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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.

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Just for you, Roy. Happy Birthday.

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Uh-oh.

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There seem to be reports of sudden acceleration of spending, and of brakes failing. Toyota has shown us the way.

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A scout who spent a year living outdoors to raise money for charity has been killed by an avalanche in a remote area of the central Highlands.

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It’s official: if you’re feeling a bit down in the dumps, then filling your face with chips will cheer you up, according to boffins at Aston University’s School of Life and Health Sciences.

Add some dead cow, and I’m in.

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The distinction between anti-whaling activists and serious skin rash is becoming less and less.

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The reason the death penalty isn’t a deterrent is because it can be delayed in so many ways.

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Let’s go surfin’ now
Everybody’s learnin’ how
Come on a safari with meeeeeeee…..

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Left-wing script writers infiltrated Doctor Who to give it anti-Thatcher plot lines in the late 1980s in a failed attempt “to overthrow the Government” Sylvester McCoy has claimed.

McCoy, who played the seventh doctor from 1987 to 1989, and Andrew Cartmel, the script editor at the time, both admitted the conspiracy, saying that it “seemed the right thing to do”.

However, the secret messages remained a secret to all but Doctor Who insiders. Meanwhile the show’s popularity went into freefall and it was taken off air in 1989.

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

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The Other McCain is on the case.

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Although analysis of the man’s mitochondrial DNA proves that he was of Asian origin, the archaeologists are unable to say whether he himself settled in Italy or whether he was the descendant of an Asian family which was already living there.

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Thanks to the iPod, audiobook sales are soaring and actors are queuing up to make them. But what’s it like recording one? ‘Like doing “King Lear” in a cupboard’, learns Richard Johnson

Read it.

Read it.

The 18-volume set, from 1797, which is still regularly used by its owner, Charlotte Hampson, has been discovered by Encyclopaedia Britannica after a search.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Three crew members of a Japanese whaling vessel have suffered face and eye injuries from acid fired by anti-whaling protesters during their latest clash in the Antarctic Ocean, their Japanese employers said.

I’m waiting for the media to treat these jerks the way they treat abortion-clinic protesters.

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But umami is not just an Asian thing. We taste it in other, western, favourites: parmesan cheese, canned anchovies, Parma ham, gherkins, olives and wild mushrooms are umami foods, along with wine and beer. The yeasts on a ripe piece of fruit have a degree of umami, and balsamic vinegar is packed with it. Favourite bottled sauces such as Tabasco and Worcester sauce lend umami to the blandest food….

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You know you want one.

Megan McArdle does what she does best.

The possibility that no one risks death by going without health insurance may be startling, but some research supports it. Richard Kronick of the University of California at San Diego’s Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, an adviser to the Clinton administration, recently published the results of what may be the largest and most comprehensive analysis yet done of the effect of insurance on mortality. He used a sample of more than 600,000, and controlled not only for the standard factors, but for how long the subjects went without insurance, whether their disease was particularly amenable to early intervention, and even whether they lived in a mobile home. In test after test, he found no significantly elevated risk of death among the uninsured.

If gaining insurance has a large effect on people’s health, we should see outcomes improve dramatically between one’s early and late 60s. Yet like the Kronick and Rand studies, analyses of the effect of Medicare, which becomes available to virtually everyone in America at the age of 65, show little benefit. In a recent review of the literature, Helen Levy of the University of Michigan and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago noted that the latest studies of this question “paint a surprisingly consistent picture: Medicare increases consumption of medical care and may modestly improve self-reported health but has no effect on mortality, at least in the short run.”

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Australia is witnessing the emergence of “Kangatarians” – people who limit their diet to vegetables and kangaroo meat only.

I love the use of the word ’emerge’ – as if this were some new species.

Gotta love Australians.

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Where the analogy breaks down is that the ‘Palestinians’, unlike the Na’vi, don’t have anything that any sane person would want.

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Amazingly enough, the knife only weighs 8 ounces due to the rat-tail handle build and the Kraton grip. You could get a stronger knife in a heavier full-width tang — but with the Ka-Bar Bowie, there’s no reason to be concerned. Ka-Bar has been building prybar strong knives with rat-tail tangs for a very long time.

You know you want one.

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“At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.”

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According to Mr Creme, in 1977 Maitreya descended from the Himalayan redoubt where he had been living with a community of ascended Masters, who are watching over mankind with a concerned eye. Since then, he has been moving largely unnoticed among us, waiting to usher in a new age of peace, wisdom and understanding.

Mr Creme had been told this by one of the community of Masters, with whom he has been in telepathic communication since 1959. This is the good news. The bad news is that the new World Teacher may not be, as many seem to believe, an English-born academic named Raj Patel, who for the last two weeks has found himself in the rather unusual position of having to deny that he is the Messiah.

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A test of simple maths skills taken by teachers from schools across the country has revealed a “shocking” lack of mental arithmetic ability and basic maths knowledge.

Only four out of 10 teachers could work out that 2.1 per cent of 400 is 8.4. Only a third knew that 1.4 divided by 0.1 is 14, and less than 50 per cent could work out that a half divided by a quarter is 2.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Sad to say, it’s already happening here.

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One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

In the wake of all the other recent scandals, “Africa-gate” may be the most damaging of all, because of the involvement of Dr Pachauri himself. Not only is the reputation of the IPCC in tatters, but that of its chairman appears irreperably damaged. Yet the world’s politicians cannot afford to see him resign because, if he goes, the whole sham edifice they have sworn by would come tumbling down.

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

Islam doesn’t do human rights. Never has. Never will.

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Financial institutions reap billions in profits from fees on consumers, many of whom lack the time or information to wade through the fine print.

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Caller ID spoofing technology allows a user to change the caller ID to show any desired number on a recipients caller ID display. There are currently a handful of companies that offer this service including SpoofCard (and it’s mobile application called Spoof App) and Spoofem, among others.

Read it.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in a Seattle subway.

“The risk involved in untrained and ill-equipped officers entering the water in these circumstances are generally too high to contemplate.”

I guess it is.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, the Instapundit, was there.

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs.

These weren’t the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

And we see how that worked out.

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Works for me.

The foundation admitted people would earn less, but said they would have more time to carry out worthy tasks.

And, as we all know, Worthy Tasks are our chief priority.

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Those coins are now worth big pesos.

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We have the technology.

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Too many Americans live in two-story homes, and/or have basements, yet have no easy access to the upstairs bathroom and Halloween decorations in the attic, or to the aunt living up there. They are forced to rely on outdated “stairs” technology. (And stairs are dangerous! So this is far more urgent than broadband! Show your outrage! Etc.!) So I ever-so-slightly tweaked the letter; this bold new campaign is meant to rectify this injustice and I hope you’ll sign on and spread the word.

Joel on Software.

At one point I entertained the quixotic and, retrospectively, stupid idea of requiring every employee at Fog Creek to be a programmer… even the receptionist would have to have done some BASIC programming in high school to qualify. In the US Marines everyone, even the cooks, is a rifleman. Of course that’s because the cooks are in friggin Afghanistan getting shot at so they better be riflemen, whereas our receptionist almost never has to drop into the source code and bang out a class. Almost never.

The population of the planet is so large, and the effect of sales and marketing so hard to scale, that by the time your product is really great, the optimal ratio might be very heavily tilted in favor of sales and marketing. Large software companies might have 5 or 10 or 20 people in the sales organization for every developer.

This explains, among other things, why US software companies can’t expect to get sustainable advantage by offshoring software development to cheaper countries. If a developer in Russia, India, or China costs 50% as much as a developer in Seattle, San Francisco, or Boston, but software development is only 10% of your costs, you can only get a 5% advantage from offshoring development. The offshoring that does happen is strongly biased to custom software development which, by design, can only solve one person’s problem, so more developers than marketers are needed.

Read it.

Works fine, lasts a long time, fails safe, and drains to the bilge.

Read it. And watch the videos, of course.

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Toyota has declined to accept a Japanese government energy efficiency award given to its hybrid Prius, saying the honour is not appropriate for a car hit by massive recalls.

Can you imagine any American or European company doing this? I can’t.

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Bet on the crocodile.

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Slander

r2.2 Slander (ghiba) means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike…

Islam doesn’t do ‘free speech’. Never has. Never will.

Read it.

Which is…?

Professor = uppity = black. Left wing, Socialist, palling around with terrorists = out-of-place black. Intellectual = frightening = especially frightening when black. True, most professors, intellectuals, and left wing Socialists are actually not black, nor are those categories seen as stereotypically black. But you say something bad about President Obama, of course that must mean you’re attacking his race. Because, you know, it’s not like conservatives have ever been known for criticizing white liberals. Why else would they pick on a liberal politician if not because of his race?