makes clear that the era of Big Government is back, and Democrats want you to pay for it,” said House Republican leader John A. Boehner.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Class warfare returns to D.C.
18th April 2009
I must confess I have a hard time getting upset about a correspondent for NPR and the Washington Post being thrown in jail by a regime whose behind her employers spend so much time smooching.
On the other hand, she’s an American citizen, and, while that doesn’t count for a lot in these degenerate modern times, it ought to.
We will continue to vigorously raise our concerns to the Iranian government.
Oh, I’m sure they’re perfectly acquainted with your concerns. Thinly veiled threats would be much more effective, although we’re not likely to see that with this yellow-dog administration.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Clinton’s Statement on Reports of Jailed U.S. Journalist
18th April 2009
Yet, many governments have been doing the exact opposite: putting lives at risk, just to bring in more revenue (often to pay off those private companies that installed the cameras). On top of that, there are still plenty of locations that don’t leave any pause between switching lights between cross traffic. Here in California, for example, it’s quite rare for there to be any pause between a light turning red in one direction, and the perpendicular traffic light turning green. Studies have shown that a slight pause — where all directions are red — decreases the number of accidents as well. And yet… governments focus on using traffic cameras solely to increase revenue.
Insert your favorite conspiracy theory here:
Any theory has to include an explanation for HOV lanes — not a high bar.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Why Won’t Local Governments Just Increase The Length Of Yellow Lights?
18th April 2009
The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web. The mission: “to eradicate this font” and the “evil of typographical ignorance.”
“If you love it, you don’t know much about typography,” Mr. Connare says. But, he adds, “if you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography, either, and you should get another hobby.”
Indeed. Obsessing about little things suggests an unconscious realization that one has no power over bigger; this is why a spread of interest in “graphic novels” and video games is a disturbing indication that collectivism and over-regulation are growing, not shrinking, in the world.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will
17th April 2009
David Friedman, as always, gets right to the core issue.
I think it is a more plausible slogan than the usual version. If you and I disagree because I want an outcome more favorable to me and you want an outcome more favorable to you, there is room for compromise—as we see whenever people bargain over the price of a house. But if we disagree because I see what I want as just and the alternative as unjust and you see it the other way around, compromise looks to both of us like moral treason.
There you have modern American politics. There you have modern American foreign policy. Hell, there you have the fargin Civil War.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on If you want war, work for justice
17th April 2009
Christopher Howse is surprised to discover that for 400 years, a half of the world’s professing Christians lived under Muslim rule.
As virtual slaves.
In place of knowledge a series of myths has grown. One is of a cultural golden age in Islamic Spain, with Muslims, Christians and Jews living in harmony. Yet Americo Castro, who coined the word convivencia to describe the life of the three faiths in the caliphate of Cordoba, wrote, in his book The Structure of Spanish History: “Each of the three peoples of the peninsula saw itself forced to live for eight centuries together with the other two at the same time as it passionately desired their extermination.”
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on A Christian world under Islam’s rule
17th April 2009
Read it.
You know how it is — we’re frightened and appalled by the thought of unmanned killing machines, but if they must exist we really, really want to play with one.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Autonomous sniper system combines Xbox 360 controller, .338 rifle for deadly drone action
17th April 2009
Here’s something that has gotten lost in the drive to institute universal health insurance: Health insurance doesn’t automatically lead to health care. And with more and more doctors dropping out of one insurance plan or another, especially government plans, there is no guarantee that you will be able to see a physician no matter what coverage you have.
I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on We already know what government-run health care looks like.
17th April 2009
Well, not really — if he did, they would just shoot him, thereby demonstrating that they understand how the world works a lot better than he does … and, of course, saving America a lot of grief, but not really doing that much for Mexico.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Barack Obama vows to confront Mexican drug cartels
17th April 2009
Steve Sailer is always worth reading.
I remember when I got the memo from Society informing me that my wife and I had been assigned the task of socializing our children. It came as quite a shock, let me tell you.
Each of the 450 or so episodes of The Simpsons is a lot more mentally stimulating than listening to your parents or to your daycare worker talk. (Okay, well, some of the episodes from this decade might not live up to that standard, but there are still a couple of hundred good ones.)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Language Gap
16th April 2009
Change you can believe in! Or maybe not.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Breaking: Obama Will Not Prosecute CIA Officers for Waterboarding
16th April 2009
Sixteen million girls are missing in China. And now we know what happened to them: They were aborted because they weren’t boys.
And this was in Slate? Hell has just frozen over.
Two hundred boys for every 100 girls. The number is mind-boggling.
Indeed. Historically, having a lot more young boys than young girls leads to war. China’s no threat? Just wait.
It’s a terrible convergence of ancient prejudice with modern totalitarianism. Girls are culturally and economically devalued; the government uses powerful financial levers to prevent you from having another child; therefore, to make sure you can have a boy, you abort the girl you’re carrying.
A pro-choice policy that carries its own cure for feminism. Thank you, Margaret Sanger.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Sex Reversal
16th April 2009
Can’t have him act like a jihadist, after all.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on US army soldier sentenced to life in prison for murder of Iraqi prisoners
16th April 2009
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Disused oil rig in Gulf of Mexico to be converted into luxury hotel
16th April 2009
Steve Sailer has some fun with recent genetic research.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Breaking News: Your genes didn’t evolve to kill you
16th April 2009
They would never do that, surely? After all, they’re Popular Insurgents™!
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Britain accuses Tamil Tigers of using civilians as human shields
16th April 2009
I see the hand of God in here, somewhere.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Award-winning advertising director killed in moped crash with deer
16th April 2009
This actually sounds very American, somehow….
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Mourners to take advantage of pay-per-view funeral service
16th April 2009
After all, the purpose of a school is to hire and pay teachers, not educate students — if that were not the case, we wouldn’t be spending more and more on “education” while student test scores plummet, as is currently the case. That’s as clear as the nose on your face.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Union War on Charter Schools
16th April 2009
The genocide charity movement seems to be gathering momentum. They don’t actually plan genocide as such, no Saddamesque gassing or Stalinesque starvation is mentioned in their plans, but as sure as nuts is nuts the result of their proposals will be massive loss of life among those least able to ride out difficult times. I speak, in particular, about the Optimum Population Trust. which has just proudly announced the support of Sir David Attenborough, the well-known creator and presenter of staggeringly expensive (and sometimes rather good) television programmes about gorillas, fish, insects and fluffy bunnies. Sir David is in no danger of starvation himself so he has a free hand to support any bunch of fanatical fruitcakes he wishes without their dangerous practices ever affecting the availability of lentil and garlic bake at his table.
According to their “ecological footprint” analysis the population of Africa is sustainable but the populations of the USA and the UK are not.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we can see what actually happens. To my unjargonised mind we can measure the sustainability of a population by asking whether they eat or starve, live to adulthood or perish in infancy, keep warm in winter or risk freezing to death, have clean water and good sanitation or cholera, in short by asking whether they have a long or a short average lifespan. The current population of the USA and the UK are entirely sustainable because we have advanced economies which, despite current difficulties, allow us to have warm homes, food, clean water and good sanitation. We have average lifespans unimaginable even fifty years ago. Much of Africa, on the other hand, suffers through political corruption and economic ineptitude resulting in its current population containing a great many who will die in infancy and few who will last as long as the average pie-munching fat Englishman.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Starvation, the new answer to global warming
16th April 2009
I am not making this up. Fortunately, I’ve already had breakfast.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Dangerously Delicious: The BA-K-47
16th April 2009
I am not making this up.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Attorneys File Suit in Germany on Behalf of Alleged Pirates
16th April 2009
Red light camera’s a scam? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The War on Short Yellows
16th April 2009
(Funny how you have to read an British newspaper to find out the interesting American news.)
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Library book stolen during US Civil War returned after 145 years
16th April 2009
Who knew that Duncanville was such a hotbed of fascism?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Texas City Councilman Arrested After Opposing Red Light Cameras
15th April 2009
Immediately arrested and charged with a hate crime for having a white calf and not a brown or black calf.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Brown Highland cattle produce rare white calf
15th April 2009
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Kenyan man bites python in struggle to survive
15th April 2009
A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was given permission to telephone a relative instead called the al Jazeera television network and gave the channel its first interview from inside the prison.
William Ayers with a beard.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Guantanamo Bay detainee calls al Jazeera from prison