Megan McArdle has an interesting idea.

One suggestion is to give them direct incentives to choose the long-term unemployed over those who are already in work, or out of work for only a short time. How? We could exempt new hires from both the employee and the employer sides of the payroll tax, one month for every month that they were unemployed. The result is a direct wage subsidy of more than 10%. But it is a time-limited subsidy, and one carefully targeted to those who need it the most. By the time the tax relief expires, these workers will have been reintegrated into the labor force. This will cost the government something of course–but not nearly as much as supporting them on welfare, disability, or early retirement–or the prison system.

I find it amusing that the best thing the government can do to reduce unemployment is to … eliminate a burden that government itself places on employment. Gee, what would happen if we reduced the government burden on employment for everybody? Maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t have so much unemployment to ‘deal with’. Ya think?

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The British Library is attempting to raise the money to buy the St Cuthbert Gospel, the oldest intact book in Europe.

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I’m not sure how walking across Australia is going to raise money for charity, unless there are people out there with money who are actually sillier than this guy, depressing though that prospect might be.

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A shadowy industry dedicated to asylum fraud thrives in New York, where many of the country’s asylum claims are filed. Immigrants peddle personal accounts ripped from international headlines, con artists prey on the newly arrived and nonlawyers offer misguided advice.

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

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Oh, like that trick ever worked.

‘We don’t obey laws. Laws are for the little people.’

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We have the technology.

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Remind me how Islam differs from the Mafia, aside from the food.

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Melinda Beck looks at health quality in urban areas compared with that in rural ones, finding that cities generally come out on top. But the suburbs fare better than either, she writes, with fewer low-birth-weight babies, homicides, sexually transmitted diseases and premature deaths than either their urban or rural counterparts.

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We have the technology.

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It has taken three decades, but Americans are finally living through Jimmy Carter’s second term.

Now we’ve got Jimmy Jr. barking at us from the White House about eating our peas and ripping off our Band-Aid. He might not even let us have our Social Security checks.

These are just the latest in a long line of nagging lectures. Already, we have been taught how we should sneeze into the crook of our arm. We need to drive less. And we need to caulk up those drafty houses of ours.

But where’s the Reagan waiting in the wings to save us? I don’t see one.

At least Carter had been a Naval Officer and a nuclear engineer. All Obama has ever been is a ‘community organizer’ who affirmative-actioned his way through college and law school on the color of his father’s skin.

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… companies are worried about another standard that requires they offer care that is “affordable,” or roughly 9.5% of an employee’s household income. The employers say they can’t calculate that without asking employees how much their spouses or dependents earn—a potential privacy violation that may not be verifiable, either.

So employers may be put in a situtation in which they either forced to either violate the law or intrude into the family finances of their employees. At minimum, this provision has the potential to seriously alter how Americans conduct salary and compensation negotiations: Who wants to pay Sally more when her husband brings in a million bucks a year on Wall Street? Why give Mike a raise this year when his wife just made partner at her law firm, and brought in a giant bonus? Even if employers make it explicit policy to avoid making compensation decisions on such factors, the knowledge that one employee’s spouse makes a ton of money is almost sure to have a subtle effect.

Yet another example of how grandiose social nostrums translate into intrusive and burdensome government regulation.

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

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The detainees, linked to a group active in Afghanistan, were detained on Tuesday on suspicion of planning attacks on US installations in Turkey to avenge the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by US forces in Pakistan on May 2, the paper said.

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Wealthy Gulf tourists are expected to continue to flock to France this summer in spite of a law that prohibits Muslim women from wearing the burqa, travel agencies said.

Travel industry experts had initially feared a decline in Arab tourists after the April ban on full veils but now report no decline in peak-season bookings to France.

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

Read it. And watch the video.

Any why not? We’ve already got humans who talk like robots. AlGore comes immediately to mind.

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Mumbai police blamed Wednesday’s attacks on the Indian Mujahideen, a shadowy home-grown Islamist group said to have support from militants in Pakistan, according to source-based media reports that could not be independently confirmed.

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

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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Hint: No.

And it just so happens that the Social Security trust fund is holding $2.6 trillion of special issue Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the government and are even subject to the debt limit. In other words, the trust fund puts Social Security in the first tier of creditors, along with Wall Street and the Chinese, while most other federal spending programs would have to scramble for what is left.

So, in his haste to scare retirees, the president pointed to a program that is in fact one of the least likely to cut benefits even if the debt limit is not increased.

Gee, the President wouldn’t lie to us, would he?

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Welcome to the Obamanation.

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We have the technology.

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Can’t imagine why.

Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State.

Oh, gee, guess the government is not here to help them after all.

And governors around the country, smelling blood in the water, have stepped up their courtship of California companies. Officials in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona and Utah are telling California firms how business-friendly they are in comparison.

The old Soviet Union was business-friendly in comparison.

Companies are “disinvesting” in California at a rate five times greater than just two years ago, said Joseph Vranich, a business relocation expert based in Irvine. This includes leaving altogether, establishing divisions elsewhere or opting not to set up shop in California.

“There is a feeling that the state is not stable,” Vranich said. “Sacramento can’t get its act together…and that includes the governor, legislators and regulatory agencies that are running wild.”

Guess having the state run by Democrats is a real advantage.

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A retired widow who says a brain tumour turned her late husband into a transvestite has launched a £500,000 High Court battle against his decision to cut her out of his will.

And you thought you had troubles….

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Customer service. That’s what it’s all about.

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Breaking news: If you base teacher layoffs on seniority rather effectiveness, you wind up firing some really good teachers and keeping some teachers who are pretty meh.

Not that anybody in the teachers’ unions care. Their priorities are (1) the organization, (2) the existing members of the organization, (3) politicians who are friends of the organization, (4) possible future members of the organization, and (5) the nominal reason why the organization exists in the first place.

OK, that’s not breaking news. But a new study by Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald from the University of Washington does the important and depressing work of quantifying just how many effective teachers (as measured by value-added scores) are getting the boot—and how many senior teachers are handing around until their pensions kick in—thanks to powerful teachers unions and the “last in, first out” policies they favor.

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

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An excellent example of the sort of drivel that passes for reporting these days. The New York Times appears to be specializing in that sort of thing.

An extraordinary amount of personal income is coming directly from the government.

More accurately, an extraordinary amount of personal income is being re-distributed by the government. The government only has money when it take it from a taxpayer, or borrows it from a bondholder.

Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Security and disability, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. In states hit hard by the downturn, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Ohio, residents derived even more of their income from the government.

Of course, this ‘analysis’ doesn’t mention the fact that amounts that the government put into some Americans’ wallets were first taken from other Americans’ wallets. You’d think that the government magically found this money under a rock somewhere.

By the end of this year, however, many of those dollars are going to disappear, with the expiration of extended benefits intended to help people cope with the lingering effects of the recession. Moody’s Analytics estimates $37 billion will be drained from the nation’s pocketbooks this year.

Well, no, they won’t ‘disappear’ — they just won’t be spent by the government, but rather  by the citizens who earned them, instead. (Don’t you just love the phrase ‘drained from the nation’s pocketbooks’? Drained to … where, exactly? And ‘drained’ implies that it was in the ‘nation’s pocketbooks’ in the first place, which if course it wasn’t; the Crustian assumption is that if the government fails to give you a dollar, it therefore has taken that dollar from you.)

People actually get paid money to write this stuff.

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China’s most senior military officer has criticised the United States for claiming to want peace in the South China Sea and then carrying out repeated naval war games.

Who knew the Chinese were Democrats?

Oh, wait, no … they’re Communists.

I’m sure there’s a difference. Let me think about that for a while.

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Once again, rats get all the good stuff.

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Since nationalism is one of the most potent impediments to a universal Crust, it is no surprise that the ruling classes oppose it.

Many believe that a Belgian bust-up would signal the break-up of the wider European “project” which is already under intense strain from popular German, Dutch and Finnish pressure over the soaring cost of bailing out the euro and growing Greek, Portuguese and Irish protests over savage austerity imposed on them by EU central bankers.

Since the ‘wider European project’ is merely another way of privatizing profit while socializing losses, it ought not to come as any surprise that eventually the cattle will get tired of the leeches.

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I don’t suppose that it ought to come as any surprise that the major players in an industry built on monetizing narcissism should throw up parents who are more concerned with their own whimsy than their children’s future. At any rate, it provides us with a perfect opportunity to sneer at people who are richer and prettier than we are.

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AMMAN – Protesters loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad briefly broke into the US embassy in Damascus on Monday and security guards used live ammunition to prevent them storming the French embassy, diplomats said.

Where were the Marines? Probably locked in the basement by some wuss of a Foreign Service officer.

“We are calling in the Syrian charge [d’affaires] to complain,” said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We feel they failed [in their responsibility to protect US diplomats]. We are going to condemn their slow response.”

Ooooh, a Strongly Worded Note. I can hear the Syrian government tremble from here.

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The United Nations, Cyprus residents, and conspiracy theorists will all want to know how a shipment of Iranian explosives came to be in a position where it could be hit by fire and cause such devastation.

A very good question.

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Unions’ political action committees have contributed $4.75 million to federal candidates this year through the end of March, according to the Center’s research. In 2009, union PACs donated $8.44 million — and in 2007, union PACs donated $6.77 million — through the same period.

Their master’s voice….

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Your would-be depravity will be monetized.

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“Basically what it says is, this person, and it lists his name, complained and so I actually have the personal information of the people complaining, and I will then be turning that info over to the police as well.”

Slow news day.

I’m sure that there are at least five people in the world who care one way or another.

I doubt that they know one another, though.

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Duh … because reporting on it would make Obama look bad. If the President were a Republican, it’d be all over the front page.

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Orange sherbet will do much the same thing.

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Over 1.5 million Americans travel abroad each year for medical procedures in what is called Medical Tourism. Services typically sought by medical tourists include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries such as heart surgery, dental surgery, joint replacement, and cosmetic surgeries. However, virtually every type of health care, including complementary & alternative treatments, psychiatry, and convalescent care are attracting Americans by saving as much as 90% off of medical procedures.

U.S. based healthcare providers have taken notice as have self-funded employers and health plans. The reality is most people, if given the choice, would rather travel for medical purposes to Tucson than Thailand to save time and uncertainty. Top surgical facilities realized they can be price competitive and have extra capacity so they have embarked on a program of domestic medical tourism. The byproduct, if you follow it to the logical extreme, is the creation of a national market for non-emergent surgery that has historically been strictly a local market. As the USA Today recently reported, costs commonly vary in healthcare by 600% or more (Source: change:healthcare) for the same procedure and same outcome even in the same city let alone from one to another.

The less friction there is to impede information flow, the more efficient markets become.

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The European Enlightenment was a response to the unprecedented explosion of scientific knowledge that had transformed Europe during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Rapid advances in the physical sciences, and later biology and medicine, led to the conceit that human society — especially political economy — could also be understood and improved by the enlightened scientific mind.

This has been the gravest and most fundamental error of the last three centuries. The philosophe arrogated unto himself the role of architect of a new society, in which outmoded customs and traditions would be discarded in favor of an improved model of society constructed by scientists armed with their superior knowledge and understanding.

The results of all this utopian tinkering — the French Revolution, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Multiculturalism, and the modern welfare state — brought untold suffering upon the human race, culminating in the heap of corpses that is commonly known as the 20th century.

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I am not making this up.

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Yet another thing for you to worry about.

How long before we have ‘activist’ groups lobbying for appropriate legislation? And seeking government funding, of course.

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Hydrostor takes the excess energy created during periods of off-peak consumption and converts that energy into compressed air via an air compressor, which in turn inflates accumulators placed under the surface of a body of water. The depth of the water keeps the air at a constant pressure, helping to store the energy potential.

When power is required, the air is released through an expander and electricity is produced. Through the heat-exchanger, modern compressors and expanders, the system approaches adiabatic operation, achieving efficiencies over 70 percent.

Megan McArdle tries her hand at myth-busting.

Hoover did not tighten up on spending.  According to the historical tables of the Office of Management and Budget, spending in 1929 was $3.1 billion, up from $2.9 billion the year before.  In 1930 it was $3.3 billion.  In 1931, Hoover raised spending to $3.6 billion.  And in 1932, he opened the taps to $4.7 billion, where it basically stayed into 1933 (most of which was a Hoover budget).  As a percentage of GDP, spending rose from 3.4% in 1930 to 8% in 1933–an increase larger than the increase under FDR, though of course thankfully under FDR, the denominator (GDP) had stopped shrinking.

Of course, that doesn’t fit the Crustian Narrative, so it goes down the memory hole.

 But there doesn’t seem to be any question that Herbert Hoover raised both spending and government deficits by rather a lot, and quite bravely considering that his critics–a group led by a fellow named Franklin Delano Roosevelt–“accused the president of ‘reckless and extravagant’ spending, of thinking ‘that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible,’ and of presiding over ‘the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.’ Roosevelt’s running mate, John Nance Garner, charged that Hoover was ‘leading the country down the path of socialism.’ “

A classic case of projection.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, points out some of the many ways in which your government is playing you for a patsy, on your dime.

The downside of our cheerful open-handedness is that it makes the USA a great magnet for freeloaders and unscrupulous lowlifes. In the news, or flitting around the edge of it, at any given time are always half a dozen stories of such.

—

US immigration, asylum, and refugee-resettlement procedures are subjects of intensive study in Third World countries. I doubt if one US citizen in ten thousand could tell you the difference between a K-1 visa and an H-4 visa; in Jakarta, Bogotá, Islamabad, and Ouagadougou, they speak of little else.

—

Job opportunities in print journalism have been dwindling for years. Plenty of citizens would have given a limb for that job Vargas got at the Washington Post. How did he get it? It probably didn’t hurt that he was an affirmative-action three-fer: An immigrant, Hispanic-surnamed (though ethnically Filipino), and homosexual.

—

Zeituni Onyango. Out of the news since her big break last year, Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni remains a poster gal for the propositions that: (a) If a US federal judge orders you to do something and you don’t do it, nothing whatever will happen to you. (b) If you make illegal contributions to the campaign of a presidential candidate to whom you are related, and that candidate becomes president, nothing whatever will happen to you. (c) No matter how deep a pit of debt the USA and its states and municipalities sink down into, there’s always $700 a month and free housing to spare for a foreign freeloader.

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The D-Dalus (a play on Daedalus from Greek mythology) is neither fixed wing or rotor craft and uses four, mechanically-linked, contra-rotating cylindrical turbines, each running at the same 2200 rpm, for its propulsion.

The key to the D-Dalus’ extreme maneuverability is the facility to alter the angle of the blades (using servos) to vector the forces, meaning that the thrust can be delivered in your choice of 360 degrees around any of the three axes. Hence D-Dalus can launch vertically, hover perfectly still and move in any direction, and that’s just the start of the story.

…

D-Dalus is particularly suited for such conditions and can thrust upwards and hence “glue down” on landing, which it can also do on a moving vehicle. Indeed, landing on a moving vehicle is one of the D-Dalus’ many party tricks, and it’s a natural for landing on watercraft. Not surprisingly, since it initially broke cover at the Royal Aeronautical Society conference a few days ago, it has already attracted a lot of interest from military quarters.

The D-Dalus is also near-silent, and has the dynamic stability to enter buildings and handle rough weather with ease – things which existing rotorcraft simply cannot achieve. The aircraft also has a sense-and-avoid system which, in conjunction with its complete lack of vulnerable external parts (such as rotors), means it can hover in very close proximity to vertical rock faces and walls, making it suitable for search-and-rescue operations, as a surveillance drone with hover-and-stare capabilities and as a proactive tool for urban battlefield situational awareness.

We also might see the return of helicopter transport to and from airports again, long since banned due to safety concerns. The conjunction of improved safety with decreased noise are going to make the military jump on this like a duck on a junebug.

This will also go a long way toward a true ‘flying car’.

Read it.

Indianapolis is about to kickoff its Black Expo, an event that was incredibly violent last year and that requires a massive police and volunteer presence to go on this year. On the first day of the expo, two Black people have already been shot.

That’s the problem when an ethnic minority has a dysfunctional culture — they eventually start making trouble for everyone else.

Steve Sailer talks some common sense, as he tends to do.

The other problem is that flying is more dangerous than driving, and not that many people are cut out to be pilots. I’m only an average driver, so I’ve never wanted to be a pilot. I’m not a good quick decisionmaker, and flying seems like a good way for me to turn my bad decisions into my funeral.

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If, of course, that’s something that you want to do.

The company sees two markets for their stove: Families in developing countries, and avid backpackers and campers.

Of course. Everyone who has to burn wood for cooking needs his mobile phone charged. That makes perfect sense.

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Not a problem you run into every day.

Megan McArdle runs the numbers.

I wrote earlier about what the jobs numbers mean for the 2012 election (hint: they are not good for the current administration).  But at some level, who cares?  This is the aspect that concerns Washington most, but it is surely the least important consideration:  neither Barack Obama, nor his staff, are going to have any trouble finding new employment in the event that they are terminated come January 2013.

Yeah, Barack & family aren’t in danger of winding up in a homeless shelter.

That’s why long-term unemployment has become such a problem.  Our unemployment problem is not, as in previous recessions, that too many people are entering unemployment. Layoffs and discharges are actually lower than they’ve been in a decade.  Rather, our problem is that people aren’t exitingunemployment.  And that’s a much bigger issue.

Human capital is like almost any other form of capital: it is a depreciating asset.  The longer you stay out of the workforce, the less valuable you are to potential employers.  You lose market intelligence and industry connections.  Your technical knowledge and skills atrophy.  And as my colleague Don Peck wrote in a devastating piece last year, the psychological effects of long-term unemployment change you permanently.  Many of the people who have now been unemployed for years may never work again, or not at anything like the income that they had been expecting.

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I predict that it will be used primarily by non-English speakers to practice English than by English-speakers wanting to practice foreign languages.

Just a hunch.