Megan McArdle offers some perspective.

It’s still true: the mania to get more and more people into college is the brain child of people who think that school is fun, and that anyone who doesn’t go is being deprived of something like a trip to Disneyland packaged with a job guarantee.

Lots of people think school is rather miserable, and they wish to leave as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the “school is fun” crowd has made an education a virtual pre-requisite for a stable and well paying job in this century.  If you don’t like school, and aren’t good at it, what do you do?  Spend the rest of your life popping chicken tenders into the deep fry at Popeye’s?  Or deal drugs?

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Called Ralstonia eutropha H16, the bacterium uses electricity to fixate carbon dioxide into alcohols (which are merely carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen arranged in a different order). In theory the hydrogen atoms could be produced by solar panels, but for safety reasons the team instead created formic acid using electricity. The bacteria feasts on the formic acid to produce the combustible alcohol.

So much for global warming.

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“Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain’s connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables — folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric,” explained Van Wedeen, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Harvard Medical School. “This grid structure is continuous and consistent at all scales and across humans and other primate species.”

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The goods and services highlighted are popular targets for revenue-hungry lawmakers who impose “sin” taxes and other punitive costs on products and industries. These discriminatory taxes, coupled with the costs companies shoulder under the current tax burden under federal, state and local governments, increase the costs of goods and services by an average of 41 percent.

In other words, of you like something that the Crust things you ought not to like, they’ll punish you for it financially.

Megan McArdle points out that poor people are poor because they do things that poor people do.

Poor people are people who make decisions.  They are not a combination of circumstances that can be tweaked to make them stop acting like poor people.   They like babies and sleeping in for the same reasons you do.  And they are generally asked to give up those things in return for much less reward than the middle class people who cluck at them for their bad decisions.  (The poor and near poor face some of the highest marginal tax rates in the country due to loss of benefits.  For some reason, the GOP has not put much of its policymaking effort into rectifying this supply-side nightmare.)

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Perhaps you thought the main reason was labor costs; Apple would have to pay American workers much more than the estimated $17 a day (or less) many Chinese workers at Foxconn make. That’s part of it, but “an enormously small part,” Duhigg told Glass.

Duhigg explained that, in terms of labor costs, producing the iPhone domestically would cost Apple an additional $10 (on the low end) to $65 (on the high end) more per phone. “Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward,” he wrote in the NYT piece.

Instead, what matters is Apple’s intricate Chinese supply chain.

In other words, even if Apple wanted to move manufacturing back to the U.S., they couldn’t get what they need.

Labor is almost insignificant. What is really important are supply chains and flexibility of factories. You want to be able to be located right next to the plant that makes the screws so that when you need a small change to that screw factory, you can go next door and say, “Give it to me in six hours,” and they can say, “Here you go.” Because if that factory was in another state or on another continent, it would take two weeks. It’s the flexibility within the Chinese manufacturing system, that’s what you can do in Asia that you can’t do in the United States.

You can’t make iPhones with gender-studies and communications majors.

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The announcement by the Interior Department sets into motion what will be at least a five year environmental survey to determine whether and where oil production might occur.Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell notes that a planned lease sale, which the administration cancelled last year, will now be put off until at least 2018.

Because, you know, it’s a really bad thing to be dependent on foreign oil, and anyway gas prices are just too high.

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The U.S. equivalent would be putting Alicia Silverstone behind the drive-through window at McDonalds for 12 hours asking ‘You want fries with that.’

Of course, in the case of Alicia Silverstone, there are other employment opportunities available to her that would generate a lot more income in 12 hours than either McDonalds or good grades, If You Know What I Mean And I Think You Do.

Released on bail, he told the police that he had not physically punished her for not doing well in school but merely wanted to teach her a lesson.

And did she?

The 12-year-old girl has been placed in a government child-welfare centre to help her overcome the trauma of her humiliating experience.

Yeah, the lesson she learned is that being a slacker means she’s a victim, and therefore entitled to sympathy and government support.

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In the wake of yesterday’s announcement from the Fair Labor Association that it had reached an agreement with Foxconn to reduce the maximum number of working hours for its employees at its Apple production facilities, Reuters reports that Foxconn workers are concerned about the move’s impact on their salaries.

‘Thank you, First World assholes, for cutting our incomes by a third. With friends like you, who needs enemies?’

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Fathered four children while running? Color me impressed….

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The entitlement mentality has been bred. People demand health care from the government. The 57 states, unable to steal the way the Federal Reserve can, are not likely to fund the desired programs. Thus, the system fails upward. Progressives, who really want the Logan’s Run level of control present in Single Payer, are not unhappy about that result. It’s worth throwing a Solicitor General or two under the SCOTUS bus to get to Single Payer. A cost of doing business. It’s all for the cause, man: Holy Progress.

Short of major reform of the Federal Reserve, all the talk of returning to  constitutional government is just so much Tea Party dreaming. It’s ultimately about the frogskins ($).

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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.

Bruce Bartlett points out some inconvenient truth.

BLUF: People acted to minimize their tax liability, shifting income around and moving overseas. Funny how that works.

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I can live with that.

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Despite a rapid rise in attendance since 2000, 72m school-age children across the world are still not in school, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa and a quarter in South and West Asia. The United Nations reckons it would cost $16 billion a year to get the remaining stragglers into class by 2015—one of its big development goals. Yet a free education is something that many parents will pay to avoid.

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Thus far, media attention has been minimal. Were the situation reversed in terms of race, there is little doubt that the media attention would be significantly more intense.

Ya think?

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The livery driver whose two-gun attack on a group of Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge shocked the city 18 years ago has finally admitted that he targeted them because they were Jewish, The Post has learned.

Rashid Baz was convicted in 1995 of murdering Yeshiva student Ari Halberstam, 16, and trying to kill more than a dozen others in a van with a hail of bullets he fired on a Manhattan approach to the bridge on March 1, 1994.

Baz initially told cops he opened fire because of a traffic dispute. But in 2007 Baz finally confessed that he targeted his victims, tailing their van for about two miles before the shooting, an admission that had never been made public until now.

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

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

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Well, that’s because the shooter was black — and the victims were white. Any son he had wouldn’t have looked (or, day we say, acted?) like James Cooper and James Kouzaris – we hope.

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The government today confirmed that an electrically powered bicycle, may not be sold in this country because its top speed exceeds legal limits.

The Turbo e-cycle’s US-based creator, Specialized, was all set to peddle its first battery-equipped bike in coming months across the EU. But with a top assisted speed of 28mph, it will not be permitted in the UK, it has emerged.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … so long as you go slowly.

See if you can pick her out.

Ignore the Farah Fawcett wannabe.

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Nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean?

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, points out how ‘multiculturalism’ is the problem, not the solution.

In Europe and the Anglosphere, this is the Age of Multiculturalism—an age when the doctrine is so much taken for granted, at least by elite types such as the Mayor of London, editorial writers at The New York Times, and American generals, that it has seeped into the tissues and bones to the degree that contrary notions cannot be thought.

The thought that New York Times editorialists cannot think about anti-Semitic murders in Europe is that Jew-killing has nothing to do with “anti-immigrant political talk” or the “far right.” It is instead an activity favored, encouraged, and committed pretty exclusively by radical Muslims who have been admitted to Europe in ululating multitudes by the same lunatic multiculturalist immigration policies that gave London its riots.

In Britain, the chief criterion to qualify as Prime Minister is being able to line up enough votes in Parliament to pass a budget that gives the government the required funds to operate. If you can’t do that — or at least look as if you can — you won’t be Prime Minister, period.

In America, we don’t have that problem. President Obama’s budget didn’t get a single vote in Congress — not even from his own supposed supporters. But nobody gives a damn.

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Because life is only good when it’s Star Trek good.

The Other McCain does the big reveal.

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Conservatives may not like liberals, but they seem to understand them. In contrast, many liberals find conservative voters not just wrong but also bewildering.

One academic study asked 2,000 Americans to fill out questionnaires about moral questions. In some cases, they were asked to fill them out as they thought a “typical liberal” or a “typical conservative” would respond.

Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal,” were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.

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Oh, what treacherous webs we weave….

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Participate.

Hurry, before some drone in Congress makes it official.

Freeberg nails it once again.

Good software engineers almost always have side projects. In fact, those side projects are one of the reasons why they are good software engineers. The reason is simple: Good software engineering requires constant learning, and very few companies create a situation where all of that learning can occur on the job.

Technology, and software in particular, move incredibly fast. Today’s frameworks and tools are different than those of a year ago, and those are different still from those of five years ago. The details are ever-changing, requiring software engineers to be continually learning to stay afloat. At the same time, the techniques and practices that are used in software development, the deeper skills underlying the fast-moving surface, are consistent but require long and dedicated work to even begin to master.

IT is probably the first occupational field in the history of mankind in which what you knew five years ago is worthless today.

I will, of course, object to the term ‘software engineer’ — engineering is when you can get a predictable result from specified inputs, and I’ve never seen a software program (beyond the traditional ‘Hello, world!’ exercise) for which the actual outcome is reliably predictable.

Clue: There’s no need to ‘beta test’ bridges or dams or buildings.

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That ought to solve the ‘kill an endangered species for political correctness’ problem.

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In town, where almost every German has a relative who has married an American and moved to the United States over the six decades the base has been here, many talk of picking up stakes, too.

“I’m heading to Texas,” said Irmtraud Goettel, 64, who runs a hotel and open-pit barbecue restaurant with her husband. Longhorns are mounted above the bar, a reminder of her granddaughter, who’s about to graduate from college in the Lone Star State.

“You know what I do in Texas?” Goettel said. “I like to pop open a big can of Natural Light” — much better than German beer, she said — “sit on the back porch, fire up the grill.”

You’ll have to fight your way past the people moving from Michigan.

Steve Sailer reviews recent controversies in the jump-to-conclusions press.

Just a week ago, the New York Times was explaining how the upcoming French election would be affected by how immigration-restrictionist talk had inspired that neo-Nazi to kill those Jewish kids in Toulouse.

Then, it was all about all the time how an evil white racist had hunted down and murdered in cold-blood cuddly 12-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The growing SPLCization of the prestige press is frightening. I realize that times are tough for everybody, and that the Southern Poverty Law Center has a gold-plated track record of piling up hundreds of millions of dollars via spreading fear and hate in the guise of fighting hate, so it’s not surprising that the national media is following the path the SPLC has pioneered. But this is scary stuff to play around with to make money.

Read it. And watch the video.

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Because nothing says ‘entrepreneurial opportunity’ like a dead son.

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The Lovecraft tradition carries on.

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What a guy! With Clinton, you only got coffee.

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How many suicides will we blame on Lady Gaga years from now?

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He saw people stare, but he looked right through them. His mind was on something satisfying. A distant thought made him smile. The bands on his right wrist read “Parachute Regiment” and “Walking With The Wounded.” His T-shirt had a whisky sponsor’s name on it and his left arm wasn’t there. I could see the stump covered in a white sock reflected on the opposite window.

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Figured I’d drop this in here just to confuse people.

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Except when extroverts are around — if we could get them to STFU, everything would be fine.

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According to information obtained by Belling, a custodian working for a private contractor at Whitewater (Wisconsin) High School was recently fired by her employer after two school employees, including the supervisor of custodians, demanded that she remove a pro-Scott Walker sign from her car and she refused.

Free speech my ass; you cross the Organization, they hurt you.

A quick drive through any Wisconsin school parking lot will reveal dozens of “recall Walker” bumper stickers. Nobody is demanding that the owners of those vehicles lose their jobs.

Look for … the Union label ….

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Nothing related to academics, of course.

Harvard’s renovation plans for its residential houses where undergraduates live include “flat-screen televisions” for student rooms, “courtesy of Harvard,” the Harvard Crimson reports. Also, “wall jacks for students to connect their gaming systems and computers to the television screen.”

Mike Loukides at O’Reilly makes a good point.

Two words: social engineering.

If a candidate proves that he’ll give out his password in an interview, hasn’t he proven that he’ll give out his password in other situations? Hasn’t he proven that he’s fundamentally unreliable, fundamentally unable to keep secret information secret?

I can see one, and only one, reason for asking for a password in an interview: as an underhanded way to weed out candidates who are unfit for any job requiring any serious responsibility. As soon as a candidate gives you the password, the interview’s over, and “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

The Other McCain looks at Florida.

The coverage on the local news has been at saturation level. Do any right-thinking people not grasp that the media frenzy has nothing whatsoever to do with justice, and everything to do with power?

When #OccupyResoluteDesk said “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon” he owned this whole thing. Should further violence be piled upon violence, Obama is culpable.

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New York City’s Consumer Affairs office fined Jamal Ahmad $30,000 after they found a 99 cent store he owned carried toy sheriff’s sets with fake handguns. Although the guns had bright orange tips, officials say they violate a city ordinance barring the sale of realistic-looking toy guns.

Too bad there isn’t any law barring the pretense that New York City bureaucrats have realistic-looking brains.

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We have the technology.

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Turns out there have been 15 such casualties since the year started.

Let’s see how long it takes President Karzai to apologize.

Let’s see how much financial compensation the Afghan government offers to the family members.

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

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Anyone who spends time looking at crime statistics will discover the basics of race and crime before too long, but you better be careful not to talk about them in polite society. They are protected by a taboo even stronger than the Victorian taboo against public discussions of sex, but with good reason. The facts are painful. No one can take joy in publicizing them.

Murder is the crime which has the greatest “clearance rate,” i.e., it is the crime most frequently resolved and prosecuted. We know a lot about the victims and perpetrators of the crime of murder.

Murder is largely an intraracial crime. Almost all murders of blacks are committed by other blacks.

Blacks as a group commit murder at a rate astronomically higher than other groups. The rate of murder committed by blacks exceeds that committed by whites by approximately seven times.