Read it.

Cue the Somali pirates.

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The Brooklyn Brewery is getting an $800,000 grant from the state of New York, the New York Times reports this morning.

Many of these taxpayers are less rich than this brewery owner is, making this deal another Reverse Robin-Hood.

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

Read it.

This must have all happened after I left in 1980.

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Of course. All it needs is an oscillation overthruster and you’re there.

This Is Just Cool.

We don’t have life, so we can pass the savings on to you….

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Texas, increasingly, is the economic and intellectual leader of the U.S. During the last 18 months before the current recession took hold, while the country as a whole was still creating jobs, more than half of those jobs were created in a single state: Texas.

Texas has usurped the leadership position that, decades ago, belonged to California. Today California is in decline, likely irreversibly so.

The debate, really, is over. High-tax states don’t deliver a better lifestyle–not for taxpayers, anyway. One of these days, voters will figure out that the same thing holds true at the national level. Higher taxes may be OK if you’re a public employee; otherwise, they’re a dead loss.

Read it.

Peace is not a process. Peace exists when one of two conditions is met: 1) two groups of people have no wish to kill one another (e.g., the U.S. and Canada), or 2) one or both of the groups would like to kill the other, but is deterred or otherwise prevented from doing so (e.g., the Cold War). In neither case is a “process” typically involved. Negotiation, unlike peace, is indeed a process. But negotiations, even when they lead to a treaty or agreement, cannot bring peace unless one of the above conditions is also met. (See Munich, Oslo, countless others).

People have been talking about a “peace process” in the Middle East for a long time, but those discussions have little or nothing to do with the actual existence of peace, which has depended on other factors. See number 2 above.

How do you make peace with a sickness?

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Recently, Democratic Representative Maxine Waters added an amendment to the bill establishing the CFPA that would add five seats to its powerful Oversight Board for “experts in the fields of consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgage loans.” All sorts of interest group representatives could easily get on the board under this amendment. For example, pretty much any bank or credit card company official could claim to have expertise in the “fields” of “consumer protection” or “fair lending.” Similarly, many banks can easily claim to “primarily serve underserved communities.” Finally, interest group representatives could pose as “representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgage loans.” For example, lenders and real estate developers located in such areas would surely qualify; after all, they live in the community too. The majority of the board will still be made up of various federal government officials. But these officials are far from immune from interest group pressure, and of course that lobbying will be facilitated by the fact that several interest group representatives will now be sitting on the board itself.

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

Read it.

I wonder whether they ‘simulated’ the NATO response as well? They’d have to get a half-black guy skilled at wringing his hands and whining to play Obama.

Read it.

While the Sarwar case is sensational by dint of the role-reversal and the method of attempted murder (throat-slitting), it’s also pedestrian: Over the past two years, there have been about a dozen attempted or successful honor killings committed in the US.

Muslim parents will attempt to kill their own children to prevent them from assimilating and becoming ‘normal American kids’. What possible justification could there be for allowing such people in this country?

Dvorak looks like Al Franken without the hair. Just sayin’.

Computers give us highly realistic games that suck people into playing them for hours on end. And I’d rather not even want to get into the time-killer called Second Life. Here a person actually creates a whole second life in which he or she can waste countless hours within that structure and waste time as another person.

Well, that’s lost productivity – if your goal in life is to work 24/7. Lighten up, John.

As a technologist myself, I have obviously promoted smart devices and computers, but I do look around at my own increasing disorganization and remind myself that I originally got into computers to get more organized and more efficient, not less. Instead I got less organized and less efficient.

So your personality deficiencies define how bad things are? Get over yourself, John. Go play a video game or something.