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Crowdsourcing is often used for fairly menial tasks: correcting databases, screening offensive images, transcribing audio. But what if you could make those little bits of human labor even more menial, discrete and interchangeable?

Here’s how we find work for all of those people on the left side of the bell curve.

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Ilya Somin from the Volokh Conspiracy (and a Real Lawyer) gives us the news.

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

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Reports suggest that a battalion of US airmobile* troops in Afghanistan are to be equipped with the XM-25 computing smart-rifle, able to strike enemies hiding round corners or in trenches. A successful “proof of concept” of a guided homing bullet for use in sniper rifles has also been announced.

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The Mexican billionaire, who Forbes still lists as the world’s richest man, said in 2007 that he could do more to help fight poverty by building businesses than by “being a Santa Clause.”

Mr. Slim’s signature also has been noticeably absent from the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge. At a conference in Syndey last month, Mr. Slim said that charity accomplishes little.

“The only way to fight poverty is with employment,” he said. “Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything.”

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I smell a major horror movie coming soon to a theater near you.

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Eurabia advances.

Germany has announced it will fund Islamic studies at three state universities to train prayer leaders and religion teachers more in tune with Western society than the foreign imams preaching at most mosques here.

Why not just send the Muslims back home?

Darwin Award Nominee.

“I saw him holding onto the top of the glass barrier with one hand, and trying to grasp something with the other,” one unnamed tiger keeper at the zoo told the Southern Metropolis newspaper. He added that he saw “four or five” tigers rushing towards Mr Sheng and quickly ran to the pen to try to save him.

By the time he reached the spot, however, Mr Sheng had already lost his grip and fallen into the tiger pack. “He sustained a lethal injury to his neck,” said the tiger keeper.

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Well, duh.

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At last, a use for Facebook — catching stupid criminals.

Walter Olson has some fun with a Democrat Congresswoman.

The union- and trial-lawyer-backed Paycheck Fairness Act, which would greatly expand the scope of lawsuits against private employers alleging gender pay inequality, has run into considerable resistance in Congress. The Bangor Daily News, for example, notes that middle-of-the-road Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, known for their willingness to support some Democratic initiatives, have criticized the PFA as “broad,” “unprecedented,” and costly to employers (Snowe) and as likely to “impose excessive litigation on the small-business community” (Collins).

Lileks deals with public policy. Everybody stand back.

Several of our state legislators want to enact a law that would require schools to have anti-bullying policies. Because if there’s one thing bullies fear, it’s a policy.

If a bully knows he will get pounded, he attempts to make friends with Brutus and fall into the natural role of Flunky. (Lesser bullies usually end up in the role of a flunky, minion or henchperson. Or they go into tax collection.)

The Ancient Codes of Honor say you’re not supposed to hit people with glasses, so that makes it twice as much fun.

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Almost two years ago, the Food and Drug Administration ignored the advice of its scientists and approved a knee implant after being lobbied by members of Congress. On Thursday, the agency issued an unprecedented “mea culpa,” saying the device should not have been approved.

The agency said it is taking steps to revoke approval of the Menaflex implant, made by ReGen Biologics. The announcement comes a year after the agency first acknowledged that its decision to approve the device was influenced by outside pressure, including lobbying by four lawmakers from the company’s home state of New Jersey.

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Hey — you asked for it, you got it.

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An article in al-Qaida’s online English magazine calls on Muslims in the West to arm vehicles with spiked battering rams and then target crowded areas.

The article, called “The Ultimate Mowing Machine,” shows an illustration of a civilian four-by-four truck and suggests turning the vehicle into a spike battering ram, Middle East Online said Wednesday.

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I’m curious as to how it does with pillowcases.

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The lesson of public choice theory is that when government can redistribute wealth or opportunities, that power will fall into the hands of politically well-connected groups, who use it to their own advantage at the expense of less favored groups.

Even where a licensing law lacks a hidden racist motive, of the sort that the law in Yick Wo had, it often has a racially disproportionate effect. In 1996, a federal court in San Diego held it unconstitutional for the state of California to require African hair-braiders to obtain licenses as beauticians. The licensing requirement forced applicants to study many hairstyles that couldn’t even be performed on black customers! In fact, well over 90 percent of what applicants for licenses were required to learn was irrelevant to what African hairbraiders actually did.

There’s no denying that expensive and complicated licensing requirements for hair stylists and other entry-level professions have a profound and negative impact on racial minorities and often push minority-owned businesses into the underground economy. Licensing laws also give political elites leverage in political disputes for minorities; I recently blogged about how taxi licensing laws helped officials in Montgomery, Alabama, resist Martin Luther King’s famous bus boycott.

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Mohammed Abdul Waheed Chisti, a reporter with a local Urdu daily, raised a question relating to the ownership of the disputed site before the construction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.

Chisti asked the Shahi Imam to spell out his stand on the mention of King Dashrath’s name in land records of 1528 before the Babri mosque was constructed.

Initially, Bukhari skirted the question but when the journalist insisted, he was threatened.

“Get him out of this conference, Bukhari shouted while accusing the journalist of working against the interests of the Muslims,” he said.

Bukhari’s supporters then thrashed the journalist in full public glare.

People like him will ‘not be tolerated by Muslims at any cost,’ the Shahi Imam said before leaving the press conference.

As with the Mafia, the truth is whatever benefits Muslims.

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Each of them – and they constitute 80% of humanity – is born the most beautiful baby in the world. Each is an above-average child; in fact the entire 80% is in the top 20% of human beings (it’s crowded up there). Each grows up knowing that he or she is deeply special in some way, and destined for a unique life that he or she is “meant” to live. In their troubled twenties, each seeks the one true love that they know is out there, waiting for them, and their real calling in life. Each time they fail at life or love, their friends console them: “You are a smart, funny, beautiful and incredibly talented person, and the love of your life and your true calling are out there somewhere. I just know that.” The friends are right of course: each marries the most beautiful man/woman in the world, discovers his/her calling, and becomes the proud parent of the most beautiful baby in the world. Eventually, each of them retires, earns a gold watch, and somebody makes a speech declaring him or her to be a Wonderful Human Being.”

You and I know them as losers.

Do it.

John Graham-Cumming is attempting to raise funds to build a working copy of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Lend a hand.

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I was under the impression that suicide was an honored part of Japanese culture. I guess there’s no pleasing some people.

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About fargin’ time.

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Membership in the E.U.? This would be the same E.U. that handed over Kosovo, Serbia’s historic heartland, to Albanian immigrants? That E.U.? Gee, whyever would ‘nationalist groups’ resist membership in the E.U.?

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Why ‘jailed’? Why not ‘executed’?

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“I don’t see any change in Steve’s first principles — except he’s gotten better and better at it.”

“What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do – but the things that you decide not to do. He’s a minimalist.”

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Slow news day.

Check it out.

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A transgendered golfer, who was born a man and became a woman, is suing the sport’s American professional body because it will not allow her to enter its tournaments.

Of course. Hate to break the news to you, guys, but however much it may look like a woman, it’s still a man. That whole Y chromosome thing, you know?

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The public sector can no longer build. It has tied itself in knots with regulations and interest group special deals, such as the Davis-Bacon sop to construction unions and an astonishing array of environmental assessments, payment rules, appeal rights for rejected contractors, and preference programs for minority-owned firms and small businesses, requiring an army of compliance personnel to administer. Dubious high-speed rail plans are another example: the United States will never be a major market because service would be cost-effective on only a few routes, but instead of buying trains cheaply from a high-volume foreign producer with economies of scale, the Obama administration’s stimulus funding has a 100% Buy American requirement (subscription may be required).

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Who would have guessed that in the 21st century one of the world’s largest military powers, a nuclear state no less, would contemplate handing the reins of power to an untested neophyte?

The exact details of his birth have been kept under wraps. The details of his elite private education are shadowy, too.

He’s the ultimate product of a corrupt political dynasty. He was nurtured for his role by observing the hardball machinations of toadies, thugs and thieves. As a government underling, he was a cipher. His ascension to power was marked by unearned awards and the fawning, irrational devotion of brainwashed throngs.

We don’t know if he has a goal beyond the ruthless exertion of his will upon the masses.

But enough about Barack Obama. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, a/k/a Dear Junior, is pretty scary, too.

Paul Krugman, of course.

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

Is Krugman really an economist, or does he just play one in Washington? THE RICH PAY PEOPLE TO MAKE SURE THEIR MONEY DOESN’T JUST SIT IDLE. One would think that a Princeton Professor would know enough about rich people to know at least that much.

Of course, he could always just be lying to us in pursuit of a political agenda. (No! He wouldn’t do that, surely?)

Freeberg has the goods.

The guy who threw a book at President Obama’s noggin turned out not to be a racist teabag scum, but rather, a slobbering Obama fan; one of the few remaining at this late date.

Media Blackout Time. You’ve not heard a syllable about it since.

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Diversity, ya know?

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Yet another reason to avoid Facebook.

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A dog abandoned by its owner after it was born as a hermaphrodite is looking for a home after having a sex change operation.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

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Bill Goffe recently (2009) surveyed one of his macro principles classes and found, for example, that the median student believes that 35% of workers earn the minimum wage and a substantial fraction think that a majority of workers earn the minimum wage (Actual rate in 2007: 2.3% of hourly-paid workers and a smaller share of all workers earn the minimum wage, rates are probably somewhat higher today since the min. wage has risen and wages have not).

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A woman who became the poster girl of Taliban oppression in Afghanistan after being mutilated by her husband has unveiled her new face to the world.

When Aisha was 12, her father vowed to repay a debt by promising her in marriage to a Taliban fighter. She was handed over to the fighter’s family, abused and made to sleep in a stable with animals.

She was caught after trying to escape and her nose and ears were sliced off by her husband as a punishment.

After being left for dead in the mountains, she crawled to her grandfather’s house and was taken to an American medical facility.

Following time time at a shelter in Kabul, she was flown to the US by the Grossman Burn Foundation in August and stayed with an American family.

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The underlying issue is whether, pursuant to the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by the Senate in 1997, Congress can criminalize any non-peacefu use of a toxic substance. Defendant argues that her particular use (to try to injure her husband’s mistress) was not within the reach of any enumerated congressional power.

A key issue in the case is this line from Tennessee Electric Power Corp. v. TVA (1939): that legal persons, “absent the states or their officers, have no standing in this suit to raise any question under the amendment.” Some lower courts have treated this as dicta but others have not.

This could be a huge step toward–or from–increasing the Constitutional constraints on Federal power. The question of standing is key: Do only the states have the ability to invoke the 10th Amendment? Or can individuals?

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The organizers of the failed Gaza flotilla last June are at it again, planning a flotilla to Gaza next January.  At least this time they are honest that it has nothing to do with humanitarian efforts.

Far be it from me to stand in the way of anybody attempting to embarrass Barry the Magic Negro, but this is aimed at the United States, and we ought to support the Israelis in quashing it.

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So public school officials get caught illegally spy on students. But no one gets fired. And none of the offending parties will be fined. Instead, a municipal insurer (which will ultimately affect taxpayers) will pay a decent settlement to one student, a small settlement to another, and a small fortune to their lawyer.

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Speed the day when the disintermediation that comes with advancing technology makes government one of the middlemen that get eliminated.

Arnold Kling get sociological.

People often care more about status than pay. Most college-educated parents would rather see their offspring work for $40,000 a year at a “professional” job than earn $60,000 a year as an air conditioning repairperson.

I suspect that this has a lot to do with the prevalent ‘send every kid to college’ viewpoint–it’s really just a search for status, the desire to ‘work clean’.

Many, perhaps most, of the people going to college these days (a) just aren’t sufficiently intelligent to handle it and/or (b) aren’t really suited to the sort of work for which college is the appropriate preparation. I’ve got three degrees and I’d much rather be working as a cabinetmaker than at anything I’m likely to get a job doing these days; unfortunately, it’s too late in life for me to switch, so I’ll just wait until I retire and do it as a hobby (if at all; I’m pretty lazy).

As the time horizon gets long, the effects of monetary incentives and status motives may be hard to disentangle. In the short run, you raise marginal tax rates, and few people reduce work effort, because the status of being “employed” is much higher than the status of being a homebody. However, once a few people decide to become homebodies, the status of being a homebody goes up enough that many people choose not to work. So the long run effect of the higher marginal tax rate is much higher than anything you might have predicted, because it has affected cultural norms. I worry about this much more near the median of the income distribution than at the very high end.

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A heavyweight American boffin has dubbed the global warming movement “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist”, and resigned in protest from the American Physical Society, saying that the society has deliberately stifled debate on the subject.

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With silver bullets (rather than wood?), it’s really a werewolf hunter’s special. But you know you still want one.

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‘Sure, we’ll take your money, so long as nobody can tell it’s from you.’