Read it.

Of course not — there’s an app for that….

I am constantly amused by the extent to which those who consider themselves — and are certainly considered by their friends — ‘progressive’ reveal a deep desire to abandon industrial civilization and get back to a Rousseauian primitive state in which we all sit around like Eloi and have a good time in a lovely world where everyone is happy and nobody has to see anything she doesn’t like. And they never seem to realize that the Morlocks lurk underneath and do all of the nasty bits and will eventually present the bill.

Freeberg, as usual, says all that needs to be said.

I tend to agonize much more about take-out. I drive over, she swipes my card, out comes a paper tape for me to sign and it’s got “gratuity” on it — I’m not even looking at my food yet and here I am filling the damn thing out. What’s the food gonna be like? Are they going to bollux it up? Lose track of the order and make me wait an extra twenty minutes? If I don’t know any of this, then why am I tipping?

If a ‘gratuity’ is a necessary part of the price, then why is it not included in the price? Forced ‘gratuities’ are like taxes – they distort the market for a product and make it more difficult for consumers to make informed choices.

If I choose not to pay over and above the formal price of a meal, I don’t see how the ‘waitperson’ has a beef with me, as oppose to his or her employer, who is deliberately paying them a sub-market wage on the expectation that the customer will make up the difference.

I suppose this is just another instance of the ‘entitlement’ mentality that is dragging down our culture. Ah’m agin’ it.

Dean Ericson speaks for the adults.

You kids don’t get it. You sit here splitting libertarian hairs, counting angels on pinheads, spinning out your abstract theories as if they mattered. Listen; in your open-borders fantasyland libertarianism is dead, dead, DEAD! And you and yours are dead. What the hell do you think happens when 100 million foreigners from around the world come pouring in here? They all sit around sipping espresso while discussing the finer points of libertarianism? — it’s laughable! Listen; they wage a merciless politics of my-group-against-all-others, a savage struggle of competing peoples to see who comes out on top and garner the spoils and who shall be plundered and ruled. For pete’s sake use your imagination, try to see what would actually happen, try getting your thinking out of the lazy rut of your precious ideology and *imagine* the reality.

Unfortunately, ‘movement libertarians’ (such as those who run–and inhabit–tReason magazine) are intellectually arrested adolescents, whose concerns are adolescent concerns — I want sex! I want drugs! I want rock & roll! — rather than the concerns of adults, and whose perspective is correspondingly narrow. Perhaps equally unfortunately, our civilization has produced a society so rich and secure that they have the room to bloviate in this fashion without being brought up short by reality, as would quickly happen in a more primitive state of society, full of evil men who think that others exist for their own profit and amusement. People like Mohammed, for example.

MORE: Yes, what would you do? Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil?
ROPER: Yes. I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
MORE: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you … where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down … do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then?

Read it.

Read it. And watch the video.

Most people probably don’t think of Corning as a crime fighting company, but when it sold its Pyrex brand to World Kitchen in 1998, the company accidentally made the illegal manufacture of crack cocaine more difficult—a fascinating example of unintended consequences.

Read it.

If pretty much any area can be declared blighted and condemned, no one’s land is safe unless, of course, they have a lot of political clout.

The trial court ruling is only the first step in an ongoing legal battle. California courts are historically very deferential to blight condemnations, and it’s certainly possible that the trial court will be overruled, at least on some issues.

Read it.

Still anticipating that day when the Church of England gives up on that whole ‘Christianity’ thing as not being sufficiently hip and trendy.

Next Thursday, say.

The Other McCain does his bit.

To be unmarried and childless is the feminist ideal of liberation from male-dominated heterosexist tyranny. “Feminism is the theory; lesbianism is the practice,” as Ti-Grace Atkinson once boldly proclaimed. However, understanding that some women may not be able to attain the sterile nirvana of lesbianism, feminists have encouraged heterosexual women to pursue anti-family practices such as cohabitation, promiscuity, unwed motherhood and divorce.

Unenlightened persons sometimes object that such behaviors do not actually increase happiness for women. But the goal of feminism is not to increase female happiness. The goal is to maximize male misery.

Read it.

A popular jihadist website has reposted a classified list of British intelligence agents, with names and the location of their postings. The post is the most recent example of Islamist websites citing classified intelligence data, released by whistleblower groups like Wikileaks and Anonymouse.org.

Read it. And ignore the video.

An Afghan Air Corps pilot, angered by an argument with nine American trainers at Kabul airport, pulled a gun on the Americans, disarmed them and methodically killed them, officials said today.

The shooter then apparently shot and killed himself.

The Afghan military said the gunman was a 20 year veteran of the Afghan Air Corps who had gotten in an argument with the American trainers during a meeting in a conference room at the Afghan Air Force headquarters.

A U.S. official told ABC News they believe the pilot left the meeting after the argument, then returned and forced the Americans to remove their weapons before shooting them with a U.S. provided M9 semi-automatic weapon.

Must have been that ol’ Islamophobia getting him down.

This is the seventh time this year that coalition soldiers or Afghan security forces have been killed by either members of the Afghan security force or insurgents impersonating them.

Remind me why we’re still in that flea-bitten country. I don’t see a damned thing there worth the loss of a Corporal’s hangnail.

Read it.

See, here’s where Donald Trump might be an asset.

For more than six years Akridge, a developer in Washington, had its eye on a 10-story office building in Bethesda, Md., which had been vacant since the National Institutes of Health moved out in 2002.

But the federal government did not put the building on the market until November 2009. By then, of course, the real estate market had slumped. Akridge and its partner, Rockwood Capital, a real estate investment fund in White Plains, finally bought the building last October, paying $12.5 million, less than the $14 million asking price.

What? The Federal government lose money? But that’s What It Does!

Yet various obstacles make it difficult for the government to unload buildings it no longer wants.

For one thing they must first be offered to other federal, state and local agencies. Officials also have to ascertain if the building has a community use — say, for a homeless shelter.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned – who should instead be known as “free-living”, the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.

I am not making this up.

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has a hard time with it, too:

I think my pro-animal views are pretty well known and I don’t want Cosmo to think I am a snake in the grass, but you’d have to be crazier than a loon, if not downright batty, to buy into this monkey business. I don’t want to rat these guys out, but they should understand that they are the canaries in the coal mine leading to the end of civilization. If we listen to this bull we’ll all go to the dogs. I mean seriously, don’t have a cow, man. I am all for treating animals humanely, but this is a horse of a different color. When I read it I felt like a deer in the headlights. This dog just won’t hunt.

Read it.

Ah, those French; so impulsive.

Read it.

Read it.

… which would be more significant if there were any work to be had.

Read it.

The French, they’re so impulsive.

Read it.

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

Read it.

Lyralisa Stevens was born as a male, but for years has received estrogen therapy in the process to become female. Stevens was convicted in 2002 for murdering a woman in San Bernardino over a $400 clothing debt.

Read it.

With enough data, we can analyze the world.

Note that the #1 CEO name in Australia is Bruce.

Read it.

Government service corrupts, and absolute government service corrupts absolutely.

Read it.

Overall, it is neglected knowledge just how much the “Green Revolution” has slowed down since the 1990s.

Thank you, environmental movement.

Read it.

Any country that has politically significant ‘tribes’ is not a civilized country. Sorry, but it just isn’t.

Read it.

Amazon has something that old-school publishers do not: it knows who buys its books. Simon & Schuster doesn’t know that. Stephen King doesn’t know it. I don’t know it. But Amazon does.

Amazon has a database of the names and e-mail addresses of every one of its customers who has bought not only books by the actual author it wishes to promote, but all other similar books by similar authors.

And Amazon has permission from most of these customers to alert them when a new book they might like comes down the pike. That is HUGE. That’s a game-changer.

Read it.

The 34-year-old, from the island, regularly features Carl Douglas’s 1974 number one hit in his set when he performs at the Driftwood Beach Bar in Sandown.

But after striking up the melody in front of customers at the weekend he noticed a man of Chinese origin walking past with his mother, making gestures at him and taking a picture on his mobile phone.

He said that he later received a telephone call from police – while he was dining in a Chinese restaurant – asking him to meet officers about the incident.

Read it.

I want one.

Read it.

In news which will send a cold chill down the necks of fast-jet pilots and air forces around the world, it has been announced that an unmanned “Predator” drone has destroyed a heavy Libyan surface-to-air missile in Tripoli on Sunday.

And they said Flight Simulator was a waste of time….

Read it.

The Afghanistan jail break where hundreds of Taliban insurgents escaped may have been an inside job, according to President Hamid Karzai’s office.

Oh, ya think?

Read it.

Gotta love Australians.

Read it.

Hundreds of Tunisian and Libyan migrants have set up camp near Paris’s Eurostar terminal with the intention to pay their way into Britain following a French crackdown.

The problem with ‘open borders’ is that it lets the locusts through. Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

After all, they’re just Jews.

The last Hamas abduction took place during Operation Cast Lead, when Hamas members kidnapped an IDF soldier and held him inside an apartment until Israeli forces bombarded the building, killing the abductors and the soldier.

Yeah, well, these Jews don’t fart around.

Megan McArdle has some fun with a New York City politician.

Apparently, that’s what a New York City Councilmember wants . . . at least without permission.  He’s sick of real estate brokers creating imaginary new neighborhoods, and he wants it to stop….

I don’t know which is more characteristic: A politician trying to keep the tide from going out, or a real estate broker trying to recharacterize what’s going on.

Steven Hayward has some fun with Time magazine.

f you want still more indicators that environmentalism is totally passé, look no further than Time magazine’s current issue featuring their latest draft picks of the World’s Most 100 Influential People. If climate change is, as Al Gore (and legions of others) claims, the greatest threat facing mankind evah, why isn’t he on the list somewhere? Or Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN’s climate circus? No Amory Lovins? No Bill McKibben, or any other carbon crusader?

The only environmental figure who turns up on the list is EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, and that’s practically a gimme. Ten years from now no one is going to remember Lisa Jackson, come what may from the EPA.

Read it.

When in danger of drowning, a colony of the critters — thousands of them — will save themselves by joining forces and forming a raft. They pile together and lock legs and jaws.

So bound, an ant raft can survive for months.

Engineers studying animal oddities now report that together, the ants aren’t just stronger. They’re floatier. Airtight, even.

“Water does not penetrate the raft,” said Nathan Mlot, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology and lead author of the ant-raft report published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academies. Even the bottom layer of ants stays dry, he said.

The parallels between fire ants and public employee unions grows increasingly uncanny.

Read it.

I don’t think Obama is a Muslim, but I can understand why many Americans are uncertain about his core beliefs. This year, Obama let Easter pass without issuing any sort of proclamation. That can hardly have been an oversight, as he devoted considerable attention to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, a purely secular event.

Personally, I don’t care whether the president takes note of religious holidays or not. It would be fine for President Obama to say that out of respect for the separation of church and state, he will commemorate only secular holidays and remain silent on all matters of religion. But he doesn’t do that. On the contrary, he has made a point of issuing Presidential proclamations on the occasion of every significant Muslim holiday–Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha.

Nothing suspicious about that, surely? After all, he’s done similar proclamations for Jewish holidays … wait a minute, I’m sure I can find one …

Read it.

Because, you know, there’s nothing more important that we could devote space in the New York Times to discussing.

Read it.

If we bought food they way we buy education….

Read it.

It is a problem most drivers have encountered on a wet morning, when they turn the ignition key only to be met with the fruitless whine of the starter motor as damp spark plugs fail to ignite the fuel.

Read it.

France’s new data retention law requires online service providers to retain databases of their users’ addresses, real names and passwords, and to supply these to police on demand.

There’s a reason why fascism originated in Europe.

The Other McCain indulges in a few Nyah Nyahs.

A little less than a year ago — on May 20, 2010, to be exact — I first took notice of Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s attack on Glenn Beck for encouraging people to buy gold.

But anyone with the most basic understanding of economics could see that the Obama administration’s policies were inflationary and so, despite Weiner’s attacks, if Beck was telling people to buy gold, he was actually giving them sound advice. On that day, May 20, 2010, the latest closing price for gold was $1,192.60 per ounce. As of this past Friday, gold was at $1,503.40 per ounce.

Read it.

I’m thinking body armor.

Read it.

Obama’s politics of envy and jealousy worked in 2008, but were not the central theme of the campaign.  “Hope and change” was the theme, which amounted to nothing more than the delusional belief that a trained agitator from Chicago would be something other than an agitator as president.

As we approach the 2012 campaign, Obama has gone into full throttle envy and jealousy agitation mode.  The Obama campaign has made the decision that turning those who receive against those who pay is good politics.

Read it.

It is pretty cool, in a geeky sort of way: music generated by fractally complex cellular automata, in the style of your choice—classical, dance, rock/pop, hip-hop, etcetera. Every composition is unique, and can be downloaded as a ringtone. They lay claim to the copyright on all the generated music, mind you, raising the interesting question of what counts as “fair use”, but I’ll leave that rant to Cory Doctorow. What sort of saddens me about WolframTones is that it’s yet another nail in the coffin of ten million teenage dreams of musical superstardom.

Read it.

If Paul Krugman were a real economist, this is what he would tell you.

No, his Nobel Prize in Economics does not make him an economist.

Nor do his degrees from Yale and MIT.

He has the credentials but he does not think as an economist.

My proof.

From Paul Krugman: “Here’s my question: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as ‘consumers’? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.”

An economist would not write that paragraph because an economist would know that a patient is indeed a consumer, a person who makes decisions on this product line called medicine. As a consumer, the patient usually decides whether to buy medical services or products, when, where and how much.

Read it. And pay attention–this is important.

Whether you like it or not.

Read it.

After researching what pandas do all day, I was struck by how panda-like we are when we use the Internet.

Roaming a massive world wide web of forests, most of our time is spent searching for delicious bamboo and consuming it. 40 times a day we’ll poop something out — an email, a text message, a status update, maybe even a blog post — and then go back to searching-and-consuming.

Read it.

Ten thousand years ago, people in southern China began to cultivate rice and quickly made an all-too-tempting discovery — the cereal could be fermented into alcoholic liquors. Carousing and drunkenness must have started to pose a serious threat to survival because a variant gene that protects against alcohol became almost universal among southern Chinese and spread throughout the rest of China in the wake of rice cultivation.

The variant gene rapidly degrades alcohol to a chemical that is not intoxicating but makes people flush, leaving many people of Asian descent a legacy of turning red in the face when they drink alcohol.

Read it.

Here’s my concern: We’ve lost much of this craft culture.

Hephaestus, we can agree, would be pissed about this current state of affairs.

Read it.

Read it.

13WHAM News has learned that a convicted rapist serving up to 40 years in prison, is being evaluated for a possible heart transplant.

The report goes on to estimate the cost of the procedure at $800,000. The bill, if the procedure is completed, would be paid by New York state taxpayers.

The felon in question, Kenneth Pike, 55, began serving time in 1996 after his conviction for raping and sodomizing a 13 year-old girl in Auburn, New York. Although the hospital admits having a patient with that name in their care in guarded condition, neither the hospital nor the New York State Department of Corrections would comment further on the matter.

Because that’s why they work so hard for that money. Sounds like another good reason to avoid New York — unless you’re a rapist.