Read it.

It isn’t a rarity for the folks at the University of Cambridge to introduce us to some of their digital findings, and on this occasion they are delivering 4,000 of Newton’s manuscripts right to your virtual door.

Read it.

went to the Mall of America on a rainy afternoon, curious to see how the retail world was holding up. Three years into the Interminably Grinding Recession, you expect tumbleweeds. The lingerie parlors will be selling burlap sacks; the kiosks will have practical gifts, like Complete Dinner Kits that come with rabbit traps and knives fer skinnin’.

But no. It all looks shiny and prosperous and merry. Enormous silver trees stand in the atrium while an orchestra of well-fed children saws away at holiday songs. Perhaps the retail mix has adjusted to the new economic realities, and the stores that used to sell $45 bars of soap infused with panda tears have gone under, but I didn’t notice.

NIST Time & Frequency Services

I love this kind of stuff.

Read it.

On Saturday, one of the replacement workers was beaten with something “similar to a baseball bat” and hospitalized. However, according to the Toledo Blade, police do not think the labor dispute has anything to do with the beating.

Of course not. These days, the police are unionized, too.

Look for … the Union label…. Be sure to wipe the blood off first.

Read it.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This means that if the government infringes on your rights, you are entitled to mount a timely and meaningful defense of those rights in court. It’s one of the cornerstones of our entire legal system, with roots dating back at least as far as the Magna Carta, which declared, “No free man…shall be stripped of his rights or possessions…except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Unfortunately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prefers a less venerable form of justice, as the Supreme Court will hear next month during oral arguments in the case of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. At issue is the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Water Act through so-called administrative compliance orders, which are government commands that allow the agency to control the use of private property without the annoyance of having to subject its actions to judicial review.

Read it.

A British doctor shot dead  by the Taliban was part of a humanitarian mission that had helped 2,000 Afghans, an inquest heard yesterday.

Dr Karen Woo was executed alongside nine other aid workers after they tried to cross a mountain river in August last year.

The 36-year-old, who was due to get married a fortnight later, suffered  ‘catastrophic’ injuries from two gunshot wounds in the attack.

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

Read it. And watch the video.

This MEMRI clip features a lecture by Sheik Abu Imran, the leader of Shariah4Belgium, about the coming abolition of “idolatry” in Belgium. He says that all “idols” — including the famous Atomium monument — will be destroyed when Belgium comes under Islamic control.

When Islam rules our lands, all forms of idolatry — art, science, music, public festivals, all non-Islamic rituals — will be ground down under the iron heel of shariah. There will be no room for compromise. We will all live in perfect freedom forever as slaves of Allah.

Useful Stuff from XKCD.

Watch it.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

Read it.

By reaching out to China — as well as a handful of up-and-coming foreign powers like India, Korea and Russia — to build the experimental new nuclear reactors, there is no mistaking the message: The prospects are brighter for a nuclear power start-up to make it in China than in the U.S. When Gates went looking for partners, he landed in Beijing, not Seattle. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out in February after Gates met with the Chinese scientific establishment earlier this year, “Current U.S. rules don’t even cover the type of technology TerraPower hopes to use.” Ouch.

Read it.

Startups thrive on discontinuities and disruption. NPR and Kaiser Health News broke a major story that Walmart intends to become the largest provider of primary care in the country. While Walmart backed away from some of what was reported in their Request for Information, there’s enough wiggle room in their statement to drive a truck through. In my view, this is the biggest news in healthcare since health reform. Regardless of how one feels about Walmart, it’s indisputable that they have a massive footprint and ripple effect that is good news for healthtech companies.

Hey, ‘buy local’ whiners! Let’s see your mom & pop shop do that!

With 1.4 million employees and hundreds of millions of customer visits every month, Wal-Mart’s impact is without parallel. It’s one reason that the Sierra Club partnered with Walmart on its Sustainability Program. At one time, Walmart would have been a target of scorn by the Sierra Club but they saw the impact they could have. The effect of Sierra Club’s partnership with Walmart may have had a more positive outcome on the environment than just about any other Sierra Club initiative.

And the Sierra Club enters the ranks of the ‘progressive’ organizations who are willing to surrender their principles in exchange for power. My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

I believe the fundamental reason that the HealthIT systems in place are so abysmal (speaking from experience of having implemented dozens of these systems – many of which are developed on late 60’s technology) has been that decision-making in healthcare is incredibly convoluted, consensus-driven and drawn out.

Most of it caused by government regulations and the heavily government-regulated insurance industry. Let’s put the blame where it belongs. Good luck to Walmart trying to push that rope.

Read it.

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

And this applies especially to those who delude themselves into believing that they are well-informed. Read any of Dennis’s comments for a good illustration of this process at work.

Tragically, this appears to apply to members of Congress, journalists, and certain politically-inclined scientists as well.

Read it. And weep.

ScienceDaily is reporting a truly depressing new study that finds that when it comes to complicated economic issues, people default to trusting government to address them.

Read it.

I have challenged Marie Simonsen, commentator in Dagbladet, to provide some concrete examples of places where Muslims have lived peacefully with their non-Muslim neighbors over longer periods of time. Personally, I don’t think any such place exists, which means that the term Islamophobia, so frequently used by her newspaper and others, is completely meaningless.

Read it. And get the free e-book.

For those who have the free time, it’s fun to make up a score card and see how many of these fallacies a typical news story (or, even worse, press release) can contain. Similar to the ‘buzzword bingo’ that people often play in business meetings, it allows us to laugh a bit when we really want to cry.

Read it.

Of course they were! EVERYBODY knows THAT!

Yeah, well, at one time ‘everybody’ knew that the world was flat, too. ‘Everybody’ can be wrong, and frequently is.

It is common to see history rewritten before our eyes. Still, even in that context, the myth of the Wall Street bailout is remarkable.

And depressing. As Some Famous Person once said, nobody every lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Banks in a fractional reserve system are uniquely fragile. They don’t actually “have” any of their “own” money, of course; they have mostly other people’s money–deposits, CDs and wholesale funds (interbank loans and other debts) on a relatively small capital or equity base to fund their assets (loans). NO bank is or can be solvent if the public thinks it is not. That’s why a run is a self fulfilling prophecy.

This applies to governments, too, a fact that Greece and Italy are having their noses rubbed in even now.

Read it.

When smuggling enforcement operations reach a publication called Small Wars Journal, perhaps it’s time for the government to wake up to what’s happening on our southern border.

This is a significant event and represents an escalation in cross border violence. According to Javier Pena, the new head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Houston Division, “Everybody is surprised at the brazenness…We haven’t seen this type of violence, which concerns us.” [1].

No shit, Sherlock.

All captured Zetas had military style (short) haircuts with no tattoos evident in the booking photos so unit discipline is noted.

In other words, these weren’t just common street hoods — these were serious professionals.

Perhaps, now that we’re out of Iraq, we could use some of the expertise presumably obtained there to attempt to cope with what’s going on closer to home.

Read it.

No app built for reading starts with the premise that the publisher has done an acceptable job.

You would think that those in the publishing business would have some sort of basic appreciation of why people come to their sites, and some sort of basic aversion to doing things that irritate their users. Unfortunately, you would be wrong therein.

If you have a site, presumably you want to have people visit the site — more than once, if possible. So why go out of your way to irritate them by making the Content difficult to get to?

A pop-up window that obscures the Content, and has to be clicked somewhere to get rid of it, is irritating, no matter what it’s for. Starting the user experience by being an asshole BEFORE SOMEONE EVEN GETS TO YOUR SITE is not a formula for success. (Yes, this means bullshit ‘registration’ requirements. ‘But it’s free!’ No, it’s not; it takes time and effort, and my time and effort are limited, and therefore valuable — and clicking the BACK button is less time and effort than your bullshit registration process, however ‘free’.)

Things that move (advertisements, twitter feeds, breaking ‘news’) are irritating, no matter what they’re for. We are hard-wired to be attracted to movement, and moving shit THAT IS NOT THE CONTENT WE CAME FOR is an unprofitable distraction. I always make a note of vendors who do this sort of thing, so I know to avoid them — not, I suspect, the hoped-for result. No such thing as bad publicity? Dude, keep thinking that way; the vultures will feast on your flesh.

Read it.

Last week, the intel community’s blue-sky research group, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Iarpa), handed over $10.5 million to Raytheon BBN Technologies to start work on the Sirius program. The initiative aims to create a series of so-called “serious games” that’d help analysts improve their objectivity and reasoned judgment when confronted with complex or culturally foreign scenarios.

And about fargin time, too. Success comes from experience, and experience comes from failure. Better to fail in a virtual world, and learn thereby, than fail for real, and fail when it counts.

Read it.

Rick Perry has done something his opponents have been hoping he’d do for years: retire. But it’s not what the governor’s detractors had in mind.

Perry officially retired in January so he could start collecting his lucrative pension benefits early, but he still gets to collect his salary — and has in turn dramatically boosted his take-home pay.

Guess he’s given up on running for President. Who’d vote for him now? He’s exposed himself as one of those who are honest only while people are watching, and sometimes not even then.

Gates of Vienna is, as usual, a treasury of useful information.

Great Jihad Iceberg. It plays a relatively small role in the push for Islamic supremacy.

There are five other major strategies employed by the Ummah in its long-term war against the unbelievers of the West:

Read it.

In a new report this week PwC predicts US manufacturing will undergo a renaissance thanks to cheap energy, with shale gas saving industry $11.6bn in lower, not higher bills. By remaining wary of climate change mitigation policies, the US economy seems to have dodged a bullet.

Amazing how well that works. The key characteristic of all the hard times going around is that they are mostly self-inflicted (if you suppose that governments and their peoples are on the same side, which is growing increasingly difficult to believe).

Thomas, once again, speaks for me.

“Activists” try my patience, and exhaust it. Their message — no matter the particulars of content or phrasing — boils down to this: Government should “do something” about “something.” This is a formula that has been invoked since the beginning of the Republic, though increasingly more often since the onset of the Progressive Era in the late 1800s. The exhortation betrays three beliefs, unconscious as they may be on the part of those who do the exhorting.

Proponents of government action will counter with the excuse that “something must be done” because of “market failure,” which is the failure of markets to produce outcomes preferred by the proponents. And yet they overlook government failure, and often seek to rectify it by exhorting more government action, which leads to more government failure, and so on.

Here are some salient examples of government failure — and its correlate, misfeasance — that ought to (but will not) give pause to the “do something” crowd:….

Read it.

The hoard was placed in a lead box and buried underground at a time when the Anglo-Saxons were attempting to wrest control of the north of the country from the Vikings.

Read it. And watch the video.

Despite repeated warnings from the Pentagon, Barack Obama rejected three plans to recover or destroy the US drone that was intercepted over Iranian territory.

I wonder whether Jimmy Carter has an arrangement to pay Obama to make sure that Carter isn’t remembered as the worst President in recent history.

Read it.

Hey, the child is father to the man, and they want to give these boys a really positive parental experience.

A pointed reminder that human rights are not a Muslim value.

Read it.

I suppose that, if you absolutely must have a government minister in charge of broadcast standards, this is the kind to have.

Gotta love Australians.

Read it.

Last October, when Bush traveled to British Columbia, the group demanded that Canada arrest him as well. At the time, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blasted Amnesty, declaring, “This kind of stunt helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International.”

One of the chief problems with advocacy groups is that they are obsessed with ‘raising consciousness’, even when it works against their nominal ‘mission’. Couple this with the degree of self-righteousness needed to devote considerable amounts of one’s time to hectoring others about how they ought to behave, plus a noticeable degree of narcissism reflected in their constant need for public attention, and one has a very disgusting conjunction of some of the ugliest aspects of the human personality. One might forgive them their sins if they were effective, but chiefly they aren’t — I know of no case where Amnesty International (or any similar group) has had any positive effect on human rights in the countries where it is most at risk; a moment’s though is sufficient to figure out why. Pretty sad, really.

Read it.

Will the last one left turn out the lights?

The last time a Democratic governor of New York raised taxes on “millionaires,” the job-creators voted with their feet. Rush Limbaugh and Thomas Golisano moved to Florida. Glenn Beck moved to Texas. Stephen Schwarzman decamped to Paris.

Trying to grasp why the current governor, Andrew Cuomo, would want to repeat this pattern, I took a look at the New York State campaign finance filings for his campaign. The first big gift that comes up is $25,000 from S. Daniel Abraham of Palm Beach, whose billions come from the Slim-Fast diet drink. Why shouldn’t Mr. Abraham fund Mr. Cuomo’s campaign? It’s good, after all, for the economy in Palm Beach and in the rest of Florida, where there is no state income tax at all.

Read it.

Did you know Malaysia had a king? Neither did I.

Read it.

A discussion of Truman’s decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan introduces a review of when, if ever, it is legitimate to sacrifice innocent lives if doing so will save even more lives.

Read it.

Or he will taunt you a second time.

Read it.

Remember that the unemployment rate is not “how many people don’t have jobs?”, but “how many people don’t have jobs and are actively looking for them?” Let’s say you’ve been looking fruitlessly for five months and realize you’ve exhausted every job listing in your area. Discouraged, you stop looking, at least for the moment. According to the government, you’re no longer unemployed. Congratulations?

Andy Leonard has some useful things to say.

I believe once a person has demonstrated they are capable of unacceptable behavior – to anyone, for any reason – they have demonstrated they are capable of that same behavior towards you. Why? It’s on their ILAA. They just proved it to you. If you witness a co-worker take something that belongs to another co-worker, they are demonstrating they are capable of stealing from you. If you observe your business partner treat another partner – or a competitor, or a customer, or anyone – unfairly, they are communicating they are capable of treating you unfairly. If you see an organization abuse one person, that organization is explaining “You could be next”. If it is on the ILAA, everyone is a potential target. Remember, this is about what is inside the individual.

Read it.

Your future under Islam. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

Read it.

Good luck. They’d be better off just selling it to the Chinese, which they’ll probably wind up doing anyway. The Chinese might have some prayer of understanding the technology.

Read it.

We used to PT at 0530 in an urban area. We had 4 or 5 students get hit by cars on indiviual runs. When the senior Marine Officer was asked why he didn’t make us wear reflective belts, he responded, “If they are not smart enough to avoid traffic; they are not smart enough to lead Marines.”

Read it.

    Because he is black, his opinions about race are controversial. If he were white, they probably would be unpublishable. This is a rare case in which we are all beneficiaries of American racial hypocrisy. That he works in the special bubble of permissiveness extended by the liberal establishment to some conservatives who are black (in exchange for their being regarded as inauthentic, self-loathing, soulless race traitors) must be maddening to Sowell, even more so than it is for other notable black conservatives. It is plain that the core of his identity, his heart of hearts, is not that of a man who is black. It is that of a man who knows a whole lot more about things than you do and is intent on setting you straight, at length if necessary, if you’d only listen. Take a look at those glasses, that awkward grin, those sweater-vests, and consider his deep interest in Albert Einstein and other geniuses: Thomas Sowell is less an African American than a Nerd American.

Read it.

Both Roosevelts railed against those with money as corrupters of all that’s good and fair in America.  Both thought the way to return to a “fair” society was by expanding the role of government.  And both thought the best way to pay for their efforts was to redistribute the wealth.  If that doesn’t sound like Barack Obama, I don’t know what does.

While we are not told what fairness means, we are told the government can attain it.

And, of course, the country pays for all this “fairness” by raising taxes.  “Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.”  Teddy said that—even before those taxes existed—but it could have just as easily been Obama.

Read it.

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

“Whoever studies the nature of the conflict between the Muslims and the Jews understands an important fact, [namely that] this is a religious conflict, not a dispute about politics or nationality, or a conflict between races or tribes, or a fight over land or country, as some describe it,” states Saudi textbook Studies from the Muslim World.

The book says that the conflict will not end unless one side vanquishes the other, because “throughout Islamic history, the Jews have striven to destroy the [Islamic] religion and spread fitna [chaos] among the Muslims.”The book also repeats classic anti-Semitic lies that Jews have taken control of Western media and culture, exploited their home societies, and aligned themselves with Christians to destroy Islam.

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

Freeberg looks at a .700 caliber rifle. Watch the video.

The rifle, with just a 16.25? barrel, can push the 1132 grain of lead up to 2300 fps. Thats 13,000 ft/lbs of energy, right up there with the .50 BMG and far exceeding the .700 Nitro Express. The cast lead bullet has enough energy to pass clean through a 1/4? steel plate.

.700 caliber is about the diameter of a penny and just shy of the size of the bullets used in classic smoothbore muskets. Needless to say, having such a weapon in your possession, much less actually owning one, would be illegal in most European countries.

Read it.

The only honest discussion of race and education in America that you’ll see this decade.

And I’d still shoot Roger Staubach on sight, given the opportunity.

Unfortunately, you have to  subscribe to his e-mail column The Goldberg File to get the best stuff. Do it.

Here’s a sample:

1. Nationalism = socialism. I’ve been saying for years that the presumption that nationalism and socialism are opposites — an idea ingrained in many Marxist minds — is nonsense. Nationalism, in terms of public policy if not necessarily culture, is socialism. When we nationalize health care, we socialize medicine. Teddy Roosevelt’s “new nationalism” was a call for a “new socialism” — a point his advisers, Charles van Hise, Richard Ely et al., would have happily conceded.

2. President Obama has been shockingly nationalistic. Sputnik moments, “Beat China!” “We owe it to the troops to support green energy,” “Kneel Before Zod!” And now he disinters Teddy Roosevelt’s “new nationalism.” In actual policy terms, he’s been vastly more nationalistic than George W. Bush was. The difference is that liberals hate cultural nationalism. They hate it so much they even see overt displays of patriotism as scarily nationalistic. But they love programmatic nationalism — Everyone shut up and build things liberal like! The danger is when you get cultural nationalists joining forces with socialists. In fact, that’s called national-socialism. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
 
3. Where the hell are the “new ideas”? Perhaps because I wrote a book arguing that liberalism remains loyal to the progressive philosophy first laid out over a century ago, or maybe because my next book is in no small part about how they try to hide this fact, I’m particularly vexed by the fact that conservatives are supposedly in thrall to “old ideas” but liberals are all about new ones. In his Kansas speech, Obama kept insisting that conservatives are beholden to the failed ideas of the past. Er, okay. And that’s why you dusted off a 101-year-old speech by a failed third-party candidate? Got it. Obama talks as if raising taxes on rich people so they can pay their “fair share” is a new idea when “let’s take more from that guy to pay for stuff I want” was an old idea when proto-humans were drawing stick figures on cave walls with saber-tooth-tiger scat. And yet somehow Republican politicians never turn the tables on this incandescently stupid argument. It vexes me. I am exceedingly vexed.

Speaking truth to stupidity. Nobody does it better.

Read it.

The action plan, launched by equalities minister Lynne Featherstone, said that a child’s early years have a “profound influence on their life chances”.

I wonder who ‘she’ was before the operation?

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain. Or any country that has an ‘Equalities Minister’.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in Barney Frank’s district.

Read it.

You are 25 times as likely to be injured cheerleading as hunting.

Read it.

I’ve recently fallen into the habit of pulling and tugging at ATM slots before I slide my card through because I fear that someone nefarious has stuck one of these 3D-printed card skimmers over the opening. This skimmer, found in California, was 3D-printed to resemble the real Chase ATM slot almost perfectly.

Wildly enough, there’s a pinhole camera connected to a full PCB hidden under the plate and the ports designed to assist the visually impaired seem to be unimpeded, which means nothing would seem amiss even as this thing grabbed your card account number, PIN, and, presumably, the security code on the back of your card in some cases. The fact that this barnacle of electronics is attached, parasitically, to one of the most secure and human-proof devices in existence is an amazing feat.

One protection is to use a local or regional bank — or, better yet, a Credit Union — rather than one of the national megabanks. Scammers are going to be after Chase or Citibank, not Widespot Credit Union.

Read it.

Let’s start with Congress and work our way up.

Read it. All of it is true. I tell you three times.

Read it. And watch the video.

An interesting idea. I’m still surprised that they haven’t developed tires filled with some sort of closed-cell foam in place of air.

Ouch.

Andrew Rossi’s Page One (2011), a sleek, self-important infomercial for The New York Times, largely involves Times partisans whining that the dinosaur carcass of the Gray Lady is being picked clean by the mammalian swarms of the new media. There are cursory nods to the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller scandals, but essentially nothing in the way of real introspection or self-criticism. The Times‘ complaint largely goes like this: “What kind of world fails to recognize the inherent nobility of our enterprise! O fallen mankind, repent your shallowness!”