Archive for June, 2013
5th June 2013
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To the handful of petrochemical scientists, engineers and industry executives who have spent a lifetime trying to unlock America’s domestic energy potential, the country’s current shale-oil and -gas boom is the result of a half-century of technological trial and error. But to the rest of the world, it has seemed like an overnight miracle. In less than a decade, the United States has gone from importing $30 billion worth of natural gas to the cusp of becoming an energy exporter.
Thanks to improvements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, wells can be dug into rock formations that are nearly 100 m thick and tap reserves that are nearly two kilometres wide. That has the potential to unleash enough oil and gas to power America for nearly a century—a feat unthinkable just a few years ago.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Welcome to the golden age of Shale Gas
5th June 2013
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Regional accents are a major part of what makes American English so interesting as a dialect.
Joshua Katz, a Ph. D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, just published a group of awesome visualizations of Professor Bert Voux’s linguistic survey that looked at how Americans pronounce words.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other
5th June 2013
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Researchers have uncovered what is now the oldest known primate fossil, pushing our understanding of human evolution seven million years farther into history than we could see before. Discovery of the 55-million-year-old fossil allowed an international team of researchers to identify a previously unknown species, as well as an unknown genus of animals that surrounds it. The fossil sits at a juncture in evolution that helps to explain how humans, apes, and monkeys all diverged from a small primate known as a tarsier.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Researchers Uncover the Oldest Primate Fossil Yet
5th June 2013
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Amazon is planning to kick off a major expansion of its AmazonFresh grocery delivery business as early as this week, sources close to the company claim.
The online retailer has been quietly offering the fresh-food delivery service to customers in the Seattle area for years, but Reuters reports that it now plans to launch it in as many as 20 markets by 2014, including some outside the US.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Amazon to Deliver Groceries in 20 Markets by 2014
5th June 2013
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The Nautilus took high school inventor Justin Beckerman just six months and $2,000 to put together — all while keeping on top of his homework.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on High-School Teen Builds One-Man Submarine for $2,000
5th June 2013
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Not in Texas, he doesn’t. He’s like George W Bush, without the nice.
Gov. Rick Perry’s high-profile efforts to lure jobs to Texas from other states may be good business and smart politics back home, but they’re infuriating to prominent Democrats around the country.
Hey, prominent Democrats! Suck on it! If you weren’t so busy destroying your own states’ economies, you wouldn’t have to worry about it.
And now at least one Republican business leader says Perry’s taking the Lone Star swagger a little too far.
Wonder how long they had to look in order to find him? And that fact that he claims to be a Republican is just hot air; Nanny Bloomberg claims to be a Republican, and he’s about as Republican as Lincoln Chafee.
Those attacks hit where it hurts and have touched off an angry political backlash against Perry outside the Texas borders, with Democrats mocking his attempts to steal jobs as clownish — and warning the Republican governor to keep his hands off. In a memorable put-down, Gov. Jerry Brown said Perry’s incursions into California were about as effective as breaking wind.
And even that is more effective than any policy Jerry Brown has ever pushed. Talk’s cheap, which is why that’s all that Democrats can afford.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | 1 Comment »
5th June 2013
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OF COURSE it’s racist! EVERYTHING is racist, if you are a Washtington Post reporter!
But did southerners explicitly design the program to be exclusionary? Perhaps not.
There’s a major concession.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on A Second Look at Social Security’s Racist Origins
4th June 2013
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Markets work, even when you don’t want them to. And people avoid burdens, even when you think that’s rotten behavior.
I know! The immigration debate provides the perfect answer: We just need to think up a new and unthreatening name for the trnasgressors!
Undocumentd Producer. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Shadow Economies Grow as People Flee High Taxes and Stiff Regulations
4th June 2013
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For 75 years, Finland’s expectant mothers have been given a box by the state. It’s like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed. And some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates.
Hey, at least it isn’t a flatpack.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Why Finnish Babies Sleep in Cardboard Boxes
4th June 2013
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Ugly people have been banned from a new jobs site which only offers positions to applicants who are easy on the eye.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on ‘Don’t Ogle Our Beautiful Members’ Begs CEO
4th June 2013
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All television has become a parody of reality. For example, how many young women believe The Bachelor plausibly depicts 21st-century courtship rituals? Alas, very many. Once a friend and I watched an installment (my singular viewing) and endeavored to figure the annual income needed to furnish such a lifestyle. Our conclusion was that a man would need approximately $5 million after taxes to live as lavishly as the series presents. That isn’t an entirely implausible until one recalls that half the globe lives on less than $2 per day.
…
Elusive to me is the one black, one Asian, one white, and one “other” band of brothers stopping in for McNuggets. Yet to judge by television I am the only person in America whose friends are predominantly one color or another. Hopefully that doesn’t make me racist, but it evidently makes me unique.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Unreality TV
4th June 2013
Freeberg waxes philosophical.
We start with the A-through-E “get me a beer” scale. An “A-girl” will get a guy a beer so he doesn’t have to get up. A “B-girl” will get a guy a beer provided he treats her as a dignified and intelligent human being, meaning, says “please” and “thank you” as his Mom taught him. A “C-girl” might get him a beer but she’s going to keep count of who does how many things for who, and after she gets his beer he’s going to “owe” her one. A “D-girl” won’t get him a beer, and an “E-girl” will build an identity for herself out of her refusal to get him a beer.
Hm.
If you make it your business to subscribe to liberal-feminist blogs, and read what they put up, you’ll see a striking pattern set in: Across the hundreds, and even the thousands, they all fall into this funnel of thought that could be summarized as “Oh how I hate this thing I found over here, come gather around loyal readers, and help me hate it.” They don’t have questions and they don’t have answers — all they have is “How Dare You.”
Yeah, that fits my experience.
Liberal women labor under a delusion that their primary motive is to elevate the stature and importance of women in our evolving society. Not only is this untrue, but they labor toward the opposite. Women can do an amazing number of things; some of these things can also be done by men, but there are just two of them that men cannot do. Those two things are 1) being a mother and 2) being a wife. Those are the two things that liberal women don’t want other women, anywhere, to do. Over the last few decades they have become unreasonably invested in the two public issues of 1) abortion, which stops a woman from becoming a mother, and 2) gay marriage, which robs women of their natural role as wives. In a society that is supposed to be sluggish in offering important and significant roles for women to occupy, those are the two roles that have always existed, and they are the very most important ones, supreme to anything a man can do. If liberal women were sincere and consistent in their stated desires, these are the two roles they would most vigilantly protect. As it is, these are the two roles for which they reserve their most incendiary hatred.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Skinny Calves and Hairy Philtrums
4th June 2013
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The Blue Waters petascale computer at the University of Illinois’ National Centre for Supercomputing Applications is being credited with cracking part of the code of HIV – and possibly helping point the way to new treatments.
Simulations carried out on Blue Waters allowed researchers to determine the precise structure of the HIV capsid – the protein shell protecting the virus, which is an important part of its ability to attack the human immune system.
We have the technology.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Petascale Powerhouse Cracks Important HIV Code
3rd June 2013
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Manually, it takes a team of painters 4.5 hours to do the first coat. The robots do it in 24 minutes with perfect quality. Boeing began using the machine in February. By midsummer, all 777 wings will be painted this way.
Your future in a nutshell. Soon the only jobs will be working for the government, sticking your nose into other people’s business — that’s the only part that they can’t get robots to do, because robots don’t care what you do.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Painting a Boeing 777
3rd June 2013
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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Glenn Reynolds initiated the “Unexpectedly!” theme several years ago; since then there have been countless news stories about the U.S. economy’s “unexpected” failures to perform. Observers generally offer micro-explanations based on trends of the moment. Currently, among other things, the minute sequester cuts are blamed for some portion of the drop in manufacturing.
But this narrow focus obscures the broader point: the American economy has performed terribly, by any objective standard, over the last few years. The recovery of 2009 to the present is the weakest–by far–of any postwar recovery. Unemployment and poverty are sky-high because economic growth is anemic. But why is growth so sluggish? After all, there are powerful forces that should be driving the economy forward, foremost among them the North American energy boom. Take the current data on manufacturing: it has been widely reported that manufacturing is returning to the U.S. because cheap energy here, the result of the shale oil and gas revolution, balances out lower labor costs in Asia. But if this is the case–and it is–then why is domestic manufacturing declining?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Manufacturing Drops–Unexpectedly!
3rd June 2013
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on OpenCola Softdrink
3rd June 2013
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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on IRS Employee: D.C. Told Us to Target Tea Party
3rd June 2013
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A community activist is challenging Gov. Deval Patrick’s pick for board chairman at the troubled Roxbury Community College because the new leader is white, but the administration is standing by the appointment.
Sadiki Kambon, who said he represents a group called Friends of Roxbury Community College, sent Patrick a letter Monday demanding that Gerald Chertavian, who was named board chairman last week, be replaced by “another qualified candidate (Black).”
“It’s important for our young people to see someone who looks like us who is the position of leadership in our academic community. We feel that someone from our community has the skill set necessary to run that institution,” Kambon told the Herald.
Kambon declined to identify other members of his group, which sent the letter to Patrick earlier this week. The letter labels the governor’s selection of Chertavian, who is white, “insulting” because the college is a “predominantly Black institution.”
Racism doth never prosper, what’s the reason? If it doth prosper, none dare call it racism.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Taxachusetts: Activist Upset RCC’s New Chairman Is White, But on Campus It’s a Non-Issue
3rd June 2013
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After more than 25 years of studying the calls of prairie dog in the field, one researcher managed to decode just what these animals are saying. And the results show that praire dogs aren’t only extremely effective communicators, they also pay close attention to detail.
Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | 1 Comment »
3rd June 2013
Baron Bodissey reflects.
Modern Islamic fundamentalism, particularly the variety concocted by the Muslim Brotherhood and related entities, was a 20th-century synthesis of traditional Islamic doctrine and the fascist/socialist ideologies that dominated the interwar period. Much of the doctrinal boilerplate that comes out of the Islamintern today still has the whiff of “Keep the Red Flag Flying” about it.
Posted in Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion | Comments Off on Time Out of Mind
3rd June 2013
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Hey, that’s what it’s all about.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Former Obama Aides Cashing In on White House Access
2nd June 2013
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You remember Faux-cahontas’s days as a “token Native American” at Harvard University, getting a $349,000 check for what was essentially part-time work. Turns out she’s not the only member of the higher education industry who’s making big bucks for small-time work.
A terrific new article from the New England Center for Investigative Reporting reminds us of the core mission of Massachusetts colleges and universities: To make money for education bureaucrats.
My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
There’s another question, too — why are the degrees so much more expensive? After all, the raw materials of a college education are far cheaper today than they were a generation ago. Textbooks that require frequent updates are expensive. Kindles that can hold 1,000 books aren’t. Million-dollar computing systems for college bureaucracies now literally fit in the palm of your hand.
And then there’s the labor: Lots of kids with worthless bachelor of arts degrees going back to grad school to avoid economic reality equals a large supply of potential professors. And as supply goes up, price goes down. (I skipped Latin to study econ.)
Only prices haven’t. College costs continue to grow faster than inflation. How is that possible?
Because, once again, the point of process isn’t to educate your kids. It’s to create cushy government jobs.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Colleges Get an ‘A’ in Hiking Costs
2nd June 2013
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How? By government, of course! Government is the only entity with the power to ban anything!
In 1943, Claude R. Wickard, the head of the War Foods Administration as well as the Secretary of Agriculture, got the bright idea to ban pre-sliced bread in America, which he did on January 18, 1943. The specific reasons behind this aren’t entirely clear, though it was about conservation of resources. One known reason for the banning was to conserve wax paper. There have also been many who have suggested there were secondary goals of conserving wheat and steel.
But mostly it was just a bureaucrat with a wild hair up his ass and the power to impose his whim on an unsuspecting nation.
(Yeah, the name Eric Holder occurred to me, too, as I was writing that sentence.)
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pre-Sliced Bread Was Once Banned in the United States
2nd June 2013
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The bottom 10% in the U.S. are better off than the top 10% in Italy, Israel, Russia, Portugal, Brazil, Turkey, and Mexico.
Think about that next time some Crustian hand-wringer starts to vent about ‘the poor’.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on First World Indeed: Our Poor Are Better Off Than Their Rich
2nd June 2013
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A U.S. EPA-mandated device meant to reduce diesel emissions may have shut down an ambulance carrying a suspect who had been shot by police in Washington, D.C.
While medics yesterday were transporting the injured man, who was suspected of shooting at officers, to the hospital, the emergency vehicle shut down. Another ambulance took the man to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
D.C. fire officials said the shutdown likely occurred because of a device designed to burn diesel toxins. When the device isn’t working, warning lights go off in the vehicle and it eventually loses power.
Well, then, there it is. Your tax dollars at work.
Per EPA regulations, the device is required on all newer models of diesel vehicles. Critics of the mandate have previously called for an exemption for emergency vehicles.
“We’re not in a position to fight the EPA regulations, and we’re not even going to try,” Donnelly said.
Sad but true.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on EPA a Job Killer? How About Just Killer, Period
2nd June 2013
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Intellectual dishonesty isn’t a monopoly of the Democratic Party, but they certainly have bragging rights to it.
We are all familiar with the Democratic hit and run operation, metaphorically speaking, in which the cry of “racism” is followed by the “move on” maneuver. Louisiana state senator Karen Carter Peterson — the chairman of the state Democratic party — brings the metaphor to life as she runs away from local television reporters who ask about her declaration that opponents of Obamacare are driven by racism.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on The Audacity of Lope
2nd June 2013
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The Atlantic, being a Voice of the Crust, approaches all subjects from the Standard Progressive Viewpoint, i.e. progress is inevitable, no progress without change, therefore all change leads to progress, therefore change is per se a Good Thing. Hence the headline — young women are changing the language therefore You Go Girl.
After writing up the list of associations on the board, I’d point out that for nearly a thousand years, double negation was standard in English. “I ne saugh nawiht” in Middle English; “I don’t see anything” in Modern English. Today, one can find it in French, which negates verbs by affixing the particles ne and pas to either side of the verb, as well as in Afrikaans, Greek, and a number of Slavic languages. The point: There is nothing inherently “ignorant” or “stupid” about double negation; judgments about speech are judgments about the speakers themselves.
Another Standard Progressive Viewpoint: All things are inherently equal, therefore it is illegitimate to judge one thing as better than another (except when it comes to the Standard Progressive Viewpoint, of course; we tolerate all things except intolerance).
Indeed, judgments about speech are judgments about the speakers themselves because some people speak better than others, just as all contests are about the contestants themselves because some contestants are better than others within the context of the contest. But context is alien to the Progressive mind, so away with it!
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Creaky Voice: Yet Another Example of Young Women’s Linguistic Ingenuity
2nd June 2013
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There is a reason the GOP is often called the “stupid party.” Although every poll finds the public firmly on the center-right side of the political spectrum, the GOP has become expert at alienating voters on issues they ought to command. On Thursday, the Republican State Leadership Committee, tasked with electing Republicans to state office, announced via press release that it was launching a program with a set quota of recruiting 200 minority candidates for office. Yes, the GOP wants to help its standing with minorities by establishing a racial quota system.
The chief factor in making the GOP the stupid party is that it is run by stupid people, and the rank-and-file put up with it.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on GOP Embraces Racial Quotas for 2014 Election
2nd June 2013
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The rioters in Sweden were Muslim and certainly the ideology of Islam was part of the chaos, but Sweden’s multicultural policy choices literally added fuel to the fire–an open door policy that led to a fractionalized Muslim community that sees itself as separate from the nation in which they reside.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
2nd June 2013
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Our colleges are raising generations of willing slaves. Of course, that’s what they’re designed to do.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on College Students Sign Thank You Card to IRS for Anti-Conservative Discrimination
2nd June 2013
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Remember the dreams of the late 20th century? Orbiting solar panels would beam down the planet’s power supply. Machines on the moon would grind out raw materials and spit them into space to build space colonies and zero-gravity factories. Everything we wanted would be manufactured molecule by molecule, via contraptions smaller than the smallest objects we previously knew.
And we were on track to do that, before LBJ’s War on Poverty and Great Society sucked up all of the money, and the Democrats decided that they wanted to use the welfare system to destroy the black family and cement the Lower Crust as their reliably-voting faithful client class.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Lost Tomorrows of Space Colonies and Nanotech
2nd June 2013
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George W. Bush has been blamed by the left for everything from hurricanes to the IRS targeting conservative non-profits. But now, it turns out that former Democratic National Committee head and current Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe blames Bush for his dad dying. Really. In an interview in May 2001, McAuliffe said that his father, Jack, died because “he could not go into a new year knowing that a Republican was actually moving into the White House.”
I guess he couldn’t face the prospect of having his taxes cut and America actually winning a war rather than just putzing around.
Really, you can’t make this stuff up.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Dem VA Gov Candidate McAuliffe: My Dad Died Because of Bush
2nd June 2013
Steve Sailer looks at the intersection of technology and politics.
I’m not sure that the blanket statement that these days “personal upper-body strength is irrelevant” is true. Guys who lift things for a living largely operate in the “non-tradeable” sector of the economy.
The irrelevance of upper body strength is true in some jobs. For example, computer programmers don’t have to lift anything heavier than the lids of their laptops. And, perhaps not coincidentally, programmers are notoriously prone to self-defeating universalist ideologies like libertarianism and open borders. The Gang of Eight openly conspires with the billionaires of Silicon Valley to lower the pay of programmers, and what do programmers do about it?
By contrast:
They are in the “non-tradable” sector so their jobs can’t be easily outsourced to Foxconn in China. Their jobs, however, could be easily insourced and gradually replaced with, say, immigrants, illegal or even skilled foreign set workers via H-1B visas. And yet the entire concept of granting visas to, say, Mexico City’s television set workers to lower Hollywood’s costs has never, as far as I know, been publicly aired.
One reason is that the guys who lift things on sets in Burbank don’t want it to happen. And, unlike computer programmers, they aren’t wracked with guilt over it not happening.
Thereby showing more sense than the ‘you must have a four-year degree before we’ll even talk to you’ crowd.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Computer Programmers and Teamsters
1st June 2013
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But the 1% they’re talking about are merely the people who hold the ‘world’s wealth’ — actually, it’s not ‘the world’s wealth’, but their own wealth; the formulation ‘the world’s wealth’ is a verbal shell game to make you think that it’s actually somebody else’s wealth that they have nefariously stolen — but rather the governmental officials who actually control it. That’s the Real 1%, the Upper Crust who determine how that wealth is used, no matter who nominally ‘owns’ it. The nominal wealth holders are the Clever Plastic Disguise to allow the Real 1% a punching bag when it’s convenient to get the Lower Crust riled up, as the U.S. Senate attempted to do to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, recently. Unfortunately for them, Tim Cook (who is not as stupid as John McCain, much less such of McCain’s colleagues as, say, Al Franken) knows the score and isn’t buying what they’re selling.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Top 1% Control 39% of World’s Wealth
1st June 2013
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There’s been plenty of talk about how the Democratic Party is strongly supported by Hollywood — and MPAA boss Chris Dodd famously threatened politicians that Hollywood might not fund their campaigns if they didn’t support SOPA. So it’s quite interesting to see Mother Jones’ detailed analysis of Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg’s strong support of President Obama’s last campaign. There’s a lot of nuance in there, so this is not just a case of clear tit-for-tat political funding in exchange for political favors. The article states multiple times that Katzenberg doesn’t really seem that focused on getting anything back for his efforts and money.
Democrats, the Party of Corruption since Boss Tweed.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Access Hollywood: Detailing a Hollywood Mogul’s Connections to the White House
1st June 2013
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Children who learned multiple languages from birth seemed to partition up their brains, using different parts for different languages, while people who added languages later spread their languages throughout their brains.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on How Multi-Lingual Children Learn Languages
1st June 2013
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Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week.
CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
“Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry in Waterloo’s Faculty of Science. “In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming.”
Remember when they banned CFCs? I do. So I guess we can all relax now.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 1 Comment »
1st June 2013
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As you might expect, government is to blame.
The reason it is cheaper is that the US government intentionally keeps domestic price 3X higher than the world market price. American food companies operating in competitive markets cannot pay this obscenely high price so they move their production lines outside of the country (which works only for products with relatively long shelf life, e.g., candy) or they switch to HFCS.
This is nothing new. US sugar industry has been enjoying trade protection since 1789 (that was one of the first acts of the Congress). The initial goal was to gain the loyalty of the sugarcane farmers in the Louisiana Territory.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on 224 Years of Substance Abuse: Why do American companies use HFCS so obsessively?
1st June 2013
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Five of the 10 fastest-growing cities in the country between 2011 and 2012 were in Texas, according to new figures from the US Census Bureau. New York is way out in front in terms of added population, but Houston is second with San Antonio and Austin fourth and fifth.
Actually, you can reduce it to two:
1. It’s not California.
2. It’s not Michigan.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on 10 Reasons Why So Many People Are Moving to Texas
1st June 2013
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It’s always hard to say whether economic changes are cyclical or structural, but I think it’s fair to say that there’s a slowly accumulating consensus that technology is now destroying jobs faster than it’s creating them, and that the resulting two-track economy is here to stay…and growing steadily more disparate.
…
In other words, the US government is already quietly paying a significant fraction of the American population not to work. If jobs keep disappearing, while the overall wealth of America and the world keeps increasing, then we can expect initiatives like that to keep expanding. George Monbiot is the latest to propose a basic income, which “gives everyone, rich and poor, without means-testing or conditions, a guaranteed sum every week.”
I’m just a little ray of sunshine today, am I not?
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on After Your Job Is Gone
1st June 2013
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Options for elderly patients who can no longer remain independent are limited. Most choices involve assisted living facilities, 24-hour caregivers, or nursing homes. State and federal assistance for payment for individual care is limited, and seniors usually pay for most costs out of pocket. For those patients who have the means to afford assisted living centers or nursing homes, “cruise ship care” is proposed. Traveling alongside traditional tourists, groups of seniors would live on cruise ships for extended periods of time. Cruise ships are similar to assisted living centers in the amenities provided, costs per month, and many other areas. This article begins with an examination of the needs of seniors in assisted living facilities and then explores the feasibility of cruise ship care in answering those needs. Similarities between cruise ship travel and assisted living care, as well as the monetary costs of both options, are defined. A decision tree with selections for non-independent care for seniors was created including cruise ship care as an alternative. Using a Markov model over 20 years, a representative cost-effectiveness analysis was performed that showed that cruises were priced similarly to assisted living centers and were more efficacious. Proposed ways that cruise ship companies could further accommodate the needs of seniors interested in this option are also suggested. Implementation for cruise ship care on the individual basis is also presented. Ultimately, it is wished to introduce a feasible and possibly more desirable option to seniors who can no longer remain independent.
And when the geezers get tiresome, over the side they go. Win-win.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Cruise Ship Care: A Proposed Alternative to Assisted Living Facilities.
1st June 2013
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Allow me to suggest that part of this paucity of suavity stems from the weaponization of gender relations. Men can be excused for feeling uncomfortable casually bantering with women because men can never be sure what will be taken in good humor and what will be considered a grave offense. In the workplace setting this pressure is even more intense and the stakes higher, with lawsuits for casual comments a real fear. It’s better to shut down entirely than risk incurring the wrath of HR (or an aggrieved husband whose wife complains about your back and forth after the fact).
I blame feminism. But that’s me.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Death of Charm
1st June 2013
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Nobody questions John McCain’s courage or fortitude.
Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, however … and it’s a drawer that famously contains quite a collection of very dull blades….
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Rebels Who Posed for Photo With Sen. McCain in Syria Identified as Kidnappers by Lebanese Press
1st June 2013
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There’s a reason why eBay founder Pierre Omidyar just shoveled $15 million in investment to political petition site, Change.org: the business of good citizenship is very profitable. While critics often stereotype tech billionaires as libertarian sociopaths, they do so under the odd premise that making money and promoting democracy are mutually exclusive.
And they ignore the undoubted fact that a depressingly large number of them contribute to, and vote for, people like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jerry Brown, and Nanny Bloomberg.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Riches of Civic Capitalism
1st June 2013
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Self-driving cars will save roughly 32,000 lives lost every year to auto fatalities, reduce pollution and save us countless hours wasted in traffic. It will also obliterate the taxi industry — like it did the steamboat industry.
Bringing to the masses services, which were once considered luxuries (personal assistants, cutting-edge medicine, and world-class education), means automating some jobs out of existence.
Unfortunately, while everybody sees it coming, nobody has any ideas about how to cope with it. My prediction is that it will give us an ever-increasing Lower Crust of unemployable proles who can only survive off of government benefits and therefore will perennially vote for the Party of Free Stuff, the Democrats or whatever even-more-socialist group eventually replaces the Democrats.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on In Defense of Prosperous Inequality
1st June 2013
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Oh, say it ain’t so!
These small online business believe that true Main Street physical retailers and true Main Street Internet retailers are not at odds, but, in fact, allies. eMainStreet makes the point that “in 2012, big-box retailers accounted for more than 83 percent of online sales. Their online market-share is increasing, and by way of the MFA the growth of their retail oligopoly will accelerate.” This is precisely what happened in the physical retail space.
The point is that, just as rich people are in favor of increasing taxes that they are in a better position to survive, big companies are in favor of increased taxes on commerce (and regulatory burdens) that they are also in a better position to survive.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Small Businesses Identify Serious Problems With Internet Sales Tax Legislation
1st June 2013
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Sipping a soda before one of their Thursday-night “meet-ups” at the Rosewood bar, Andersen’s business partner, Nina Ericson, describes the origins of Cougar Night. Ericson—a 50-year-old lawyer turned life coach—goes by the Twitter handle @DrDate2soulmate and often meets Andersen’s clients at the Rosewood spa café. She tells me it all started when the local venture capitalists wanted to find somewhere to go for drinks after work. Men make up 89 percent of venture-capital-firm partners, according to a 2011 survey by the National Venture Capital Association and Dow Jones Venture Source, and a demographic of mostly male, wealthy, well-known businessmen began reliably showing up for happy hour. Thursdays were the most consistent night and colleagues from up and down the road congregated in the comfortable bar overlooking the Santa Cruz Mountains. “Soon, women interested in the V.C.’s started coming,” says Ericson, “and it just turned into a crazy night.”
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on First World Problem, Silicon Valley Solution: Cougar Night at the Rosewood
1st June 2013
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It’s not a political alliance people are used to seeing. But in states like Texas and North Carolina, Tea Party supporters have been teaming up with Democrats to defeat measures that would expand gun rights for lawmakers but not the general public.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Democrats and Tea Party Supporters Teaming Up to Stop Lawmakers Giving Themselves Gun Perks
1st June 2013
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“It was our friend Chelsea’s birthday, and we didn’t have an oven to bake her a cake, so we decided to try to 3D print a cake for her, instead. It took some trial and error, but eventually (and unfortunately months past her actual birthday) we managed to print a simple cupcake topper that spelled out ‘Chelsea’ in cursive sugar,” said Liz von Hasseln. “Chelsea loved it so much that we started seriously considering how interested other people might be in 3D printed sugar. When we graduated, we decided to start a mini design firm for 3D printing custom sugar.”
You, too, can be fattening.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Husband and Wife Architects Create the Sugar Lab, a Foundry for 3D Printed Sweets
1st June 2013
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A tragic loss. Vance had as distinctive a voice as P G Wodehouse, and will be greatly missed.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on RIP Jack Vance