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Wear YOUR Team Colors on the Vest!

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The recent news that Conan O’Brien will be replaced by Jay Leno has caused white people to erupt with rage and hostility. You might even expect them to lash out and do something about it like take to the streets or write a letter to NBC to voice their dissatisfaction with the network. But no, white people will solve this problem the way that they solved the election crisis in Iran – through Facebook and Twitter status updates. In 2009, millions of white people took 35 seconds to turn their twitter profiles green, and consequently sent a very powerful message to the leaders of Iran. Their message was that they wanted their friends to know that they would stop at nothing to ensure freedom and democracy for the Iranian people. Thanks in large part to that effort Iran is now completely democratic. With that issue settled, white people are launching a similar campaign for Conan that is sure to have similar results.

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

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It started its decline in 1966 and was totally uncouth by the mid-1980s. The turning point came when Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase black power at a 1966 rally in Mississippi. Until then, Negro was how most black Americans described themselves. But in Carmichael’s speeches and in his landmark 1967 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America, he persuasively argued that the term implied black inferiority. Among black activists, Negro soon became shorthand for a member of the establishment. Prominent black publications like Ebony switched from Negro to black at the end of the decade, and the masses soon followed. According to a 1968 Newsweek poll, more than two-thirds of black Americans still preferred Negro, but black had become the majority preference by 1974. Both the Associated Press and the New York Times abandoned Negro in the 1970s, and by the mid-1980s, even the most hidebound institutions, like the U.S. Supreme Court, had largely stopped using Negro.

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Real reform of complex institutions is always hard, but it is possible. Consider a storied, historic, indeed iconic American institution that had developed an internal structure so convoluted that information did not flow through it—fiefdoms abounded, and duplication and delays were the rule. After many failed efforts at reform, only the threat and actuality of bankruptcy forced this institution to slim down, streamline and focus.

We are referring, of course, to the U.S. auto industry. The domestic automakers’ organizational structures were notoriously complex and top-heavy. While Toyota had been selling the same car worldwide, Ford had insisted that American consumers would not buy the cars successfully produced by Ford for sale in Europe. As a result, every stage of production from R&D to actual manufacturing was duplicated in the two markets.

We have an unwieldy multiplicity of agencies that operate largely independently. Dysfunctional bureaucratic incentives decree that an attack involving a repetition of a known terrorist procedure is the most damaging politically, so shoes are scanned because a shoe was used in an attempted airplane bombing. Now underwear will be scanned as well. The government seems always to be playing catch-up to the terrorists.

We can fix this. As with the auto industry, the moment of crisis is the right moment to tackle in-depth reform of the intelligence services. One possibility that deserves serious consideration would be a consolidation of most existing agencies into four primary agencies: a foreign intelligence agency, a military intelligence agency, a domestic intelligence agency, and a technical data collection agency (satellite mapping, electronic interception, etc.).

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Recently while I was brushing my teeth, my 6-year-old son scolded me for running the water too long. He severely reprimanded me, and at the end of his censure asked me, with real outrage, “Don’t you love the earth?” And lately he has taken up the energy cause, scampering virtuously around the house turning off lights, even while I’m using them. He seems as stressed and anxious about the sins of environmentalism as I was about masturbation in the days of my Roman Catholic childhood.

And where did he get indoctrinated with all that crap? In school, of course. Don’t send your child to a government school, or s/he will come back a Young Pioneer.

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Taylor has read the evidence with scrupulous care, absorbed all the most recent scholarship, and written a clear, well-documented narrative that follows Joan closely through the different stages of her short existence. Taylor evaluates the various controversies judiciously, and comes to balanced, sensible conclusions. (She makes a good case, for instance, for trusting the Latin trial record). The book is the most accurate, up-to-date account we  have of Joan, and it will likely remain the standard critical biography for some time.

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Whenever I hear the term ‘carbon footprint’ I reach for my revolver.

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The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of people who refuse to employ new technology. It’s well known the strictest of them don’t use electricity, or automobiles, but rather farm with manual tools and ride in a horse and buggy.  In any debate about the merits of embracing new technology, the Amish stand out as offering an honorable alternative of refusal. Yet Amish lives are anything but anti-technological. In fact on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers and surprisingly pro technology.

The Amish call this pneumatic system “Amish electricity.” At first pneumatics were devised for Amish workshops, but it was seen as so useful that air-power migrated to Amish households. In fact there is an entire cottage industry in retrofitting tools and appliances to Amish electricity. The retrofitters buy a heavy-duty blender, say, and yank out the electrical motor. They then substitute an air-powered motor of appropriate size, add pneumatic connectors, and bingo, your Amish mom now has a blender in her electrical-less kitchen. You can get a pneumatic sewing machine, and a pneumatic washer/dryer (with propane heat). In a display of pure steam-punk nerdiness, Amish hackers try to outdo each other in building pneumatic versions of electrified contraptions. Their mechanical skill is quite impressive, particularly since none went beyond the 8th grade. They love to show off this air-punk geekiness. And every tinkerer I met claimed that pneumatics were superior to electrical devices because air was more powerful and durable, outlasting motors which burned out after a few years hard labor. I don’t know if this is true, or just justification, but it was a constant refrain.

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These ships are just.so.cool.

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Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.

Cornucopia’s cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate combinations of food. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by Cornucopia’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head.

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Experts at Mumbai’s National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten “Lost Tribes of Israel”.

Or maybe not.

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Bet you didn’t know that.

A bit of cheek from the Telegraph in London.

An informative chart.

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

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Well, there isn’t much you can do with it….

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And you can believe as much or as little of that as you want to.

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In the view of the New York Times, of course, if it isn’t happening in The City, it isn’t happening.

Even Canadians noticed.

Notice, however, the acceptance of David Brooks’ characterization that those of the Crust are the ‘educated class’ and everyone else is just part of the Great Unwashed, a mass of ignorant rubes.

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

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Leftists like mass transit because it’s centrally planned and reduces personal freedom.

As Yogi Berra would say if he were paid to say it by a libertarian foundation, if people don’t want to come out to a station, covered in flop sweat and carrying heavy packages in both hands, to wait for an inconviently scheduled train full of heavy coughers, nothing’s gonna stop them.

Unfortunately, once people have a choice, they don’t take it unless that’s their only option or it’s so heavily subsidized by taxpayers that it’s cheaper than any other method. But, as Margaret Thatcher said, eventually you run out of other people’s money.

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Policy uncertainty hurts hiring.

No shit. The economy isn’t going to recover until Congress quits dicking around and allows the situation to stabilize.

Megan McArdle looks at the commercial real estate market.

One of the most persistent narratives of the recent crisis portrays a nation of unsophisticated home buyers led astray by greedy bankers. Supposedly those bankers were willing to write risky loans because they intended to pass them on to some unwary investor. But this explanation falters in the face of a legion of failing commercial deals. Prospective landlords had all the expertise they should have needed to put a fair price on properties—and the majority of lenders who were originating loans for their own portfolios had ample incentive to perform careful due diligence.

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Nick Reding’s Methland (Bloomsbury, $25) made a number of “Best Books of 2009” lists, but I want to make sure it does not get consigned to the Decade That Was. It is one of the best pieces of book-length journalism that I have read in years, and if you haven’t read it already it should be your must-read book of 2010.

In Oelwein he gives us a sad example of what the introduction of agribusiness can do to employment in a farming community: In 1992, the local Iowa Ham plant was bought by Gilette. Within a day, Gilette dismantled the union and wages fell from $18 to $6.20 an hour. Gilette then sold the plant to Iowa Beef Products, and in 2001 Iowa Beef Products sold the plant to Tyson. With each sale, people were fired. In 2006, Tyson closed the plant for good. (Also with each sale, more and more workers turned to meth, hoping that it would allow them to stay awake for enough shifts at a time that they would be able to earn a decent wage. As Reding notes, meth has always been the drug “associated with hard work.”)

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The built-in “marriage penalty” in both House and Senate healthcare bills has received scant attention. But for scores of low-income and middle-income couples, it could mean a hike of $2,000 or more in annual insurance premiums the moment they say “I do.”

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A 23-year-old British woman on holiday in Dubai told police she had been raped, only to be arrested herself for having illegal sexual intercourse.

Your future under Islam. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

Cringely looks ahead.

This column is about homeland security, which is something our government isn’t very good at and I predict won’t get any better at this year because of a systemic inability to do correctly even the most basic things to protect our society, our privacy, and our way of life.

Preaching to the choir, here, bubba.

hese changes are minimal but I doubt they’ll even be implemented because this is a system that inevitably reverts to little fiefdoms run by idiots.

We call it ‘government’. It is not your friend.

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Oh, weep, weep for Starbucks.

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But only if the government has the wit and balls to use them; neither of which applies to the government of the United States.

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I guess ‘King’ doesn’t mean what it used to.

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Spare a thought for the modern thief. They have to face off against phones that can broadcast their location, laptops that lock themselves down, a LoJack service for iPods, and now a laser tripwire that can twitter pictures of unwanted visitors. It’s a decidedly DIY Arduino-based project, but unlike many similarly powered offerings that we hit, this one is described as being very easy — as far as Arduino-based projects go, anyway.

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You know it had to happen.

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It’s hard out there for a pipe.

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… intellectuals gain notoriety either by saying something that no one else is saying and making a case for it or by making a particularly clever argument that disagrees with the generally held wisdom. An “intellectual” who agrees with common sense positions and traditional ways of doing things generally isn’t considered an “intellectual” at all. Why is that? Well, how can you be smarter than everyone else if you have the same opinions held by the common man?

The main problem is that a lot of what they ‘know’ ain’t so.

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Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

John Stossel sees an eerie parallel.

Even though Rand published Atlas in 1957, her descriptions of intrusive and bloated government read like today’s news. The “Preservation of Livelihood Law” and “Equalization of Opportunity Law” could be Nancy Pelosi’s or Harry Reid’s work.

The novel’s chief villain is Wesley Mouch, a bureaucrat who cripples the economy with endless regulations. This sounds familiar. Reason magazine reports that “as he looks around Washington these days,” Rep. Paul Ryan “can’t help but think he’s seeing a lot of Wesley Mouch.”

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I hate it when that happens.

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Girls as young as fifteen have been abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to Muslim men, with their families being warned in no uncertain terms not to attempt to reclaim their daughters. All of this persecution occurs with at least the tacit — and sometimes active — collusion of the police and local authorities.

Dhimmis have no rights against Muslims under Islam.

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Bill Gates is gone and Redmond is settling into a comfortable middle age. While this may not be good it was probably inevitable as Steve Ballmer rebuilds the company in his own image. What’s sad is it probably means an end to changing Microsoft strategy over a weekend and sending the company into a tizzy as Gates liked to do. Recent layoffs at Microsoft, for example, have much more to do with remaking the internals of the company in a new, more pinstriped model, than with cost savings.

‘Bill Gates is gone’? Time to sell your Microsoft stock.

David Pogue discovers the true nature of the Internet.

Reader feedback about my review of Google’s new cellphone yesterday was unusually voluminous and, in some sectors, vitriolic. Where I had written, “The Nexus One is an excellent app phone, fast and powerful but marred by some glitches,” some readers seemed to read, “You are a pathetic loser, your religion is bogus and your mother wears Army boots.”

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To put this in an American context, replace ‘Coptic Christian’ with ‘Native American’ and ‘Egyptian’ with ‘American.’

Islam has no room for non-Muslims except as dhimmis, and dhimmis are treated the way black were treated in the Jim Crow south.

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Na’vi is a constructed language spoken by the fictional indigenous race (the Na’vi) on Pandora in James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar. The language was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at USC with a doctorate in linguistics. This website exists to share this beautiful language with all who want to learn.

And to make money, of course. Don’t forget that. Monetizing a doctorate in linguistics isn’t like being a welder, you know.

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Unlike Christianity, Islam doesn’t forbid telling lies; only telling lies to other Muslims.

Taqiyya offers two basic uses. The better known revolves around dissembling over one’s religious identity when in fear of persecution. Such has been the historical usage of taqiyya among Shi’i communities whenever and wherever their Sunni rivals have outnumbered and thus threatened them. Conversely, Sunni Muslims, far from suffering persecution have, whenever capability allowed, waged jihad against the realm of unbelief; and it is here that they have deployed taqiyya—not as dissimulation but as active deceit. In fact, deceit, which is doctrinally grounded in Islam, is often depicted as being equal—sometimes superior—to other universal military virtues, such as courage, fortitude, or self-sacrifice.

The parallels between Islam and the Mafia are sometimes very scary; if you want to know how Muslims think about non-Muslims, watch The Sopranos.