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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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’.

John Stossel lays out what everybody ought to be able to figure out on their own but typically can’t be bothered with.

“Buy American” is a dumb idea. It would not only not create prosperity, it would cost jobs and make us all poorer. David R. Henderson, an economist at the Hoover Institution, explained why.

“Almost all economists say it’s nonsense,” he said. “And the reason is: We should buy things where they’re cheapest. That frees up more of our resources to buy other things, and other Americans get jobs producing those things.”

This is what people always forget. Anytime we can use fewer resources and less labor to produce one thing, that leaves more for other things we can’t afford. If we save money buying abroad, we can make and buy other products.

The nonsense of “Buy American” can be seen if you trace out the logic.

“If it’s good to Buy American,” Henderson said, “why isn’t it good to have Buy Alabaman? And if it’s good to have Buy Alabaman, why isn’t it good to have Buy Montgomery, Ala.? And if it’s good to have Buy Montgomery, Ala. …”

You get the idea. You wouldn’t get very good stuff if everything you bought came Montgomery, Ala.

Check it out.

If you are a calendar geek (as Roy obviously is), this will tell you EVERYTHING THERE IS TO BE KNOWN about calendars.

So there.

David Harsanyi points out that all of the equality-mongers focus on bringing the high low rather than hoisting the low up. Makes you wonder whose side they’re on.

If the wealthy get wealthier, no one has to become one penny poorer. This childish idea that the economy is a zero-sum game might appeal to the populist sentiments of the so-called 99 percent—or to the envious nature of some others or to the emotions of many struggling through this terrible economy—but in the end, it doesn’t stand up to the most rudimentary inspection.

The explanation lies in ‘income distribution’, as if ‘income’ were a waterfall coming from the stars and what we need to do is ensure that The Wrong Crowd don’t get more than their ‘fair share’. This is what reading Rawls in college will do to you. For the Useless Class, ‘incomes’ are being passed out somewhere and the ‘fat cats’ are cutting in at the head of the line. The swine! Of course, the Useless Class have no idea where ‘incomes’ come from (except perhaps when they get their welfare remittance — ‘It’s free! It’s free! Just swipe your EBT!’), but they’re pretty sure they’re not getting their cut.

You will notice that the Occupy Wall Street crowds—and the progressives who support them—focus on bringing the wealthy down to earth rather than lifting the 99 percent. They have a nearly religious belief that too much wealth is fundamentally immoral and unhealthy for society. The economic systems they cheer on would coerce downward mobility for the sake of equality but ignore prosperity for the people they claim to represent.

And that is a degenerate cultural position that causes more damage than their political activity ever could, entertaining though it might be..

Mark Steyn is gratifyingly dyspeptic today.

The thing is, for better or worse, we are defined by our differences, and if Barack Obama didn’t understand that when he was at a podium addressing a room filled with representatives of Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Venezuela, and the whole gang of evil, the rest of the world certainly did as soon as Qaddafi appeared. Obama and Qaddafi may both have been the heads of state of sovereign nations, but if you’re on an Indian Ocean island when the next tsunami hits, try calling Libya instead of the United States for help and see where it gets you.

The global reach that enables America and a handful of other nations to get to a devastated backwater on the other side of the planet and save lives and restore the water supply in a matter of days isn’t a happy accident or a quirk of fate. It is something that derives explicitly from our political system, our economic liberty, our traditions of scientific and cultural innovation, and a general understanding that societies advance when their citizens are able to fulfill their potential in freedom.

That was then. This is now.

The United States government currently spends one-fifth of a billion dollars that it doesn’t have every hour, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Ramadan. A fifth of a billion dollars every single hour—so the $7 billion that John Boehner calls “a real enforceable cut for financial year 2012” represents what the government of the United States currently borrows every 37 hours. In the time between the Friday announcement of the plan and the Sunday morning talk shows’ discussion of it, the government borrowed back every dime of those painstakingly negotiated savings.

Your tax-eaters at work.

You can see this at work—or rather, not at work—every time you’re on the isle of Manhattan. The Empire State Building was put up in one year and 45 days in the middle of a depression. Ground Zero is still a building site after a decade. 9/11 is something America’s enemies did to us. The 10-year hole in the ground is something we did to ourselves.

Or not, as the case may be.

If we don’t turn this thing around by mid-decade, if we let China become the dominant economic power in a world where the Iranians are nuclearizing and where Russia is making whatever mischief it can, we will see something new in world history. Something terrifying. This will not be like the transition from Britain to America, from a crucible of liberty to its greatest exponent. This will be the greatest step backwards for the civilization that built the modern world and spread its blessings across the map. There will be no new world order. There will be no world order.

Take whatever action you deem appropriate. It might even matter. But probably not.

Read it.

Just as Microsoft in the 90s didn’t realize that you had to spread some cash around Washington to keep the jackals off your back, and wound up in a ten-year bogus anti-trust lawsuit, so Michael Arrington didn’t realize that you can’t say anything about race anywhere anytime without the Dogs of the Crust piling on your unworthy carcass, and so is the subject of the latest Two-Minute Hate.

The problems with the interview:

– I was told by CNN it was about startup accelerators, not minorites.
– CNN then created a clip that highlighted me saying I didn’t know any black entrepreneurs, even though later in the conversation I corrected myself.
– CNN then wrote two articles, one of which was the top story on CNN last week, focusing on my race problems.
– Only a very few people have seen it. I haven’t, and I’m in the absurd position of not having seen it myself (to know how they edited the long version) and defending myself from people who also haven’t seen my interview.

And that’s the way these people (using the term loosely) work. They control the horizontal, they control the vertical, and most especially they control the sound, so the only way not to be misquoted is just not to talk to them at all — a difficult program for somebody whose job is talking about tech.

It was a “gotcha” and that’s that.

Yup. Welcome to the jungle.

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Seniors in Maranville’s “capstone” business strategies course complained because he didn’t lecture enough. After a year on the job, citing negative student course evaluations, the university denied Maranville tenure.

What was going on in Maranville’s classroom that generated such a backlash? He says he simply required students to do what most employers wish colleges would do: connect academic concepts to the real world. To facilitate that process, Maranville used the Socratic method, creating classroom dialogue by asking students open-ended questions that necessitated creative thought and participation—even if they hadn’t raised their hands. He also required them to work in teams and participate in small-group discussions during class time.

Pretty heinous.

Read it.

Andrew Stiles notes a report from Green Technology that Solyndra’s executives substantial bonuses shortly before their company declared bankruptcy, having run out of your money. The taxpayers likely will be stuck with a $530 million bill.

Aren’t you proud?

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My question is: With what?

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“$30 would get me there, so I thought,” she told a reporter from KGO TV in San Francisco. “Now it’s $25 for one bag, $35 for another bag.”

She explained that she had no money and asked if she could pay upon her arrival in Idaho, but says the airline refused. She even offered to leave one of her bags behind, but the airline said this was against security rules.

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Somewhere in the old Cincinnati-Dayton Defense Area that spans Southwest Ohio and Southeast Indiana sits a $1.5 million “man cave.” I made my way to the site on a warm fall morning with Google Maps and GPS coordinates supplied by my real estate advisers, Matthew and Leigh Ann Fulkerson of 20th Century Castles, LLC. Built in a decommissioned Nike missile site, the residence boasts a kitchen, four bedrooms, two baths, an exercise room, indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, and an elevator for lowering the owner’s classic automobiles below the surface. On clear days, the doors that once exposed anti-ballistic missile for launch can be opened to let sunshine penetrate the otherwise dimly lit basement.

Want your own missile base? It can happen.

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Most federal programs have never been evaluated for true effectiveness. And most evaluations that are conducted – and there are many – aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. They may examine a national program only locally, or lack a “control group” to compare against.

And we aren’t likely to find out, either.

Read it.

We have the technology.

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Last year, Amit Aharoni, an Israeli national and a graduate of Stanford Business School, secured $1.65 million in venture capital funding with two cofounders to launch CruiseWise.com, an online cruise booking company.

Business Insider ranked the company, which is set to launch its website in just a few weeks, one of the “20 Hot Silicon Valley Startups You Need to Watch,” and Aharoni has already hired nine Americans.

But this story of entrepreneurship and job creation is hitting rough waters because Aharoni is not American. On Oct. 4, Aharoni received a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denying his request for a visa and notifying him that he needed to leave the country immediately.

They can’t find hundreds, maybe thousands, of Mexican drug mules, but they can find this guy. Your tax dollars at work.

Immediately after receiving the letter denying his visa application, Aharoni left for Vancouver, where he now tries to guide his company from a friend’s living room. He says he believes his San Francisco headquartered business could create hundreds of jobs in the next five years, a plan that is now in jeopardy.

He ought to have stayed. As an illegal immigrant, he would get free health care, loving support from ‘sanctuary cities’ like San Francisco, free schooling at public expense should he care to have a child or two, and many other benefits. If he registers as a Democrat, he can even vote … possibly more than once.

Read it.

You know you want one.

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In recent years, those tests have generally been conducted at a 1.5 megajoule launch energy, which the Navy puts into perspective by noting that “a one-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph has approximately one megajoule of kinetic energy.”

We have the technology.

Read it.

Every few months, it seems, we hear of another online content store dying or changing… and with it, out goes all the content that people thought they were “legitimately” buying, because the connected DRM server goes dead. It makes you wonder why anyone buys any DRM’d content at all, knowing that in a flash, it might all go away.

Which is why I never store stuff ‘in the cloud’, because when the sun comes out the clouds go away.

Read it.

Unfortunately, understanding this chart requires a level of numeracy not possessed by most graduates of government schools.

Read it. And watch the slideshow .

Representatives of “the 99 percent” have been camping out in lower Manhattan to protest economic inequality since late September, but the riches on display at some of their home addresses clearly came from “1 percent” families.

We searched Google Maps and the real estate Multiple Listing Service for the home addresses police collected during the arrests of less-than-law-abiding New York City “occupiers,” and found dream homes aplenty. These opulent houses include in-ground swimming pools, manicured lawns, and golf course access.

As I’ve always said, this is merely an internal dispute among the Crust, in a Clever Plastic Disguise.

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In his book, Eker lists seventeen ways in which the financial blueprints of the rich differ from those of the poor and the middle-class. According to him:

1. Rich people believe: “I create my life.” Poor people believe: “Life happens to me.”
2. Rich people play the money game to win. Poor people play the money game to not lose.
3. Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.
4. Rich people think big. Poor people think small.
5. Rich people focus on opportunities. Poor people focus on obstacles.
6. Rich people admire other rich and successful people. Poor people resent rich and successful people.
7. Rich people associate with positive, successful people. Poor people associate with negative or unsuccessful people.
8. Rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling and promotion.
9. Rich people are bigger than their problems. Poor people are smaller than their problems.
10. Rich people are excellent receivers. Poor people are poor receivers.
11. Rich people choose to get paid based on results. Poor people choose to get paid based on time.
12. Rich people think “both”. Poor people think “either/or”.
13. Rich people focus on their net worth. Poor people focus on their working income.
14. Rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well.
15. Rich people have their money work hard for them. Poor people work hard for their money.
16. Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.
17. Rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know.

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Thanks, guys, you’re really helping.

(No millionaires were harmed in the making of this hippie behavioral sink.)

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When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will quite cheerfully murder each other.

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Let’s start with the good news. Arson in Detroit (you know, Devil’s Night, where the Motor City’s Black occupants burn down buildings) was down 50 percent this year. The bad news: how much of Detroit is there actually left to burn?

An excellent question.

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Let’s cut to the chase: sugar doesn’t make kids hyper. There have been at least twelve trials of various diets investigating different levels of sugar in children’s diets.  That’s more studies than are often done on drugs. None of them detected any differences in behavior between children who had eaten sugar and those who hadn’t.  These studies included sugar from candy, chocolate, and natural sources.  Some of them were short-term, and some of them were long term. Some of them focused on children with ADHD. Some of them even included only children who were considered “sensitive” to sugar. In all of them, children did not behave differently after eating something full of sugar or something sugar-free.

As usual, most of what people ‘know’ ain’t so.

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It may seem strange, but when leftist social scientists actually talk to and observe the poor, they confirm the stereotypes of the harshest Victorian.  Poverty isn’t about money; it’s a state of mind.  That state of mind is low conscientiousness.

Turns out that the reason poor people are poor is because they aren’t worth much. There appears to be a certain degree of symmetry there.

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Of course, if a Republican were President, this would be covered wall-to-wall 24/7.

Funny thing about that. You’d think the media were … what is that phrase? Biased?

Read it.

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

When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will quite cheerfully murder each other.

Richard Epstein is a smart guy who realizes that there are no quick fixes available for our economy.

The constant question of the audience members was what could be done for them in the short run. That sentiment was captured by Shaila Dewan, a New York Times reporter present at the debate, who, to great applause, wanted to know “what do you do in the short run” to help the unemployed?

It is never fun to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the blunt truth is that Obama’s jobs plan will not work. The audience, however, was in no mood to acknowledge that there is no magic short-term fix of the sort that Zandi and Rouse promised. Indeed, the full set of proposals in the Obama jobs plan is likely to set matters back even further. Zandi and Rouse’s misguided optimism demonstrates everything wrong in today’s thinking about job creation in the United States.

The only way to fix the short-term unemployment problem is by fixing the long-term issues that have fallen into treacherous disrepair over the past decade. Several long-term issues that must be fixed include, for starters, minimum wage legislation, unionization, and employer health-care mandates. Then, once we get an improved business environment, investors and employers will come off the sidelines and start investing and hiring. But without that change, prudent investors will shy away from productive ventures, preferring to hoard their money in treasury bills. The longer we wait to implement these overdue reforms, the more delayed the recovery will be.

We didn’t get here overnight, and we’re not going to get away from here overnight. But in this modern instant-gratification culture, that’s not a message to which people’s ears are tuned.

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I’m waiting for this technology to reach something like, say, a Toyota Camry.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Steve Sailer routinely picks up issues that others ignore.

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and I’ve come to the conclusion that population control was a very big deal in the press back when Protestants were worried that Irish Catholics were going to swamp them. As soon as that threat disappeared, Protestants lost interest in the whole question, and we rapidly moved to today’s situation where only crimethinkers publicly suggest that maybe some of those 10,000 NGOs in Haiti should provide Depo Provera shots.

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

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Slavery has been a curse upon human existence since the dawn of mankind. During modern times there has been a thin illusion that slavery has vanished from the world. The sad reality is that slavery does exist in our modern era, and while slavery is not unique to Islam, there has never been an abolition of slavery in the Islamic world as there has been in the Western nations.

Read it.