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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.”

David Brooks is almost always worth reading.

The ability to delay gratification, like most skills, correlates with socioeconomic status and parenting styles. Children from poorer homes do much worse on delayed gratification tests than children from middle-class homes. That’s probably because children from poorer homes are more likely to have their lives disrupted by marital breakdown, violence, moving, etc. They think in the short term because there is no predictable long term.

The good news is that while differences in the ability to delay gratification emerge early and persist, that ability can be improved with conscious effort. Moral lectures don’t work. Sheer willpower doesn’t seem to work either. The children who resisted eating the marshmallow didn’t stare directly at it and exercise iron discipline. On the contrary, they were able to resist their appetites because they were able to think about other things.

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.

Steve Sailer never hesitates to grasp the nettle firmly.

The Pashtun are disagreeable bad-tempered back-stabbers. But, they live there. And we don’t.

Read it. Apparently Apple is discovering what customers of AT&T (formerly Cingular, not to be confused with the Old AT&T, which was a great company before Cingular bought it and screwed it up) have known all along — AT&T service sucks, and that spills over onto the iPhone.

I’d dearly love to have an iPhone but I will not deal with AT&T, and Apple needs to think hard about its partnership with one of the worst companies in an industry notorious for poor customer satisfaction.

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The long-held notion that fingerprints marks help us grip more firmly appears to be wrong. Instead, a new study finds that the marks actually reduce the friction between skin and surfaces.

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Driving a SmugMobile can get expensive. That is, if you survive.

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“John” and “Mary” are always safe choices. “DeWayne” and “Leticia” — uh, not so much.

Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, an essayist wrote about staring at her one month old daughter and realizing “Oh man. We gave our kid the wrong name.” (She ended up changing the child’s name to Summer from Presley.)

Yeah, that’s an improvement.

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Sounds as if they have the same hiring practices as DART.

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Last week, Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) contacted General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson. He wasn’t happy with GM’s decision to close a distribution center in his district. He asked Mr. Henderson to reconsider.

Mr. Frank controls the funds upon which GM’s survival depends. His request was immediately approved, and the facility will stay open for at least another 14 months.

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

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It won’t be enough for the envirofascists, but it sounds encouraging.

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A woman gave birth in a car as it drove along a motorway after being sent home twice that day by a hospital because she wasn’t ready.

(Perhaps by “not ready”, they meant that she had neglected to marry the child’s father.)

But of course Britain’s National Health Service is far superior to the American system, and a model for what the Obamassiah would like the American health care system to be.

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Whatever would we do without scientists?

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Because that’s where the power is.

You can (a) make a lot of money but have a non-trivial chance of going to jail and/or being denounced nationwide, or (b) make less money but have a lot more actual power and a guarantee that you can’t be fired and won’t ever spend a day in jail. Which would you choose?

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Security theater is the best you can hope for.

Another reason why I don’t fly.

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Perhaps that’s why we’ll never get rid of government.

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So they’re handling Britain’s heritage the same way they’re handling Britain’s health care.

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That’s going to make one hell of a souvenir.

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A former partner of Miss Mallinson, whose children are from four fathers, told The Sun newspaper that her oldest son had discovered her affair after overhearing her telling Caban she loved him.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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One of the few remaining US clinics that provided controversial late-term abortions will close in the wake of its owner’s murder.

So the murder appears to have been effective in accomplishing its object, to stop late term abortions from that clinic.

It is not clear whether the two remaining clinics will be able to absorb Mr Tiller’s caseload, Ms Jones said, and it’s possible some women may end up dying because they could not access the highly-specialised procedure.

And, of course, if that actually happens, no doubt we’ll be the first to know.

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“Saved or created” has become the signature phrase for Barack Obama as he describes what his stimulus is doing for American jobs. His latest invocation came yesterday, when the president declared that the stimulus had already saved or created at least 150,000 American jobs — and announced he was ramping up some of the stimulus spending so he could “save or create” an additional 600,000 jobs this summer. These numbers come in the context of an earlier Obama promise that his recovery plan will “save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.”

What? You mean the Obamassiah lied to us? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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That must be why most politicians prefer planes to trains.

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

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I know how she feels.

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

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I’ll bet they do, I’ll bet they do, nudge nudge….

Francis Fukuyama likes Shop Class as Soulcraft.

“Shop Class as Soulcraft” is a beautiful little book about human excellence and the way it is undervalued in contemporary America.

Matthew B. Crawford, who owns and operates a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Va., and serves as a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, notes that all across the United States, high school shop classes teaching mechanical arts like welding, woodworking or carpentry are closing down, to free up funds for computer labs.

Question: Were Crawford not a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advance Studies in Culture — were his claim to fame merely owning and operating a motorcycle repair shop — would Professor Fukuyama be as smitten with what Crawford has to say? I suspect that he would not.

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Nearly 10,000 years ago, 50 metres beneath the surface of what is now North America’s Lake Huron, hunters set an ambush. Caribou were herded through stone corridors towards archers that lay waiting behind low parapets.

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Not long ago, I would have applauded this type of government expansion. Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a “single payer” — the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

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He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

And that pretty much tells you all you need to know about our modern American functionary class. As with Britain in the 1930s, fashionable socialism among the establishment adolescentia leads to disaffection when those in charge of the government persist in acting like grownups, which moves fairly smoothly into treason.

If we were to automatically imprison the entire graduating class of the top ten U.S. universities, the nation would come out ahead in the long run.

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I’d like a fence, please. Sooner would be better than later.

On the border between California and the rest of the country would do nicely.

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So why are behavioral geneticists so eager to downplay the practical relevance of their field?  The most plausible explanation is that these scientists already have enough trouble with political correctness.  They don’t want to amplify their public relations problem by pointing out that their science undermines a bunch of popular, feel-good policies.

Critics of behavioral genetics are prone to hyperbole, but they do have good reason to fear this science.  It really does undermine a lot of their sacred cows.  Example: If differences in talent – not differences in opportunities – explain the inter-generational income correlation, people with normal values will conclude that a lot of redistribution is unjustified.  “Giving everyone a chance to realize his potential,” isn’t the only rationale for redistribution, but it is an important one.  If people admitted that family environment has little effect on economic success in our society, there is every reason to expect a decline in support for redistributive policies.

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I have no idea whether — or how — this actually works, but it looks really cool.

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The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

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Or it could just be that you’re stupid.

Hey–it happens…

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Did anyone among all those who busied themselves with draft after draft after draft of The Speech That Will Live In Infamy check those Qur’anic quotes? Did they understand that those who knew the text would, as Robert Spencer devastatingly did the other day at this site, recognize the plucking completely out of context of a phrase or two from what turned out to be bloodcurdling passages from the Qur’an? Did they not realize that it did not take Spencer, but that you and I, and practically anyone at this point, could see that the quoting of 5.32 without 5.33 was simply to repeat the hideous misunderstanding of that misunderestimator of Islam, George Bush?