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

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An Air Malta flight from London Heathrow was forced to return to the terminal after a passenger started praying and chanting in the aisle just before take-off.

The man got to his knees on Tuesday and started chanting in Arabic and ignored instructions by cabin crew to return to his seat, a spokesman for the airline said.

Passengers panicked when they heard the man chanting, and he had to be restrained by passengers and crew, according to media reports.

Oh, will the Islamophobia never cease?

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An initial study involved 80 undergrads spending five minutes thinking about either their fifteenth century ancestors, their great-grandparents or a recent shopping trip. Afterwards, those students in the two ancestor conditions were more confident about their likely performance in future exams, an effect that seemed to be mediated by their feeling more in control of their lives.

Three further studies showed that thinking or writing about their recent or distant ancestors led students to actually perform better on a range of intelligence tests, including verbal and spatial tasks (in one test, students who thought about their distant ancestors scored an average of 14 out of 16, compared with an average of 10 out of 16 among controls). The ancestor benefit was mediated partly by students attempting more answers – what the researchers called having a ‘promotion orientation’.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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Soon, your gut feeling may actually qualify as an informed decision.

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A gun-wielding woman burst into a North Carolina television station in America on Tuesday forcing the evening newscast off the air, though no one was injured, the station said.

And who hasn’t wanted to do that?

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Pretty slick. The frustrating part is, that even when they figure out how these creatures do what they do, it’s a still bigger chore to emulate it.

The Other McCain pulls no punches.

The latest Census report is not good news for the Party of Baby-Killing and Barebacking.

This means that the odds of Democrats recapturing the House of Representatives before 2023 are roughly equal to the chances of Andrew Sullivan siring a baby with Ellen DeGeneres.

The future belongs to the fertile.

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The rule appears to be: Open is for thee, not for me.

Cringely kicks over a rock.

The short story of what’s happening at the FCC is that the agency is trying to grab power over the Internet and to make that happen is paying-off any number of constituencies. With everything eventually going onto the net as a data service, the FCC wants to avoid irrelevancy, so this is how they are doing it with the help of Google and Verizon. Net neutrality partisans appear willing to accept more oversight if it comes with guarantees against packet throttling. And phone companies are willing to accept broader restrictions if they can still throttle or introduce tiered charges on their only networks that matter anymore — wireless.

These new rules, then, establish three fundamental ideas: 1) the FCC has regulatory authority over the U. S. Internet; 2) Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can’t discriminate between data types like video, voice, or torrents on their wired networks, but; 3) wireless ISP’s can discriminate between data types and applications as long as they aren’t giving preferential treatment to their own competing products or services.

A government agency grabbing for power? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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And well they should.

Two Voices of the Crust whine about how their masters are being treated.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that ‘public servant’ no longer describes (if it ever did) government employees. Their priorities are (a) getting paid, (b) getting paid more, (c) keep getting paid once they stop working, and (d) building their little power empires. Serving the public and providing value for the people who pay their salaries don’t enter into it.

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The US Navy says it has successfully launched a jet fighter into flight using a radical new electromagnetically powered catapult. The feat is important for the Americans, whose next supercarrier will be a disastrous botch without the new tech: it is even more critical for the future of the Royal Navy.

The next US fleet carrier – CVN 78, aka USS Gerald R Ford – is now at an advanced stage of build, and was designed around the EMALS. If EMALS couldn’t be made to work, the US Navy would have found itself in possession of the world’s biggest helicopter carrier. There will be much celebration at NAVAIR following Saturday’s success.

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Bugarach, population 189, is a peaceful farming village in the Aude region, southwestern France and sits at the foot of the Pic de Bugarach, the highest mountain in the Corbières wine-growing area.

But in the past few months, the quiet village has been inundated by groups of esoteric outsiders who believe the peak is an “alien garage”.

According to them, extraterrestrials are quietly waiting in a massive cavity beneath the rock for the world to end, at which point they will leave, taking, it is hoped, a lucky few humans with them.

Most believe Armageddon will take place on December 21, 2012, the end date of the ancient Maya calendar, at which point they predict human civilisation will come to an end. Another favourite date mentioned is 12, December, 2012. They see Bugarach as one of perhaps several “sacred mountains” sheltered from the cataclysm.

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Mitsubishi WD-60638At least two major superheroes, Batman and Ironman, are the alter egos of  billionaire “industrialists,” Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark respectively. Both are the at least titular heads of their respective corporate empires, Wayne Enterprises and Stark Industries. Both are major defense contractors, i.e. arms merchants. Wayne Enterprises is generally described as a multi-industry conglomerate with significant revenues in a number of unrelated businesses, while Stark Industries is primarily in the arms business, but both appear to derive a significant portion of their revenues from selling weaponry of all sorts.

This raises two interesting issues. First, how exactly do these companies get the money for these sorts of secret projects? And second, do our various heroes break any laws when they leave the country or provide this equipment to others?

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China’s state press and publishing body said such words were sullying the purity of the Chinese language.

I note without comment the fact that no government or publication that uses English has ever banned using foreign words because they were sullying the purity of the English language.

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The Wall Street Journal has an editorial about how Oregon’s tax increase to 11% on individual income above $500,000 a year has produced far less revenue than projected. The paper calls it “an instant replay of what happened in Maryland in 2008 when the legislature in Annapolis instituted a millionaire tax. There roughly one-third of the state’s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.”

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

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

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I’m talking about the political troops who worked their rear ends off to take back the House of Representatives and narrow the gap in the Senate, only to watch Barack Obama and Harry Reid run circles in the closing weeks of the lame duck session around Republicans on everything except the Omnibus bill and the Dream Act.

Nothing of a non-emergency nature should take place in a lame duck session, and Republicans should have stuck to their original guns.  It is absurd and illegitimate that the fate of the nation for years or decades to come is being decided by people who have been thrown out of office.

Which just goes to show you that evil always wins; it’s just a question of whether it wins big or wins small.

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A secondary-school pupil in Spain was so upset by the mention of ham in his geography class that his family filed a complaint with the National Police about the teacher’s “racism and xenophobia”. Guess what religion these folks practice?

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The mighty Basilosaurus isis was discovered along with more than a thousand other aeons-dead whale skeletons in an area of Egyptian desert known as the “Valley of the Whales”.

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In the real world comic book characters and their likenesses have been made into toys, video games, movies, television shows, lunchboxes, bed sheets, and innumerable other things.  All of these secondary uses are mediated through intellectual property rights, particularly copyright and trademark rights.  But if Superman were a real person, how might the situation be different?  Could just anyone slap his image or iconic S shield on a lunchbox?  What about uses that suggest that Superman endorses a product or service?  (“Try Metropolis Brewery Beer, the choice of the Man of Steel!”)  Or worse, what about revealing a superhero’s secret identity?

Charlie Stross demonstrates why he’s a best-selling author, and you’re not.

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Something actually useful in the New York Times. Grab it while you can.

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On a quick break between classes last week, Reef Al-Shabnan slipped into an empty room at Catholic University to start her daily prayers to Allah.

In one corner was a life-size painting of Jesus carrying the cross. In another, the portrait of a late priest and theologian looked on. And high above the room hung a small wooden crucifix.

This was not, Shabnan acknowledged, the ideal space for a Muslim to pray in. After her more than two years on campus, though, it has become routine and sacred in its own way. You can find Allah anywhere, the 19-year-old from Saudi Arabia said, even at the flagship university of the U.S. Catholic world.

Now, let someone try to whip out a rosary and say Christian prayers in a Muslim school anywhere in the world, and see what that gets you.

“Because it is an overtly religious place, it’s not strange or weird to care about your religion here, to pray and make God a priority,” said Shabnan, a political science major who often covers her head with a pale beige scarf. “They have the same values we do.”

Except for the little matter of the 1400 years Muslims have been trying to destroy Christianity in the Middle East, of course.

Even a nice Nazi is still a Nazi, even a nice Communist is still a Communist, and even a nice Muslim is still a Muslim.

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“The big mistake of the crafters of the 20th Amendment was that they didn’t really anticipate airplane travel,” said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale University law professor. “It takes a lot of time to go from a district in Texas by train to Washington, D.C. Who’s going to schlep there?”

Still, for the next 47 years, the amendment seemed mostly to work as intended. There were some lame-duck sessions, often in wartime, but no grand legislative agendas.

Then, historians say, things started to change.

Fighting over the lame duck

In 1980, Democrats came back after losing the presidency and the Senate and passed major bills, including one that created the Superfund toxic-cleanup program.

“We wouldn’t need to be doing all this in the lame duck if the Republicans had not obstructed and delayed everything that we had been trying to do,” said Regan LaChapelle, a spokeswoman for Reid. “I don’t see anything wrong with working for the American people to get things done.”

Uh, guys, the Democrats had a majority. Even if every Republican voted NO, it wouldn’t matter — if you weren’t being sandbagged by your own party. ODF.

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Well, maybe. There are other issues (like civilian faculty treating military faculty like dog shit) that may stand in the way.

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

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Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled their homes to semi-autonomous Kurdish areas and neighbouring countries since a Catholic church in Baghdad was attacked six weeks ago, the U.N. refugee agency has said.

Some 1,000 Christian families, roughly 6,000 people, have arrived in the northern Kurdish areas from Baghdad, Mosul and Nineveh, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. Several thousand have crossed into Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Many spoke of receiving threats or leaving out of fear. Fifty-two hostages and police were killed when Iraqi forces tried to free more than 100 Catholics taken hostage during Sunday mass on October 31.

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

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Two of the 10 Northeast states that agreed to dedicate millions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions and promote green energy have reneged on their promise, instead diverting substantial funds to saving their budgets.

New York and New Jersey over the past year have raided accounts set up under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first mandatory U.S. cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide. The accounts were created to pay for energy efficiency programs aimed at reducing the region’s pollution by 10 percent by 2018.

Citing their example, New Hampshire dipped into its fund in June to help balance its budget.

New York took $90 million last fall _ roughly half of its fund; New Jersey zeroed out its fund, taking all $65 million; and New Hampshire, a much smaller state, took $3.1 million in June. In all three states, the money was used to pay the state’s bills.

Hey, hiring and paying government workers is job one. Pollution control we get to if there’s anything left.

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Apparently, White tried to help the Garcias — and they robbed him, killed him and dismembered his corpse.

From In Cold Blood to Helter Skelter, from the two punks who killed Matthew Shepard to the weirdo who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, the tale of the petty criminal who eventually makes the major leagues of serious, shocking crime is a very old one.

Another reminder that those who break the law, no matter how ‘trivial’ the offense may be, are people who have demonstrated that they do not possess the psychological curbs against law-breaking that are society’s first line of defense against descent into chaos. The only thing that allows society to function normally is our confidence that the vast majority of people we encounter every day have these curbs. Otherwise you wind up with Beirut or Zimbabwe. That’s why these people need to be removed from any opportunity to interfere with the lives of others; the only argument is about which is the most effective way to do so; and the proper criterion is the welfare of the law-abiders, not the purported ‘rights’ of the law-breakers.

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Cyber-gumshoe?

The focus on background screenings comes as some 20 million Americans are using dating sites, more than double the number five years ago, according to the market research firm IBISWorld. While they are finding casual dates and even love, they are also encountering married people pretending to be single or, worse, sexual predators and convicted felons.

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Because, you know, it couldn’t have been a miracle or anything that. No, no, perish the thought. It was merely by some odd quirk of fate that some Jewish kid was born around the same time. Purely a coincidence. Entirely unconnected. I was just poking around the sky and happened to notice it, and I said ‘Huh. Look at that.’ Otherwise the date is of absolutely no significance.

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The New York Times Sunday Week in Review section has an article headlined, “Is Going to an Elite College Worth the Cost?”

Not mentioned are Harvard dropouts Bill Gates (Microsoft founder) and Time magazine person of the year Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder).

Maybe the answer to the Times question is, “Yes, so long as you don’t stay too long.”

Yeah, staying too long at Harvard will rot your brain. Look at Larry Summers.

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My mother just came back from purchasing Israeli-made shoes from the store in downtown Montreal that is being subjected to a boycott because it sells Israeli-made shoes. Twenty people showed up to buy shoes after Eric Duhaime called on Montrealers to show solidarity with the embattled store owner. She, with others, was greeted by about a hundred threatening Arabs with Hezbollah flags shouting anti-Semitic slogans and blocking the street completely. She says that several intimidating Arabs took her picture as she was going inside and one was even filming. One young Arab called her a Jewish sow. The store owner is getting death threats and is seriously depressed. He said that he won’t given to these terrorists’ demands. But how long can he keep it up before going out of business?

That’s some Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

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Let’s see, it’s the Republicans’ fault that he can’t stop Obama from doing an end-run around Congress. Right.

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The Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was removed from the country on Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between American and Pakistani spies, with some American officials convinced that the officer’s cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

Hint to the Obamassiah: Pakistan is our enemy, not our friend.

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April Webster became pregnant by her boyfriend, Nathan Fishbourne, when she was 13.

She gave birth to the couple’s son, Jamie, four weeks ago.

The pair are now negotiating over the baby’s custody arrangements.

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Everything you need to know about Islam that the Crust are attempting to hide.

To learn about Islamic law, what we read must have these characteristics:

1.         It must be written by a Muslim.
2.         The author must be recognized within the Muslim community as an expert on Islamic law.
3.         The work must be intended for a Muslim audience.

This is not as difficult as it seems. Despite what Muslim spokesmen would like you to believe, it isn’t necessary to know Arabic, since four-fifths of the world’s Muslims don’t understand Arabic. Many authoritative books on Islamic law that are intended for a Muslim audience are written in English.

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The case – one of the most prominent ethics investigations undertaken by the committee – came apart as committee and staff members argued over whether documents should be subpoenaed and when the trial should be scheduled and for how long. They all expected Waters to agree to a negotiated settlement, which she ultimately declined.

The breakdown of the Waters inquiry highlights the difficulties that the ethics committee faces in policing House colleagues. The panel sought to restore public confidence in its work during the current Congress, scrutinizing nearly two dozen members for possible transgressions and preparing for several trials. But its staff of 14 was quickly overwhelmed.

Guess they’re more crooked than they looked.

Perhaps the only issue on which all of those involved in the probe agree is that they had expected Waters to concede that she had made mistakes and to accept an admonishment. Her refusal to do so caught everyone by surprise and caused the staff to renew the search for evidence.

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

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How’s that whole Global Warming thing working out for ya?

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Last month, Iowa voters ousted three of the seven justices on the Iowa Supreme Court – a move that was widely recognized as a referendum on the court’s decision to strike down a ban on same-sex marriage last year.

Apparently the ouster of the trio wasn’t enough for some new members of the Iowa House. Three freshman Republican members are drafting legislation that would begin the process of impeachment for the remaining four justices on the state Supreme Court.

According to this story in the Iowa Independent, the trio is working on the legislation that could result in the removal of the four justices — Mark Cady, David Wiggins, Daryl Hecht and Brent Appel.

Democracy! Such a deal!

“Are Republicans really considering shutting down state government to pursue an extreme, partisan agenda that will do nothing to help middle class families?” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Democrat, said to the Iowa Independent. “The House has no business spending weeks on impeachment proceedings instead of putting Iowans back to work and growing our economy.”

Same old tired Democrat talking points! How stale! Note the tired hack phrases ‘extreme partisan agenda’ and ‘middle class families’ … as well as the standard socialist agenda that it’s the government’s business to ‘put Iowans back to work’ and ‘grow the economy’, when it was the government that caused the problems in the first place.

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Brendan O’Neill, the editor of spiked, writes a furious and fascinating book review asserting that some neo-Malthsuian progressives are valorizing homosexuality as eco-friendly. Why? Because gays and lesbians are less likely to have children and children despoil Mother Earth. O’Neill notes that he had encountered this sentiment before in Anthony Burgess’ dystopian novel, The Wanting Seed, in which the state harshly discriminates against heterosexual breeders and promotes homosexuality in a future overpopulated Britain. Now O’Neill argues that some anti-ferility elite opinion is beginning to advocate turning dystopian fiction into dystopian fact.

Whenever I see the term ‘breeder’ I always think of Pak Protectors. Gay people as Pak Protectors? Not in this universe.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds kicks over a rock.

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A farmer unwittingly shot two suspected burglars who were allegedly targeting a cannabis factory, which he didn’t know existed, on his property.

British news is always more interesting than American news.

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Most of the time when property is damaged, the property owner has insurance that will pay to restore their property to approximately the state it was in before the loss occurred. But when Doomsday goes on a rampage of destruction across at least three states or the Joker blows up half of downtown Gotham, insurer’s aren’t actually going to want to pay for that, and there is reason to believe that under the terms of standard insurance contracts, they wouldn’t have to. The reason has to do with the way insurance policies are written, which is a matter of contract as much at it is a matter of law.

So the focus of this post is not whether supervillains can get insurance, but whether standard insurance policies will pay for damage that they cause.

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Is it just me, or has the quality of commentary in the Wall Street Journal plunged downhill lately?

On its face, there’s something strange about this notion: that a state that does not recognize same-sex marriage will not allow two women, married to one another in a different state, to get a divorce.

Strange to a Crustian metrosexual, perhaps, but not strange to an intelligent adult. No marriage => nothing to dissolve. Duh. (This guy graduated from law school and clerked for a federal judge? Our education system is worse off than I thought.)

James Blacklock, a lawyer in the attorney general’s appellate division, said that Texas law forbids any action that recognizes or validates a same-sex marriage granted in another state, even if the point of the action is to dissolve such a marriage.

So he knows the issue, he’s either too stupid to understand plain English or in denial about it.

Freeberg nails it yet again.

Yup, women men do not want to see are bitching away about the women men do like to see. Hey, I wonder if that simple statement just sums it all up. Ya think?

Megan McArdle kicks over a rock.

So the latest talking point I’m seeing is that the individual mandate is no big deal–just a tax dodge like we’ve always had.  The government is raising taxes, and then giving a deduction of equal size to those who buy health insurance.  Why the fuss?

Well, for starters, this is not what they wrote in the law.  They called it a penalty.  Now they’re worried that maybe their Commerce Clause powers aren’t quite as great as they thought, suddenly it’s a tax.

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Satellite images pulled from Google Maps showing empty Chinese ‘ghost-cities’ surfaced and went viral yesterday, capping months of allegations that there are allegedly over 64 million brand new vacant apartments in China, enough to house over 200 million people.

The almost post-apocalyptic images of excess property are said to be the result of Chinese government pressure to increase internal economic activity and hence net GDP by any possible means, even building entire cities even when it’s unnecessary.

Thomas Friedman, call your butler.

Well, there it is.