Read it.

A study of pollution in 34 Chinese cities has found that the electricity generated by power stations to drive electric vehicles leads to more fine particle emissions than petrol-powered transport.

No surprise to some of us.

Read it.

For the sports star who has everything there remains one tiresome problem – how do you get hold of your millions without having to leave the house?

Read it.

Nicola Rothon and Helen Bicknell tried to register joint maternity after their daughter, Satya Amani, was born in December, but were denied permission.

The women, both 34, then filed a claim alleging discrimination and demanding that state prosecutors protect their constitutional rights.

I’m curious as to what ‘constitutional rights’ a homosexual couple could have in Ecuador.

Their baby was conceived using a sperm donor, who was a mutual friend, and Miss Rothon carried the child to term.

So Rothon is the mother and the sperm donor is the father. That’s biological fact, and (more than likely) legal fact in Ecuador (and every other jurisdiction not run by space cadets).

Whatever happened to the ‘reality-based community’ that ‘progressives’ so loudly claim they inhabit? No trace of it here.

In 2008 Ecuador adopted a new constitution extolling “families of diverse types” and recognising civil unions, giving them the same rights as marriage apart from joint adoption of children.

Aha. But do-it-yourself-parentage wouldn’t appear to be included.

The women are now considering taking the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Where would the space cadets be without these trans-national busybody organizations? For which taxpayers like you inevitably wind up paying?

Read it.

A pointed reminder that Islam has absolutely no problem at all with slavery; Saudi Arabia didn’t abolish slavery until 1962, and it’s still a flourishing practice (in effect, if not formally) in Sudan and other Islamic states.

Read it.

Maybe — just maybe — he’s not the raging narcissist that his Democratic colleagues are.

Just maybe.

Read it.

There was a time, perhaps, when U.S. defense spending could accommodate both our strategic interests/defense needs and the political needs of our legislators. Ashton Carter and Peter Schweizer correctly insist that this time has passed.

Read it.

One of the under-appreciated challenges of banning stuff is that you have to define with some degree of precision whatever it is you’re trying to outlaw. Write a law too broadly and you might render illegal things (and anger constituencies) that were never on your radar. Write too narrowly, and you miss your target entirely. And if you set out to ban chemicals, natural or artificial, that make people feel good, you soon discover that savvy chemists are perfectly capable of making new chemicals that get people just as high.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Artur Davis was first elected to Congress from Alabama in 2002. The Harvard Law School grad was quickly tapped as a rising star among Democrats. He became a Senior Whip for the caucus, co-chair the New Democrat Coalition and even headed up the Southern region for the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee. His eight years in Congress showed him to be a thoughtful, independent and energetic member. Yesterday, he announced he is now a Republican.

What does he know that you don’t?

‘On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again. I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country. You have also seen me write that faith institutions should not be compelled to violate their teachings because faith is a freedom, too. You’ve read that in my view, the law can’t continue to favor one race over another in offering hard-earned slots in colleges: America has changed, and we are now diverse enough that we don’t need to accommodate a racial spoils system. And you know from these pages that I still think the way we have gone about mending the flaws in our healthcare system is the wrong way—it goes further than we need and costs more than we can bear.’

Read it.

Because we humans seem to be natural-born signal hunters, we’re terrible at regulating our intake of information. We’ll consume a ton of noise if we sense we may discover an added ounce of signal. So our instinct is at war with our capacity for making sense.

Read it.

One of the leaders honored by President Obama yesterday with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, is Dolores Huerta, an honorary chair of Democratic Socialists of America.

The Democratic Socialists Web site calls for “massive redistribution of income” and sharp cuts to defense spending.

Read it.

Abbot Justin Brown of the St. Joseph Abbey never thought about the casket business, despite the fact that the abbey has made them for years, but as the abbey must support itself, the monks invested in the necessary equipment and added casket-building to their routine, the Post reported.

But due to the state law, the abbey must either give up the business or get licensed, which would require a display area, a layout parlor, employment of a licensed funeral director and even an embalming room. So with the assistance of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian civil liberties law firm that challenges “the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living,” the monks went to federal court.

In a July ruling, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr., said Louisiana’s restrictions were unconstitutional and held “the sole reason for these laws is the economic protection of the funeral industry,” the Post noted. Judge Duval pointed out that consumers can buy a casket online from Wal-Mart or Costco, but not from an in-state manufacturer.

Crapitalism red in tooth and claw.

Read it.

Maryland accounted for the largest taxpayer exodus of any state in the region between 2007 and 2010.

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

It’s pretty amusing how all the Democrats that work in DC live in Maryland, and all the Republicans that work in DC live in Virginia.

Read it.

Apparently the natives are restless. Ask not for whom the drums sound — they sound for thee.

Read it. And listen to the music.

He will be missed.

Read it.

Or maybe not. Jacob Sullum appears to intend to criticize current drug policy while actually criticizing news coverage, but hey, it’s all criticism, right?

Read it.

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

Lileks. ‘If you can’t figure out Twitter on your own, do the world a favor and stay off Twitter’.

And that goes for politics, as well.

Read it.

The Norwegian mass killer’s life “fell apart” after a failed relationship with a Belarusian internet date left him struggling with his sexuality, his friends told the court.

“That was perhaps his last attempt at dating a girl like the other boys did,” his best friend’s ex-girlfriend told the court.

Breivik’s friends suspected the 33-year-old extremist might be homosexual because he was feminine and fastidious about his appearance, another friend, a lawyer in Norway’s Ministry of Defence, said.

“He used make-up powder, those kinds of things, and he explained that as being ‘metrosexual’. He made reference to David Beckham being that at the time.”

Heh.

Read it.

And, last time I looked, Obama still hasn’t tried to do anything about it. He talks a good game, though.

Read it.

There are big differences between doing business with a private vendor and doing business with a public agency. If the private vendor doesn’t like the way you use its services, it might ding you on the price or even sever ties and send you elsewhere. If the public agency doesn’t care for your interpretation of the arrangement, it has the power to throw your ass in jail. Which is how Diane Tran, a Houston-area high school honor student who takes advanced placement courses, gets straight-As and works full-time to support herself and two siblings, found herself in jail for “truancy.”

Read it.

Your life under Islam. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Read it.

Scientists and doctors are using the creeping metallic tools to perform surgery on hearts, prostate cancer, and other diseased organs. The snakebots carry tiny cameras, scissors and forceps, and even more advanced sensors are in the works. For now, they’re powered by tethers that humans control.

We have the technology.

But experts say the day is coming when some robots will roam the body on their own.

Rather like herpes.

Read it.

Back to the drawing board.

Read it.

Paedomorphosis is the evolutionary process in which a descendant retains the juvenile state of an ancestor, retaining certain juvenile features of the ancestor into adulthood and reproductive age.  Paedomorphosis is one example of heterochrony: the process (discussed by Steve Gould in his book Ontogeny and Phylogeny) whereby evolution operates by changing the timing of development.

Bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

A pair of security researchers claim to have found a back door in a commercial field-programmable gate array (FPGA) marketed as a secure tool for military applications.

Ruh-roh.

On the other hand, maybe not.

Read it.

Dumb rules prevent Silicon Valley from building the houses and offices we need to power American innovation.

Apparently even Left Coast ‘progressives’ get tired of their ideological fellows from time to time.

Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

I think Congressmen ought to be tested for this new organ. They certainly have the ‘special, accordion-like blubber layer that goes from the snout to the navel’ that ‘expands  to allow the whales to engulf large quantities’.

Read it.

I have trouble accepting the idea that Hitler was a vegetarian. He just didn’t seem that pushy.

It’s not pretty.

Of all the annoying identity movements under the giant rancid rainbow, what is it that causes militant vegetarians to be the most obnoxious? What is it about the Vegetarian Personality that makes me wish someone would cannibalize them? What is it about being lectured by vegans that makes me want to drive straight to Wendy’s and order a Classic Triple?

Because they are the most irrationally self-righteous, which irritates the living shit out of normal people, even if they can’t articulate why.

Human beings evolved to, among other things, eat meat. Modern ‘progressives’ delight in forcing people to acknowledge moral superiority for things that are against nature (‘gay marriage’ comes immediately to mind), all the while proclaiming that their adversaries are ‘anti-science’. This hearkens back to Tertullian’s famous dictum ‘Credo quia absurdam’ and just reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun.

Read it.

Forward into the past!

The university, along with Sustainable Rail International, are to restore a 1930s locomotive – 3463, a 4-6-4 Hudson-type loco built by Baldwin that’s spent its retirement at the Kansas Expocenter in Topeka – as a test bed for bio-coal. The locomotive has already been stabilized prior to the trip to Minnesota for restoration.

If all goes well, the university says, it expects to create the “cleanest, most powerful passenger locomotive”, costing less to maintain and fuel than current diesel-electric locos.

And, since there’s no point in ambitions if you don’t make them big, the consortium also hopes to take the restored loco up to 130 miles per hour (nearly 210 km/h).

Good luck finding tracks that will handle that speed in modern America.

Its biocoal – cellular material processed into a solid fuel – exhibits the same energy density and material handling properties as coal, the university says, but without coal’s heavy metals. The biomass is also carbon-neutral, and produces less ash, less smoke (sorry to those for whom the ‘magic of steam’ includes the smell of burning coal), and fewer volatile off-gases.

Note there’s no discussion of how much it costs. Which means that it’s far more expensive than real coal.

Read it.

America is very fortunate these days in having a broad range of very highly intelligent (and very highly educated) field-grade officers who spend their spare time thinking through variations on existing (and prior) military doctrine and using the excellent technical tools we now have to work through simulations of their ideas in action. America is even more fortunate in having a military establishment who value these people and their approach, and listen to them with  respect.

OneSTDV has a talent for finding nuggets of degeneration where you would think that the depths have already been plumbed.

You MUST watch this video, which is a definite sign of the End Times.

Read it.

From Captain Cook to playboy Prince Bertie, Tessa Dunlop examines the appeal of the tattoo among high society.

A transparent attempt to sanitize the celebrity culture of narcissism that has rich white liberal kids attempting to act like the poor black underclass. If the tattoo has any appeal, it is among low society, not high; a public distinguishing characteristic of people with poor to nonexistent impulse control, like slacker adolescents and the criminal fringe. ‘Here’s your sign.’

Read it.

If the nuclear apocalypse comes, do you want to be hanging out with the mutants we got to know oh-so-well in Fallout? Of course not, but you’ll have to pay for the privilege to ride out the end of the world in the lap of luxury — to the tune of at least $2 million if you’re looking to get into Larry Hall’s 200 foot-deep, missile silo-housed apartment complex in Kansas.

In-depth (no pun intended) overview here.

OneSTDV saves everyone a lot of time.

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

Of course, left-wing blogs do exactly the same thing — but they have no sense of humor about it. Nyah nyah….

Lileks feels our pain.

We love the swipe-and-go payment method. The cards have cut down on that bane of the grocery store line: the Checkbook Lady. She’d wait until the last item was bagged before spelunking in her purse for the checkbook; once it was found, she wrote the check with a speed that suggested writer’s block, as if she was searching for le mot juste for the comments field — I know! Groceries! Once this was done, the amount would be entered in the register with the meticulous care of Bob Cratchit working the books under Scrooge’s baleful eye, and then the checkbook would be returned to the cavernous purse before she moved an inch away from the counter. On behalf of everyone: You are why our ice cream has those crystals you get when it melts and refreezes.

I have always hated those people. I want to grab them by the throat and say ‘BITCH, IT’S A NEW CENTURY. GO TO YOUR BANK AND MURMUR THE MAGIC WORDS “DEBIT CARD” AND END OUR NATIONAL NIGHTMARE!” But I never do. Must be my native indolence coming to the fore. Or maybe it’s the restraining order.

Read it.

Modern Liberalism is more about politics than policy. Even the most devout liberals are not immune to the legal harassment levied against other entrepreneurs.

The pack sometimes eats its own, to keep the rest strong — and watchful. ‘Okay, boys, meat’s back on the menu!’

Sure you would expect any successful chain to face nuisance lawsuits. Last year, a Mexican National sued a Minneapolis Chipotle for violating his human rights by denying him a beer. They actually asked him for more identification than the State of Minnesota requires to vote. The chain was also sued by a man in a wheelchair who claimed that the counters were too high for him to watch his burrito being prepared, denying him of his “full Chipotle experience.”

Even in the pros, you occasionally get an own-goal.

Personally, I don’t see a problem with hiring Mexicans to work in a Mexican restaurant.

Indeed. Whipping up disgusting unhealthy third-world poverty food and selling it to SWPL metrosexuals at premium prices sounds like the Platonic ideal of a Job Americans Won’t Do.

This is politics Chicago-style (apparently, deep-dish pizza isn’t the only tradition nationally franchised out of the Windy City). It’s flat-out harassment. The Administration is trying to convince the restaurant that it would be more profitable to donate than to pay legal fees. As the adage goes, Hell hath no fury like a liberal denied his protection money.

Nice little restaurant chain you got there, amigo. Be a shame if anything happened to it. Make the check out to ‘Obamassiah for President’.

Apparently, just being liberal isn’t enough anymore.

Sadly, it never is.

James Taranto has a dark horse for you to bet on. Or is that racist?

Nobody is challenging Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries this year–and is doing surprisingly well. One of the reasons some commentators thought Obama would be a shoo-in for re-election is that like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, he drew no serious primary opposition as an incumbent president. By contrast, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bush père were challenged by Reagan, Ted Kennedy and Pat Buchanan respectively. Lyndon Johnson abandoned his 1968 re-election bid after Eugene McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in New Hampshire and Robert F. Kennedy’s late entry.

We now have seen Obama held under 60% by a slate of three candidates–antiabortion extremist Randall Terry, federal prison inmate Keith Judd and Tennessee lawyer John Wolfe–not to mention Nobody. Unlike the recently re-elected presidents, Obama does not have the full support of his party.

Hey, I’d vote for Nobody over Obama.

Ben Yagoda continues his fight for truth, justice, and correct use of the comma.

Read it.

Dozens of memes, no waiting.

Read it.

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

But of course the Crust can’t be bothered with this sort of thing — they’re too busy protesting Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

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

Read it. And watch the video.

“We have never been in danger of running out of resources,” says Dr. Robert Zubrin, “but we have encountered considerable dangers from people who say we are running out of resources and who say that human activities need to be constrained.”

Read it.

The resemblances might surprise you.

And, then again, they might not.

Smitty at The Other McCain points and laughs.

President Barack Obama, who has spent almost all of his career and adult life in academia, law firms, and government, begins his criticism of Mitt Romney by declaring, “those of us who have spent time in the real world . . .”

Read it.

Read it.

When scholars gathered at Harvard last month to discuss the political tumult convulsing China’s ruling Communist Party, a demure female undergraduate with a direct stake in the outcome was listening intently from the top row of the lecture hall. She was the daughter of Xi Jinping, China’s vice president and heir apparent for the party’s top job.

Xi’s daughter, Xi Mingze, enrolled at Harvard University in 2010, under what people who know her there say was a fake name, joining a long line of Chinese “princelings,” as the offspring of senior party officials are known, who have come to the United States to study.

The current Chinese ‘Communist’ regime is merely the ancient Mandarin regime without an Emperor and wearing a Clever Plastic Disguise. As such, they represent the Platonic ideal of The Crust towards which all Western imitators vainly strive.

“This is about haves and have-nots,” said Hong Huang, the stepdaughter of Mao’s foreign minister Qiao Guanhua and a member of an earlier generation of American-educated princelings. “China’s old-boy network .?.?. is no different from America’s old-boy network,” said Hong, who went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and whose mother served as Mao’s English teacher.

Read it.

Politicians are always quick to declare that America’s seniors depend on Medicare for their health. But seniors also depend on innovation in medical practice and technology. And Medicare’s top-down payment system represents a significant burden to improving both. In remarks given at a recent Harvard debate, Neil Minkoff, the founder of FountainHead Health and a commissioner on the Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission, does a good job of summarizing how Medicare’s centralized payment system discourages quality in medical servicing.

Gotta love that government health care. Before too long, government health care will be delivering the same quality product as government schools. What a paradise we’ll have then!

Read it.

SittingAround, the new service that allows parents to quickly and easily find and schedule a babysitter online, is now getting their sitters clients equipped with Square credit card readers. CEO Erica Zidel tells us that, starting now, all sitters are being offered a free Square dongle as a part of the signup process on the website, and can then indicate whether or not they accept credit cards in their online profile. Parents, meanwhile, can now search and hire sitters based on the payment method they accept.

We have the technology.

Freeberg just keeps on thinkin’.

… for forty years now, I’ve heard feminists tell me that everyone needs to think and live the way the feminists tell them to, because their way is the right way; over those forty years, they’ve gone from insisting women can have everything and don’t need to choose anything, nor should they have to — to, you can’t be invested with real authority, as a woman, if you happen to look good. So the inconsistency bothers me a lot. But also, it leads to an elite layer of female leaders, one that is somewhat detached from the rest of society and yet, in many cases, making highly influential decisions about how the rest of society should live. The decisions they make, then, are consistently wrong.

Read it.

This could prove to be almost as entertaining as the progressive dissolution of the Anglican Communion.

All they need do is repeal the Act of Union of 1707 and work from there. But I suppose that wouldn’t allow a sufficient number of politicians to pee in the soup first.