Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Read it.

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.

Walter Olson turns over a rock.

Vicious cycle: EPA gives money to busybody groups; busybody groups sue EPA to force more regulation; courts play along; EPA’s empire expands; EPA gets more money to fund expanded empire; EPA shares the wealth with busybody groups. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Your tax dollars at work, forging new chains for your daily life.

Read it.

While it was a magnificent technological achievement, and had many great accomplishments, it was a failure in the primary purpose for which it was built: to dramatically reduce the cost of access to space, and make such trips routine and safe. So as NASA heads into an uncertain future, many are drawing lessons from the shuttle experience to apply to policy going forward.

Unfortunately, many of those lessons are false. If they are believed and applied, they will result in human spaceflight, at least as performed by NASA, that remains expensive, unsafe and rare.

Read it.

United Nations peacekeepers failed to intervene as Sudanese civilians fleeing fighting were beaten to death, or dragged away to be shot, eyewitnesses told The Daily Telegraph.

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

Read it.

The front teeth have horizontal lines that were so neatly filed, archaeologists believe it must have been done by a skilled craftsman rather than by their owners, and the process undoubtedly would have been excruciating.

Read it.

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

Read it.

What is the most important thing about mobs of black teens attacking and seriously injuring innocent pedestrians and businesses?  The feelings of teenagerswho share the race of the attackers, according to Chicago’s local CBS affiliate.

That’s right: Mobs of teenagers have unleashed terror in the streets of Chicago and other cities in “flash mobs,” and the best thing CBS in Chicago has to say about that is that black teenagers are worried about racial profiling.

This is like focusing on how Muslims are worried about ‘backlash’ in response to jihadist bombings.

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.

Your next job application could require a social media background check. Odds are, you have no clue what that means. Nobody does. It’s new and scary and probably scours the Web for pictures of you puking on the beach.

…

In fact it screens for just a handful of things: aggressive or violent acts or assertions, unlawful activity, discriminatory activity (for example, making racist statements), and sexually explicit activity. And it doesn’t pass on identifiable photos of you at all. In other words, your drunken kegstand photos are probably fine as long as you’re not wearing a T-shirt with a swastika or naked from the waist down.

Basically, it just wants to know if you’re the kind of asshole who will cause legal hassles for an employer.

Bad news for the Let It All Hang Out generations. Yet another excellent reason to steer clear of Facebook and Twitter.

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 afflicted vessel is USS Independence, the second in the sailing branch’s fleet of fast, reconfigurable Littoral Combat Ships. Eventually, these ships are supposed to be the workhorses” of tomorrow’s Navy.

As Bloomberg reported, the Navy has discovered “aggressive” corrosion around Independence’s engines. The problem is so bad that the barely year-old ship will have to be laid up in a San Diego drydock so workers can replace whole chunks of her hull.

I wonder what it’s like to live in a country where the government is competent?

Lots of things — major weapons, for one — have been left off the LCS in order to keep the price down. The list of deleted items includes something called a “Cathodic Protection System,” which is designed to prevent electrolysis.

Guess we’ll never find out.

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.

Think nuts and bolts are exclusive to mechanics and engineers? Think again. The Trigonopterus oblongus weevil has been using the mechanism in its hips for 100 million years.

There is nothing new under the sun.

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.”