The Hog confronts the information revolution.

I have a Facebook account; don’t ask me why. I log in about once a month. Facebook has weird features called “apps” that help people annoy each other. One is called “Speed Date.” I do not understand how it works, but somehow I got signed up for it, and it likes to send me possible matches in the Miami area.

You can probably imagine how eager I am to make use of this information. If there is anything worse than an unsuitable woman you choose for yourself because you have no judgment, it’s an unsuitable woman a computer chooses for you, based on variables chosen at random, by the kind of well-adjusted males who work in the IT industry.

It’s nice to sort of get to know people online, but the truth is, I don’t care what movies you like or whether your imaginary zombie can beat up my imaginary zombie. And I find it a little creepy when another man “Superpokes” me.

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A great new term, although I think “slobocracy” would be more accurate.

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I am sorry to inform you that after some consideration, I’ve decided not to perform the appraisal service that you’ve requested. Your writing on the subject of global warming is offensive to me personally, and I feel that I would have difficulty being an impartial appraiser of value given my view on the subject.

Megan McArdle looks at health care reform.

As far as I’m aware, the actual track record of heightened contradictions is pretty poor.  The crisis tends to straggle on far longer than you thought possible, a large number of people suffer, and it turns out that you don’t get the exciting new system you were hoping for, but whatever terrible idea looked most expedient during the crisis.  See Argentina, Nation of.

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We don’t condone “mercenaries,” sniffs the UN. But a system where the top 10 payers of peacekeeping dues (rich countries like the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, etc.) rely on the top 10 troop contributors (poor countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Jordan, Nepal, Ghana, etc.) to do their dirty work sounds pretty mercenary to me. Countries that provide troops get roughly $1,100 a month per soldier, many times the salary of a Bangladeshi private at home—not that he’d see much of it. Critics worry about accountability of private military companies, since they operate in a murky legal environment. But their forces seem no less accountable than, say, the miscreant UN contingents serving in Congo, and they would certainly be more effective. Some UN relief agencies already rely on military contractors for security. Why not extend that protection to the populations they’re trying to keep alive?

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Christopher Hitchens tells it like it is.

Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict—which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane—the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not “run.” Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. (“They fell for it? But it’s too easy!”) Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that “the genuine will and desire” of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.

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Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

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

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Fascism is on the march.

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Amazon is a fascinating company to watch. You can never tell what it will do.

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That’s why the White House just demonstrated where local mayors stand in this administration’s pecking order: the President will not fail to get re-elected in 2012 if he snubs the mayor of Miami Lakes, Florida. He will fail to get re-elected if he snubs the AFL-CIO too severely, and organized labor is having enough upsets already over Card Check. So not crossing the picket line is pretty much an easy way to score points with the entities that will be of most use to this administration in about three years. There’s nothing personal about this: I’m sure that the White House doesn’t particularly want to offend urban mayors.

It’s just that none of them are worth the effort it’d take to avoid giving offense.

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Sensible thinking from government officials? How much do you want to bet this goes nowhere?

I suspect that the chances are pretty good.

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The 17th century royal game which gave Pall Mall in London its name was played on the street for the first time in 400 years.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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“One of our government’s most powerful officials, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was using his public office for private gain,” Lytle told jurors in his opening statement here at the federal courthouse in Alexandria this morning.

With that, Lytle launched explanations of a dizzying array of alleged bribery schemes involving African-American businessmen who would arrive at Jefferson’s office looking for the Congressman’s help in pursuing business opportunities in West Africa. In exchange, said Lytle, the businessmen would end up being forced to pay bribes to sham companies set up to benefit Jefferson’s family.

God forbid that they should mention he was a Democrat until the next-to-last paragraph, in passing. Perhaps corruption is just so much a part of the Democrat lifestyle that we can assume “corrupt politician” = “Democrat”.

Defense attorney Robert Trout of Trout Cacheris was expected to counter after a lunch break that none of Jefferson’s alleged actions relate to his official duties, such as voting or introducing legislation. Trout is expected to say they were private acts and therefore not crimes.

And people would have come to him for these “private acts” even if he hadn’t been a Congressman. Sure, I believe that.

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And why not?

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According to a paper written by two philosophy professors, Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California at Riverside and Joshua Rust of Stetson University, a college professorship in ethics does not necessary translate into moral behavior. At least, that’s what the people who work with ethicists say.

I’ve always that that being an “ethicist” would be a really cool job. I mean, you get to tell other people what they ought to do. And you get paid for it. And it pays better than being a government bureaucrat, which is the other position with the same job description.

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I should like to point out that this rarely happens when traveling in one’s own private automobile.

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This week American private client account-holders at Lloyds’s received letters informing them of an “important change in policy regarding clients who are resident, domiciled or linked to the United States by property or asset holdings”. They were told the bank had “no choice” but to “cease acting as your investment manager.”

The proposals, which were unveiled in the President’s first budget, have been designed to clamp down on American tax evaders abroad. But bank bosses say that in practice they could be asked to take on the task of collecting American taxes at a cost and legal liability that make servicing the clients inexpedient. The rules have not yet been finalised and are still subject to debate in Congress.

Change you can believe in. Of course, so is being mugged.

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Well, I suppose that would do it. On the other hand, I’m sure there are those who would consider that a feature rather than a bug.

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They have been incorporated into everything from heraldry to architecture, comics, novels and films. And now, six of our best loved mythical creatures have the ultimate accolade, a starring role on their own set of stamps.

Seth Godin comes out swinging.

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Watching it blow up like the Hindenburg in an accident, taking you and the emergency responders with it. Very innovative.

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Democrats insisted they were so serious about keeping pork out of the stimulus bill that it was President Obama himself who blocked the FutureGen project from the massive spending package.

Oh, wait, that’s not what we meant.

The Department of Energy on Friday announced that the FutureGen project is on track after all, committing federal stimulus money to advance the project to its next stage. One reason: It was the only shovel-ready project that fits the requirements of the stimulus bill.

General rule: Whenever the government spends money, that money will be spent, if it can possibly be, in a way that will either buy votes for an incumbent legislator or increase the power of a government bureaucracy.

FutureGen had an enormous amount of political juice with the new administration. Not only had Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, been backers of the project but so had the new secretary of transportation, Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois.

I guess so.

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Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

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Good man.

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The Germans went from shooting Jews to gassing them for precisely the same reason.

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We’ve long disliked the position of inspectors general, on grounds that they are creatures of Congress designed to torment the executive. Yet this case appears to be one in which an IG was fired because he criticized a favorite Congressional and executive project (AmeriCorps), and refused to bend to political pressure to let the Sacramento mayor have his stimulus dollars.

Gee, wonder where all the froth-at-the-mouth folk are who bitched about Bush firing some U.S. Attorneys? Guess they must have something else to do.

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Mr. Obama’s cri de coeur might have had more credibility had he not specifically ruled out the one policy to deter frivolous suits. “Don’t get too excited yet,” he warned the cheering AMA members. “Just hold onto your horses here, guys. . . . I want to be honest with you. I’m not advocating caps on malpractice awards.” In other words, the tort lottery will continue. California, of all places, has had great success in holding down liability costs for doctors and hospitals after a 1975 reform that limited pain and suffering damages — balanced against the public interest of fairly treating victims of genuine malpractice.

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As recently as 2000, Michigan ranked 16th in terms of per capita income. Today Michigan ranks 33rd, with its per capita income 11% below the national average — the lowest it’s been since the federal government started keeping figures. Over those same years, Michigan has steadily hemorrhaged jobs.

Michigan’s economy is in the toilet because it’s run by tax-and-spend Democrats — and Michigan voters keep hitting themselves in the head with a hammer hoping that that will somehow make the pain stop.

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Gotta love that Global Warming.

Joe Wikert is always worth reading.

Adoption of the textbook was the last really major change in the education process, being a major improvement over a master at the front of the class reciting information and the students vainly attempting to write it all down — and that, of course, was a function of the lack of technology for disseminating information quickly and inexpensively. Once printing came along: Problem solved, let’s pump up the information flows. (The introduction of home appliances to replace servants had a similar impact.)

The problem here isn’t that the customers are not willing to try new alternatives to the tired old textbook.  No, the real problem is with the system itself.  Publishers, schools, authors (which oftentimes means “professors”) and campus bookstores all have plenty at stake and have enjoyed the current model for far too long.  It’s yet another case of The Innovator’s Dilemma.  You’d think it would be an excellent opportunity for an upstart to come in and completely obliterate the system, sort of like what Craigslist did to the newspaper industry.

Speed the day.

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I’ve seen it happen so many times that I’m prepared to call it a general rule. If you’ve got all your receipts neatly organized in a shoebox, then it may well make sense to buy a handsome wooden receipt box. But if your receipts are scattered among drawers, tucked into envelopes, folders, and purses, and stacked up with unfiled bank statements, then buying a handsome box will do you no good at all. In fact, it’s worse than no good at all: next time you need to gather your receipts you’ll have to look in all those old places and your box as well.

There is wisdom here.

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Some times the old ways are best.

If I were king I’d be tempted to stock it with fairly hard-assed combat soldiers, just to get it back to its roots.

But that’s me….

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This is about the size of the typical light cruiser — although not nearly as much fun; I am particularly attracted by the “military-grade missile defence system” feature.

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Remember the golden rule.

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Or perhaps just the end of the Mayans. It’s hard to say.

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Geez, you’d think it was Chicago.

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Hey, don’t say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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Which demonstrates about how much it’s worth.

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Bogart and Bergman will always have Paris, but that still leaves London, Copenhagen, the Vatican, Tokyo and the Bahamas if you’re a big Obama donor.

Not that Republicans are any different. But this is supposed to be “change you can believe in”.

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It is known as one of the world’s most expensive yachts, although it still lags behind the Dubai, the 531-foot vessel owned by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, and valued at £212 million ($350 million).

Oh, well, then, forget it.

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If it were any good, we’d be moving there rather than them moving here.

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Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Be the first on your block to make your own pipe organ … out of wood.

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About two in three Americans say they prefer to live around people belonging to different races, religions and income groups. In reality, however, survey research shows that people are increasingly clustering together among those who are just like themselves, especially on the one attribute that ties the others together — political affiliation.

A trend much reported on, but only dimly understood. Unfortunately, most “journalists” are charter members of the “we value diversity” crowd and find wanting to live around people more or less like oneself to be between barbaric and incomprehensible. Hence what makes it into the dinosaur media is typically fairly incoherent. This article is a step in the right direction.

This might explain the loathing many Republicans and Democrats feel for each other. It isn’t about taxes or terrorism: The yoga people simply can’t stand what the lawn-chemical people represent, and vice versa. This might explain why, despite all of Obama’s calls for an America that is larger than its differences, political polarization at the county level intensified between 2004 and 2008.

And that expresses it very neatly.

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In recent years, scientists have discovered that epigenetic changes–heritable changes that do not alter the sequence of DNA itself–play a major role in development, allowing genetically identical cells to develop different characteristics; epigenetic changes also play a role in cancer and other diseases. (The definition of epigenetics is somewhat variable, with some scientists limiting the term to refer to specific molecular mechanisms that alter gene expression.) Most epigenetic studies have been limited to a cellular context or have looked at the epigenetic effects of drugs or diet in utero. These two new studies are unique in that the environmental change that triggers the effect–enrichment or early abuse–occurs before pregnancy. “Give mothers chemicals, and it can affect offspring and the next generation,” says Larry Feig, a neuroscientist at Tufts University School of Medicine, in Boston, who oversaw part of the research. “In this case, [the environmental change] happened way before the mice were even fertile.”

John Bolton thinks the unthinkable.

Actually, there isn’t a lot the Iranians can do.

* They can’t close the straits of Hormuz, because that would get them in a pissing contest with the U.S. Bad move. One carrier-based air strike on their few gasoline refineries and everybody in Iran is either walking or riding donkeys. They know it, we know it, and the only people who don’t know it are the “journalists” whose business it is to know these things.

* They can’t cut oil production, because their economy needs oil revenue worse than the world needs their oil.

* They can’t attack U.S. and allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, because they’re already doing that … as much as then can get away with short of getting into a pissing contest with the U.S. (See option 1 supra)

* They can’t launch missile attacks on Israel without giving Israel a beautiful excuse to clean their clocks and reveal what a house of cards the Iranian military actually is.

* They can’t support Hamas and Hezbollah attacks against Israel … because they’re already doing that.

Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs’ regime and plunge the region into political chaos.

As if it weren’t already.

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And about fargin time, too.

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You can’t make this stuff up.