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Change you can believe in! Or maybe not.

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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.

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Can’t have him act like a jihadist, after all.

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Steve Sailer has some fun with recent genetic research.

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They would never do that, surely? After all, they’re Popular Insurgents™!

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I see the hand of God in here, somewhere.

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This actually sounds very American, somehow….

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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.

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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.

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I am not making this up. Fortunately, I’ve already had breakfast.

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I am not making this up.

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Red light camera’s a scam? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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(Funny how you have to read an British newspaper to find out the interesting American news.)

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Who knew that Duncanville was such a hotbed of fascism?

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Immediately arrested and charged with a hate crime for having a white calf and not a brown or black calf.

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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.

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In an effort to highlight the hidden burdens imposed by government, Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, together with CFA, has estimated average prices and taxes imposed on 13 popular targets for multiple layers of hidden taxes.

This could prove amusing.

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Note that none of them were American. Heh.

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Well, my car would look lame, anyway, but look at the video and pretend you’re on Serenity.

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Jerry Pournelle has been pushing this scheme for decades. It looks like it’s finally getting some mindshare.

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The Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species (T.I.G.E.R.S.), in South Carolina, has animals of the Royal Standard Bengal (which is orange and black), the Royal White Bengal (white with black stripes), the Snow White Bengal (all white or with ghost stripes), and the Golden Tabby Bengal (red to pale orange cream stripes and saddle).

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Pictures here.

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The modern slacker’s dilemma.

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How appropriate that a perceptive article about the financial meltdown should appear in the effete lifestyle magazine Vanity Fair.

“Yes, I know Björk,” a professor of finance at the University of Iceland says in reply to my question, in a weary tone. “She can’t sing, and I know her mother from childhood, and they were both crazy. That she is so well known outside of Iceland tells me more about the world than it does about Björk.”

I know how he feels.

Back away from the Icelandic economy and you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. There are, of course, a few jobs in Iceland that any refined, educated person might like to do. Certifying the nonexistence of elves, for instance. (“This will take at least six months—it can be very tricky.”) But not nearly so many as the place needs, given its talent for turning cod into Ph.D.’s. At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it.

Truly, Barack Obama’s dream world. “When everybody’s somebody, then no one’s anybody.”

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That European Union thing is really working out well for them, isn’t it?

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in D.C.

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In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

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Well. There it is.

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Police have been told not to evict illegal gipsy camps from private land unless they are causing additional problems such as crime.

Gee, I sorta thought that “illegal gipsy camps” were “crime” all by themselves … but apparently not.

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Let me know when they take up smoking again.

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Except farmers, of course — and corporate mega”farmers” like ADM most of all. And their Congresscritters, of course. And environmentalists, of course. And the politically fashionable, of course.

Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn’t cooperate.

Americans are unlikely to use enough gas next year to absorb the 13 billion gallons of ethanol that Congress mandated, because current regulations limit the ethanol content in each gallon of gas at 10%. The industry is asking that this cap be lifted to 15% or even 20%. That way, more ethanol can be mixed with less gas, and producers won’t end up with a glut that the government does not require anyone to buy.

The ethanol boosters aren’t troubled that only a fraction of the 240 million cars and trucks on the road today can run with ethanol blends higher than 10%. It can damage engines and corrode automotive pipes, as well as impair some safety features, especially in older vehicles. It can also overwhelm pollution control systems like catalytic converters. The malfunctions multiply in other products that use gas, such as boats, snowmobiles, lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc.

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This public option will supposedly “compete” with private alternatives. As President Obama likes to put it, those who are happy with the insurance they have now can keep it — and if they happen to prefer the government offering, well, gee whiz, that’s the free market at work. The reality is far different. Not only will the new program become the default coverage for the uninsured, but Democrats intend to game the system to precipitate — or if need be, coerce — an exodus to government from private insurance. Soon enough, that will be the only “option” left.

Well, that’s what Democrats do.

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Quelle surprise. Gaming the system is what activist groups do.

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In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

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The fellow passengers fell into two categories: foreign students or drunkards. Some were both.

Apparently British doctors don’t like adventures.

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Looking like a refugee from an Alien movie: Priceless.

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This creeps me out.

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They’re missing one: Democrat politician — perhaps under the misapprehension that they only attack your wallet.

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Yup, Pakistan will have to be next, after Afghanistan.

Assuming, of course, that the Obamateurs actually win in Afghanistan.

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Donald Payne, from New Jersey and a member of the foreign affairs committee, arrived in Mogadishu for talks with President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his prime minister on rampant piracy off the country’s coast.

You would think that after all this time they would have learned how to shoot better than that.

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Yeah, that’s the first idea that comes into my head when I’m depressed — let’s go jump in a zoo with a bunch of polar bears.

Zoo keepers who saved the life of a woman who jumped into a polar bear enclosure at Berlin Zoo revealed on Monday that they were moments away from shooting the animals.

They ought to have been prepared to shoot the woman instead.

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Carolyn Lorimer, a woman who let out her flat to a young couple, evicted them after discovering photographs of wild parties at the property on the social networking website Facebook.

Well. There it is.

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And about time, too. The old doctrine was based on an assumption of a clear and rational foreign policy, and in a world where “Democrat administratoin” => “dithering punctuated by spasms of overreactive violence”, such an assumption is manifestly false. We need to return to the principle expressed by James Madison that we are the friends of liberty everywhere but the guardians only of our own.

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I was intrigued to note when I bought a £216 air ticket to New York that an additional £80 was charged in tax introduced to combat global warming, When I got home it was reported that 5,000 more UK companies, from banks to hotels, are faced with a yearly cost of £660 million to buy “carbon credits” under the EU’s “emissions trading scheme” (ETS).

Doubtless the believers in global warming are quite happy to pay thousands of pounds a year for their faith. But for the rest of us this is all the most shameless excuse for stealing our money since they put a tax on windows.

More here.

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Quite possibly. One of the many ways in which the arrogant narcissism of social media like FaceBook comes back to bite the arrested adolescents who indulge in it.

Mind your own business, and encourage other people to mind theirs. Good fences make good neighbors, and that applies to information as much as to anything else.

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To make that clear, white people are paying $15-25 per session to hold their dog in the same position as other white people.  This is considered a relative bargain.

The Hog is in rare form.

Ladies who choose to live with single men (every man who is not married is single), let me tell you what it means when your live-in boyfriend proposes after a period of years. It means he gave up and decided you were the best he could do. If he had thought you were a catch, he would have married you sooner, to keep someone else from getting you. Or it could mean he hates being with you less than he hates dating.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll read today.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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That’s some Religion o’ Peace you got there.