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We have the technology.

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A few weeks ago, I linked to a picture of civil rights activist John Salter being attacked by a mob during a lunch counter sit-in during the 1960s. I also linked to a newspaper op-ed in which Salter explained how he and other civil rights workers used firearms for protection from Klansmen and other terrorists—when Klansmen knew that a homicide would not be witnessed by the news media. Since that blog post drew great interest from the readers, I thought that some persons might be interested in the longer version of Salter’s history of the role of armed self-defense in the Civil Rights Movement.

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Two Iraqi families, mostly children, were murdered in cold blood and some of the victims beheaded.

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

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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Well. Isn’t that special.

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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We have 16 separate intelligence agencies. No wonder people aren’t connecting the dots.

The national intelligence apparatus of the U.S. has fewer employees than GM had in its prime, yet it consists officially of 16 separate agencies, and unofficially of more than 20. Each of these agencies is protected by strong political and bureaucratic constituencies, so that after each intelligence failure everything continues pretty much the same and usually with the same people in charge.

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Scientists worship at the altar of peer review, and I use that metaphor deliberately because it is rarely if ever questioned.

There are a few studies that suggest peer review is somewhat better than throwing a dice and a bunch that say it is much the same. It is at its best at dealing with narrow technical questions, and at its worst at determining “importance” is perhaps the best we might say. Which for anyone who has tried to get published in a top journal or written a grant proposal ought to be deeply troubling. Professional editorial decisions may in fact be more reliable….

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The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel’s military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads.

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In november 2009, one of the uglier fruits of the current practice of seeding mothers into the American military burst briefly onto the national stage. Ordered to Afghanistan from Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, an Army cook named Alexis Hutchinson refused to go. A 21-year-old single mother, she explained that there was no one to care for her infant son because initial plans to leave him with her own mother had fallen through.

What happened next should disturb anyone who has so far succeeded in ignoring the fact that the United States now sends soldier-mothers off to war. Specialist Hutchinson was arrested and threatened with court martial and her son was temporarily placed in foster care — because, as the Fort Stewart spokesman explained, the 30-day extension that she had been granted was “plenty of time” to find some other babysitter for that ten-month-old while the only parent seemingly present in his life went off to Afghanistan.

This is one face of contemporary battle that no one wants to contemplate point-blank. Nevertheless, face it somebody should. Ever since Congress in the 1970s passed a law allowing women with dependent children to enlist in the military, the collision visible in the Hutchinson case between motherhood and soldiering has been waiting in the wings. The wonder is not that an Army cook and mother would choose staying stateside with her child over her deployment. It is rather that — given two wars and current American military policy — more cases like Hutchinson’s have not erupted already.

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It’s fashionable to hold up the Internet as the road to democracy and liberty in countries like Iran, but it can also be a very effective tool for quashing freedom.

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A little more than a year ago, when the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim increased his stake in the New York Times Company (NYT), I wrote “I pity the Times Mexico bureau chief who has to tiptoe through who is and isn’t out of favor with the paper’s new sugar daddy.” Now we have a very clear example of how the Times treats Slim within its pages; it’s not pretty, and the journalistic compromise can be seen well beyond Mexico.

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I have always fancied being bored on a huge and stylish scale. I’m talking Great Gatsby boredom, with everyone lying around in white clothes and floppy hats, sipping long drinks with cooling names, and being utterly and divinely bored. How sophisticated can one get, goes my thinking, that even when surrounded by the best things in life, it’s not enough? Boredom wins through.

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Until some Muslim fundamentalists come along and blow it up, as happened in Afghanistan. Let’s take advantage of it while we can.

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I’m not sure I really want to know what a ‘Buddhist tattoo’ looks like. I have this vision of a fat guy in an orange robe on a Harley.

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THE nation’s industrial umpire has ruled that a long-term employee who was legitimately sacked for repeated safety breaches must be reinstated and paid compensation because of his poor education and poor job prospects.

He’s depraved on account of he’s deprived.

An excellent illustration of the folly of having a ‘nation’s industrial umpire’. Sad to see it happening even in Australia.

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Gunfire has become an increasingly popular celebration custom at lavish Indian weddings in recent years.

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The flowchart is especially amusing.

Get it.

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The way you get to be a colonel is by being a good soldier. The way you get to be a general is by being a good politician. Everybody in the officer corps of the United States soon learns this.

There remains a distinction, however, between generals who become even better soldiers (Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, Creighton Abrams, Norman Schwarzkopf, Tommy Franks, David Petraeus)  and those who phone-in the soldier part and concentrate on becoming better politicians (Dwight Eisenhower, William Westmoreland, Colin Powell, Wesley Clark, Alexander Haig). The latter are a serious danger to our Republic, but unfortunately their chosen career path gives them the inside track to success in an increasingly political world.

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Beginning Monday, some of the more outrageous practices of credit card issuers will be outlawed. But just like a bully on a playground who doesn’t punch when the teacher is watching, lenders will find ways to continue pummeling consumers.

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If everyone else obeys such a ‘ban’, then that leaves more for the Japanese. Most nanny-staters would characterize this as a solid example of the ‘freeloader problem’.

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The image of banks locking their doors to keep customers from making withdrawals during a bank run is what immediately came to mind when we heard that Citigroup was telling customers it has the right to prevent any withdrawals from checking accounts  for seven days.

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Historians have finally revealed what they reckon is the definitive site of the Battle of Bosworth – the 22 August 1485 scrap in which Henry Tudor’s army defeated Richard III’s forces.

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I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

Watch it.

Hey, I’m Orthodox. Cope.

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The fact is that expiration dates mean very little. Food starts to deteriorate from the moment it’s harvested, butchered, or processed, but the rate at which it spoils depends less on time than on the conditions under which it’s stored. Moisture and warmth are especially detrimental. A package of ground meat, say, will stay fresher longer if placed near the coldest part of a refrigerator (below 40 degrees Fahrenheit), than next to the heat-emitting light bulb. Besides, as University of Minnesota food scientist Ted Labuza explained to me, expiration dates address quality—optimum freshness—rather than safety and are extremely conservative. To account for all manner of consumer, manufacturers imagine how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food, then test their products based on these criteria.

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Doesn’t that sound like a great name for a high-school football team? The Balch Springs Cane Toads!

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“Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” The adage is usually attributed to Henry Kissinger, though others apparently preceded him in the thought. Depending on how you look at it, the case of Amy Bishop is either a case in point or an exception that proves the rule.

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The objective is apparently to ‘raise consciousness’ about how telling the world where you are is not necessarily a good thing.

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What’s the use of power if you can’t abuse it?

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So how come I can’t wear jeans to work?

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Yeah, about the time I get my personal jet belt.

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Puts to rest any speculation that David Brooks is actually a conservative.

The Other McCain, of course, reacts appropriately.

Walt, betrayed.

The Other McCain has a plan.

America’s contemporary public-education system is funded on the basis of Average Daily Attendence (ADA), and the bureaucracy strives to maximize ADA in order to maximize revenue. Ergo, no matter how smart a kid is, the system compels them to go through 13 years (K-12) of school. This is accomplished via a dumbed-down curriculum geared toward the learning capacity of the “average” student, which aims to prevent bright children from learning at their own pace and graduating early based upon demonstrated content mastery.

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David Friedman is joining the give-it-away economy.

My agent, whose opinion I respect, disagrees. Acting on her advice and my own inclination, have just put the entire text of Salamander, my as yet unpublished second novel, on the web for anyone who wants to read it.

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It’s good to know that the Central Incompetence Agency isn’t the only thing standing between us and the Bad Guys.

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Gotta love Australians.

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Being mayor of Kiev must pay better than I thought.

NPR.

Your tax dollars paid for this. Aren’t you proud?

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Grant Achatz is probably one of the best chefs now living; El Bulli was reputed to be the best restaurant in the world. This is an amazing story.

A fascinating conversation.