Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

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

Read it.

So take pity on Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren, the scold of the 1 Percent who is currently running for the Senate in Massachusetts after getting hosed by the Obama administration. Warren is widely credited with pushing for the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would simplify credit offerings so that all of us idiots who bought houses we couldn’t afford could blame somebody else. Faced with opposition from Republicans, Obama tossed Warren aside as the first hea of the CFPA.

So she wants the ‘Ted Kennedy seat’ in the Senate as a consolation prize. In Taxachusetts, she’ll probably get it.

Hard to see how Warren wouldn’t be, by most standards, wealthy, according to the Personal Financial Disclosure form she filed to run for Senate shows that she’s worth as much as $14.5 million. She earned more than $429,000 from Harvard last year alone for a total of about $700,000, and lives in a house worth $5 million.

She also has a portfolio of investments in stocks and bonds worth as as much as $8 million, according to the form, which lists value ranges for each investment. The bulk of it is in funds managed by TIAA-CREF.

But she’s not one of THEM, however.

“I realize there are some wealthy individuals – I’m not one of them, but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios” she told [MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell].

Just poor as a churchmouse, that’s our Lizzy.

Read it.

In a tour de force of office supply physics, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, have shown that it is possible to produce X-rays by simply unrolling Scotch tape.

Next step: nuclear fusion.

“We’re going to do that,” said Seth J. Putterman, a professor of physics at U.C.L.A. “I think it will work.”

Bear in mind that this is from the New York Times so you’ll want to check it with another source.

Read it.

Hard on the story noted here the other day of new doubts about catastrophic global warming from the scientific mainstream comes the news from Britain’s MET office, which is one of the primary nodes of the global warming establishment, that global temperatures have now been essentially flat for the last 15 years.

Time for AlGore to write another book, I guess, or for Michael More to make another ‘documentary’.

Read it.

New York City, of course. Welcome to the Other Left Coast.

The NY Post introduces the world to 66 year old New York City public school teacher Alan Rosenfeld, the rajah of the city’s “rubber room,” or holding pen for teachers on full pay who are kept away from the classroom.

In 2001, Rosenfeld was accused (but not convicted) of “ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens” and the typing teacher has been kept away from students as a result. He pulls a salary of $100,049 and can’t be fired or forced to retire.

Ooh, ooh,  I want to be a typing teacher when I grow up. Make money! Meet girls! Can’t beat it, son.

Read it.

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

After all, Mao did much the same thing….

Read it.

From California, of course.

Last fall, a state inspector strode into Great Beginnings preschool and declared the tree house and climbing structure too high. They would have to come down or be surrounded by extra padding.

The metal ladder to the playhouse, which had been there 30 years, could pinch the children, said Beverly Wright-Chrystal, a state child care licensing representative. Also, a log worn smooth by generations of boys and girls playing horsy and hide-and-go-seek would have to be sanded and painted because of a potential “splinter hazard,” Wright-Chrystal determined.

Marian Stocking, who opened the Long Beach preschool in a converted house on 4th Street in 1978, had the offending equipment hauled away. Watching it go, some of the children cried out, “Tell those bad men to bring our log back.”

Good luck with that, kid. Welcome to the Left Coast.

When I was in Law School, my torts professor would spend Friday’s class examining the latest WTF ruling that had come out of the California Supreme Court. Those sessions certainly contributed to my decision not to make my living practicing law.

Read it.

It seems odd that someone can be born and raised in the United States, and even graduate from a high school in the United States, and still not understand basic English.

Arizona has become a bellwether for what will likely be America’s grandest cultural divide of the 21st century: the demographic struggle between Anglos and Hispanics, two groups that are split along a seemingly intractable linguistic rift. Arizona is home to an ongoing immigration dispute that has pitted the governor against the president. The state recently outlawed a “Mexican-American Studies” program that was deemed to encourage Hispanic resentment against Anglos.

On the other hand….

This has all fallen on deaf ears in the heat-wilted border town of San Luis, AZ, probably because nine out of ten residents speak Spanish at home. The 2010 US Census pegged the city’s population as slightly over 25,000, with a decisively dominant 99% of its residents being Hispanic. (The quotient was less than 90% in 2000.) So as someone who’s fluent in Spanish but only possesses “survival English” skills, Cabrera would adequately represent her local constituency.

It’s not clear to me why ‘good English’ is necessary for someone to represent a constituency that is 90% Spanish-speaking. It’s not as if there aren’t enough people around who are bilingual and can provide translation services in cases where they are necessary. We don’t insist that American military personnel speak Arabic in order to do ‘nation-building’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a position on a city council, not an executive job where the officeholder is required to serve the public generally. Sure, it would be a good thing if she were to speak better English, and I certainly hope that this incident motivates her to get better at it, but still, I don’t see why it’s so necessary in this case. Is puzzle.

Read it.

Japan’s population is expected to shrink to a third of its current size over the next century, with the average woman living to over 90 within 50 years, a UK government report said on Monday.

Read it.

Origami architect, Ingrid Siliakus, can spent up to two months painstakingly creating entire cities purely from folding pieces of paper.

Read it.

Explorers believe they have found a submerged treasure trove of artefacts once owned by Lord Nelson – including his sword – in the wreck of a ship sunk almost 90 years after his death.

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Workers at the Regency Ceramics factory in India raided the home of their boss, and beat him senseless with lead pipes after a wage dispute turned ugly.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Tim Cavanaugh turns over a rock and watches what wriggles out.

How many public transit expert/advocates actually ride on public transportation?

Damned few. I’ll bet you a paycheck on that one.

I have met more than three folks, in and out of the establishment media, who speak with authority about mass transportation yet somehow can never get around to using it in the heat of their daily struggles. Judging by this storied Onion headline, I’m guessing others have met such people as well.

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

I wonder this every time an expert makes the case for more intelligently planned transit networks featuring smarter coordination throughout the hub or loop or grid. There’s one thing you learn by your second day of using transit when you actually don’t have a choice: For every transfer in your itinerary, you need to double the time allotted for the trip.

That’s because it’s not just taking you, it’s taking a bunch of other people, too. When you’re the only guy using the bathroom, it’s pretty quick. When you share it with others, it takes longer. Anybody who grew up with siblings knows the answer to that one. (Hm. I wonder how many ‘experts’ are only children? That would explain a lot….)

But the reality of transit use in the non-hypothetical universe is that you don’t need smarter hubs or better coordination or more efficient transfers. You don’t need experts planning out more brilliant three- and four-transfer itineraries. You need more shit running more frequently to more destinations.

Transit doesn’t suck because it lacks central planning. It sucks because it’s artificially scarce.

The basic problem with ‘mass transit’ is that it carries you from where you aren’t to where you don’t want to be, with stops in between to waste your time by picking up and dropping off people other than you. That’s the long and the short of it. If ‘mass transit’ started at your door and went to the door of your destination, it would be great. But it doesn’t. So it’s not.

Tom Smith shares my sentiments about the pretentious New York Times columnist.

Read it.

BLUF: Both have been proven wrong repeatedly by Actual History. A rational person is therefore justified in thinking such theories to be bullshit.

But read the whole thing.

Read it.

Read it.

Researchers from the home of graphene, the University of Manchester in England, have discovered — seemingly by chance — one of the most important properties of graphene yet: It’s impermeable to everything but water. It is the perfect water filter.

In the Good Old Days™ we had something called the Spoils System, whereby anybody who got elected to office was entitled to replace all of the existing government employees with his own picks. Needless to say, a lot of these where Friends & Family, but as one went up the Hierarchy of Greeds one soon had to depend on people who were unrelated and, lets face it, not all that friendly. So, as a result, the elected official had to select from among the people who supported him for office; which meant that, whatever he stood for, they more or less stood for the same thing. So every election the entire cast of officeholders would change.

Nowadays, however, we have a ‘reform’ call the Civil Service System, regarding which, as with most government programs, the name is the exact opposite of what it purports to be doing — in this case, it indicates that government employees are obliged neither to be civil nor to give service. But, aside from the name, it’s chief impact has been the fact that once you get hired for a government job, the only way you can lose it is to die (and sometimes not even then). So elections don’t lead to changes the way they used to.

Bottom line: No matter who is elected President, the government will be run by the same malicious morons who run it today. It’s like being electrocuted: No matter what it feels like, you can’t let go.So don’t spend a lot of time fashing yourself about it.

Watch it.

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed at anything so hard this year.

Well, so far, anyway.

Read it.

A product of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP ), SuperTracker is an online tool located at choosemyplate.gov that helps users set and maintain dietary goals. Create a user profile at the site, and you can track the calories you consume each day, record your daily physical activities, set weight management goals, and see how close you come to eating the USDA’s recommended daily allowance of dark green vegetables. SuperTracker, an expanded version of previous tools called the MyPyramid Tracker and the MyPyramid Menu Planner, debuted in December 2011. In its first month, it reportedly attracted more than 700,000 registered users. Any day now, then, we should expect to see either the end of the obesity epidemic or SuperDuperTracker, an even more intrusive and hands-on government effort to engineer our behavior. If you’re a betting man, bet on the latter.

Homework: Determine whether it’s Democrats or Republicans who are more likely to be attempting to control what you can eat through government action. Extra credit if you find the largest number of ‘it’s for the children!’ excuses.

Mike Masnik points out, at greater length than I have the give-a-shit to do, why the concept of ‘intellectual property’ is a loser.

One of the more important points in understanding some of the fights over the ridiculousness of today’s copyright and patent laws is to recognize how knowledge (information) is a natural resource. It is the input that makes other great things. Economist Paul Romer’s famous research really showed how knowledge and information as a resource is what creates economic growth. Once you recognize that fact, you begin to run into problems when you think about locking up that natural resource. Think of other natural resources. Do we think the world is better off if there’s a greater supply of each of those? An abundance? If we have an abundance of wheat, that’s a good thing. If we have an abundance of energy, that’s a good thing. There may be side effects of such abundances, but the overall abundance is something worth cherishing.

Read it.

Police in England arrested a man Saturday on suspicion of making a racially abusive gesture at a high-profile soccer match between Liverpool and Manchester United earlier that day, they said Sunday.

And I’m sure that’s the most important thing they had to do that day.

Sheesh.

Meanwhile, back in the real world:

We’ve featured a number of articles recently about racially-motivated larceny and violence in Britain and Denmark. Other stories about similar events in Norway, France, Germany, and Sweden have been included in the news feed — although in the case of Sweden, one has to read between the lines to detect the ethnic component of most crimes, since the media go to great lengths to avoid giving any clue about the racial or religious background of criminals.

The attackers in all these cases are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants, usually from Africa, the Arab world, or South Asia. Their modus operandi is to converge in groups of five to twenty “youths” on a white native of their host country, choosing their victim for his exposed position and relative helplessness.

And what are the ‘authorities’ doing about it?

Media reports of these incidents typically describe the attacks as “inexplicable” or “random”. Police spokesmen often tell reporters that the perpetrators’ motive is unknown. Despite the obvious racial animus behind most of the crimes — including the expression of racial epithets while the victim is being beaten or stabbed — there seems to be a widespread reluctance to discuss race when the attackers are “brown” and the victim is white. A cone of silence descends over the press and the authorities. Under those circumstances, from their point of view, race simply doesn’t exist.

Read it.

It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace. A new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on when people get cold, sucks fat out of the rest of the body to fuel itself. Another new study finds that a second form of brown fat can be created from ordinary white fat by exercise.

Check it out.

I got an 8.

Read it.

So if you speak French and want to learn English, you’ll be paired up with a native English speaker who wants to learn French. You start in one language and halfway through the video session, a timer tells you when to switch to the other. Speakers are also matched by their language levels, and to aid in the conversation, Verbling will suggest topics according to the ability of the participants, such as “What chores are you responsible for in your home” or “what kind of music do you listen to?”

And Berlitz and Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone all feel the cold wind of disintermediation on the backs of their necks….

Read it.

Asim Kausar, 25, from Bolton, kept the information on a computer pen drive.

The material only came to light after Kausar’s family suffered a burglary and the memory stick was handed in to police.

Kausar pleaded guilty to four charges under the Terrorism Act at Manchester Crown Court.

The memory stick contained details about ricin, assassination and torture techniques, and how to construct improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Must be one o’ them IRA terrorists. Asim Kausar sure sounds like an Irish name, don’t it?

His mobile phone was also seized which contained a photograph of Kausar posing with an AK rifle – believed to have been taken in Pakistan.

The court was also told about a letter written by Kausar in which he said: “I want to fight jihad for Allah”.

The letter also asked “whether he would be able to fight and whether his martyrdom would be accepted”.

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

Read it.

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

Funeral, schmuneral — Hey! Thanks for lining up like that!

Read it.

Bans on soda and “junk food” in public schools, while less objectionable than policies aimed at adults, have always struck me as symbolic. Since what kids eat (not to mention how much energy they expend) is determined by so many factors other than what’s available at school, it seems unrealistic to expect that getting rid of vending machines selling candy bars, potato chips, and sugary drinks will have a noticeable impact on their diets or waistlines.

Yeah, but it lets the people in charge Feel Good About Themselves, like they Made A Difference, and that’s all that counts with such people. Such Wellness Theater matches the Security Theater we see at the airports — it doesn’t have any effect, but so long as it looks like something is being done, that’s enough. ‘How can you say we were ineffective? Look at all the stuff we did! Look at all the money we spent!‘

Read it.

Were the (completely true) accusations against, say, Romney or Santorum, they would almost certainly be fatal, as they were against Cain and a host of other politicians.  But Newt deftly deploys a reframe and shames the questioner, and probably gains support rather than loses it.  The fact that he’s consistently talked a ‘family values’ line that he manifestly fails to live up with is irrelevant.  Only non-alphas get held to standards of hypocrisy by the neurotypical woman who is on the same side of the red/blue tribal boundaries.  Perhaps the easiest way to describe Newt is a lesser Bill Clinton, an appetite in a suit.  They’ve got nearly all the same markers, but Clinton is (IMO) slightly smarter—I view Clinton as likely @3 sigma and Newt between 2 and 3–and somewhat more charismatic.  Neither lacks the ability to seduce though, and they have nearly exactly the same vices.  I suppose some of the delta between their respective approval ratings can be explained by their median media coverage (Clinton, fawning vs Newt, hostile).

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In the past few weeks, several reports have been released related to federal lands.  These reports attempt to explain how federal lands could be better used to access energy sources. Both the American Petroleum Institute and the Institute for Energy Research found that the amount of domestically produced oil and natural gas has greatly reduced since Obama assumed office in 2009.  The United States has some of the largest natural gas, oil and coal resources in the world.  The reports found that these are resources that are not being used to their full potential.

Perhaps because the Obama administration hates America and it’s people and is making a valiant attempt to destroy their economy. Hey, if they wanted to do that, what would they have done differently?

Read it.

Almost certainly, you, too are ordering more and more of your merchandise via an online retailer.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.  But it gets a little sketchy when you start visiting big box retailers like Best Buy and Target so that you can have a look at the goods–and then place your order on Amazon.com.

There’s nothing sketchy about it at all. It’s called ‘competition’. We do that in America. As it happens, I have a Target just down the street, and I shop there all the time — especially now that they carry essential groceries and produce. I don’t shop at Best Buy because every time I have I was most impressed by how indifferent their salespeople were to customers.

Since it’s probably a lot cheaper to sell over the internet than to pay for prime real estate and employees to walk you through all the features, it’s hard to see how the brick-and-mortars can compete with see-it-here, buy-it-there.

Read it.

Read it.

We have written many times over the years about liberal newspapers, in particular the New York Times, which have published classified information in violation of the Espionage Act. They did thus to undermine the foreign policies of the United States, and in particular to attack the Bush administration. Today the curtain was raised on one of those episodes, as a former CIA official who was more recently a Democratic staffer for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was indicted. The Washington Post has the story (without mentioning, however, that the criminal defendant, John Kiriakou, was a Democratic staffer).

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

Katherine Mangu-Ward correctly points out the legal immigration into the U.S. is a nightmare.

We got your bureaucracy, right here.

And, of course, whenever bureaucratic nightmares arise, it generates a passel of lawyers devoted to gaming the system.

It is not a pretty sight, and will need to be fixed if we ever hope to get a handle on illegal immigration.

Read it.

Nigerian police said they found cars and vans filled with explosives in the northern city of Kano on Monday, three days after Islamist sect Boko Haram carried out a deadly attack there. Security in Nigeria’s second largest city has been beefed up since Friday when bomb attacks and fierce gun battles between the sect and police killed at least 178 people.

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

Read it.

A crude new method of making methamphetamine poses a risk even to Americans who never get anywhere near the drug: It is filling hospitals with thousands of uninsured burn patients requiring millions of dollars in advanced treatment … a burden so costly that it’s contributing to the closure of some burn units.

In the good old days, such people would die, and eventually all the stupid ones would have been killed off, and the trend would bottom out. In today’s new Kinder Gentler World, of course, intelligent people are on the hook for repairing the mistakes of stupid people. I predict that such a civilization won’t last very long.

Read it.

A MAN arrested in a police counter-terrorism operation told an officer he would “cut your head off and machine gun the lot of you”, a court has heard.

Mohammed Abdin, 21, will be sentenced in Cardiff Crown Court next month after admitting throwing furniture and threatening officers when they stormed a meeting in Canton Community Centre, Cardiff, on Thursday.

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

Reminder for the dimwitted: Any country that lets Muslims inside its borders has a deathwish.

The Other McCain is the home of the itchy trigger finger.

Setup: For those who don’t follow these things (and who could blame you?), Christine Peliosi is the daughter of Crustian power-broker Nancy Pelosi — a child of the Left Coast Establishment who has a non-career as a Democratic party political operator. She is a poster child for the second-generation Crust-guppies that clog our upper-tier universities while their leather chair waits at the non-prof. They lack for nothing and produce nothing, except occasional pious sentiments and righteous indignation, all in a Good Cause. (She comes by it honestly, though; her siblings are just as bad:

Among Christine’s siblings include environmental activist Paul Pelosi, Jr. and filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi.

— per Wikipedia.) An entire nest of First-World drones. Put them in a homeless shelter with nothing but the clothes on their backs and $10 in their pockets, and they’d starve to death in a week.

But that’s not the entertaining part. The entertaining part is Smitty’s comment on unions:

For those unaware, a union is a corporation without a product. Unions produce not-work, in a fashion similar to that of organized crime. The threat of not-work is used to extort dues from workers and benefits from companies. These monies and favors are then used to buy politicians in a non-virtuous cycle. In the Navy, we called a union a ‘mutiny’.

And I’ve never heard it put better.

Read it.

The point is, our goal should never be to “create jobs”. Our goal should be to enable people to contribute something valued by other people. The value is the point, not the work. If someone finds a way to provide value to hundreds of millions of people and it requires no more effort from them than batting their eyelashes, that would be a win.

So why are economists like Cowen and Brynjolfsson talking about jobs? The stories they are telling, while far from the same, have a common theme which I interpret as follows: the forward march of technology has made it very difficult for people who have traditionally had low-skill or even middle-skill occupations to contribute value.

More inconvenient truth from a Real Economist. The whole emphasis on ‘creating jobs’ is a species of Cargo Cult — the reason jobs exist is because they contribute to the production process; if they don’t produce, they’re Just Another Welfare Program in a Clever Plastic Face-Saving Disguise.

This is not a matter of semantics. If you think the problem is a lack of jobs, all sorts of dangerous “solutions” may come to mind. Anything from having the government hiring en masse to do make-work, valueless jobs, to setting high tariffs and immigration restrictions so that domestic companies and labor do not have any foreign competition.

Usually an economy, especially a champion economy like ours, has enough surplus to support a limited number of these not-really-jobs welfare slots, but we’re in danger of having the exceptions swallow the rule.

Getting a job is not an end unto itself; the whole point is to trade our labor for other things that we want. Getting a job at the cost of not being able to afford anything is an absurd proposition.

Not that Democrats and other congenital pork-barrel politicians shrink from absurd propositions when it means more power for them.

As for make-work jobs, I would rather the government send the poor a check to do what they want with than to force them to “play real job”. At least then they would have the time to think about how they can contribute something of real value!

Amen.

Commenter Rubberpants on tech site TechDirt does an excellent and thorough fisking of a statement relating to the obnoxious legislative proposals commonly known as SOPA and PIPA.

Read The Whole Thing as an example of how every intelligent citizen ought to analyze any statement by members of the Crust, including (but not limited to) elected officials and corporate crapitalists.

Read it.

And why? Because Muslims are treated as a privileged class in the New Multi-Culti Britain.

Sources claim that converts are attracted by the chance  of better food and a more comfortable regime.

But there are also fears that some are being radicalised.

Read it.

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

Read it.

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

‘He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.’ — Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Read it.

It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Donald Boudreaux, Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason University, explains why for the dimwitted:

Your report on Apple’s allegedly inadequate job creation in America is titled “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” (Jan. 22).  Although your reporters missed it, the answer to this question is a happy one: Americans remain exceptionally prosperous.

According to The Economist, labor costs are only 7 percent of an iPad’s retail price.*  This reality suggests that, in addition to the fact that the bulk of each Apple product is made by machine, most of the labor that is used to bring the likes of iPads and iPhones to market is of the low-skilled and low-paid sort that is abundant in developing countries.  Should Americans lament the loss here of such low-paid jobs?

No.  As your reporters admit, Apple uses lots of overseas workers precisely because those workers are willing to work in worst conditions and for lower pay than are American workers – strong evidence that the options open to even low-skilled Americans are far superior to those of most workers in developing countries.  Our prosperity enables even the poorest of us to avoid such toil.

Of course, some people (apparently including, according to your report, Pres. Obama) wonder why Apple doesn’t simply hire American workers at American wages to do more of those jobs.  Alas, the unavoidable result of that policy would be a substantial rise in the price of Apple products and a fall – likely total – in the number of such products produced and sold.

Put differently, your report, like Mr. Obama, insinuates that low-wage jobs overseas (and jobs currently performed by machines) would, if transferred to America, somehow become the same – but higher paying – jobs for workers here.  This insinuation is wrong.   If Apple followed Mr. Obama’s suggestion, there would soon be no Apple and, hence, no “iPhone work” that the U.S. could possibly “lose out on.”

Lileks.

Huge blocks of artisanal ice were imported for the Modern Sculpture Ice Carving Competition, and local artist Hannah Botello’s “Incomprehensible Thing Meant to Encourage Despair” won top honors, with second prize going to a piece of conceptual art called “Essence,” a dish of liquid water over a can of Sterno.

“Challenges our very notions of ice,” said one judge.

Read it.

According to the report published in Science, the engineered bacteria can metabolize alginate, which is seaweed’s primary sugar constituent. Not only that, but it works without requiring heat or chemicals to pre-treat the seaweed, reducing the number of processing steps needed to create a biofuel.

DNA from E. coli – a workhorse in the lower intestine, but with a few strains that cause illness, giving it a poor reputation in the popular mind – was mixed with DNA from various marine microorganisms. These included Pseudoalteromonas, which provided genes to produce an enzyme to break up alginate; and Vibrio splendidus to digest the alginate.

Read it.

The fallout over Barack Obama’s decision to kill 20,000 (mostly) union jobs on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project continues as the Laborers International Union of North America left the BlueGreen Alliance Friday afternoon.

Founded in 2006, the BlueGreen Alliance is a political pairing of left-wing unions and environmental groups whose mission (so to speak) is to ensure that America’s conversion to a green economy results in union jobs as jobs in industries like coal are destroyed.

Heh. Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

Read it.

More than 370,000 migrants who were admitted to Britain to work, study or go on holiday are now claiming out-of-work benefits, according to official figures compiled for the first time.

Bloated welfare rolls are the persistent legacy of left-wing governments — Labor in the U.K., Democrats in the U.S. — because the cornerstone of the ‘progressive’ program is to have everybody possible a dependent of the state and the political class that runs it. Britain is further advanced on this road than we are; remember their example the next time you hear some politician bloviating about a ‘path to citizenship’ for the criminals who snuck into this country to leech off of the institutions of a culture far advanced of their own.