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Gotta love Australians.

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Mark Twain is credited with the remark that history doesn’t repeat itself–but it rhymes.* Over the last 48 hours I think we’ve seen an ironic rhyme of an old career-killing incident: Newt Gingrich has had his Romney Moment. No–not the Romney moment you’re thinking; not Newt’s tentative embrace of an individual mandate for health care, which is the 8,000-pound millstone sinking Mitt Romney’s prospects. I think Newt’s problem is his alignment with another Romney–Mitt’s dad, George Romney.

Newt would make a good Vice-President, though.

The Other McCain has some fun with our Politically Correct culture.

Why is it that so many liberals can’t tell the difference between “poor” and “black”?

A local Dallas talk show yesterday afternoon had a caller, from her accent black, who denounced the phrase ‘food stamp President’ as obvious racism, yet was unable to explain how ‘food stamps’ were a race, or linked to any particular race. Being a talk-show host these days is both easy and depressing, I would guess.

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Photovoltaics suffer from gross inefficiency, despite incremental improvements in their power producing capabilities. According to research by a team led by a University of Missouri professor, however, newly developed nantenna-equipped solar sheets can reap more than 90 percent of the sun’s bounty — which is more than double the efficiency of existing solar technologies. Apparently, some “special high-speed electrical circuitry” is the secret sauce behind the solar breakthrough.

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Teachers are giving up trying to make boys read long books because they cannot get past 100 pages, new research as found.

I have a fix for that — two words: Tom Clancy.

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Julien Moise envisioned a device that’s powered by blown air, displaying the time only when you want to see it.

We do these silly things so you don’t have to.

Freeberg has some fun. Watch the  video.

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More than $20 billion has been given to Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001. President Obama is proposing almost $3 billion in aid for the supposed ally in the War on Terror for fiscal year 2012.  That includes:

– $1.6 billion for police and military;

– $150 million for what the State Department calls “good government and democracy building”;

– $122 million for health, AIDS and “family planning”;

– $145 million for education.

The rest goes to economic development and humanitarian assistance.

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The converter employs up to one thousand tiny cantilevers attached to a one square inch surface (e.g. a computer chip) to produce between one and ten milliwatts of electricity — admittedly a very small amount of energy. However, it’s creators are quick to point out that a slew of these converters could generate enough power to perform small tasks in the heat-generating device — things like sensing when a server room gets too hot for comfort.

This is pretty cool.

The Other McCain paints in stark colors.

. . . and she was just 17 years old. Simona was born in Lithuania, when that nation was still under the heel of Soviet despotism. When she was 3 years old, her family emigrated to Israel.

On the evening of June 10, 2001, Simona and some friends wanted to attend a dance party for young emigres from the former Soviet Union.

The beachfront disco that Simona visited that night in June 2001 was at the Dolphinarium, scene of one of the most heinous atrocities of the Second Antifada — a suicide bombing that killed 21 people, 16 of whom were just teenagers.

Simona’s killer was Sa’id Hasan Houtari. Both Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad initially claimed credit for the bombing, but it was eventually determined that Hamas was responsible. News of this murderous atrocity “was greeted with jubilation in Ramallah and parts of Gaza, where people danced in the streets and fired guns in the air. ” Documents captured during Israel’s 2002 military invasion of the West Bank showed that the Palestinian Authority had paid $2,000 to the family of the suicide bomber Houtari, who was celebrated as a “martyr” by the Palestinians.

They don’t want peace. They want dead Jews.

And that says all that needs to be said on the subject.

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

Freeberg has a beef.

Now, I do have my preferences on things, but I’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy. So what’s my beef with the hippies? I didn’t have any complaints when you saw them here & there…I didn’t even complain when you saw them all over the place. Hippies can be interesting people. No, my complaint is when you can’t get away from them. Let’s face it, since the sixties the hippie lifestyle has been one of cognitive dissonance. “We just want to be left alone to grow our vegetables & whatever, and do our own thing, man”…coupled up with…”change the world, one [insert name of incremental thing] at a time. Man.” They like having the props that come with wanting to do-your-own-thing — freedom lovers — but they aren’t wholly dedicated to that. In fact, not even in the slightest. All too often, they want to make other people do things their way, but not admit to it.

And that goes for ‘progressives’ in general. They’re all in favor of ‘power to the people’, except that they mean ‘power to our people and to hell with your people’.

So in the long run, the European smaller-portions thing doesn’t work for me. What seldom to never gets mentioned is that European portions-control is tailored around European physical activities; which, near as I can make out, consists of sitting at a tiny table with a tiny teacup and bitching about Americans. Well, this American likes to spend some calories doing things.

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In the wonderful new world that’s being lovingly sculpted by the nice people who know what’s best for us, peace on Earth will apparently never come until everyone everywhere is either offended or apologizing all the time.

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My own first reaction was: why in the world is the head of the International Monetary Fund a socialist?

Which is distinct from, and not as interesting as, the question of why in the world is a socialist the head of the International Monetary Fund.

But none of it matters, because ‘socialism’ is merely the latest Clever Plastique Disguise by which the Crust attempts to rationalize drawing all power into the hands of the government (i.e. theirs).

Steve Sailer kicks over a rock.

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Thousands of artifacts dating to between 13,200 and 15,500 years ago were uncovered by researchers led by Michael R. Waters of Texas A&M University. They report the discovery in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

The find was located 5 feet below materials left by the well-known Clovis culture, which was once thought to have been the first American settlers around 13,000 years ago.

The Other McCain is perplexed.

It is nowadays said by many that Barack Obama is the worst president in American history. If this is so, President Obama will have eclipsed a mark that most observers believed would stand unchallenged until the final trumpet: The abysmal record of James Earl “Jimmy” Carter.

It’s a tough choice.

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

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Think of it as evolution in action.

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Their latest project, Mycoform, places mushroom roots known as mycelium spores into a mold and feeds them with agricultural byproducts like buckwheat husks. In just over a week at 80 degrees, the spores grow to fill the form, resulting in a light yet solid structure. The brick is heated to 100 degrees when complete to kill the spores, preventing further growth.

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

Is it time to leave yet?

Michelle Malkin has the goods.

Bleeding-heart sympathizers seriously speculated that al-Murisi had simply mistaken clearly marked lavatory doors for the clearly marked cockpit door (because, you know, it’s normal to shout “God is great” repeatedly just before relieving yourself as your plane is about to land). Some federal authorities and media whitewashers proclaimed that al-Murisi’s motives were “unknown.”

So how, despite a massive transportation and homeland security apparatus, did al-Murisi get into this country and get on a plane? He had no keys, no luggage, $47 cash, two curious posted checks totaling $13,000, and a trove of expired and current state IDs from New York and California — where relatives said he had not notified them that he was coming. He is young, male, brought no family with him, had no job or other discernible income, and hails from the terror-coddling nation of Yemen. Yes, the same Yemen that is Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home, harbors al-Qaida operatives who are burning the “torch of jihad,” and is deemed a “special interest country” whose citizens warrant increased scrutiny by DHS when they cross the border illegally.

Well, you know, those TSA guys were too busy patting down suspicious-looking babies to pay attention. Only so many hours in the day, you know.

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There’s trouble down at the Crust.

In affidavits, family friends say that the girl went from being outgoing to anxious and sad.

Yeah, well, being exposed to psychiatrists will do that to you.

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The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned! He is a man when the other is still a baby.

America used to be like that.

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Bottom Line: What often gets overlooked by politicians in Washington is that real people, not corporations like ExxonMobil, ultimately pay all taxes. Higher taxes on oil companies will get passed on to actual people, and can only mean higher prices for consumers at the pump, lower wages and fewer jobs for employees, and/or lower dividends for shareholders. There might be a political payoff to raising taxes on oil companies, but it will be an economic disaster that will also make us more dependent on foreign oil.

Arnold Kling calls out the Crust.

1. The main reason we have them is because parents love it when their kids are placed in them. It is a huge status thing for parents. G&T programs could have negative effectiveness and still be enormously popular.

2. Either you believe your bright kids should experience going to class with students who are not so bright, or you don’t. If you don’t, then pay for private school. G&T allows you to send your kids to private school while claiming they are still in public school.

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The draining away of working-class support isn’t a problem confined to the Labour Party. Left-wing parties all over Europe are facing similar difficulties. Labour was punished by the British electorate last year, polling its lowest share of the vote since 1983, but not as severely as the Social Democrats were by the Swedes, polling their lowest share of the vote since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921. This was the first time in the Social Democrats’ history that it lost two elections in a row. Only 22 per cent of those Swedes in work voted Social Democrat in 2010, a number that fell to 13 per cent in the Stockholm region.

On the face of it, mass immigration has been the undoing of leftwing political parties across Europe since it erodes the shared values that are an essential prerequisite of a well-funded welfare state. Why should indigenous, working populations support the high levels of taxation necessary to sustain generous welfare payments if the beneficiaries are people unlike themselves? If they can’t look at a benefit recipient and think, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”, why should they continue to pay such high taxes? This problem was spelt out by David Willetts a few years ago:

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Well, you don’t want to rush into these things.

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Now all he has to do is change his name to ‘Barack’.

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As recession-racked cities struggle to balance their budgets with everything short of feeling behind sofa cushions for loose change, a growing number are seeking more money — just don’t use the word taxes — from nonprofit institutions that occupy valuable land but by law do not pay property taxes.

Boston has been sending letters to its largest nonprofit institutions this year, telling them the value of their land and asking them to begin making annual payments that would eventually rise to a quarter of what they would owe if they paid property taxes. Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel of Chicago wants the city to begin charging water fees to nonprofits, which have been spared them in the past. And the mayor of Providence, R.I., Angel Taveras, cited Boston’s example this month when he called on nonprofits to pay more money to the city.

The technical term for this is ‘shakedown’.

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OK, the incredible details of the operation to silence Osama bin Laden are, indeed, irresistible — but our government’s been saying way too much about them, tipping off al Qaeda and clueing in other bad guys.

You can’t blame the press; its job is to get the story. But you can finger the White House and other government officials for not keeping enough of a zipped lip on some elements of the historic operation.

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I’d be more impressed with ‘economists’ like this one if, just once, they supported something that wasn’t part of the market basket of contemporary ‘progressive’ policies.

And, of course, economists — once they wander into the political field — are as inclined (some would say, more inclined) to commit the fallacy of Unwarranted Aggregation. For example:

Think about that when arguing that the richest country in the world can’t afford Social Security and Medicare starting at age 65 because “everyone” in this country has seen their life expectancy increase.

The problem with this is that ‘the richest country in the world’ can’t afford anything, because ‘the richest country in the world’ doesn’t have one giant bank account that can be tapped for whatever Cool Idea is the latest fad. That’s the tedious trick that most social ‘reformers’ use so often that it’s worn grooves in everybody’s brains and so is no longer even noticed, much less protested. Calling a country ‘rich’ is just a metaphor, a way of summarizing a technical statistical aggregation so that it can be compared with other technical statistical aggregations; using it as if it were a Real Thing that can serve as a foundation for a policy recommendation is the sort of Stupid Mistake that a Real Scientist tries to avoid — which is why when Real Scientists speak, what they say is hedged around with cautions and qualifiers.

Any purported scientist that says something definite without immediately following it with ‘But of course you have to bear in mind that…’ is almost certainly talking out of his ass, and so said opinion is to be accorded no more deference than one would give to, oh, a newspaper story (i.e. not very much).

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The word “antifa” comes from Antifaschismus, the German term for anti-fascism. Dressed in their preferred street garb of black clothes, boots, balaclavas, and anti-Nazi patches are young people, almost all white, driven by an ideology as powerful and magnetic as communism. French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has warned, “I think that the lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what communism was for the 20th century: a source of violence.”

Antifa activists do not debate their enemies; after all, their enemies are fascists and thus have no legitimacy. Their goal is to confront and silence them.

And this differs from fascists … how?

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Well, of course. What else could she do with it?

Steve Sailer is on the case.

Once upon a time, rich people like the Rockefellers and Bushes donated a lot of money to population limitation charities. Now, that is vastly out of fashion because it’s considered racist.

What if, though, the efforts of Bill and Melinda Gates to force every child to go to college are really a triple bankshot superduper secret effort to lower birthrates among underclass NAMs by making them waste time in college before having children?

After all, they can’t really give to Planned Parenthood any more.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning….

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A disturbing new element has crept into our political life: organized efforts to intimidate private citizens who choose to support certain political causes or otherwise participate in civic affairs. This, as far as I know, is unprecedented in our modern history. Our democracy depends on citizen involvement, and until now, Americans have felt free to participate in public life and to support whatever causes, political and otherwise, they choose. But if the Left has its way, that may be about to change.

History repeats itself. This sort of intimidation was a hallmark of the statist political movements during the 1930s; Hitler’s brownshirts were particularly notorious in that respect. So this appears to be just another attempt to make us more like Europe.

We wrote here about a disgraceful episode in which approximately 500 union members were bused to the home of a lawyer who works for Bank of America, where they “demonstrated” on his lawn, thereby terrifying his teenage son, who was home alone. The event was supposed to have something to do with foreclosures.

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

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Just in case you want to know what you’re missing.

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Syrian tanks shelled residential areas in the city of Homs on Wednesday, targeting civilians at random in a significant escalation of violence to crush the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

History repeats itself.

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Now that’s just silly.

The Other McCain points out that it’s the Democrats, not the Republicans, who are the ‘party of the rich’.

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Hey, remember back in the old days when you could post a picture on Twitter and not have it ransacked by news organisations and picture agencies? Yeah, those days are gone. All these picture sharing apps are looking lovingly at the feed of images coming in and licking their lips. Whether you like it or not, one day these apps will have to monetize and there is gold in them there photos…

So there’s been a huge blow-up around the use of these images. Twitpic is being reported as claiming the copyright on your images. And entertainment news and photo group WENN has signed a deal with the photo app, ” to represent those images.” Oh really? How convenient for everyone. But what about the users?

Lesson: Put your stuff online, others will use it … whether you like it or not, whether your rights are respected or not, whether your privacy is respected or not, whether you’re paid or not, and inevitably to your detriment. Putting your information online is like putting all of your worldly possessions out in the yard and then trucking off to work. Don’t be surprised if it’s not there when you get back — or if it’s been destroyed in the meantime. Verbum sapientis sat est.

Check it out.

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At some point during the attack, the man and the cat reportedly were injured by a knife the man was holding. The man was taken to Cleveland Regional Medical Center before being transported to Houston.

They can surprise you.

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If Repblicans were doing this in, say, New York, this same NPR would be deriding them as kooks and nutt-cases, of course.

Politically, the Tucson metro area has long been more moderate than other parts of the state.

Meaning ‘more left-wing’ in NPR-speak.

The University of Arizona plays a big role. So do government workers.

Oh, ya think?

And southern Arizona was part of Mexico until 1854. So Eckerstrom says it’s more culturally integrated.

Great, let’s sell it back to the Mexicans. Perhaps we can do the same with Travis County here in Texas, the blue zit on the ass of an otherwise sensible state.

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The new underground locomotion tech comes from Professor Daniel Goldman of Georgia Tech and his colleagues, funded in their mechanical mole research by the US Army and National Science Foundation. The prof and his team were inspired by the sandfish lizard of the Sahara desert, which “swims” through the sand seas there.

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A controversial new scheme will allow parents in South Africa to dump unwanted infants anonymously in a ‘babe safe’ mounted on a public wall.

They call it a ‘baby safe’ because ‘garbage pail’ was already taken.

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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

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More germane to showers, we rarely admit how much of who we are is driven by our subconscious minds.  We know our dreams, which are owned and operated by our subconscious, can be incredibly creative.  But on a busy day in modern times we are bombarded with information, and our conscious mind dominates. It’s only when we have quiet time, going for a walk, getting some exercise, or taking a shower, that our conscious minds quiet down enough for our sub-conscious to be heard. And that’s why you get ideas in the shower. The other inputs to your mind are quiet, your body (which is connected to your brain) is relaxed, and the way is clear for the rest of your brain to bubble up interesting thoughts. (Chapter 1,  6 and 12 of The Myths of Innovation explores the science/history of, and advice on, how creativity works – sample chapters here (PDF)).

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Strange but interesting.