Read it.

Gee, I feel a lot safer now. How about you?

Read it.

The “Bimbo” in question is Bimbo Ayelobola, who, as we discussed the other day, came from Africa to Britain in order to give birth to her quintuplets (at a cost of £200,000) and have them taken care of, as long as their special needs exists, by the British taxpayer. Hey, if it’s ok with Britain, why shouldn’t it be ok with Bimbo?

One of the major defects of the British National Health Service is that its doors are open to everyone, whether a British taxpayer or not. Hence Britain sees a lot of ‘medical tourism’, as here, that is just one of the feathers breaking the camel’s back of the UK budget. This is a great deal for the parasites but not so good for the hosts.

Charlie Stross looks at A.I.

Not only is SF as a field full of assumed impossibilities (time machines, faster than light space travel, extraterrestrial intelligences): it’s also crammed with clichés that are superficially plausible but which don’t hang together when you look at them too closely. Take flying cars, for example: yes, we’d all love to have one — right up until we pause to consider what happens when the neighbour’s 16 year old son goes joy riding to impress his girlfriend. Not only is flying fuel-intensive, it’s difficult, and the failure mode is extremely unforgiving. Which is why we don’t have flying cars. (We have flying buses instead, but that’s another matter.) Food pills out-lived their welcome: I think they were an idea that only made sense in the gastronomic wasteland of post-war austerity English cuisine. I submit that AI is a similar pipe dream.

Jonah Goldberg does an e-mail letter (free) that has, well, Jonah Goldberg writing in it.

And speaking of bad looks, I do wish Mexico would stop pounding its spoon on its high chair about these outrageous assaults on “Mexican sovereignty.” Again, they should be pissed about the guns on the merits. But it is difficult to take the whining about sovereignty too seriously from a country that, as a matter of policy, encourages massive illegal emigration to our country and calls us racist and inhumane when we do anything to stop it. Indeed, Mexico’s official position is that if we adopted the same immigration policiesthey use to police illegal entrants from their southern border, we would be committing an outrage.

…

The logical upshot of liberalism’s hatred of hypocrisy is that it is better for the liar to champion lying, the glutton to advocate gluttony, the adulterer to celebrate adultery, than for someone to preach the right thing if he himself occasionally does the wrong thing. Better to let your failings define you and be happy about it, than to let your ideals define you but then fall short of them, for that opens you up to the charge of hypocrisy (or inauthenticity, or denial, or whatever).

…

But when Quadaffhi starts killing his own people, Obama insists that our ideals and, in effect, our honor demand that we stop him. When Bashar Assad starts doing the same thing, our honor and ideals are apparently on a bus to Atlantic City and realism is left manning the office.

Read it.

The most serious problems occur when the bus is passing through La Boca, a working-class district in the south of the city well known for its tango dancers and brightly painted houses.

Last November the route was changed to avoid a particularly violent street after a nine-year-old girl from the city of Córdoba was seriously injured when a stone hit her in the face. The most serious incidents are logged with the police, but they appear powerless to stop the problem.

Read it.

Ah, the cry of we-want-the-future-now folks has been “where’s my flying car?” Well, a very simple version of one may finally be coming to market. A year ago, we noted that the Terrafugia Transition “roadable aircraft” had been approved by the FAA for flight as a light sports aircraft (meaning you don’t even need a full pilots license). But it apparently took another year for the Transition to get the necessary “exemptions” from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to let the thing go on the road.

Note that the key roadblocks to ‘the future’ are caused by the government … for our own good, of course.

Read it.

Shear-thickening fluids, whose properties are so strange they earn the moniker “non-Newtonian,” increase in viscosity when under great strain. A simple shear-thickening fluid can be made by combining cornflour with water, Sheffield informs. Get the ratio just right, and you’ll have a substance that will remain a fluid when left alone, but will turn rigid and behave like a bouncing ball if you throw it against concrete. Explains Sheffield: “Under normal circumstances, the particles in STFs repel each other slightly, however following sudden impact, the extra energy in the system proves stronger than the repulsive forces, causing the particles to clump together in structures called hydroclusters, which bump into each other, consequently thickening the fluid.”

Read it.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is floating a proposal that would alter the way workplace elections are currently held. The board, made up of three Democrats and one Republican, has drafted rules that would speed up the election process and require employers to hand over information on its employees – like email addresses and phone numbers to prospective unions.

Thursday, former union steward Larry Getts testified on Capitol Hill, telling members of the House Education and Workforce Committee that union officials never needed help tracking down non-union workers.

“We found the UAW officials waiting in our break room,” Getts said. “They would even follow us to our vehicles before and after work, some to our homes.”

Getts testified that he eventually left union leadership after it became clear they were intent on abolishing the right to secret ballot elections.Supporters of the NLRB proposal say the current system has long favored employers, and it’s time for a change.

“When it takes 12 years to try to get a place unionized something is wrong,” said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., as some attending the hearing broke into applause.

Freeberg distills the essence.

1. Before we realize absolute success in making life completely perfect and before everybody’s safety and happiness are resolutely guaranteed, I think we can stop making new rules. Yeah, before we get there. For no reason, just stop. Otherwise, all things within our ability fall into two categories: What’s already illegal now, and what will be someday. And, you know, I don’t like that.

2. I don’t want my elected officials to make me a better person. I don’t think they have what it takes to do that, even when my favorite guys are the ones that got elected. It’s just not in the job description.

3. I think the whole point of taxation is to raise revenue for vital services. Their purpose is not to punish or reward people, or offer people incentives to start or stop doing certain things.

4. If you have a hot new idea, I think it should be tested out someplace where it doesn’t impact anyone, before we force it on people. That’s just the way I see it. For this reason alone, I can’t be a democrat.

5. I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

6. I don’t think we’re more civilized when we find reasons not to lock up violent criminals, or look for excuses not to execute them when they’ve killed innocent people. That doesn’t protect the innocent. Actually, I think that’s barbaric behavior, because innocent people get hurt and we know it. I think we’re more civilized when we pull the switch.

7. I think when some people produce goods and services of value and other people do not, the people who produce things can go ahead and do their producing without advice or regulations from the non-productive people. Those non-productive people, if they knew anything about the best way of producing things, I figure they’d already be doing it.

8. The way I see it, humans are part of nature. Even when you take humans out of nature, this doesn’t make nature “pristine,” or free of malice, violence, death, even sadism…so what’s the point? Leave humans in it. We belong in it.

9. I don’t think it’s right to count “jobs created or saved.” I think when you create jobs with money you forcibly removed from other people by means of taxation, you need to produce a “net”; you need to factor in the jobs that failed to materialize because the people who would’ve created them, had to worry about these taxes.

10. I think when you earn money, and you pay all the taxes in effect at the time, whatever’s left belongs to you. And that is perfectly okay.

11. It remains okay even if you end up with vastly more money than some other guy. I don’t think there is any one point where you’ve made enough money.

12. I respectfully disagree with Michael Moore. Private property is not a “national resource.” It is a resource that should be placed under the control of the people who own it.

13. I’m worried about the exploding public debt. I’m worried about it when we debate tax policy…AND…unlike democrats, I keep worrying about it when we discuss where the money should be spent. I can’t turn it off like a switch.

14. By the way, those two are separate in my mind. Because I’m not mentally disabled, I don’t think a tax cut is something that “costs” us anything.

15. When we talk of the virtues of “choice,” I don’t think sex means an awful lot. To be a democrat, you have to think choice is important when you’re talking about sex, then you have to be suddenly anti-choice when we’re not talking about sex anymore. I just can’t bend that far.

16. I don’t think, when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

17. However, when a child has both a mother and a father…I do think, generally, that is good for everybody.

18. Drill, baby, drill. Consuming resources is a natural part of living life, and going after those resources is a natural part of consuming them. There is no shame for anyone in any of this. The shame is in compelling others to make sacrifices you yourself are not willing to make.

19. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they voted for Obama.

20. I don’t think people are necessarily better because of the color of their skin.

21. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they’re women.

22. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they’re gay.

23. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they choose to be vegetarians.

24. I don’t think people are necessarily better if they happen to work for the government.

25. I know too much to be a democrat. I know you can’t restore the hours that the library is open, by cutting defense spending.

26. I don’t think a nation can tax its way into prosperity. I don’t think the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. And if they are, then that’s great, because you can only get so poor, but if the rich are getting richer then that would mean the economy is doing better, and who would have a problem with that?

27. I don’t believe the middle class is taking any kind of a beating when it is found that fewer people are in it. I don’t think organized labor is taking a beating when there are fewer members. I don’t think people appreciate the environmental movement more when they see more hybrid cars or eco-cups. I don’t think college graduates enjoy a brighter future when there are more college graduates. In short, I can’t be a democrat because I appreciate the simple economic truth that commodities become precious through scarcity, not through abundance.

28. I think a study that is funded by the government has just as much chance to be biased and inaccurate, as a study funded by oil companies, in fact the government-backed study has greater potential to rely on false information.

29. I don’t believe in “unfettered capitalism.” Such a thing is an impossibility, because you cannot have capitalism without a free market, and in a free market all transactions 1) must involve at least two parties representing different interests, and 2) are suspended by default, permitted to go forward only if both sides believe they’re coming out of it ahead. Capitalism is self-regulating. Socialism, on the other hand, works within the rules only until such time as it figures out it needs to break the rules, and then consistently tries to find ways to break the rules.

30. I know Ronald Reagan was right: If not a one among us is sufficiently competent to manage his own affairs, there cannot be anyone among us sufficiently competent to manage everybody else’s.

And that pretty much says it all — thirty pieces of gold to match the Democrats’ thirty pieces of silver. Print this out and post it on your wall. Put it on the ceiling above your bed so you see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Stick it on the front door so that people will know what real American’s believe.

Read it.

A 12th Century guide to Spain’s Way of Saint James pilgrimage has disappeared from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

Read it.

A document drop by LulzSec has revealed an ominous bulletin from police officials in Tucson, Arizona. In short, law enforcement is advised to be on the lookout for Hezbollah terrorists operating in the traditional smuggling corridors on our (wide-open) southern border with Mexico.

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

Because what could possibly go wrong with Hezbollah terrorists, who are assisting Mexican drug cartels, which have been armed and equipped by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice?

What, indeed?

Read it.

As you sit out there, those of you foolish enough to work in the Private Sector or those of you stupid enough to work for state governments that are tightening their belts, wondering if you’ll have a job in six months or if you’ll be forced to take a cut in pay just to keep you job, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that the fifty-four percent of The White House staff each got, on average, a sixteen percent raise between 2010 and 2011. Of course, that was down from the seventy-five percent got raises between 2009 [the first year of this Administration] and 2010.

Democrats — hands in your pockets since the Great Depression.

Read it.

Mr. Kristof doesn’t explain why labor should be taxed higher than capital — in fact just few paragraphs earlier he was arguing that it was wrong for tycoons to be taxed at a lower rate than personal trainers or chauffeurs. It’s hard enough in this economy to get people to take entrepreneurial risks to create jobs and growth; I don’t see the wisdom in moving to reduce the rewards available to entrepreneurs. I suppose there’s a certain logic to the Reagan-era rates that set capital gains and ordinary income rates at the same levels. Then labor and capital are taxed the same. As for Mr. Kristof’s reference to the “low capital gains rate,” it’s worth remembering that quite a few of America’s international competitors — Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland — have capital gains tax rates of 0%. Compared to that, America’s 15% rate isn’t “low,” it’s high.

Everybody has a bright idea for how much tax — usually more — the Other Fellow ought to pay.

Read it.

Those of us who don’t live on Animal Farm can easily discern ways to grow revenue without raising real taxes.  This involves eliminating special interest “tax extenders” for selected individuals, industries, or social engineering endeavors – and those “credits” granted to people who have no tax debit in the first place.  We should leave those deductions and credits that are 1) broadly available and 2) do not completely eliminate someone’s tax liability.

Let’s see whether the Half-Blood Prince is really serious.

Read it.

Don’t look now, but the real action in Washington this week isn’t the parti san wrangling over the debt ceiling but something — literally — even more incendiary: Operation Fast and Furious, which seems about to explode right in the face of Attorney General Eric Holder — and maybe other administration officials, too.

…

The ATF’s acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department.

Democrats discovered violating the law.

How surprising.

Steve Sailer looks at questing in America.

One day, you should compile all the ongoing Ponce de Leon like quests in contemporary America:

1) The Great White Defendant
2) The Great Bright Illegal
3) The Magic Bullet To Close The Achievement Gap (or Home Ownership Gap or Firefighter Test Scores Gap)
4) The Great Moderate Muslim (I guess this one’s more of an international scope) or Democracy Loving Islamic Nations That Love Us Back
5) The Great Black Quarterback
6) The Great Republican African-American
7) The Great Gay Male Athlete (in sports people care about) or The Great Gay Soldier [recent — there are a lot of them from awhile ago]
8) The Incredible Latino Supervote (as you once called it)
9) The Great Female Movie Director [or cinematographer — I campaigned for Mandy Walker to become the first woman to get an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography for Baz Luhrman’s Australia but the insensitive sexists in Hollywood didn’t listen to me]
10) Green Jobs, Shovel Ready Jobs

Steve Sailer looks at trial by jury.

The law in Texas didn’t exactly have an exception that said you could shoot somebody if he had it coming, but most jurors in Texas in the 1950s-1970s felt that some people just deserved some shooting.

‘Judge, he needed killin’.’

Read it.

If growing numbers of Muslims in Egypt have an intrinsic hatred for all things Christian— demonstrated days ago by the torching of eight Christian homes on the rumor that a church was being built—let us not forget that this hate has instrumental, that is, economic benefits: the extortion of money from the non-believer—tribute from the conquered infidels to their Islamic overlords—otherwise known as jizya.

Considering that Mohammed spent much of his career as an armed robber (and mass murderer), this should come as no surprise. Perhaps Tony Soprano missed his true calling.

Read it.

Let us suppose that everything the prosecution alleged about Casey Anthony is true – that she decided she didn’t want to be a mom anymore, killed her small child with chloroform, dumped her body unceremoniously in a swamp, and proceeded to go out partying for the next 30 days. While I agree that this is reprehensible behavior, our Supreme Court decided in 1973 that it was also constitutionally protected behavior, and that if mothers decide they want to kill their children in order to prevent an interruption in their nightlife, then the State can’t say “boo” about it one way or the other, so long as the child is in utero.

Thousands of mothers every day decide they’d rather party/go to school/whatever than be a mom, and so they hire a doctor to kill their baby with either sharp instruments or chemicals and then have them dropped in a trash can. Thousands a day. Hundreds of thousands (if not over a million) a year in this country alone. And the only difference between them and and Casey Anthony is that they realized that they didn’t want to be a mom before the child escaped the womb. None of them will ever face even the threat of prosecution, thanks to the Supreme Court.

Read it.

Fascism comes to the U.S.A.

Read it.

Shaina Perry remembers the punch to her face, blood streaming from a cut over her eye, her backpack with her asthma inhaler, debit card and cellphone stolen, and then the laughter.

“They just said ‘Oh, white girl bleeds a lot,’?” said Perry, 22, who was attacked at Kilbourn Reservoir Park over the Fourth of July weekend

But of course black people can’t be racist — she must have been mistaken.

Read it.

Needless to say, government employees excel at evasiveness.

Read it.

Australian scientists have uncovered the world’s biggest marsupial – a “three-tonne monster” the size of a four-wheel drive that lived up to two million years ago.

It’s amazing what you find when you look hard enough.

Read it.

No doubt to give him a reward.

Read it.

The Obama administration is foot-dragging on approving a pipeline to deliver abundant Canadian oil to the United States at the same time the Chinese are investing in a pipeline that could send that oil to China.

…

The Canadian province of Alberta has the world’s third-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and more than Russia or Iran. Daily production from oil sands is expected to rise from 1.5 million barrels today to 3.7 million in 2025.

Delivering the oil will mean building two pipelines, one south to the refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast and the other west toward the Pacific, where it can be exported to China.

If the United States doesn’t approve its pipeline promptly due to environmental concerns, “Canada might increasingly look to China, thinking America doesn’t want a big stake in what environmentalists call ‘dirty oil,’ which they say increases greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a report from The Associated Press.

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

Jeff Jarvis cuts the cord.

I was a “member” of American Express for 35 years. No more. And Amex doesn’t give a shit. So fine. We’re well rid of each other.

My brief experience with American Express was uniformly negative.

Read it. And watch the video.

A group of modders have launched a Star Wars themed takeover for Call of Duty 4, giving gamers the chance to play Modern Warfare as an Imperial Stormtrooper or Rebel Alliance soldier.

This is pretty slick. Very impressive work. I really wish I had the time to play these games.

Read it.

British scientists have produced a new study suggesting that the Sun is coming to the end of a “grand solar maximum” – a long period of intense activity in the Sun – meaning that we in Blighty could be set for a long period of much colder winters, similar to those seen during the “little ice age” of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Gotta love that Global Warming.

Read it.

Apparently the TSA’s Security Theater is a comedy.

Your tax dollars at work … or not.

Read it.

The current edition of The Economist (July 2nd, 2011) has a provocative cover story. With the retirement of the last space shuttle this month, and the de-orbiting of the International Space Station in 2020, The Economist believes ‘the game will be up’ for manned spaceflight: there will be no more of it. And with all the planets already visited by robot craft, even unmanned space exploration will soon be sputtering out.

The tag line for the article is: ‘Inner space is useful. Outer space is history’. The Economist sees much future activity in the economically-valuable torus bounded by low-Earth and geosynchronous orbits, a volume destined to become a ‘tamed wilderness’. But beyond that: nothing.

Read it.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

Read it.

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

Read it.

The automobile’s potential is its greatest secret—an open secret and yet, it often seems, a forgotten one. The big SUV in my garage may occasionally make a 10-mile trip to Walmart or 2-mile run to the volunteer fire station when the siren sounds. But it has the potential—the size, the power, the range—to take me, my friends, and our bicycles over the mountain to a distant bike trail, or 1,100 miles with a load of furniture and books to my son’s house in Florida.

And that potential translates into freedom, freedom that most people won’t give up, whatever the nagging by the masters of the Nanny State.

This powerful potential is at the crux of replacing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs). Can EVs ever develop the potential that ICE cars routinely deliver? This is not merely an issue of range, but range plus the sheer reserve power to carry real-life loads, deal with emergencies, and finesse the unexpected detour or delay.

The problem is that we just don’t have the technology (yet) to make an electric car that’s a reasonable substitute for a gas-powered car. And all the subsidies and preferences in the world can’t make up for that basic deficiency.

Megan McArdle asks the big question.

I am getting the same sinking feeling that Brooks is having–that there is a sizeable faction on the right, and worse, in the GOP caucus, that is willing to default rather than make any deal at all. In fact, I think it’s worse than Brooks suggests.  It would be bad enough if these people were simply against higher taxes, because then you might persuade them by pointing out that if we default, we’re probably going to end up with higher taxes, right now, in order to close the current gap between spending and tax revenue.

She’s got a point. Some of the Republicans in Congress are in serious danger of making the best the enemy of the good.

If the GOP doesn’t cut a deal sometime pretty soon, we’re either going to default on our debt (hello, financial crisis, unemployment spike, substantial and immediate drop in GDP, followed by an angry mob of voters descending on their polling places with pitchforks), or we’re going to cut a bunch of programs that beneficiaries are very attached to. (Hello, angry mob of seniors descending on their representatives with machetes.)  There is no deal that they can cut which does not include raising more revenue; the Democrats aren’t going to be the only people offering compromise, and I don’t blame them.

Read it.

Beats working.

Read it.

Do you know what the Vikings ate for dinner? What a typical meal of a wealthy family in Roman Britain consisted of, or what food was like in a Victorian Workhouse? Why not drop into history cookbook and find out? This project looks at the food of the past and how this influenced the health of the people living in each time period. You can also try some of the recipes for yourself.

Starting with Air Force One.

Obama’s attack on “corporate jet owners” provides a short course in populist demagogy. From the sound of it, you’d think Obama was against the deductibility of corporate jets — “a tax break for corporate jet owners” — but no. The attack was in service of a proposal to increase the depreciation schedule on corporate jets from five to seven years — even though Obama himself had signed the legislation reducing the depreciation schedule to its current form.

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

Professor Epstein characterizes Obama’s economics as “primitive” and explains: “First, it is not possible to gain more money for the public treasury by taxing heavily those practices that are efficient for a firm. Putting a special tax on corporate jets will cut corporate profits, leaving nary a dime to fund the worthy causes that the president promotes. To repeat a constant refrain, taxation policies that are unsound in good times do not become sound in bad times.”

Read it.

Just might be.

Read it.

No one ever proposed a radical restructuring of the criminal justice system, one that would replace jury trials with a supposedly superior system of charge-and-sentence bargaining. Like the growth of government in general, plea bargaining slowly crept into and eventually grew to dominate the system.

This is because prosecutors have an incentive to get through lots of cases quickly with as high a conviction rate, no matter for what, as possible, because they’re using it as a stepping-stone to the next political office. The system is structurally defective. (Just like our legislative process.)

From a defendant’s perspective, plea bargaining extorts guilty pleas. People who have never been prosecuted may think there is no way they would plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. But when the government has a “witness” who is willing to lie, and your own attorney urges you to accept one year in prison rather than risk a 10-year sentence, the decision becomes harder. As William Young, then chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, observed in an unusually blunt 2004 opinion, “The focus of our entire criminal justice system has shifted away from trials and juries and adjudication to a massive system of sentence bargaining that is heavily rigged against the accused.”

The trope ‘Admit your guilt and you’ll get a lighter sentence; be a butt about it and we’ll throw the book at you’ is a standard one in cop shows, to the point where more people consider it some sort of law of nature. The fact that juries are composed of people from the left side of the IQ bell curve — and that everyone is aware of that fact — certainly doesn’t help. Having watched ‘juries’ deliberate through one-way glass during trial practice exercises in law school, the last thing I would want is for my fate to be in the hands of a typical jury.

One point often stressed by progressives is that trials bring scrutiny to police conduct. But when deals are struck in courthouse hallways, judges never hear about illegal searches or detentions. This only encourages further misconduct. Conservatives, meanwhile, are right to wonder whether overburdened prosecutors give the guilty too many lenient deals. Why should an armed robber get to plead guilty to a lesser crime such as petty theft?

Modern courts aren’t about justice, they’re about resolution. Getting the case resolved is what goes on ‘your permanent record’ as an attorney or judge; justice doesn’t enter into it.

It is remarkable how few people will openly defend the primary method by which our courts handle criminal cases. The most common apologia for plea bargaining is a pragmatic argument: Courthouses are so busy that they would grind to a halt if every case, or even a substantial share of them, went to trial. But there is nothing inevitable about those crushing caseloads. Politicians chose to expand the list of crimes, eventually turning millions of Americans into criminals. Ending the disastrous war on drugs would unclog our courts in short order.

Shooting one-in-ten legislators whose session ended with more laws on the books than when they started would be another effective method, and (I suggest) much more satisfying to the public.

But that’s me.

Read it.

Read it.

With the impending demolition of Columbus, Ohio’s failed downtown mall, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on all of the urban planning failures of the past, and all of the things that, while they were successful in a sense, had serious unintended consequences: urban renewal, pedestrian malls, highway mania, single use zoning, federal housing subsidies, etc. It seems to me that almost every urban planning approach du jour ends up, over time, either not accomplishing the things it was touted as delivering, or brought serious negative side effects. Why is this?

Read it.

Geologists say they’ve uncovered expansive new deposits of rare earth minerals, buried within a seabed some 20,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean surface. Research leader Yasuhiro Kato estimates that the deposits contain anywhere from 80 to 100 billion metric tons of rare earths, which, if commercially viable, could pose a serious threat to China’s global hegemony.

And it couldn’t happen to nicer people.

Watch it.

Because your life will never be the same.

Read it.

One of the most tedious aspects of the homosexual-activist movement is their incessant whining. They whine about people being intolerant, when they are one of the most intolerant groups on the planet. They whine about persecution, when they are the petted and pampered mascots of the chattering classes, the fashionable accessories of the establishment, beneficiaries of preferences and plaudits showered upon them by those who thereby pat themselves on the back for their broadmindedness. They whine, whine, whine until one longs to take them by the nose and say, ‘Look, we don’t hate you because you’re homosexual — we hate you because you’re assholes!’

Steve Sailer declares the game afoot.

The hunt for the Great Bright Illegal continues. Everybody who is anybody keeps proclaiming that we are lucky to be getting all these highly talented illegal immigrants from Mexico, but, as the decades and generations go by, it’s hard to come up with very many names of high achievers to anecdotally illustrate the bromides.

Read it.

Reading the Declaration of Independence 235 years after it was written, it’s kidney-punchingly obvious that the United States government has become precisely the sort of bloodsucking tyrant against which the Founding Fathers revolted.

Wakey, wakey.

Read it.

If one thinks about it, the world will never run out of oil.  As oil becomes scarce, consumers will necessarily turn to an alternative before the supply runs out.  Whether it is due to a realization that oil is scarce – if only in an economic sense – or due to a concern for global warming, we can see the signs of a shift in consumption.  Most automobile manufacturers have some pure electric or electric hybrid car project in development or in production.  There are even hybrid Formula One racecars.  (What would Enzo think?)  It is only a matter of time that the automobile is electric.  It seems not too far-fetched that oil consumption might drop.

As a commodity, oil is of course limited. But as a resource, it is essentially unlimited, not just because they keep finding more of it, but because people will stop using it and go on to something else when it becomes sufficiently scarce to be expensive. So anybody who goes around whining ‘OMG, we’re going to run out of oil!’ can be legitimately treated as an idiot.

Read it.

I say, let’s just mash all of the latest technologies together and see what kind of a game that makes, what? Jolly good.

Read it.

I guess, now that Senator Hutchison is retiring, Senator Cornyn has decided to take up the Texas RINO badge.