Read it.

The court heard that Noga locked up his flat and moved in with his mother when his home became overcrowded with stolen post.

Who hasn’t encountered the problem of ‘too much stuff’?

Read it.

Five years after Uzbek troops opened fire on hundreds of protestors in the city of Andijan, experts say the Central Asian state has yet to be held accountable for one major reason – Afghanistan.

Actually, the one major reason is that nobody gives a shit what happens with, to, or among Uzbeks.

Read it.

LUCKNOW: Darul Uloom Deoband, the self-appointed guardian for Indian Muslims, in a Talibanesque fatwa that reeked of tribal patriarchy, has decreed that it is “haram” and illegal according to the Sharia for a family to accept a woman’s earnings. Clerics at the largest Sunni Muslim seminary after Cairo’s Al-Azhar said the decree flowed from the fact that the Sharia prohibited proximity of men and women in the workplace.

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

Of course, if a Christian had said this, there would be a media firestorm.

Read it.

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

Megan McArdle nails it.

But I do think that David Brooks is onto something when he notes that her relentless careerism, her pitch-perfect blandness, are a little creepy. Not in themselves, but because they’re a symptom of a culture that increasingly values what Brooks calls Organization Kids: the driven, hyperachieving spawn of the Ivy League meritocracy who began practicing Supreme Court nomination acceptances and CEO profile photo poses long before they took notice of the opposite sex.

The Other McCain is on the case.

But that trick never works….

Steve Sailer reviews the big guy.

Herself and I saw the movie last night and had a great time. Just sayin’.

Read it.

I’m sure they are.

While home-schooling’s popularity has increased, the rate of growth concentrated in Texas’ high school population is off the chart: It’s nearly tripled in the last decade, including a 24 percent jump in a single year.

“That’s just ridiculous,” said Brian D. Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute. “It doesn’t sound very believable.”

Well, perhaps not to you….

Read it.

Read it.

I was explaining this to my son after we went to watch Iron Man 2, and my girlfriend needed to visit the facilities before we headed over the hill to go home. The human genome evolves…and it evolves on either side of a gender barrier. Just about anything that would come in handy when you go out to kill a wild animal and bring it home, men are going to excel in that particular skill. Anything that involves guarding a bunch of helpless babies from hazards as if you’re a momma bird guarding a nest, women are going to be much better suited for it. Going a couple of hours without taking a leak, obviously that’s our department.

Read it.

You can figure out the logic for yourself just fine, right? Americans eat way too much processed junk, so their/our behavior has to be brought back into line by means of a special tax that will effectively force us to eat tofu, hummus, carrots and arugula.

Read it.

Readers may recall that Hispanic activists successfully sued Irving under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that the city’s century-old system of electing council members from at-large, city-wide districts discriminated against Hispanics because no Hispanic had ever won a seat on the council.

To settle the lawsuit, Irving was forced to create six single-member voting districts—one of which was heavily gerrymandered to ensure the election of a Hispanic—and two at-large ones.

The election results are in and the folks at the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund must be having a bad day. The newly created “Hispanic” district was won by an African American (who defeated a Hispanic), while the one at-large contest was won by … yep, a Hispanic (who defeated a white candidate).

The best-laid plans of mice and race-pimps gang aft agley….

Read it.

How about a Let’s Laugh at Lawyers day?

Read it.

Ten candidates were interviewed after the advert was placed in July and the most eligible, a 41-year-old named as Mr Lee, was introduced in October to Mr Kim’s daughter, who works for a design company. The couple is now set to tie the knot on Saturday.

And that’s the daughter’s only appearance in the whole process. We don’t even find out here name.

Read it.

In only four days, a twin-engine aircraft equipped with an advanced version of lidar (light detection and ranging) flew back and forth over the jungle and collected data surpassing the results of two and a half decades of on-the-ground mapping, the archaeologists said. After three weeks of laboratory processing, the almost 10 hours of laser measurements showed topographic detail over an area of 80 square miles, notably settlement patterns of grand architecture and modest house mounds, roadways and agricultural terraces.

Check it out.

Read it.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

I’m waiting eagerly for the census form to arrive in the mail. Its arrival will give me an opportunity to comply with the “real” Constitution by committing an act of civil disobedience. Specifically, I will refuse to answer the questions that have nothing to do with the constitutional purpose of the census.

The Constitution authorizes them to count you. Everything beyond that is a violation of privacy. (Remember your Constitutional right to privacy? It allows you to kill your unborn child but not to tell the government all about your life.)

Of course, conscription (‘The Draft’) is unconstitutional as well (read the 13th Amendment some time), and we see how well that works when it goes against what the Crust wants.

Read it.

A friendly native guide to what politicians are saying.

X :  I will serve the people of this district to the best of my ability.

Y:  I intend to look out for my own interest every step of the way, so unless you’re the highest bidder for my services, you’d better start saying your prayers now.

Read it.

The Crust uses the theory ‘Hey, you screwed up. Let’s give you more money and power until you get it right.’ Since they’re just paying themselves, they think it’s perfectly reasonable. Meanwhile, you’re wallet gets flatter and flatter.

Aren’t you proud?

Read it. And watch the video.

Of course, it didn’t come from a Harvard guy or a multinational conglomerate so the chances of the government (any government) adopting it before I’m ready for Social Security is vanishingly small.

Charles Stross explains certain inconvenient truths.

This is a wonderful compendium of facts about the e-book business.

Watch it.

‘Oh, look, it’s like an event, except everybody’s in costume.’

Read it.

And rich people, who early adopters tend to be.

Read it.

Enter Islam, and everything changes. I cannot be the only person to have watched, during the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis, a certain type of surreal discussion on television current affairs programs, in which a defender of freedom of speech and some self-parody of a Muslim hypocrite would go back and forth on the subject of whether we should be allowed (in our own countries, no less) to ‘insult’ Islam or Muhammad. Can anyone watch any of these sickening infiltrators try to argue away our freedoms and still not comprehend what we are up against? Can anyone doubt that if such people were in a position of power, there would be no sitting around the table discussing human rights when Muhammad was drawn with a bomb in his turban?

If there is a mechanism whereby principle steps onto the battlefield, waves its magic wand, and resolves these conflicts prior to the intervention of tribally-motivated actors prepared to use large-scale violence to achieve their aims, I have yet to encounter it.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna attempts a response.

Read it.

But if complexity is your only demon, I’ve got two simple rules of thumb to exorcise him. Here goes:

1. If you don’t have clear and convincing evidence that doing something is better than doing nothing, do nothing.

2. If you know that doing nothing is bad, but don’t have clear and convincing evidence that one action is better than another, do the simplest, standard thing.

Carrie Vaughn, author of the ‘Kitty’ series of werewolf stories and one of my Recommended Writers (see the list on the right), reviews.

Don’t tell me a story.  Make me freaking believe it.

And that says everything that needs to be said.

Read it.

Unfortunately, the left side of the blogosphere is in fact a caste system*, and the higher castes do not exist to break their own scandals: they exist to ‘break’ the ’scandals’ that are given unto them by professional scandalmongers within the Democratic party.  Which is why Markos is distinctly uninterested in covering this story further, to the point of not even bothering to update the original post (as of 2:30 PM EST, Thursday 05/06/10) with the CoC’s denial: it doesn’t fit the narrative, and Establishment Democrats don’t want this allegation explored further.  After all, aside from everything else it’s not actually true.

Steve Sailer will talk about things that most people are afraid to even think about.

All this is pretty similar to what I heard from Penn State geneticist Mark Shriver eight years ago. He came up with about 18% white admixture in African Americans. The technology was more primitive then, but his sample size was about 20 times bigger. So, one-fifth appears to be a good rough estimate.

Needless to say, I love the guy.

Read it.

The pages of this necessary but contentious book burn with a righteous moral anger about the contradictions and tensions of delivering humanitarian aid in conflict zones. Linda Polman’s polemic is a timely reminder that noble intentions and humanitarian motives are often stretched to, and beyond, breaking point in the febrile world of modern-day war. She implores us to look beyond the clichés of humanitarian aid – red crosses, heart-rending dispatches from refugee camps, fund-raising appeals – and examine in detail the difficulties involved in giving aid effectively in such circumstances.

Read it.

Having a few of them shot for treason might have a salutory effect.

Read it.

Ruh-roh.

Read it.

Be the first on your block.

Read it.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace you got there, Abdul.

Read it.

Ya think?

Read it.

In the old days they would have been shot, not released. Who says the Russians haven’t mellowed?

Just trying to help out.

* Iran can have nukes, but you can’t have salt.

* Shape up voters, or we’ll get a cheap replacement for you from Mexico.

Read it.

I’d be tempted to rabbit-punch her until her brain wakes up.

Read it.

He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere! (Oh, sorry, that’s Chicken Man….)

Read it.

Seven new albino killings have been reported in Tanzania and Burundi amid signs that the lucrative trade in their body parts has not waned.

Sure, these people are ready for self-government.

Read it.

Sometimes the system works.

Read it.

Just for perspective, consider whether a Canadian school would send kids home for wearing Canadian flags on the Fourth of July. The question answers itself.

Read it.

This is God telling you to STAY HOME.

Read it.

Identity politics raises its ugly head yet again. Lordy, I get tired of this shit. Some people just have nothing better to do than whine about stuff that Just Doesn’t Matter.

Where is Natural Selection when you really need it?

Read it.

Say not that the struggle naught availeth.

Arnold Kling holds up The Mirror.

Make a list of five to ten social issues that you feel are important. Next, make a list of five to ten social issues that you think government should stay out of. What is the intersection of those two sets? If it is zero, then you probably belong to the Church of Unlimited Government. If every social issue you care about (not just the top five or ten) is one where you want government to deal with it, then you definitely belong to the Church.

Charlie Stross has some interesting thoughts.

Apple are trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat. That’s the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit.

Read it.

Tax increases are driving London’s top money managers to pick up and move to Switzerland, Bloomberg News reports.

And who could blame them?

Read it.

Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.