Read it.

Read it.

EVERYTHING YOU’D WANT TO KNOW ABOUT VIKINGS is IN THAT BOOK.

Read it.

Rep.-elect Tim Scott (R., S.C.) said Wednesday that he’s not going to join the Congressional Black Caucus.

“While I recognize the efforts of the CBC and appreciate their invitation for me to caucus with them, I will not be joining at this time,” Mr. Scott said in a statement. “My campaign was never about race.”

Thereby cementing the CBC’s position as an explicitly Democrat organization. (We already knew that it was an explicitly racist organization.)

Read it.

Read it.

Yet the animal that may well be New Zealand’s most bizarrely instructive species at first glance looks surprisingly humdrum: the tuatara. A reptile about 16 inches long with bumpy, khaki-colored skin and a lizardly profile, the tuatara could easily be mistaken for an iguana. Appearances in this case are wildly deceptive. The tuatara — whose name comes from the Maori language and means “peaks on the back” — is not an iguana, is not a lizard, is not like any other reptile alive today.

In fact, as a series of recent studies suggest, it is not like any other vertebrate alive today. The tuatara, scientists have learned, is in some ways a so-called living fossil, its basic skeletal layout and skull shape almost identical to that of tuatara fossils dating back hundreds of millions of years, to before the rise of the dinosaurs. Certain tuatara organs and traits also display the hallmarks of being, if not quite primitive, at least closer to evolutionary baseline than comparable structures in other animals.

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Well, that’s a relief.

The ones who do hate the rich, the article explains, are journalists and professors jealous that their college and private school classmates are making so much more money than they are.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

Keisha Buchanan, the former Sugababes singer, says the success of the middle-class Kate Middleton with Prince William has given her hope with Prince Harry.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Read it.

And, of course, these are THE RICH who need to be taxed more.

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Bloomberg reports:

Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said.

Notice that he’s going to take “a job.” It doesn’t tell us what kind of job because it doesn’t really have to. The important thing is that he’s on the payroll. What skills does he bring to the table? He’s a smart guy but one thing he brings is his ability to call people in the White House and the Fed and have them return his call.

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And yet: Which of us has not been tempted to do the same?

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By now it is evident to all but the most brassbound liberals, incorrigible in their refusal to face hard facts, that Islam contains within it a sizeable faction of determined men whose politics derive from the warmaking doctrines of the Jihad. Wherever Islam is, this faction will be also. Virtually every time a Jihadist is arrested (as one recently was in Portland) for conspiring to bring fire and slaughter to unarmed American civilians, we are treated to a mass of all-too-familiar reporting to the effect that almost no one suspected that this quiet kid who kept to himself could possibly turn to Jihad. Indeed, in several recent cases it appears that the division between the Jihadist and the elusive moderate Muslim drives all the way down to the household level. So wherever Islam is, the Jihad will be.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the folly of liberalism on this matter more clearly than that its adherents persist in laying hold of the old idiom of racism in abusing their interlocutors, when it is evident to anyone with a modicum of curiosity that this is chiefly a doctrinal and cultural, not a racial matter. Speaking from personal experience, it’s now been almost five years since I spent a portion of an evening at an event at the University of Georgia arguing (quite civilly) about the Jihad with a Muslim of Swedish extraction and American heritage.

Read it.

We’ve been hearing about the science of Star Trek for years, but what about the engineering of Star Trek? Star Trek’s writers may pay precious little attention to scientific accuracy, but sadly, they pay even less attention to engineering. Science and engineering are two different, albeit related concepts, and Star Trek has successfully butchered them both, while claiming to champion them.

Every Federation starship has a chief engineer, right? And the chief engineer’s job is to keep everything running and solve problems, right? Right, but unfortunately, that’s about the only thing they get right.

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

If I had a dollar for every time the Enterprise nearly blew up, I’d be a rich man.

Read it.

A fascinating list, and some pretty recent stuff; which makes me wonder what else is out there waiting to turn up.

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‘Stand back, everyone. I take very large steps.’

My question is: How come they all dress like girls?

Megan McArdle enjoys the irony.

Perhaps you have to be familiar with New York politics to understand how truly bizarre this story is: 1199 is dropping its health care coverage for children.  1199 is the extraordinarily powerful local health care workers’ union which has pushed New York State’s Medicaid reimbursements into the stratosphere.  The state not only has much higher than average Medicaid enrollment, but also spends more per-enrollee than any state but Alaska.  Every time a governor tries to cut into, say, the funds for home health care workers, the union runs tear jerking ads which imply that the governor is trying to end health care for everyone in the state.

Read it. And watch the video.

Gates of Vienna is one of the websites I read every day.