Read it.

We do these things so that you don’t have to. Note that The French Laundry stands alone.

I’d kill for some onion strings right now….

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It seems to me we have a lot of “Republicans” running around who are still drunk and hung-over on this intoxicating elixir of personality-politics. Palin’s policies and Obama’s policies, they say, are somewhat or mostly irrelevant. The democrats have found a likable guy, so we need to find a likable guy. Palin may be likable but she doesn’t inspire confidence. We have to find a guy who is oh-so-likable, and oh-so-competent looking — that nobody will ever want to make fun of him, ever.

Then we put him up against Barack Obama, in an election that is bereft of any policy discussions just as the election of ‘08 was. And Obama gets hammered into one-term history.

Yeah good luck with that.

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“Albany should emulate New York City’s public financing of campaigns, which promotes competition and lessens the corrupting influence of special interests,” the New York Times advises in an editorial this morning. How’s that “public financing of campaigns” working out for New York City? Well, it’s hard to credit the law with promoting competition when, as this article notes, “Over the past two decades, incumbent New York City Council members have enjoyed a 97.5 percent rate of re-election.” And it’s hard to credit the law with countering corruption, when, as this article reports, the council “for years used slush funds, stowed in the names of fictional organizations, to sidestep budget rules and bestow political favors.

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Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races.

Well, if they’d just concentrate on the science rather than obsessing on the Politically Correct  politics, then it wouldn’t be a crisis.

As Steve Sailer says, ‘For years, I’ve been hearing that as the evidence piles up, the dominant ideology will have to adapt to it. Why? Why not just lie more and persecute more? A lot of people find covering up the truth to be more emotionally satisfying than learning it.’

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His sentence was commuted due to the “mercy” of then governor Mike Huckabee who cited his tender years at the time his crimes were committed. Should Clemmons turn out to be responsible for the killings of the four police officers, I’d say Mike Huckabee should hang up his further political aspirations in America for good. This would be Huckabee’s Willie Horton moment only several orders of magnitude larger.

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The Royal Navy is regularly allowing Somalian pirates to go free because of the risk they would claim asylum if prosecuted in Europe.

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PRESIDENT OBAMA’S recent trip to China reflects a symbiotic relationship at the heart of the global economy: China uses American spending power to enlarge its private sector, while America uses Chinese lending power to expand its public sector. Yet this arrangement may unravel in a dangerous way, and if it does, the most likely culprit will be Chinese economic overcapacity.

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It is an iron-clad rule, presumably taught in journalism schools, that when discussing black single mothers and their children, one must never, ever ask: Who and where is the father, and how many fathers are there?  Tens of thousands of articles have been written about the struggles of black single mothers, and the appearance of their children is always treated as a virgin birth. Not only are there no fathers in sight in such articles, there is no curiosity about where the  fathers are and why they’re not stepping up to the plate.  Instead, the reader will learn in great detail either about the callous lack of taxpayer-funded social services or, as in the present article on black infant mortality, about the provisions that a wise and benevolent government has made available to the mothers and their miraculously-conceived children, who seem to appear with the same inevitability as the tides.

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The ICC’s chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court’s authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he already has jurisdiction—at least with respect to Afghanistan.

Because Kabul in 2003 ratified the Rome Statute—the ICC’s founding treaty—all soldiers on Afghan territory, even those from nontreaty countries, fall under the ICC’s oversight, Mr. Ocampo told me. And the chief prosecutor says he is already conducting a “preliminary examination” into whether NATO troops, including American soldiers, fighting the Taliban may have to be put in the dock.

And Obama would be just the guy to surrender to it. Give the man some cheese, it’s traditional.

Steve Sailer loves pithy phrases that express truths most people won’t allow themselves to think.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is that U. of Virginia has a mean SAT score of 1326, one of the highest for any public university in the country. Maryland’s is about 50-60 points lower, but still pretty good for a state flagship university, and flagships are much harder to get into than a generation ago. To win a college football national championship, you need a whole lot of players who have no business being in college except to play football.

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Such people should not be encouraged to reproduce.

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I have often wondered why seemingly intelligent people like most in the IT field refuse to apply that intelligence to political, social, and moral questions. This has effects on the real world that the rest of us live in – check out how many employees of Google and Microsoft and Apple gave money so that a n00b that none of them would have hired was elected President of the United States just because his dad was black. This article is an example of what happens when SWPL conditioning comes up against the Dread Pirate Introspection.

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A drone of the Crust looks down his nose at people who actually produce a useful product.

As you probably know, the California-based company Apple makes a portable communication device — a device that an acquaintance of mine whose first language is not English distinguishes as a “self” phone. Though proper nouns conventionally begin with a capital letter, Apple spells the device’s trademark with an initial lowercase i, followed by an uppercase P. Thus styled, the word has a hump in the middle. I could print it here to show you, but I refuse to allow my prose to be so disfigured.

Rather an elegant examplar of why Apple is making money, and the New York Times isn’t.

Eric S Raymond connects the dots.

This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

All you apologists weakly protesting that this is research business as usual and there are plausible explanations for everything in the emails? Sackcloth and ashes time for you. This isn’t just a smoking gun, it’s a siege cannon with the barrel still hot.

Read it.

Survey says: You don’t have to be Swedish to believe that.

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But the Class Warrior replies: ‘Who are you going to believe, me or these lying Census Bureau numbers?’

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Think only India has castes? Think again — America is planted thick with them.

Liberalism has built an entire “Western Sharia Law” around this; a religion inextricably intertwined with a way of governing. If you’re a straight white guy, you get one package of rights & responsibilities; if you’re black, you get another, if you’re gay you get another, if you’re a woman you get another. Expectations are made. If you’re Latino, you m-u-u-u-s-t support illegal immigration even if it offends you deeply — even if the reason for the offense, is that you and your relatives, or your grandparents, meticulously followed the rules when coming here. And we already know from the good Rev. Jesse Jackson that “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Of course you can’t. Expectations have been made.

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Your life under Islam. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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Because productivity in agriculture had been growing faster than demand, we needed to shift resources out of agriculture. The Great Depression did this, rather painfully. I would add that the advent of the internal combustion engine greatly re-organized economic life. Because you could move agricultural produce and other goods around by truck, you did not need central cities surrounded by farms. The farms that used to surround big cities were now converted either to suburbs or wilderness.

World War II got people off of the farms and into industry in cities.

Greenwald goes on to say that the same thing is happening today in manufacturing–productivity has been growing faster than demand. This is a problem for the United States, but we have a fair amount of the restructuring behind us. Japan, China, and Germany are the most vulnerable economies right now.

So we need to get people out of industries and into … what?

The transition would be easier if (a) we did not tell workers in declining industries to expect to get their jobs back and (b) we did not limit access to employment in education and health care through licensing, accreditation, unionization, etc.

And then what happens when we eventually automate education and health care, as we did manufacturing, thus bringing the productivity expansion that hit agriculture and manufacturing?

Read it.

A lesson you won’t hear from the dinosaur media.

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Their basic problem is that most of what they ‘know’ ain’t so.

That’s why the best remedy for a pigheaded progressive liberal idiot-type is to ask them questions which they can’t slither out of with party line lies they would rotely recite to escape giving an honest, well-thought answer.  You see, if you ask a question that the recipient has heard before, they’ll just parrot how they’ve heard others like them answer.  If you ask a liberal about abortion, for example, you’ll get the liberal talking points.  They’re just repeating what others say about it.  You haven’t engaged their anti-lie mechanism because they aren’t telling their own lies, they’re just telling someone else’s.  The goal is to elicit the emotional response associated with telling a lie.  Since most people who would even be interested in this type of conversation don’t want to be liars – particularly to themselves – if you make them feel their lies, they might be more receptive to altering their worldview, which is of course our end-goal.

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A boffin funded by the US Navy has used a gigantic CT scanner, normally employed for inspecting space rockets, to X-ray the head of a whale. The results apparently indicate that naval sonars can’t be the cause of whale beachings, as the mighty cetaceans are unable to hear the relevant frequencies.

But the ONR announced yesterday that Cranford’s latest findings “suggest that mid-frequency active sonar sounds are largely filtered, or ‘muffled’, before reaching the animal’s ears. The findings also suggest that higher frequencies used by whales to hunt prey are heard at amplified levels without any dampening.”

Mid-frequency active sonar has been in widespread naval use since World War II, though it has only been fingered by pro-whale activists as a cause of beaching in recent times – and beachings are rare, whereas sonar is used constantly in exercises. There have been protracted legal struggles between the US navy and environmental groups in the US courts over the issue, and similar allegations have been made regarding beachings in the UK.

And once again the religion of environmentalism falls before actual science.

Read it.

Read it.

A great idea. I don’t know of any Muslim sea lions.

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“It’s discrimination, the mayor should have used the money to build houses for us instead,” Kucharova, a 25-year-old Roma, said.

Note the preferred use of public money on the part of an alleged victim.

“The fence doesn’t prevent the Roma from coming to the village,” he said. “It just prevents them from entering private gardens and stealing. It wasn’t just petty theft, especially in autumn.

“People don’t grow vegetables in their gardens any more, there’s no use – everything gets stolen.”

Note that there was a time – presumably before the Roma arrived – when there wasn’t a theft problem. Now there is. How are public authorities supposed to handle that? This would seem a minimally-invasive action, to borrow a medical phrase.

“The children have been stealing apples from the gardens but what can we do – they are just children,” admitted the 21-year-old Roma mother of one.

Do other, non-Roma children have the same problem?

Check it out.

Some of which aren’t really all that silly, when you think about it. The first one, for example.

Darwin Award candidate.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

–President George Washington, 3 October 1789

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Recent evidence that prominent climate scientists have tried to intimidate academic journals into not publishing papers submitted by “climate change” skeptics have caused a major brouhaha in the ongoing political battle over global warming. At least some of the scientists in question certainly seem to have put ideology above the search for truth. The effort to keep skeptical articles out of academic journals also raises the issue of whether the academic “consensus” supporting global warming theory is genuine, or a product of systematic exclusion of dissenting voices.

Ponder the fact that the people who most loudly support the notion of Global Warming are also the people who most proudly claim to be part of a ‘reality-based community’. You can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

Read it.

Say you take a person with a performance orientation (“Paul”) and a person with a mastery orientation (“Matt”). Give them each an easy puzzle, and they will both do well. Paul will complete it quickly and smile proudly at how well he performed. Matt will complete it quickly and be satisfied that he has mastered the skill involved.

Now give them each a difficult puzzle. Paul will jump in gamely, but it will soon become clear he cannot overcome it as impressively as he did the last one. The opportunity to show off has disappeared, and Paul will lose interest and give up. Matt, on the other hand, when stymied, will push harder. His early failure means there’s still something to be learned here, and he will persevere until he does so and solves the puzzle.

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“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.”

Most law professors use the same trick, although inadvertently.

Read it.

Being rousted out of bed for a couple of months by an E-7 with an affection for great noise early in the morning works pretty well, too, and doesn’t require batteries. Grogginess really isn’t an option.

Read it.

One interesting conclusion of the research is that “food miles” are a largely pointless measure. Far more important than the distance food has travelled before being eaten is the means of travel used.

This directly contradicts the advice offered by Greenpeace, for instance, which says “choose line-caught fish wherever possible”.

Ah, yes, the eternal conflict between science and religion.

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Whatever floats your boat….

Ponder the fact that most of the world’s fashionable wacky ideas are underwritten by people who inherited money from more productive ancestors. Perhaps massive inheritance taxes aren’t such a bad idea after all.

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A crude-bearing cache known as the Birdbear, beneath North Dakota’s already booming oil patch, can be tapped using new technology that would expand horizontal drilling to parts of the state that have never seen it, geologists believe.

That whole ‘peak oil’ thing just keeps getting closer and closer, doesn’t it? Guess we’ll have to cut back or something.

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A study of 20 titles, including many from the Call of Duty and Tom Clancy series, carried out by Pro Juvenile – an organisation which aims to protect kids from unlimited videogame violence – and Trial, which fights to prevent people who commit war crimes getting away with it, found that most of the games contained “elements that violate… international standards”.

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

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

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The children of the bureaucracy — and those who aspire to join them — are pissed that they can’t make the common people pay for their education.

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I thought that rude staff were the hallmark of a first-class restaurant?

A spokesman for the Lehigh Pub said the restaurant menu makes it clear parties of six or more have a mandatory 18 per cent gratuity.

Uh, guys, if it’s mandatory, it’s not a gratuity, it’s a service surcharge. I’d love to be the lawyer on this one.

Hajj guiding: an ancient family business

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The Obama administration says the answer to that question, or at least part of the answer, is the Chihuahuan Desert. Send illegals across the border at San Diego, immigration authorities have argued, and they’ll just hit a couple of happy hours in Tijuana before coming right back across to the United States. But get them on the other side of a vast and inhospitable desert, and the heat and the cactuses and the coachwhip snakes will do what the U.S. Border Patrol cannot: Keep Mexicans in Mexico.

It’s a great theory, with one glaring flaw: It assumes that the Mexican authorities are going to transport deportees across the desert and back to their hometowns in the interior. Mexico is not going to do that. Mexico is a corrupt and oligarchic backwater, and illegal immigration is its main anti-poverty program. Anybody who has even a passing familiarity with the Mexican federal law-enforcement authorities knows better than to expect them to behave responsibly. And it’s not just negligence — Mexico actively encourages its poorest citizens to break north and send remittances (about $25 billion last year) south. Mexico exports its poor to the United States because it’s a lot cheaper than trying to care for them itself and, while the Mexican government has a woefully inadequate infrastructure for providing basic social services, it has a pretty good infrastructure, both formal and informal, for shunting its unwanted poor into the United States. It even issues its own identification card to illegals, the matricula consular, which is accepted as valid ID by some U.S. government agencies. The idea that deportees are going to get out of those Wackenhut buses convoying them down to Presidio and be taken inland by some putative El Wackenhut is preposterous.

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Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Of course, nobody will believe it, because Oxford was the product of an ancient noble family while Shakespeare came out of nowhere and went straight back. The latter fits the modern egalitarian narrative better.

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Look at the Muslim areas of the Middle East. The vast majority of that was once Christian, and is now Muslim through aggressive war (‘jihad’). Everything but Islam is being suppressed there. And that’s what they have in mind for the rest of the world. Just in case you need reminding.

Robert Wright, in the New York Times, seems to think that, as Mick Jagger was fond of singing, ‘Well, after all/it was you and me.’ This has been a beloved meme of the Blame America First crowd since the sixties. (Funny, you’d think that, if this country sucked as bad as all that, they’d go somewhere else. Sweden, say.)

One reason killing terrorists can spread terrorism is that various technologies — notably the Internet and increasingly pervasive video — help emotionally powerful messages reach receptive audiences. When American wars kill lots of Muslims, inevitably including some civilians, incendiary images magically find their way to the people who will be most inflamed by them.

By this logic, leaving them alone would reduce terrorism. This is an idea so absurd that only an intellectual could believe it, to use Orwell’s phrase. What the left can’t see, because it would undercut their entire worldview, is that Islam is founded and predicated on terrorism against non-Muslims; it’s not just Methodism with prayer-rugs. The left cannot admit that it is possible for people to exist who don’t just want to get along. This is their blind-spot with respect to communism, and this is their blind-spot with respect to Islam. ‘None so blind as they who will not see.’

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It’s getting pretty bad when even the British notice.

Paul Graham examines Political Correctness.

The most extreme of the things you can’t say would be very shocking to most readers. If you doubt that, imagine what people in 1830 would think of our default educated east coast beliefs about, say, premarital sex, homosexuality, or the literal truth of the Bible. We would seem depraved to them. So we should expect that someone who similarly violated our taboos would seem depraved to us.

The most entertaining thing about technically-oriented people is that they can blow through a social paradigm without hardly noticing it.

In fact, finding the outer limits is very, very hard. Popular controversialists just go for the low hanging fruit. To really solve the problem would take years of introspection. You have to untangle your ideas from the ideas of your time, and that’s so hard that few people in history have even come close. Isaac Newton, smart as he was, wasted years on theological controversies.

This in turn reveals a ‘default educated east coast belief’: that theology is a waste of time for a smart person like Isaac Newton. (Don’t get him started on Thomas Aquinas, I guess.)  In every century other than this one, most intelligent educated people would characterize that as the best use of his time – and brain.