3D Printed Rocket Engine
6th January 2013
We have the technology.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on 3D Printed Rocket Engine
6th January 2013
We have the technology.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on 3D Printed Rocket Engine
6th January 2013
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act because it failed to
* Continually provide ready-made hot and cold gluten- and allergen-free food options in its dining hall food lines;
* Develop individualized meal plans for students with food allergies, and allow those students to pre-order allergen free meals, that can be made available at the university’s dining halls in Cambridge and Boston;
* Provide a dedicated space in its main dining hall to store and prepare gluten-free and allergen-free foods and to avoid cross-contamination
The ADA is one of the reasons that George H.W. Bush deserves to burn in Hell for all eternity.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | 2 Comments »
6th January 2013
Starbucks … they’re everywhere.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Caffeinated Seas Found off U.S. Pacific Northwest
6th January 2013
Just when you thought that the Land of Fruits and Nuts couldn’t get any more ridiculous….
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on California Lawmaker Proposes “Homeless Bill of Rights” to Legalize Pissing on the Street
6th January 2013
Democrats talk a good fight about ‘diversity’, but don’t practice it much.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Take Up the White Man’s Burden … and Join the Obama White House
6th January 2013
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on HAPPY DANCE SUNDAY
5th January 2013
Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Evolution of the Hand
5th January 2013
Kolbe points to a survey by the Tarrance Group and Hart Research that concluded that U.S. adults favor a switch to a dollar coin by a two-to-one margin.
Uh-huh. And yet…
According to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, right now the U.S. Treasury has about $1.4 billion in unused and unwanted $1 coins. That’s so much inventory the federal government recently announced that it wound end its program of producing presidential $1 coins – or at least suspend it.
‘Unwanted’ by whom? The American public, obviously; they’re the ones refusing to use them. Which casts some doubt on the claim that two-thirds favor a switch.
Posted in Think about it. | 2 Comments »
5th January 2013
Lurking not far beneath the surface in the uproar over the 1% versus the 99% is the notion that once an American makes it to the top he or she is very likely to stay there.
But is that so?
Hint: No.
Of those who were in the top 1% in 1987 (and could be found in 2007 and had some income in 2007), 24% were in the top 1% in 2007 and another 37% were on slightly lower rungs but still in the top 5%.
So 75% had dropped out of the top 1%.
Among people ages 15 years and 18 years in 1987 who showed up as dependents of taxpayers in the top 1%, about 14% were in the top 1% as adults in 2007 and another 20% didn’t make it to the tip top but were still in the top 5%.
So two-thirds of people whose parents were in the top 1% didn’t make it as adults.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Making It to the 1% and Staying There
5th January 2013
John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, shares his wisdom.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens, observes one of Schiller’s characters sagely: “Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.”
We all know the feeling.
(If you don’t know what vade mecum means, feel free to look it up.)
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on John Derbyshire’s Vade Mecum for Diversity Conversations
5th January 2013
When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different. We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years. But when we look ahead, somehow we expect ourselves to stay the same, a team of psychologists said Thursday, describing research they conducted of people’s self-perceptions.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be
5th January 2013
Freeberg encounters the Crust, and is Dismayed.
There is no significant change anywhere, even though the public at large is about as disenchanted with the way things are going, as they have been for quite some time. It’s like a bigger version of California. The electorate isn’t firing anyone, anywhere, and it isn’t because they’re pleased with the state of things. It’s because they’re tired. They’re not fixing anything because they don’t see how; and they refuse to admit that they don’t know what to do.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Action vs. Desire
5th January 2013
You need one of these. Now.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Public Service Announcement
5th January 2013
A comic that is far from comical.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Detroit: City of Unintended Consequences
5th January 2013
In praising Congress’s huge new tax increase, President Obama said Tuesday that “millionaires and billionaires” will finally “pay their fair share.” That is, unless you are a Nascar track owner, a wind-energy company or the owners of StarKist Tuna, among many others who managed to get their taxes reduced in Congress’s New Year celebration.
All of whom paid big bucks to the appropriate government officials, of course.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Crony Capitalist Blowout
5th January 2013
The images were found by experts who were scientifically analysing the portraits in a bid to increase understanding of the working practices of Tudor artists.
They used reflectography and x-radiography to examine the layers beneath the paint surface.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Hidden Images Found Under Tudor Portraits
5th January 2013
The pieces of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver were declared treasure by coroner Andrew Haigh on Friday and will now be valued by the British Museum.
There are two items in the current collection that do not sparkle as much as the others but which could be the most valuable to archaeologists researching the hoard.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Staffordshire Hoard: ‘Opening a window into the Mercian kingdom’
4th January 2013
According to a study from Long Island’s Stony Brook University, the lightbulbs give off extraordinary levels of UV radiation, which can burn skin and even cause skin cancer. “When there is something in your house,” said Miriam Rafailovich, Professor of Materials Science at Stony Brook, “you don’t perceive any danger, you wouldn’t get that close to an x-ray in a doctor’s office.” Marcia Simon, who teaches dermatology, said, “The results were that you could actually initiate cell death.”
Heh.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Study: Environmentally Friendly Lightbulbs Cause Cancer
4th January 2013
Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Father of the Chicken Nugget
4th January 2013
Not the sort of thing you usually see in Slate.
If you fear genetically modified food, you may have Mark Lynas to thank. By his own reckoning, British environmentalist helped spur the anti-GMO movement in the mid-‘90s, arguing as recently at 2008 that big corporations’ selfish greed would threaten the health of both people and the Earth. Thanks to the efforts of Lynas and people like him, governments around the world—especially in Western Europe, Asia, and Africa—have hobbled GM research, and NGOs like Greenpeace have spurned donations of genetically modified foods.
But Lynas has changed his mind—and he’s not being quiet about it. On Thursday at the Oxford Farming Conference, Lynas delivered a blunt address: He got GMOs wrong.
Thanks to ErisGuy for the link.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Leading Environmental Activist’s Blunt Confession: I Was Completely Wrong to Oppose GMOs
4th January 2013
The Other McCain has a plan.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Green Energy Underpants Gnomes
4th January 2013
Well, you could always move to Canada, right? Think again. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) comes more fully into effect this year, and as The Globe and Mail’s Barrie McKenna explains, “FATCA will force the hand of many Americans in Canada, making them choose between compliance or giving up their U.S. citizenship.”
Well, there’s always Russia.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on ‘We can no longer afford to be American citizens’
4th January 2013
At the University of Minnesota, the number of employees with “human resources” or “personnel” in their job titles has grown from 180 to 272 since the 2004-05 academic year. Since 2006, the university has spent $10 million on consultants for a vast new housing development that is decades from completion. It employs 139 people for marketing, promotions and communications. Some 81 administrators make $200,000 per year or more.
In the past decade, Minnesota’s administrative payroll has gone up three times as fast as the teaching payroll, and twice as fast as student enrollment.
Oh, and tuition more than doubled in that same period, to more than $13,000 per year.
Gotta love that Blue State life … if you can afford it.
Americans and their elected leaders have grown used to discussing college “affordability” as a matter of distributing ever more government aid — in the form of tax breaks, direct assistance or subsidized loans.
Actually, this is self-defeating: by making it possible for students to pay higher tuition, federal and state aid reduces institutions’ incentive to make the hard budgetary choices that might hold tuition down in the first place.
Oh, ya think?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on An F for Effort on Holding Down Tuition
4th January 2013
The Other McCain is on the case.
According to Louisville police, Browning went to the Valley Station Walmart and tried to purchase two iPads with an Electronic Benefit Transfer card. When the transaction was denied, she assaulted a store clerk, pushed another employee to the ground and fled from the store with the merchandise.
And the Entitlement Mentality chickens come home to roost. Note that the perp is an Obama-tinted person; perhaps she thought that the free Obama phone was just the first step on the road to a free Obama electronic device universe.
We’re subsidizing stupidity and, as everyone who has studied economics knows, when you subsidize something, you get more of it.
Yup.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Woman Tries to Buy iPad With Her Food Stamp EBT Card
4th January 2013
And that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about France … and Russia … these days.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Gérard Depardieu Granted Citizenship in Russia
4th January 2013
Read it.
Delaware taxpayers appear to be getting soaked twice under a deal in which the Democratic governor loaned $21.5 million to a hybrid electric carmaker to set up shop in the state. The company has yet to produce a car in Delaware, and taxpayers are footing the electric bill for the idle plant.
The deal was enthusiastically announced in 2009 by Gov. Jack Markell and Vice President Biden — formerly Delaware’s senior senator — as a way to bring as many as 2,500 green jobs to the state. But California-based Fisker Automotive Inc. has since suffered a series of setbacks that have compounded its shaky financial situation.
Life in a Blue State. You’d think they’d learn, but they never do.
“It has not worked out the way he had envisioned,” Markell spokeswoman Cathy Rossi acknowledged Monday in a statement to FoxNews.com.
Sort of an archetype of Democrat ‘crapitalism’ everywhere.
“We didn’t know and couldn’t have known about the underlying technical and financial problems.”
Not that they made any effort to find out. Asking somebody who knew something about business — a banker, say — would have been a good first step.
The $21.5 million from Delaware is composed of a $9 million grant and a $12.5 million loan that includes so-called “claw backs” should Fisker fail to meet deadlines. However, recovering that money should the company fold will not be easy.
No shit.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Delaware Taxpayers Increasingly on the Hook as Fisker Auto Plant Idles
3rd January 2013
Just in case you’re stuck for ideas.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on List of Unusual Deaths
3rd January 2013
In November, Chicago voters re-elected a legally insane judge charged with a crime of violence. “The Cook County Democratic Party supported her” in her re-election bid. The day after Judge Cynthia Brim “won re-election to the Cook County Circuit Court” with 63.5 percent of the vote, she “showed up in court — not as a judge, but as a defendant in a battery case.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Chicago Voters Re-Elect Legally Insane Judge
3rd January 2013
David Friedman takes a look at the Crustian Narrative.
A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that being overweight, as defined by body mass index, may be good for you—that people in the recommended BMI range are more likely to die (“all cause mortality”) than people whose weight classifies them as overweight but not obese. What I found most interesting about the news coverage of the article was the reaction reported—people quoted as criticizing the article without offering any good reason to think it was wrong.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Weight Propaganda
3rd January 2013
The Other McCain turns over a rock.
Advocates of economic redistribution do not generally think of themselves as motivated by selfishness. Egalitarianism typically presents itself as a species of humanitarian philanthropy so that its political advocates are seldom compelled to defend their implicit claims to be acting in the altruistic spirit of charity.
The Democratic Party gets a free pass in this regard. Let any thievish political scoundrel put a “D” beside his name, and he thereby gains for himself the presumption that his every impulse is motivated by a selfless concern for the plight of the downtrodden poor.
As a hustle — a scam, a racket – this is brilliant.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Demographics of Envy
2nd January 2013
A useful contrast.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on The Dearborn T-Shirt Project
2nd January 2013
Guy Somerset has some news for you.
So the apocalypse didn’t quite happen last year. It’s good news for some, but perhaps not as good as we think. This world has changed immensely in the past fifty years. Here are six signs that maybe the Mayans were more right than we know.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Six Omens for the New Year
2nd January 2013
In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, CNN’s Piers Morgan found a cause: gun control. Now some Americans want him deported. And…
Oh, sorry: You’re wondering who Piers Morgan is.
Well, I’m not, but most normal people might be.
He draws half the viewers of Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow in the same time slot.
That many? Color me surprised.
I can spare those Americans who want me deported a lot of effort by saying this: If you don’t change your gun laws to at least try to stop this relentless tidal wave of murderous carnage, then you don’t have to worry about deporting me….I would…seriously consider deporting myself.
Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | 1 Comment »
2nd January 2013
Illinois is the only state in the Union that does not allow some sort of concealed carry statute for its law-abiding citizens. Illinois is also home to the city with the highest murder rate in the country.
Gee, I wonder whether those two facts might be connected.
According to the source, the bill would not include any grandfathering and would require Illinois gun owners to turn in their guns to the Illinois State Police, where the weapons will be destroyed.
I see some Fifth Amendment problems with that….
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Illinois State Senate Trying to Ram New Gun Ban Through Lame Duck Session
2nd January 2013
One of the lines that many progressives and TV talking heads are reiterating is that no one really wants to take away Americans’ guns. Senator Dianne Feinstein apparently missed that directive. She admitted as far back as 1995 that she does, indeed, wish to take everyone’s guns away from them.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Which Harry Potter character would she be? Why, this one, of course.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on ‘Turn ‘Em All In’: Feinstein Said She Wanted All Guns Banned
2nd January 2013
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Iraq Is Officially Fighting in a ‘Low-Level War’ a Year After U.S. Withdrawal
2nd January 2013
I’m waiting for the inevitable calls to force doctors to take Medicare patients.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on 27% Pay Cut or Not, More Docs to Leave Medicare in 2013
1st January 2013
Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that 1,193 vehicles were burned overnight around the country. Clashes between police and offenders in the New Year’s Eve took place in the Muslim majority districts in the city of Strasbourg and Mulhouse. About seven police officers were attacked New Years eve night.
Around 1,200 cars were burned by rioting Muslims on the New Year’s Eve in France, where the mass burning cars in the national holidays are kind of tradition among Muslim residents of the disadvantaged suburbs of immigrants.
What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Muslims Burn About 1,200 Cars on New Year’s Eve in France
1st January 2013
In the September 1960 issue of IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, radio theorist Millett G. Morgan, a “leading researcher in the field of ionospheric physics” based at Dartmouth, speculated that he could generate artificial “whistlers”—that is, audial electromagnetic effects that are usually caused by lightning—if only he could find the right island.
“In thinking about how to generate whistlers artificially,” Morgan’s proposal leisurely begins, “it has occurred to me that an island of suitable size and shape, extending through the conducting sea, may constitute a naturally resonant, VLF slot antenna of high quality.”
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Antarctic Island Radio
1st January 2013
And the more the Crust raises the minimum wage, the sooner these will start putting the Underclass out of work and onto the dole. Way to go, Democrats!
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Hello Robots, Goodbye Fry Cooks
1st January 2013
Ann-Marie Slaughter has some thoughts on the subject.
It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why Women Still Can’t Have It All
1st January 2013
Why would they? Who cares about how many white people die?
Whenever gun control becomes a hot topic, you see white liberals going through a set pattern of contortions, one most fully worked out in Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine:
– Racist white rednecks in the sticks want guns because they have racist fears of urban blacks;
– So, we must disarm everybody to stop rednecks from killing so manyDeconstructed, this bizarre theory actually makes a fair amount of sense:
– Liberal whites in the cities want gun control because they have realist fears of urban blacks;
– So, we must disarm everybody to stop blacks from killing so many.But, white people don’t like talking about black people, they like talking about how much they hate other white people.
Certainly the SWPLs in the media do.
They especially like coming up with theories about other kinds of white people. For example, the state with the highest homicide rate is usually Louisiana. Just think what savage redneck monsters white people in Louisiana must be. Didn’t you watch Deliverance or read Albion’s Seed?
(Of course, the murder rate in Louisiana is only about half of that in Washington D.C.. Has anybody checked out what Ezra Klein, Chris Matthews, Cokie Roberts are up to?)
No good, I suspect.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Has Anybody Ever Calculated White Murder Rates by State?
1st January 2013
It’s not what you think….
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on 10 Most-Searched Cars of the Year