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More government stupidity. If the guy wants to tell everybody he’s homosexual, he ought to be allowed to do so. There’s nothing inherently offensive about saying that you’re gay.

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SPROUT GARDEN. The crew plans to grow sprouts and herbs during the journey. To avoid salt spray, the garden may be relocated to the rear mast.

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Yeah, it’s called ‘poverty’. People prefer freedom, when they can afford it, which is why they move out, live in the suburbs, and drive cars rather than take trains.

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Don’t know why this is such a surprise.

Memory eternal.

Watch the clips for the best music of the 20th century.

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Beaufort is a remarkable cheese, one of the noble Alpine cheeses. It’s produced exclusively from unpasteurized cow’s milk in the French Alps of the Haute-Savoie, from the milk of cows that, in the best examples of the cheese, graze on sustainable mountain pastures, imparting unique grassy, flowery aromas to the meaty cheeses, which have a firm yet buttery taste which melts easily in the mouth.

Get your SWPL game on.

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

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.

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The chief of the French chef’s association has barricaded herself into her office in an attempt to stop union members from giving her the sack.

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Lose a limb? Walk it off.

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A Southend Jedi Knight who refused to dehood in his local Jobcentre was escorted from the premises by security stormtroopers, the Sun  reports.

Chris Jarvis, 31, is described as a Star Wars fan and member of the International Church of Jediism. Said church’s intergalactic hoodie uniform is at odds with the strict doctrine of the Department for Work and Pensions, which may require Jobcentre “customers” to remove crash helmets or hoods for “security reasons”.

Regarding burqas and the like, Jarvis protested: “I was just standing up for my beliefs. Muslims can walk around in whatever religious gear they like, so why can’t I?”

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What would happen to the Palestinian ‘intifada’ if Israel were to adopt this policy?

How would the Chattering Classes react?

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There were a series of blog posts, detailing some of the details of the sickness, tests that had been done, and some of the general questions that the doctors were trying to zone in on. It even included a list of possible diagnoses, crossing out the ones that had been ruled out. Relatively quickly, two separate readers came up with an obscure medical journal article from South Korea from 1994 “about heptatic mega-hemagionas and FUOs,” which apparently quite accurately described the situation.

An elegant illustration of Hayek’s dictum that none of us knows as much as all of us, which he thought was the ultimate proof that markets were superior to central planning.

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Consider: You’re waiting for something, it doesn’t matter what, and to while away the time you use what’s available to you — in most cases, your phone. The advent of the ‘smart phone’ puts in our pockets a number of activities that previously were only available at home … in this case, games; in other cases, e-books and such. I find that the .mobi reader on my Blackberry Storm has replaced the paperback stuffed in the back pocket as the preferred tool for idle-time-reading. My wife uses her Kindle for the same purpose.

And, if worst comes to worst. you can make a phone call. How cool is that?

Steve Sailer isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions.

Clearly, the main reason for the tightening grip of the federal government on local education is simply that the most ambitious politicians, such as Bush and Obama, go into federal politics and they grab the most appealing issues (Fix the schools!) and try to deal with them at the federal level.

Indeed, one might ask why government, federal or otherwise, is involved in most of its activities.

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A new version of the online payments service’s iPhone app debuted on Monday, with a feature that allows you to pass money from one person to the next by bumping–or simultaneously shaking–two phones. (You need not worry about all your money accidentally pouring out of the phone in your pocket; both sides have to set up and confirm the transfer in the software before it goes through.)

An interesting concept.

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Seth Godin has a beef.

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According to Verizon, the company is taking a contemplative pause to focus on marketing the service to areas that are already deployed.

But according to long-time industry analyst Dave Burstein, Verizon’s essentially cutting and running on additional deployment plans, leaving a very large chunk of their footprint on last-generation DSL and copper-based voice networks.

Burstein tells Broadband Reports that he doesn’t see Verizon expanding any further (with the exception of major cities where they’ve signed franchise agreements) unless they get money from Uncle Sam (aka, taxpayers). “They want to get on the gravy train, although I think the new, less competitive leadership is the primary explanation,” says Burstein when asked why Verizon’s shifting tactics. Seidenberg, the driving force behind the first wave of FiOS, is on his way out — and his replacements aren’t quite as bullish on angering investors for the sake of this whole “future” thing.

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However bad you think it might be … Surprise! It’s far worse.

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It is well established that white people like the past. Vintage clothing, history degrees, and nostalgia are just three examples of how white people show their love for by-gone eras. So when white people think about growing their own food they are reminded of pastoral images of farming, working the land, and growing whole natural foods for their family. This most positive viewpoint comes from the fact that white people have mostly enjoyed  supervisory roles in agricultural production over the years.

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Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn’t the public have a right to know?

At Guantanamo, “legal mail” is strictly limited to correspondence between counsel and a detainee that is related to representation of the detainee, privileged documents and publicly filed legal documents. But even “legal mail,” according to the rules mandated by Judge Joyce Hens Green in a 2004 protective order, prohibits lawyers from giving detainees information relating to military operations, intelligence, arrests, political news and current events, and the names of U.S. government personnel. Lawyers are forbidden from discussing other detainee cases not directly related to the representation of their own client.

The Amnesty International brochure, handed out at a human rights conference in London, was a political advocacy screed in clear violation of that order, which was formulated to protect force security. Maj. Gen. Hood made a command decision. He banned the Paul, Weiss lawyers from access to Guantanamo. The DOJ notified the firm.

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

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A father on his way to a family skiing holiday was told by airport security officials to turn his T-shirt inside out because they feared a slogan on it could be construed as a threat.

This sort of simple-minded fascist pettifoggery is a major reason why I don’t fly.

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With two consecutive New York governors in ethical imbroglios, New Yorkers may think they’ve got the sleaziest state political culture in the country. But plenty of other states are in the running.

Wonder how much effort it took to get an angle such that the Paterson looked like Jack Webb.

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In a novel way to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the death of the poet Philip Larkin, a council is to spend £200,000 on 65 giant fibreglass toads.

When you care enough to send the very best….

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Domino’s Triton No. 1, an experimental pizza-delivery vehicle, at the Pioneer Auto Show, a museum in Murdo, South Dakota. It’s a future that never came to pass, as most pizza drivers use their own cars for delivery.

Hiro Protagonist, you’re on deck.

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Note that you never see a headline saying ‘Muslim made burned alive to keep her from reporting rape.’ Ponder why that is.

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Perhaps she was trying to tell him something.

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‘I know you miss the Wilsons, Bobby. But they were weak and stupid people, and that’s why we have wolves and other large predators.’

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The woman, known as “Kylie”, alleged that the massage parlour’s boss dismissed her for choosing her clients and for spending time with her boyfriend, who did not pay for her services, according to a report from the South African Press Association.

‘There once was a union maid, she never was afraid….’

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Virtually every aspect of Sikes’s story as told to reporters makes no sense. His claim that he’d tried to yank up the accelerator could be falsified, with his help, in half a minute. And now we even have an explanation for why he’d pull such a stunt, beyond the all-American desire to have 15 minutes of fame (recall the “Balloon Boy Hoax” from October) and the aching need to be perceived as a victim.

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But what I see here is a disturbing trend in this country to replace some standard with no standards.  We’re systematically inhibiting ourselves from defining our own culture by the use of our own courts.  Essentially, the ACLU’s purpose is to strike down any decision made by anyone that attempts to conform human behavior into a mold that the collective group, the “society”, has agreed upon.  If even a single person disagrees with any cultural decision that we the people make, the ACLU soars in on a white horse to sue us and force us to conform to the desires of that single person.

Preach it, brother.

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What goes around comes around.

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Sounds almost like a tabloid headline, doesn’t it?

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Funny how that works.

We reported in May that after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households to 6.25% from 4.75%. In cities like Baltimore and Bethesda, which apply add-on income taxes, the top tax rate with the surcharge now reaches as high as 9.3%—fifth highest in the nation. Liberals said this was based on incomplete data and that rich Marylanders hadn’t fled the state.

A Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysis of federal tax return data on people who migrated from one state to another found that Maryland lost $1 billion of its net tax base in 2008 by residents moving to other states. That’s income that’s now being taxed and is financing services in Virginia, South Carolina and elsewhere.

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Except perhaps to whine that they’re not getting their fair share.

Indeed, if you look at all of human history, probably 99.999999% of it has been about dealing with the issues of scarcity. In fact, our entire original economic philosophy (which is really just two and a half centuries old) was based on “resource allocation in the presence of scarcity.” Historically, abundance just hasn’t been an issue that we’ve had to deal with very much. And the problem is that people try to apply the mental rules of scarcity to abundance and they basically kick out an error message. It’s a “divide by zero” sort of problem. You get infinity as a result, and you think it’s wrong.

So the response is almost always the same. Rather than actually trying to deal with what abundance enables, people try to force abundance back into a feeling of scarcity — which they’re comfortable with. That is, they try to apply artificial rules and restrictions to make the abundance feel like it’s scarce, so that they can understand it again.

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Oddly, Ortiz seems to be raising awareness about someone else’s bill. In an interview on Fox News today, he described the bill as offering consumers the choice “to ask the waitress and chef to don’t put any additive sodium in their items.” He further explained that “the bill clearly state that the consumer will have the right to ask whether that item is being prepared with sodium and also to either minimize or maximize [and] will allow the chef and the consumer to have a conversation about what we can add or no add.”

That is not what his bill says. … That’s no salt, anywhere in the preparation of the food. Period.

No decent chef will put up with that. Salt is essential in the preparation of, among other things, pasta and bread. This guy is an idiot, and the people who vote for him are well represented.

George Will tags the Obamassiah with his true nature.

Hating Wilson is the best use of your time I can think of.

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Spend the rest of time as a Reef Ball….

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In a number of places around the world, it is open season on Christians. We read of Christians burned out of their homes and slaughtered in Pakistan. Most recently, at least 500 Christians were murdered in Nigeria. The attackers in all cases are Muslims, inspired by the warlike message of their Prophet.

So where is the outrage? I don’t know what denomination those Nigerian Christians were, but Lutherans are the most numerous Christian denomination in Africa. I’m a Lutheran, but I have never heard a single word from any church source, local or national, about the mass murder of African Christians. No one seems to care.

Maybe “mainstream” Christianity is dead, except as an appendage of secular liberal opinion. Maybe, as the world’s largest religion, Christianity has become so diffused that New World Christians don’t much relate to their co-religionists in Africa and Asia. I don’t know. What I do know is that it is much more dangerous to publish a cartoon of Mohammed than to slice apart a Christian with a machete.

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Points that can be redeemed for valuable prizes….

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A cell phone application that will help illegal immigrants find water and key landmarks as they cross into the United States is an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds and an irresponsible use of technology, critics say.

The Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), the brainchild of three faculty members at the University of California-San Diego and a colleague at the University of Michigan, is a software application that can be installed into a GPS-enabled cell phone. In addition to helping immigrants locate water and landmarks, it also could alert them to Border Patrol checkpoints. And to make the trek a little less arduous, it also plays recorded poetry.

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Public employees all say ‘Stimulus been bery bery good to me.’

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My back-of-the-envelope calculations (explained in a footnote below) suggest that if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems and don’t bother to comply with the recall, your chances of being involved in a fatal accident over the next two years because of the unfixed problem are a bit worse than one in a million — 2.8 in a million, to be more exact. Meanwhile, your chances of being killed in a car accident during the next two years just by virtue of being an American are one in 5,244.

So driving one of these suspect Toyotas raises your chances of dying in a car crash over the next two years from .01907 percent (that’s 19 one-thousandths of 1 percent, when rounded off) to .01935 percent (also 19 one-thousandths of one percent).

I can live with those odds. Sure, I’d rather they were better, but it’s not worth losing sleep over. And I don’t think it’s worth all the bandwidth the Toyota story has consumed over the past couple of months.

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Let’s hook a generator up to Walt. I bet we could power the entire East Coast.

Steve Sailer connects the dots.

I’ve been pointing out for years that the theory and practice of disparate impact is fundamentally catastrophic to American public education, since any realistic, effective policy will have a racially disparate impact, and therefore make schools vulnerable to discrimination lawsuits. The Obama Administration today announced: Undermining public education is not a bug of disparate impact, it’s a feature!

That Obama! What a guy!