Archive for November, 2011
12th November 2011
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The cephalopods’ abilities are a defence mechanism, apparently arising from the fact that they operate on the depth boundary between two main kinds of deep-sea predators who might fancy them for lunch.
Many of the hungry enemies of J heathi and O banksii spot prey by seeing its silhouette against the light waters above, illuminated by the sky. To avoid these, staying transparent is best. Those parts of the cephalopods which can’t be fully see-through – for instance their guts, filled with food – are reflective, as that’s the next best thing.
Deeper down, however, many ocean hunters use bioluminescent lighting of their own to illuminate prey. The transparent condition, used against these, would be a bad idea as the predators would easily detect the cephalopods’ reflective innards. Thus, when J heathi and O banksii notice that they are being illuminated strongly by certain wavelengths of light – blue is favoured by ocean creatures as it penetrates water better, as any diver will know – they swiftly turn themselves dark.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Deep-Sea Squid Go From Transparent to Dark as Fast as a Kindle
12th November 2011
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A prototype fingerprint scanner has been developed that can detect the presence of opiates, cannabis, or cocaine in the sweat on a user’s fingertip.
We have the technology.
The device uses special cartridges to take a fingerprint, which are then processed using both chemical testing and a unique photo scanning system. This takes a high resolution image of the fingerprint and its residue, so that the output from individual sweat pores can be measured.
And … how convenient … they now have your fingerprint. One-stop-copping, you might say.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Fingerprint Scanner Can Detect Drugs in Sweat
11th November 2011
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Since John is a Crustian leftist, this is a dependable answer to the question “Who’s the biggest RINO of them all?”
Take whatever action you deem appropriate.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on John Scalzi Picks a Republican Candidate
11th November 2011
Don’t care.
Ain’t my school, ain’t my state, got more important things to think about.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Penn State Scandal
11th November 2011
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School was a bubble of instant academic and athletic validation, full of prizes, accolades, awards. We weren’t just successful adolescents for getting there, we were successful there too. Look at our resumes. We’re all successes. But school has to end at some point–though many of us give the impression that it is possible to continue to “be educated” ad infinitum–and so we were foisted on the real world. What happened then? It was 2008 or 2009, the economy was a disaster and nothing we anticipated seemed to be coming our way. Experts in art history ended up folding jeans. Animal rights activists ended up at a hunting non-profits. There were jobs, just not ones that matched any of our skills or interests.
We were deceived. There had been a tacit promise throughout our twenty years of schooling that good grades and meaningful activities would conspire to produce a satisfying existence. Was it the system–the teachers, coaches, parents–that fooled us or did we fool ourselves? Either way, we were gypped.
So the ‘Occupy’ movement represents an outburst of Lost Boy angst, a great cry from the heart ‘I Won’t Grow Up!’ Unfortunately, the world has a very quick and brutal way of dealing with those sorts of sentiments. Never Never Land doesn’t exist, but Captain Hook does, and he’s waiting.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
11th November 2011
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There are two challenges. One is the sheer speed of adjustment. In a hyper-Schumpeterian economy, the main work consists of destroying someone else’s job. Garett Jones has pointed out that the typical worker today does not produce widgets but instead builds organizational capital. The problem is that building organizational capital in one company serves to depreciate the organizational capital somewhere else. Blockbuster video adversely affected the capital of movie theaters, Netflix adversely affected the capital of Blockbuster, and the combination of faster Internet speeds and tablet devices may depreciate the organizational capital of Netflix.
The second challenge is the nature of the emerging skills mismatch. People who are self-directed and cognitively capable can keep adding to their advantages. People who lack those traits cannot simply be exhorted into obtaining them. The new jobs that emerge may not produce a middle class. Instead, if the trend documented by Autor for the period 1999-2007 were to continue, most of the new jobs would be low-end service jobs, for which competition will tend to keep wages low.
The recent trend in job polarization raises the possibility that gains in well-being that come from productivity improvements will accrue to an economic elite. Perhaps the middle-class affluence that emerged during the latter part of the industrial age is not going to be a feature of the information age. Instead, we could be headed into an era of highly unequal economic classes. People at the bottom will have access to food, healthcare, and electronic entertainment, but the rich will live in an exclusive world of exotic homes and extravagant personal services. The most popular bands in the world will play house concerts for the rich, while everyone else can afford music downloads but no live music.
And there stands the plot of about half a dozen science fiction dystopias I could mention, starting with the books of Mack Reynolds.
The chief problem would appear to be for the people on the left side of the bell curve. Such people traditionally get jobs where physical strength but not much brain is required. What do they do when all such jobs are performed by machines? The best they can hope for is temporary employment during the time it takes to design and build the machine that will ultimately replace them.
And even ‘smart’ people will have to run as fast as they can just to stay in place. As a lazy smart person, I don’t much like that idea, and I’m tremendously glad that I’m not in my twenties these days.
On the other hand, this may just represent the speed at which evolution works in a technologically sophisticated world. We’ve almost completely eliminated the frictional barriers to the flow of information; perhaps we’ve effectively done the same with whatever frictional barriers there are to the activity of evolution.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear?
11th November 2011
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If you have ever wondered what would happen in a society consisting entirely of liberals, the Occupier movement is providing the answer: devolution. It is almost impossible to keep up with the downward spiral, but here are some of the highlights of the last 24 hours….
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Occupier Devolution
11th November 2011
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Contrary to what the Food and Drug Administration might insist on having you believe, high-sodium diets may not be so bad for you afterall, a new meta-analysis finds.
Specifically, the new analysis found that reducing sodium intake increases cholesterol levels by 2.5 percent and triglycerides by seven percent.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Low Sodium: Sacrificing Flavor for…Higher Cholesterol
11th November 2011
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It is easy for us to be dazzled by illuminated manuscripts – all that gloriously vivid colour and brightly glittering gold. In part that was what their makers and owners wanted us to feel. We should wonder at the supreme artistry of some of the finest paintings to survive from the Middle Ages, painstakingly created over months, sometimes years, by the leading artists of their day. We should also be impressed by those well-preserved vestiges that showcase the magnificence of the great and the good of the medieval world. Yet, it is worth trying to look more carefully and to understand them more deeply. For they have so much to tell us about times very different from our own. Indeed they do so in a unique way, not as mere records of historical fact, but as active players in history. Reading their texts and viewing their illustrations informed how medieval people lived – what they knew and who they aspired to be.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Exhibition in Focus: Royal Manuscripts, British Library
10th November 2011
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Let’s get some to Michael Moore and watch him vanish like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on A.M. Vitals: Drug Kills Fat Cells in Monkeys; Human Trials May Be Next
10th November 2011
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How long before we get the traditional SWPL hand-wringing about Soulless Walmart Squeezing Out Local Mom & Pop Doctor’s Offices?
Posted in News You Can Use. | 2 Comments »
10th November 2011
Walter Williams, a Real Economist, explains some inconvenient truth.
Let’s look at corporate taxes and ask, “Who pays them?”
Virginia has a car tax. Does the car pay the tax? In most political jurisdictions, there’s a property tax. Does property pay the tax? You say: “Williams, that’s lunacy. Neither a car nor property pays taxes. Only flesh-and-blood people pay taxes!”
What about a corporation? As it turns out, a corporation is an artificial creation of the legal system and, as such, a legal fiction. A corporation is not a person and therefore cannot pay taxes. When tax is levied on a corporation, who pays it?
Hint: Where do corporations get their money?
Posted in Think about it. | 2 Comments »
10th November 2011
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And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one. These reasons are applicable to a generic competent President (such as Hillary, or any of the front-rank Republican candidates), but the Obamateur not only thinks outside the box, he’s set up housekeeping so far outside the box it’s barely within hailing distance.
Biggest real reason: If he throws the dice bombing Iran and it actually works, it’s his best chance for re-election. That’s logic that he can appreciate.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
9th November 2011
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Hey, they made that bed, they can just sleep in it.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | 1 Comment »
9th November 2011
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Chris Birch, 26, suffered a stroke during during a freak training accident when he attempted a back flip and broke his neck.
But folllowing his recovery he quit his bank job to become a hairdresser, grew to hate sport, called off his engagement and started dating a man.
“I was gay when I woke up and I still am,” he said. “It sounds strange but when I came round I immediately felt different. I wasn’t interested in women any more.
Soon to be a major motion picture, I have no doubt.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | 2 Comments »
9th November 2011
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Last March the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an $14 million award to John Thompson, a Louisiana man who spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, because prosecutors in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office deliberately withheld crucial exculpatory blood evidence. Since the prosecutors themselves enjoyed “absolute immunity” for their egregious misconduct, Thompson argued that their office should be held liable for failing to properly train them in their constitutional obligations. A federal jury agreed, and so did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. But the Supreme Court reversed that ruling, saying Thompson had not demonstrated a pattern of disregard for constitutional rights under District Attorney Harry Connick that was tantamount to official policy. Today the Court saw more evidence of that pattern as it considered a case in which Connick’s office failed to disclose a key witness’s conflicting statements to Juan Smith, the defendant in a multiple murder trial. Justice Antonin Scalia, who voted with the majority in Connick v. Thompson, lost patience with Assistant District Attorney Donna Andrieu, who persisted in arguing that the prosecution was not obligated to share the statements under Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 decision that established a defendant’s due process right to see such evidence. “Surely it should have been turned over,” Scalia said. “Why don’t you give that up?”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on How Many Brady Violations Does It Take to Make a Pattern?
8th November 2011
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The machine on the drawing boards at the Science Museum in London is the Babbage Analytical Engine, a room-size mechanical behemoth that its inventor envisioned but never built.
The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine composed of roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision. That project was completed in 1991.
The new effort — led by John Graham-Cumming, a programmer, and Doron Swade, a former curator at the museum — has already digitized Babbage’s surviving blueprints for the Analytical Engine. But the challenges of building it are daunting.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on It Started Digital Wheels Turning
8th November 2011
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In a sane world, the news media would disseminate information about which states are most successful and what policies they pursue, so that other states can emulate them. That is a pipe dream, of course: we all know that in the world we actually inhabit, our media have an entirely different agenda.
Which leads me to the three-part hit-piece that NPR recently did on South Dakota.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Slandering the Red States
8th November 2011
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The men who killed the al-Qaeda chief have decided to speak out because they are tired of their “shabby treatment” by politicians who claim they were on a “kill mission”.
“I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words ‘kill mission’. It’s a fantasy word. If it was a kill mission you don’t need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades.”
He said the men were angry with President Barack Obama for announcing Bin Laden’s death on TV just hours after they completed the mission on May 1.
“There isn’t a politician in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting Bin Laden but it devalued the ‘intel’ and gave time for every other Al-Qaeda leader to scurry to another bolthole,” he said.
Way to go, Barry … Chuck Schumer in not-so-black face.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | 2 Comments »
8th November 2011
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Not that it made any impression.
“Real class acts, the Chicago Board of Trade,” tweeted Occupy Chicago. “This week, it’s McDonald’s job applications they litter from the windows. Soulless place.”
Hey, at least they have jobs. (And bathe regularly.)
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Traders From Chicago Board Of Trade Dump McDonald’s Applications On Occupy Chicago Protesters
8th November 2011
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When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will quite cheerfully murder each other.
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Nine Members of One Family Killed in Afghanistan Roadside Bomb
8th November 2011
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The London Philharmonic Orchestra has just released “The Greatest Video Game Music” featuring full orchestrations of all of your favorite themes including Super Mario Brothers, the Legend of Zelda, and Halo. That’s right: Angry Birds finally has its own multi-part score and trilling woodwinds.
And the cover art, featuring a soldier playing a cello, is wildly goofy.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Video Game Theme Songs
8th November 2011
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At Watts Up With That, data from the National Climatic Data Center are reviewed. The results are quite startling. Every region of the continental United States has shown a cooling trend during the winter from 2001 to the present, and five of the nine regions have also had a cooling trend during the summer. With respect to annual mean temperature, only one of nine regions–the Northeast–has gotten warmer; the other eight have gotten cooler.
But the science is settled! Global warming! We’re all gonna drown! AlGore said so!
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on United States Is Getting Colder, Not Warmer
8th November 2011
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The percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Democrats has dropped from 50 percent in early 2008 to 43 percent now, while the percentage of those who consider themselves Republicans has gone up, from 37 percent to 40 percent.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Poll: Democratic Ranks Thinning
7th November 2011
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The revolution could be trademarked in the US as more entrepreneurs seek to profit from the Occupy demonstrations.
T-shirts began to appear days after the first protest on 17 September, a march through lower Manhattan. Now T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise are being offered on the campsites that have sprung up in cities across the US. The US patent and trademark office has received a spate of applications.
Ray Agrinzone, a clothing designer, who launched theoccupystore.com and has received hateful tweets and emails, said: “There’s nothing wrong with turning a profit.”
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on US Entrepreneurs Cash In on Occupy Movement
7th November 2011
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Even a left-wing rag can’t avoid realizing the Unintended Consequences of Yet Another Politically Motivated Boondoggle.
The California High Speed Rail Authority, the agency trying to build the bullet train, couldn’t have found a more politically sensitive target. The school is where House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), one of the project’s staunchest opponents in Congress, sends his children.
Critics say such blunders are routine for the rail authority. Across the length of the Central Valley, the bullet train as drawn would destroy churches, schools, private homes, shelters for low-income people, animal processing plants, warehouses, banks, medical offices, auto parts stores, factories, farm fields, mobile home parks, apartment buildings and much else as it cuts through the richest agricultural belt in the nation and through some of the most depressed cities in California.
Although the potential for such disruption was understood in general terms when the project began 15 years ago, the reality is only now beginning to sink in.
Once again, ‘progressive’ pie-in-the-sky can’t be bothered to think it through.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | 2 Comments »
7th November 2011
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Cornwall should adopt its own currency to protect itself from economic downturn and keep money in local communities, local groups have urged.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Cornish groups want to dump sterling and adopt own currency
7th November 2011
Scott Johnson at Power Line does the honors.
It’s tough to keep up with the crime wave associated with the Occupy encampments around the United States and Canada, but we’re doing our best.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on ‘Occupy’ Crime Wave Update
7th November 2011
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Hizballah continues to discuss battle plans for its next war with Israel, promising to take a much heavier toll on the Israeli people than the 2006 conflict in Lebanon. In recent weeks, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has held a series of meetings with the group’s senior military commanders to prepare the group for a future war, which reportedly include plans to fire missiles at Tel Aviv, seize parts of the Galilee, and take Israelis hostage.
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Hizballah’s Aggressive War Plans
7th November 2011
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The incident happened when angry anti-capitalist protesters laid siege to a dinner held in honour of President Ronald Reagan by the Americans for Prosperity group, which is closely aligned with the anti-tax, small government Tea Party movement.
Hundreds of protesters affiliated with Occupy DC shut down streets on Friday night near the Washington convention centre, where Americans for Prosperity was holding its annual conference. That day, the conference was addressed by the leading republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.
Dolores Broderick, 78, had taken an 11-hour bus journey from Detroit to attend the Americans for Prosperity conference, according to a friend who emailed the Instapundit blog. Video footage showed her being helped by police as she lay dazed on the floor.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Occupy Wall Street ‘Injure Elderly Woman at Conservative Dinner’
6th November 2011
According to foreigners, anyway.
From a Canadian perspective – being able to walk into a store at 3am and purchase a can of beer the size of my head.
Drive-through everythings. Drive-through ATMs, drive-through bank tellers, drive-through pharmacies, drive-through liquor stores in some states. On the flipside, the paucity of sidewalks/pavements in many parts of the US, where your European would receive funny looks from his hosts if he suggested walking to a relatively nearby destination, and might even be stopped by the cops if they spotted him strolling along a residential area.
The first time I tried to cross a road by myself, it took me at least 15 minutes to get the rhythm of the traffic lights and how much time I had to make it to the other side. Streets are a lot wider, so the timing is completely different. And drivers in Southern California do not give a shit about pedestrians. And the multi-lane intersections… aaah. So confusing.
This guy obviously hasn’t tried crossing a street in Boston.
People using checks is antiquated in terms of other developed countries.
DID YOU HEAR THAT, YOU ASSWIPES WHO HOLD UP THE LINE WHILE WRITING A CHECK? IT’S A NEW CENTURY. GET A DEBIT CARD LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING.
A mate of mine was asked honestly if we have electricity in Australia.
Of course they do — they make it out of beer.
People without passports.
Passports are only for people who want to leave the country. Only wierdos want to leave this country; that’s why foreigners are always trying to come here, sneaking in if they can’t do it any other way.
The realization that while you may be familiar with American celebrities, journalists, politicians, and geography from it’s broader worldwide audience, no one in America has a clue about eqiuvalent sundry things from my country of origin.
That’s because no rational human being gives a shit about your country of origin; otherwise they’d be buying your stuff, not American stuff.
That it’s not unusual to see soldiers travelling in full uniform in the USA (I’ve seen this often at Grand Central, and at various airports around the USA). In many parts of the UK, soldiers, airmen, etc. are unable to wear their uniforms off base due to the level of abuse they get from the public. (Yeah, WTF?)
That’s why Britain (and other European countries) are turning into such behavioral sinkholes.
Read the whole thing — it tells you quite as much about how quirky non-Americans are.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | 3 Comments »
6th November 2011
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The market for maple syrup offers an odd inversion. The thin, pale fluid labeled Fancy or Grade A Light Amber commands the highest prices. It is the white bread of condiments, an inoffensive accompaniment to more flavorful fare. The robust, thick syrup marked Grade B fairly bursts with maple flavor, but sells at a significant discount. So why does the nominally inferior grade offer decidedly superior flavor? The answer lies in the history of maple syrup, a product that has long served as a symbol of American authenticity. As our sense of American identity has evolved, our syrup labels have not always kept pace.
I recall someone telling me once upon a time that the stuff from New Hampshire is better than the stuff from Vermont, but all I’ve ever seen in the stores is Vermont syrup, so there it is.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 1 Comment »
6th November 2011
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Presidential candidate Ron Paul said Sunday that the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan was making the U.S. less safe.
“It makes things worse,” said Mr. Paul, the Texas congressman running for the Republican presidential nomination. “Sometimes they miss. Sometimes there is collateral damage. And every time we do that, we make more enemies.”
I like Ron Paul’s domestic policies, but in foreign policy he’s still off in batshit-crazy land where live the radical libertarians and Pat Buchananites.
1. Every drone strike targets an enemy of the United States. I fail to see how killing enemies of the United States is a bad thing.
2. Hey, Ron, wake up and smell the hummus — they’re Muslims. Muslims are already our enemies, either in esse or in posse — read the Koran if you don’t believe me. To the extent that drone strikes convert passive enemies into active enemies, it helps us identify them … and kill them. The only good enemy is a dead enemy, and it’s better to kill them on somebody else’s turf than here at home.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to run for President, apparently.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Ron Paul Says Drone Strikes ‘Make More Enemies’
6th November 2011
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Sure, 7 billion is a big number. But most serious demographers, economists and population specialists rarely use the term “overpopulation” — because there is no clear demographic definition.
Posted in Think about it. | 3 Comments »
6th November 2011
A Useful Chart.
Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 1 Comment »
5th November 2011
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And the people who thought of it taken out into the courtyard and shot, with their bodies left for the dogs to feast on.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why Daylight Saving Time Should Be Abolished
5th November 2011
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There wouldn’t be a bunch of smelly people running around in masks, for one thing.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on What if Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot had succeeded in 1605?
4th November 2011
Read it. And watch the video.
Yesterday a crazed Wall Street Occupier who apparently has been part of the protest for the last three months went on a violent rampage, attacking Occupiers’ tents in Zuccotti Park. He was finally stopped by another Occupier, who turned out to be crazy also.
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
(Hey, the batshit-crazy are part of the 99%, right?)
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Deranged Wall Street Occupier Goes on Rampage
4th November 2011
Steve Hayward at Power Line takes on the Myth of Camelot.
JFK’s supposed “cool handling” of the missile crisis is probably the greatest enduring myth of JFK’s presidency. Yes, it was good that we avoided World War III, but aside from that just about every common judgment about the missile crisis is wrong. It was both a political and military defeat for the United States, but the great Kennedy spin machine managed from the first moments to convey the exact opposite impression. And the whole matter arose precisely because the Soviet Union perceived JFK’s weakness.
This fact was not generally recognized because key concessions from Kennedy were kept secret from the American people and even from most of Kennedy’s top advisers at the time. Kennedy secretly agreed to withdraw American missiles from Greece and Turkey, something he had publicly stated he would not do when the Soviets demanded it. (When this concession leaked out years later, it was said the missiles were “obsolete” and unimportant, though the Soviets did not share this view.) The biggest public concession was Kennedy’s pledge that the U.S. would cease attempting to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba.
Kennedy was in many respects the proto-Obama … and the proto-Clinton.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Reckoning With JFK
4th November 2011
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Doing well by doing good. (Hey, compassion like that don’t come cheap.)
Attending the event required a donation of between $1,000 and $5,000, continuing Warren’s trend of raising money outside the state where she is actually running.
The Boston Globe reported in late October that, according to Warren’s campaign filings, nearly 70 percent of the $3.14 million Warren raised last quarter to unseat Republican Sen. Scott Brown was from out-of-state donors.
The Crust is nothing if not cosmopolitan. Hillary Clinton blazed that trail.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren and Barbra Streisand fight for the downtrodden at $5,000 a pop
4th November 2011
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It’s that flapping sound again….
Maybe Men’s Wearhouse will learn from this lesson. But I can’t guarantee it.
Indeed.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on One Day After Supporting OWS, Men’s Wearhouse in Oakland Vandalized by Protesters
4th November 2011
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Well, if you can boil a kettle with a bulb, why not crank up the dial and zap bugs with UV? Philips is doing exactly that with InstantTrust, a new instant water disinfection solution that is petite enough to be used in household appliances like taps, water filters and even water pitchers. The ultra-violet system is able to nix those nasty microbes at a rate of around four liters of water per minute and, unlike other bacteria-zapping systems, at any water temperature.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Philips InstantTrust Water Purifier Offers Immediate Bug-Free Hydration
4th November 2011
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The July issue of the science journal PLoS One detailed an explosive finding: a drug that creates a kind of viral self-destruct switch. In years to come it could be used to eradicate diseases from HIV to the common cold. “Forget the flu shot,” wrote Men’s Health. “How about a flu cure?”
Even more impressive, the study’s main researcher isn’t a doctor. Todd Rider entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986 at age 17 and left nine years later with four degrees, including a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science. He also minored in relativistic quantum field theory and solid state and optical physics. “Once you start on the path of the dark side, you are hooked,” jokes Rider of his obsession with science.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Todd Rider Has a Kill Switch for Viruses
4th November 2011
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Italian physicist and inventor Andrea Rossi has conducted a public demonstration of his “cold fusion” machine, the E-Cat, at the University of Bologna, showing that a small amount of input energy drives an unexplained reaction between atoms of hydrogen and nickel that leads to a large outpouring of energy, more than 10 times what was put in.
The physicists who were invited to the demonstration in April gave the E-Cat a solid thumbs-up. It produced too much excess heat to have been originating from a chemical process, they wrote in their report, adding that, “The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Italian Cold Fusion Machine Passes Another Test
4th November 2011
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RJ Balson and Sons, a butchers based in Bridport, Dorset, boasts an astonishing history that is almost 500 years old.
Experts have traced the businesses roots back through 25 generations to when founder John Balson opened a stall in the town’s market on South Street in 1535.
Since then dozens of family members have worked as butchers in the market town, passing their skills down the generations.
And 476 years later, the shop remains a thriving business and has been named Britain’s oldest family run retailer.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Britain’s Oldest Family Business Opened When Henry VIII Ruled
4th November 2011
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Two bombs exploded as members of a government-backed Sunni militia gathered to collect their pay in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Thursday, killing six people and wounding dozens, security and health officials said.
When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will quite cheerfully murder each other.
A suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest among members of the Sahwa militia near the gates of a military headquarters in western Baquba, and a car bomb blew up nearby a few minutes later, security sources and witnesses said.
The second explosion was to catch people like ambulances, doctors, EMTs, and firefighters. I guess helping people who’ve been injured isn’t a Muslim value.
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Attackers strike Iraq Sunni militia, six killed
4th November 2011
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $1m grant to an astrophysicist developing a laser-based solution to a decidedly terrestrial problem: malaria-spreading mosquitoes.
How many swatters would that buy?
“I wanted to apply my astrophysics, optics, laser expertise towards some humanitarian goal that can help people,” says Columbia University associate professor Szabolcs Márka in video outlining his laser “light wall”.
And the $1 million doesn’t hurt, either.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 2 Comments »
3rd November 2011
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“Our findings suggest that this human propensity toward optimism is facilitated by the brain’s failure to code errors in estimation when those call for pessimistic updates,” the authors write in the online version of Nature Neuroscience.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Optimism Is a Brain Defect, According to Functional MRI Scans
3rd November 2011
The Other McCain has the scoop.
My response is: If that’s what’s going on, he’s not doing a very good job.
Just sayin’.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | 1 Comment »