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But sometimes a story emerges that requires outright condemnation.  On this occasion, the condemnation goes to the British Government.  The government – our government, supposedly representing you and me in its interaction with people abroad – wants to label goods as coming from the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, so as to help consumers boycott them.

The rot spreads.

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And, apparently, made a good case.

I want one of these hats.

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Long feared by US intelligence, Muslim radicalisation is gaining momentum in the United States, which has had a spate of cases featuring youths recruited and trained overseas for jihad.

Well, duh.

House of Eratosthenes connects the dots.

Well, I played a round of Obama Speech Bingo with it last night. I didn’t count the word “my” as a “me,” and mostly because of this, by the time I made it to the end we were seven squares away from a total blackout. Pretty good speech.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

Steve Sailer is the personification of insouciance.

My impression after a half hour is that SuperFreakonomics is very competently done. I didn’t see anything implausible, in contrast to the way you can’t read Gladwell for 3 minutes without stumbling upon something that sounds just plain wrong. (SuperFreakonomics elicited much angry response because it expresses some skepticism about Climate Change dogma, but I don’t know anything about climate, so I skipped those parts.)

That sounds about right.

Read it.

This would seem to be a self-correcting problem.

(Thirty stone is 420 pounds — the British never use a unit that everyone uses if they can find an obscure one that only they use.)

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Let’s lock the animal-rights environmentalists and the alternative-energy environmentalists in a room with switchblades and see who walks out.

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

Why this was in the ‘Religion’ RSS feed of the Washington Post is left as a exercise for the reader.

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The chairman of the congressional watchdog panel overseeing the TARP says the bailout fund is not intended for job-creation program and thus should not be used for them, as the Obama administration is reportedly now considering.

The Obama administration plans to announce on Wednesday that it intends to extend the life of the $700 billion financial bailout fund until next October, sources told CNBC Tuesday.

An administration official told CNBC that it will dedicate $175 billion of TARP money to deficit reduction. The amount represents the total the Treasury expects to be repaid by banks through 2010.

Law? We’re the government! We ARE the law!

Read it.

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

Reminder for the dimwitted: Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology with which no co-existence is possible.

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A comparison of the actual temperature record at one of the ‘climategate’ collection points compared to what the Global Warming people are claiming it is. Hint: Not even close.

There are three main global temperature datasets. One is at the CRU, Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, where we’ve been trying to get access to the raw numbers. One is at NOAA/GHCN, the Global Historical Climate Network. The final one is at NASA/GISS, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The three groups take raw data, and they “homogenize” it to remove things like when a station was moved to a warmer location and there’s a 2C jump in the temperature. The three global temperature records are usually called CRU, GISS, and GHCN. Both GISS and CRU, however, get almost all of their raw data from GHCN. All three produce very similar global historical temperature records from the raw data.

The answer is, these graphs all use the raw GHCN data. But the IPCC uses the “adjusted” data. GHCN adjusts the data to remove what it calls “inhomogeneities”. So on a whim I thought I’d take a look at the first station on the list, Darwin Airport, so I could see what an inhomogeneity might look like when it was at home. And I could find out how large the GHCN adjustment for Darwin inhomogeneities was.

YIKES! Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century … when those guys “adjust”, they don’t mess around. And the adjustment is an odd shape, with the adjustment first going stepwise, then climbing roughly to stop at 2.4C.

Yikes again, double yikes! What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right … but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?

Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.

Read it.

Boy, those Zimbabweans are sure lucky they’re no longer under the boot of that oppressive white regime.

Thank God for the U.N. and the international community, or who knows what sort of hell they’d be living in now.

Read it.

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

Didn’t know they did that sort of thing in Ireland … Thank God granny’s dead….

Read it.

Steve Sailer has some ideas….

Read it.

His fortune was allegedly accumulated during his late wife Benazir Bhutto’s two terms of government when he became known as “Mr Ten Per Cent”. It was the subject of a series of corruption cases until they were dropped under an amnesty to allow the late Miss Bhutto and her supporters to return to Pakistan.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…. It’s not as if his wife were given a newly-created job when he went into politics that paid three times what she’d been getting before, and which was conveniently abolished when he became President.

Watch it.

We report, you decide.

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The Crocodile Keyboard’s triangular keys have significantly more ‘dead space’ around them than you’ll find on a standard rectangular-key Qwerty layout. The result, claimed David Baker, Managing Director of Crocodile Keyboard Ltd, is that users are more likely to press the correct key each time they tap.

Read it.

A hint from God to stay away from Nepal.

Read it.

A hint from God to stay home.

David Friedman is always worth reading.

Witnesses, in this case or others, might lie. In other cases, one thing discouraging them from perjury is that if it is discovered that their false testimony led to the execution of an innocent defendant, they will be found guilty of murder and themselves executed. But if their testimony leads to the execution of an innocent defendant who is himself dying of a lethal disease, they won’t be executed, because killing someone who is dying of a lethal disease isn’t murder.

Since the witnesses are not at risk of execution for perjury, they might commit it, so their testimony can not be trusted—cannot be taken as sufficient evidence to convict someone of murder. So if someone who is himself dying of a lethal disease commits murder, and doesn’t do it in the presence of the court, he cannot be convicted.

Do that twelve hours a day for three years. Congratulations! You’ve just been through law school.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Check it out.

Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s not as if I’m getting paid for this stuff….

Read it.

A couple who claim social services “kidnapped” their baby daughter for adoption are due to flee Britain today to prevent their unborn child being taken into care.

The couple allege that police and council staff forced their way into their home and snatched the girl despite no allegation made against them ever having been proven.

The father, a lorry driver, told the Daily Telegraph: “We are absolutely terrified that social services will do exactly the same thing with our baby boy as they did with our daughter.

“They have already requested that we attend meetings for a pre-birth risk assessment but we are not taking any chances, so we’re leaving immediately.

A rational concern, it would appear.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here … wherever busybodies can find power and wealth working for the government — i.e., anywhere.

Civil Liberties Group Loses $20 Million Donor

A longtime anonymous donor to the American Civil Liberties Union has withdrawn his annual gift of more than $20 million, punching a 25 percent hole in its annual operating budget and forcing cutbacks in operations.

A.C.L.U. board members, who insisted on anonymity because the loss of the gift was reported in an executive session of their meeting, identified the donor as David Gelbaum, who made a fortune as a hedge fund manager and is now better known as a major investor in clean technology.

So the guy gave them over $100 million on the sole condition that he remain anonymous, and as soon as he stops giving, they out him? That rather illustrates the moral qualities of the ACLU board members, doesn’t it? Hope it gives him a warm fuzzy.

Steve Sailer is the gift that keeps on giving.

A certain share of the craziness in the world is the fault of freelance journalists looking for something to write about. Combine that with the fact that most of the market for women’s journalism revolves around self-improvement, since only men will read about The Crisis in Yemen (there is one, isn’t there?) and pretend it’s conceivably relevant to their lives (“What if the White House calls seeking my advice on Yemen? I must be ready for The Call.”)

Read it.

Meanwhile, assume that rising CO2 levels are undesirable. I say assume, because CO2 level have certainly been higher in the past, and there are some reasons to welcome increased CO2 — plants love it, as an example. There is no particular reason to assume that the levels that prevailed when we began CO2 measurements are “better” in some sense than the somewhat higher ones of today. It may be that today’s are “too high”, but I haven’t seen any detailed analysis of why that is so, or of what the optimum might be. I haven’t seen much discussion of just what “optimum” is, nor of what the “optimum” temperature of the Earth might be. Optimum for what? And for whom?

But you may be sure they are not discussing such measures in Copenhagen as they use up all the limousines in Denmark. What’s at stake in Copenhagen has little to do with achievable CO2 levels, or real temperatures. What’s at stake is control. If the EPA can assert that CO2 is a public health threat, they can assert anything; and if you believe that breathing in a few more parts per million of CO2 is dangerous to your health, you will believe anything. And so it goes.

Bo’s Cafe Life – check it out, over there on the right.

Read it.

1. There was a can of saved bacon grease in a cabinet, which they used to fry other stuff.

Mom used an old Crisco can. The irony was probably lost on her.

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Chicken Little is alive and seemingly employed as a finance analyst or reporter for an education interest group. If one relies on newspaper headlines for education funding information, one might conclude that America’s schools suffer from a perpetual fiscal crisis, every year perched precariously on the brink of financial ruin, never knowing whether there will be sufficient funding to continue operating. Budgetary shortfalls, school district bankruptcies, teacher and administrator layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, pension system defaults, shorter school years, ever-larger classes, faculty furloughs, fewer course electives, reduced field trips, foregone or curtailed athletics, outdated textbooks, teachers having to make do with fewer supplies, cuts in school maintenance, and other tales of fiscal woe inevitably captivate the news media, particularly during the late-spring and summer budget and appropriations seasons.

Yet somehow, as the budget-planning cycle concludes and schools open their doors in the late summer and fall, virtually all classrooms have instructors, teachers receive their paychecks and use their health plans, athletic teams play, and textbooks are distributed. Regrettably, this story is seldom accorded the same media attention as are the prospects of budget reductions and teacher layoffs.

Read it.

I have argued that universities will move to a superstar market for teachers in which the very best teachers use on-line instruction and TAs to teach thousands of students at many different universities.  The full online model is not here yet but I see an increasing amount of evidence for the superstar model of teaching.  At GMU some of our best teachers are being recruited by other universities with very attractive offers and some of our most highly placed students have earned their positions through excellence in teaching rather than through the more traditional route of research.

Check it out.

Read it.

Dr Dave Reay, senior lecturer in carbon management at Edinburgh University, has calculated that filter coffee is responsible for 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than its cheaper counterpart.

Don’t expect that to sit well with the Crust.

Read it.

Rather than assassinate Iranian citizens abroad, which proved a constant irritant between Iran and host countries, the Islamic Republic has developed much more sophisticated mechanisms to control its exiled population.

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

Read it.

Hey, guys, appreciate the lift and the hunting ban.

Miss Arkless said: “He was so casual. He left under the ticket barrier and toward the bus station exit. Maybe he was trying to catch the last bus home.

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That’s okay; these things happen.

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Those French, they’re so hospitable.

Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister said: “This is another gesture of contempt from France to Britain. The only result of this will be to encourage more potential illegal immigrants to try to break our laws.

Oh, ya think?

Read it. And watch the video.

Here’s retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin talking about the true nature of Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood mujahid….

Read it.

This  Washington Times editorial brings us up-to-date on the growing scandal at the Obama-Holder Justice Department over the New Black Panther case. As the Times reminds us, that case involves paramilitary-garbed Panthers caught on videotape engaged in intimidating activities outside a Philadelphia polling booth on Election Day 2008. A judge was ready to enter a default judgment against the Black Panthers, based on a case brought by career Justice Department attorneys, but the Obama administration decided last spring to drop three of the four cases and punish the final one with only a weak injunction.

Power Line connects the dots.

As we have noted many times, the United States is the only country in the world that deliberately fails to develop its own energy resources. Other than instituting price controls, this is the single most destructive economic policy that a country can pursue, which is why no one does it except us.

With a market capitalization of more than $220 billion, Petrobras is one of the world’s 10 biggest companies. Over the past two years, it has been the most frequently traded foreign company on the New York Stock Exchange, trade data show. Among investors bullish on Petrobras is George Soros, who last year made the oil company the largest single holding in his investment fund, according to Bloomberg.

That’s right: the Godfather of the Democratic Party, who exerts his enormous political influence to prevent American oil companies from developing our own petroleum resources in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, has placed his biggest bet–not on the United States, but on Brazil. If Exxon Mobil can’t compete in the Caribbean with Petrobras, the value of Soros’s Petrobras investment will skyrocket. That’s the sort of thievery that lies behind the Democratic Party’s deliberate hobbling of the American economy.

Read it.

Some mistakes are so big that only smart people are tempted to make them. One is the faith in Big Government.

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Welcome to the future.

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A bit late to the game; Congress has been doing that for years.

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Cybersyn was a project of the socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and British cybernetic visionary Stafford Beer; its goal was to control the Chilean economy in real-time using computers and “cybernetic principles.”  The military regime that overthrew Allende dropped the project and probably for this reason when the project is periodically rediscovered it is often written about in a romantic tone as a revolutionary “socialist internet,” decades ahead of its time that was “destroyed” by the military because it was “too egalitarian” or because they didn’t understand it.

Although some sources at the time said the Chilean economy was “run by computer,” the project was in reality a bit of a joke, albeit a rather expensive one, and about the only thing about it that worked were the ordinary Western Union telex machines spread around the country. The two computers supposedly used to run the Chilean economy were IBM 360s (or machines on that order).  These machines were no doubt very impressive to politicians and visionaries eager to use their technological might to control an economy (see picture at right.)  Today, our perspective will perhaps be somewhat different when we realize that these behemoths were far less powerful than an iPhone.  Run an economy with an iPhone?  Sorry, there is no app for that.

Read it.

A long, long time ago, while doing my first round of graduate studies, I took a class that focused on contemporary cults, sects and religious movements and their impact on church-state law. Now before everyone goes nuts talking about what is and what is not a “cult,” please be aware that we were working primarily with doctrinal definitions (as opposed to focusing on some of the more controversial elements of sociology).

They can’t be a cult – cults have principles.

Read it.

This is pretty slick. Wouldn’t mind having a Real Computer with this form-factor.

Steve Sailer is the gift that keeps on giving.

The Washington Post breaks the astonishing news that there’s actually a second generation of Latinos in the United States. Who could possibly have known that not all Mexican-Americans are immigrants? Nobody in Washington — or in New York, for that matter — ever noticed any Mexicans around before a few years ago. How could we in the East Coast media centers have foreseen that they would reproduce?