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Saltwater crocodiles, the world’s largest living reptiles, travel hundreds of miles and cross large areas of open sea by surfing ocean currents, scientists have discovered.

You want jaws? We’ll give you jaws….

The Other McCain takes a look at Rachel Corrie.

n case you’ve forgotten, or perhaps never knew, who Rachel Corrie was, she was a 23-year-old middle-class college kid from Olympia, Washington, who got caught up in post-9/11 ”peace” activism.

That was, in and of itself, a damned foolish thing to do, but college kids do foolish things all the time, and I suppose marching around with a bunch of smelly International A.N.S.W.E.R. commies shouting senseless slogans is no more foolish than getting a tramp-stamp tattoo during Spring Break in Daytona.

Ah, but Rachel Corrie was not content with peace slogans. She became a fanatic. Every fanatic needs a scapegoat and — like other fanatics before and since — Rachel scapegoated the Jews.

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Hope springs eternal….

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And rightly so, I should think.

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The exhibition is powerful. But that is not really because of Cleopatra; it is because a lost world is resurrected here. There are some 150 artifacts on display, and the vast majority were found buried in the silt and clay of the Bay of Aboukir, off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Since 1992 those waters have been explored by Franck Goddio and his European Institute of Underwater Archaeology. Using a nuclear magnetic resonance magnetometer, Mr. Goddio mapped the geographic fault lines beneath the clouded waters and has brought to the surface a small fraction of what lies below.

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We’ve written here about the regulatory revolving door, in which executive branch or congressional aides go to work for big banks or interest groups. Less mentioned is the revolving door out of the press corps. Mike Allen’s Politico playbook today has two examples: “Teddy Davis, ABC News Deputy Political Director joins SEIU as Assistant Director of Communications, working with the SEIU team on their political campaigns and policy agenda. Last day at ABC, 6/11. First day at SEIU, 6/14.” And: “Mark Johnson, Capital Bureau of The Charlotte Observer/The News & Observer, with the subject line ‘Ch ch changes’: ‘I’m very much looking forward to going to work for Gov. Bev Perdue starting June 28 as deputy communications director. If you need to reach me, this address will work for another week.'” Governor Perdue is a Democrat.

Perhaps some enterprising journalist will investigate this sleazy practice.

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But I have found a reason to love the Cash for Clunkers program:  it is a fabulous demonstration project for just how utterly pointless government stimulus programs can be.  Stimulus programs tend to be hard to evaluate in our complex economy — sort of like trying to calculate the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings on world climate.  But since cash for clunkers only lasted a few weeks and hit only one industry, we can learn a lot about the effectiveness of government stimulus.

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Al the news you won’t find in your local newspaper.

Hey, Israel: Here’s a suggestion – one submarine, five torpedoes, no more problem.

Amity Shlaes overturns a rock and takes a look at the myriad forms of life thus revealed.

To understand the nature of the Beck challenge, you have to recall that our system of higher education is a throwback to medieval economics: a guild. As in the classic guild, members require a lengthy period of training, with formal stages. To be in any way authoritative, a writer must have a Ph.D., a guild seal. Members of this guild have enormous discretion when it comes to the conferring of the seal – also typical. In the humanities and social sciences, Ph.D.s. and, it goes without saying, tenure-track posts — are usually awarded to those not hostile to the master professors’ views. For many decades top universities have been especially rigorous in this practice, with the result that it is difficult to find non-progressives with top credentials in the humanities. The guild demands much from its apprentices, graduate students, including dull work in obscure texts. Indeed it is proud of that obscurity, for it distinguishes academic work from, say, the easy popular histories on bookstore shelves or tv.

Steve Sailer does the jobs that the LameStream Media won’t do.

What Eia had done, was to first interview the Norwegian social scientists on issues like sexual orientation, gender roles, violence, education and  race, which are heavily politicized in the Norwegian science community. Then he translated the interviews into English and took them to well-known British and American scientists like Robert Plomin, Steven Pinker, Anne Campbell, Simon Baron-Cohen, Richard Lippa, David Buss, and others, and got their comments. To say that the American and British scientists were surprised by what they heard, is an understatement.

Recall that the Norwegian scientific establishment gives out the Nobel prize in Economics. Puts a new light on Paul Krugman, doesn’t it?

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Freeberg understands the dialectic.

I’m just on the light side of 44 now, and in a flash of insight I lately realized that nearly all of the things that have infuriated me beyond all reason…or simply irritated me mildly…have been done by people anxious to prove they’re wonderful. If only people weren’t so desperate to find new ways to prove their wonderfulness, my disposition would be considerably sweetened and I’d probably have a lot more years ahead of me on terra firma right about now.

Preach it, brother.

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Hamas’s security forces on Monday and Tuesday raided the offices of several non-governmental organizations in the Gaza Strip and confiscated equipment and furniture, drawing sharp condemnations from human rights groups.

The sources said the raids were carried out by agents belonging to Hamas’s Internal Security apparatus without court permission.

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

Of course, if Israel did that, the media firestorm would blanket the globe.

Read it. And watch the video.

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Little noticed before the holiday weekend was this piece in the Washington Post,  where Obama administration officials bemoaned the fact that they can’t find anyone to accept the job of Director of National Intelligence (DNI). After floating the name of General James Clapper, the Obama administration is apparently looking elsewhere because of pressure from Capitol Hill to appoint a civilian. Problem? Apparently no qualified civilian intelligence experts are interested. The Post quotes an intelligence official saying, “Nobody who knows this stuff wants this job.”

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Don’t ever say we never have useful stuff here.

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Oh, remember all that stuff about islands being submerged in the rising sea levels? Never Mind!

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Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born fugitive Al Qaeda leader now hiding in the tribal areas of Yemen, recently issued a call for Muslims to kill American civilians. This sort of indiscretion doesn’t seem to harm his reputation — and probably even enhances it — among American Muslims.

Here’s an exclusive report from CBN news about the Halalco supermarket in Falls Church, Virginia, which featured Mr. al-Awlaki’s books and DVDs until Erick Stakelback paid a little visit to the store and drew proprietor’s attention to the al-Awlaki display.

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We have reached a point where nobody in public life who values his career prospects dares to mention the word “Islam” in connection with terrorism or mob violence. “Jihad” has officially been ruled out of the lexicon by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The word “terrorism” itself is discouraged, because too many people have come to associate it in their minds with Islam, for some strange reason.

We are so far down the rabbit hole that returning to a state of denial would be an improvement.

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How bad does AT&T suck? Let me count the ways….

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The diamond has been in British possession since East India Company forces in India defeated the Maharaja of Punjab in 1849 and forced him to hand it over to Queen Victoria as a tribute following the Treaty of Lahore.

So how does India have any claim to it? I don’t see them asking for it to be returned to the proper heir of the Maharaja of Punjab, who in any event was a Sikh, a minority persecuted by the Indian government.

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

Jeff Jarvis understands the dialectic.

AT&T’s service sucks. Just listen  to our most trusted newsman on the topic. But AT&T response to this core business problem is not to improve its service, to invest in better ways to handle more customers.

No, AT&T’s response is to change its pricing to make us use its service less.

That’s cynical. It’s evil.

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An article in the Straits Times says the rich in China are increasingly fleeing home to avoid taxes, government crackdowns and rising popular resentment. Where are they going? Well, to the U.S. for one.

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The Orthodox year has a rhythm, much like the tide coming in and going out – only this rhythm is undulation between seasons of fasting and seasons (or a few days) of feasting. Every week, with few exceptions, is marked by the Wednesday and Friday fast, and every celebration of the Divine Liturgy is prepared for by eating nothing after midnight until we have received the Holy Sacrament.

It is a rhythm. Our modern world has lost most of its natural rhythm. The sun rises and sets but causes little fanfare in a world powered and lit by other sources. In America, virtually everything is always in season, even though the chemicals used to preserve this wonderful cornucopia are probably slowly poisoning our bodies.

Orthodox do not starve when they fast – we simply abstain from certain foods and generally eat less.

But it is a rhythm – fasts are followed by feasts. The fast of the Apostles begins on the second Monday after Pentecost and concludes on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29. Most of Christendom will know nothing of any of this – that Eastern Christians will have begun a Lenten period while the world begins to think of vacations.

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There are, indeed, two Americas: the increasingly straitened world of the private sector, where jobs are competitive, money is scarce, and job security is, for many, nonexistent; and the lush world of the government employee, where competition is more or less unknown, salaries and benefits often double those available to private workers, retirement is ten or more years earlier than in the private sector, and it may take a felony to get fired. This is the central economic conflict of our time, between lavishly compensated and ever more gluttonous government employees, and wealth-creating private citizens who are increasingly unable to support their public-sector masters in the style to which they have become accustomed.

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Ronald Baily actually looks at the science.

However, the researchers found that how students divided up money changed as they became older when it was earned and depended on individual achievements and luck. Most fifth graders (63 percent) remained strict egalitarians, dividing up the money equally, despite the fact that some players earned more money through individual achievement. However, the portion of egalitarians dropped to 40 percent by 7th grade; falling eventually to 22 percent by 13th grade. Conversely, the share of meritocrats rose from 5 percent in the fifth grade, to 22 percent in 7th grade, rising eventually to 42 percent in the 13th grade. A full 42 percent of players in the 13th grade kept more money for themselves because they believed that they have earned it. The authors of the Norwegian study conclude that the meritocratic fairness view increases as the cognitive abilities of children mature. In other words: yes, kids outgrow socialism.

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Rarely does a conservative author have his thesis validated on the front page of the New York Times just as his new book hits the shelves. But that is precisely what happened recently to Arthur Brooks. In The Battle, Arthur eloquently lays out the choice America faces between “the principles of free enterprise” and “European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracy, increasing income redistribution, and government-controlled corporations.” Now the Times has given us a window into our future if we do not heed Arthur’s warnings and choose wisely between these two visions.

In a story entitled “Europeans fear crisis threatens liberal benefits,” the Times reports that “Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism. … But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead. With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle.”

Hooda thunkit.

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A short while later, after the patients had been evaluated and stabilized, another medic from the Blackhawk detachment visited the hospital to check on the two Afghan men. He found that when a forensic examination had been conducted of the patients’ hands, both men had tested positive for gunshot residue. This meant that in all likelihood they had been firing weapons a short while before. If this was so, then the most likely explanation was this: they had been firing at the American patrol, and after being shot had assumed the role of wounded civilians, seeking help from the same men they had been trying to kill, and from the same helicopters that, each day, the Taliban fighters try to shoot down.

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Time to move.

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I guess that’s the best you can hope for in Nanny-State Britain.

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And that’s all you really need to know about the Middle East.

It’s easy to get your side of the story out first if (1) you already know you’re going to start a fight and (2) you are willing to lie about what happened. As ever, the Palestinian side met both of these criteria last night. The Israelis, by contrast, did not know in advance that they would be assaulted, though they probably should have placed a higher probability on this outcome than they did.

More importantly, the Israelis did not want to present an account of the battle until they could verify all of the details. This is understandable — the government stands to be crucified by the MSM and the international community if it gets any detail wrong. Hamas, the PA, and their supporters face no such risk.

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However, the national power that is quietly aiming for Islamic pre-eminence is Turkey. Up until 1924 the Ottoman Sultan was also the Caliph of the entire Ummah — or at least the Sunni portion of it. Now that the relentless secularization instituted by Kemal Ataturk is finally crumbling, the emerging Islamic regime in Ankara is eyeing its traditional role as the supreme leader of the Islamic world. A Turk is the head of the OIC — which is setting itself to be the Caliphate reborn — and many of its most important meetings are held in Turkey. The Saudis bring the big money to the table, but the Turks supply the brains, organization, and military clout.

Yes, many of the dead and injured are undoubtedly Turks, because the Free Gaza Flotilla was a thinly-disguised Turkish military operation.

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Gunmen stormed a Pakistani hospital where doctors were treating the victims of an earlier suicide attack on Monday, killing at least six people in an attempt to free a militant being treated there, officials said.

I have a suggestion: Perhaps the world would be better off without Pakistan.

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The author, Peter Saunders, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Sussex, concludes that governments are therefore wrong to put so much effort into opening up universities to working-class teenagers and increasing taxes for middle-income earners in order to provide more benefits for the poor.

He writes: “The ideal of promoting social mobility by increasing meritocracy has in the last few years been used to justify some old-style socialist politics which in reality have little or nothing to do with increasing individual opportunities or rewarding effort and ability.