John C. Wright lets loose.

Before swan-diving into the sewer of total stupidity that is the DESOLATION movie, my intractable Southern courtesy requires that I say something good about this movie. Well, as it happens, there was not just one thing good about this movie, there were three: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, and Richard Armitage. They played their parts so well, that I feel I have met the real Gandalf, Bilbo and Thorin.

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Crustian values come to the fore.

Deciding on a career in the real world is hard enough, but for those who live in the fictional realm of romantic comedies, the prospects are even slimmer. Because rom-coms aim to transport swooning, optimistic viewers to a gentle fantasyland for a couple hours, the films’ lead characters tend to have glamorous gigs. It’s not likely that a bus dispatcher is going to have a serendipitous meet-cute, and Nora Ephron would never have filmed in the Applebee’s kitchen.

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Of course, since this is NPR, they assume the existence of a ‘food desert’ in this location (Michelle said so! It must be true!), so no wonder they are puzzled.

A Rational Human Being, however, would consider that perhaps the whole notion of ‘food desert’ (i.e. proles who don’t eat SWPL food that yuppies would prefer that they eat) is merely projection on the part of the Upper Crust.

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Thoughtcrime comes to the United States.

And the fine print of the latest announcement from the Administration is worse than the terrible headlines. This rule includes a provision that says you have to have the right motives for having a certain number of employees to be in compliance with Obamacare. Bear with me, that’s right: You must certify to the IRS – under the threat of perjury – that the reasons for your employee head count have nothing to do with your opposition to or avoidance of Obamacare. This president doesn’t just selectively enforce the law as he sees fit; now he is actually inventing new crimes.  It’s jaw-dropping that if you fall below 100 employees, the burden will be on you to prove that you meant no disrespect to Obamacare.  I can’t wait to see the video of the first Democrat who tries to defend this new threat of prosecution within Obamacare.  In fact, look for the White House to fix this and somehow drop this provision altogether.  It’s completely indefensible.

This from the Washington Post, the most certifiable Voice of the Crust around. (And if you’re betting that the White House ‘fixes’ this, I’ll be happy to take the other side of that bet.)

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The Transportation Security Administration is being criticized yet again, this time for embarrassing a cancer victim by proclaiming his incontinence issues to other travelers and strip-searching him before allowing the man to proceed.

The incident was detailed in an anonymous blog post on CafeMom.com, where the man’s wife claimed a TSA agent yelled that her husband was “wearing a diaper.” Another agent then reportedly laughed at the situation before escorting the man into another room for an inspection.

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Which brings me to the weird general observation: American liberals are quite essentialist when it comes to the target of their critique. Conservatives and Republicans are racist by their nature, by their intent, so their social segregation from non-whites counts toward their racism. It’s a fundamental attribute. In contrast American liberals and Democrats are anti-racist, so their social segregation from non-whites is situational, and does not reflect antipathy to non-whites.

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Of course. Like New York, San Francisco is rapidly becoming a ‘bracket’ city comprising the Upper Crust, who can afford the prices, and the Lower Crust, who live ‘in the cracks’ and can’t afford to go anywhere else.

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As her 11-year-old son Ethan lay in a coma dying, the Florida Education Department was forcing Andrea Rediske to prove that he wasn’t able to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. During his last month in hospice his homebound teacher came everyday, which the family appreciated, and was required to document the progress he was making on his sixth-grade curriculum, which left them upset and baffled.

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The Obama administration announced on Monday that it would postpone enforcement of a federal requirement for medium-size employers to provide health insurance to employees and allow larger employers more flexibility in how they provide coverage.

Totally ignoring the fact that the law nowhere gives the administration the authority to do that. They just decided to ignore the law.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said.

The militants belonged to a group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is fighting the Shiite-dominated army of the Iraqi government, mostly in Anbar Province. But they are also linked to bomb attacks elsewhere and other fighting that has thrown Iraq deeper into sectarian violence.

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

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

Read it. And watch the video.

Elijah Cummings is a key player in covering up and disseminating disinformation regarding the criminal misconduct of the IRS. From his perch as the ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, Cummings does his best to sow confusion as the committee pursues its investigation of the IRS. My daughter Eliana took a look at a piece of the Cummings story this past June in “The IRS’s best friend in Congress.”

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One of the biggest possible economic impacts of 3D printing  to the U.S. economy is the fact that it may eventually allow corporations to bring jobs back onshore from China. The United States outsources a large number of jobs over to Asia as a way to cut labor costs. 3D printing and robotics promises to change some of this, as companies can utilize industrial scale 3D printers and automation to manufacture parts for their products, cheaper than even the labor force in China can produce them. That’s if, of course China lags behind in their adoption of these technologies.

It appears, however that China is investing heavily in 3D printing, just like those in the U.S. and Europe. Their corporate and government leaders clearly can identify an emerging technology and its possible economic impact on the future of China. In fact, back in June, China announced a gigantic 3D printer, which they claimed was the world’s largest at the time, with a 1.8 m build diameter. Basically the thing could print out a nice sized bathroom vanity if you wanted it to.

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What do they know that you don’t?

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Some people are better than others? Burn the witch!

As it happens, Canada is an excellent laboratory for the authors’ theories. And the Toronto District School Board, with its 250,000 students – one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world – offers the perfect natural experiment. The TDSB conducts detailed demographic analyses of its students and their performance. The data strongly confirm the group differences described in The Triple Package. (My thanks to education consultant Paul Bennett, whose excellent blog, Educhatter, led me to this trove of information.)

The first surprise in these data – for those who haven’t hung around a Toronto schoolyard lately – is that only 29 per cent of the TDSB’s students are white. The next largest ethnic groups are South Asian (24 per cent), East Asian (15 per cent), and black (12 per cent). About three-quarters of the kids were born in Canada, but only a fifth of the students have two Canadian-born parents. More than two-thirds are from immigrant families with both parents born outside Canada.

The second surprise is that there is almost no link between academic success and family income among immigrant groups. More than half of all East Asian students (Chinese, Hong Kong and Korean) come from families that make less than $50,000 a year. But they blow the other kids away. Between 85 per cent and 89 per cent of them score at levels 3 and 4 in Grade 6 math. The school board average is just 60 per cent. Most South Asian students do well too, even though 70 per cent of them come from homes with incomes of less than $50,000 a year.

Mencius Moldbug lays down some inconvenient truth.

 For there’s nothing new here.  At the height of the lame, doomed “Red Scare,” the Brown Scare was ten times bigger.  You may think it was difficult making a living as a communist screenwriter in 1954. It was a lot easier than being a fascist screenwriter.  Or even an anticommunist screenwriter.  (Same thing, right?)  And as any pathetic last shreds of real opposition shrink and die off, the Scare only grows.  That’s how winners play it.  That’s just how the permanent revolution rolls.

…

Of course, ain’t nothin’ new here.  For quite some time in America it’s been illegal to employ racists, sexists and fascists, and mandatory to employ a precisely calibrated percentage of women, workers and peasants.  Because America is a free country and that’s what freedom means.

…

It’s actually not hard to explain the Brown Scare.  Like all witch hunts, it’s built on a conspiracy theory.  The Red Scare was based on a conspiracy theory too, but at least it was a real conspiracy with real witches – two of whom were my father’s parents.  (The nicest people on earth, as people.  I like to think of them not as worshipping Stalin, but worshipping what they thought Stalin was.)  Moreover, the Red Scare was a largely demotic or peasant phenomenon to which America’s governing intellectual classes were, for obvious reasons, immune.  Because power works and culture is downstream from politics – real politics, at least – the Red Scare soon faded into a joke.

…

Think about it.  Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn’t waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk.  They’re getting burned right and left, for Christ’s sake!  Priorities!  No, they’d turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters.  In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won’t see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there’s a serious witch problem.  In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.

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The rhetoric of Socialism/Communism has intrinsic appeal to certain groups of people and some members of each group are always likely to fall under its spell: the guilt-ridden wealthy and/or their even-more-guilt-ridden spawn, the poor who feel they’ve been screwed by society, the politically and economically naive intelligentsia who feel they know better than others, the religious and/or idealistic who want everyone to be loving and good and selfless, and those who just like the idea of power and control over others and plan to be the ones in charge.

Combine all that natural appeal with the undeniable propagandist skill of many on the left—including their willingness to lie in the most brazen manner—and you have an even greater effect. And then combine all of that with ignorance of history and economics, our culture’s reluctance to teach the young our good points and its eagerness to harp on our bad ones, and the fact that people only tend to really learn something through bitter and personal experience.

The wonder is that more people don’t believe that socialism/Commmunism is the answer to the world’s prayers, not that so many succumb to it in the first place. Never imagine that the fight, especially in the intellectual and educational and propaganda spheres, can be over. It would be too bad if each generation had to learn the lesson through personal suffering rather than in the realm of ideas.

John C. Wright questions whether we’ve really made any progress under ‘progressive’ government.

The modern poor man is in a much more favorable legal situation, but not a more favorable real-life situation as the serf or slave. Perhaps his situation is worse, because he lacks a personal relationship with his lord or owner: the modern welfare-serf must beg of the anonymous, cold-faced and impersonal institutions what he once sat before the gates of the rich man to beg of him.

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I always suspected as much.

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After my recent articles documenting how the U.S. is the chief facilitator of Christian persecution in the Muslim world, I received an email from John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, in which he made the following observation:

The sad fact is that the ruthless Assad dictatorship has a better record than the United States or its Sunni allies of protecting religious minorities in the Middle East. What Syrian Christian, Alawite or Druze in their right mind would trade the Assad’s time-tested protection for the smooth words of a John Kerry, especially when they can see Sunni supremacist Saudis, Qataris, Turks and a motley array of jihadis over their shoulder?

A sad fact indeed.

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I am not making this up.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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And I can’t think of a more appropriate place.

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Have you noticed that whenever a person of the Islamic persuasion blows something up, or shoots people, or beheads someone, or gets caught with a trunkload of explosives, the first thing the federal authorities tell concerned American citizens is that the incident “has no connection with terrorism”?

Not partway through the investigation, mind you. Not after sifting mounds of forensic evidence. Not after long hours of interrogating suspects. But the first thing. Before the smell of cordite has dispersed from the scene. Before the blood on the sidewalk has dried. Before the strewn body parts have been collected and covered up.

When the Islamic nature of the bomber, shooter, or beheader becomes undeniable, the perpetrator is further described as a “lone wolf” who was “radicalized on the Internet”. He is never, ever part of a jihad network within the United States. Such things don’t actually exist, thanks to the eternal vigilance of our zealous law enforcement agents.

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What do they know that you don’t?

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Having been to Wellesley in my youth, I suspect it’s because that’s about as close to a nearly naked man that most of them can aspire to for quite a while.

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Not that anyone would notice.

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Orangeburg, South Carolina Sheriff Leroy Ravenell cited self defense for a woman who shot her enraged boyfriend after he beat her and dragged her through the yard and across the floor on February 2nd.

Sounds about right. Would that more would do the same.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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A number of years ago, a manager in my office was embezzling thousands of dollars in travel funds. His actions were common knowledge, but other managers, including a currently high ranking executive in the office of chief counsel, did not report him. I did report his conduct to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), but they did not investigate the matter for a considerable length of time. After I complained to my local congressman’s office, TIGTA finally forwarded the matter to the office of chief counsel to be handled internally. Eventually, the office of chief counsel made the manager pay the money back, but took no other disciplinary action, even though others who committed the same type of scheme were punished severely.

The Hanger Squeegee

Unbreakable Walking Stick Defense Umbrella

Canine Raincoat. Nothing smells worse than a damp pooch.

Personal Steam Inhaler.

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And who could blame them? Eric Holder is rather revolting.

First it was the Justice Department’s career prosecutors; now it’s FBI agents. The federal employees responsible for fighting crime are simply unable to digest the anti-law enforcement slop being served up by their boss, Attorney General Holder.

The FBI’s beef is with the selection of Debo Adegbile as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. The FBI Agents Association’s opposition is based on the way in which Adegbile defended, and led the cheers for, cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The problem isn’t that Adegbile defended Abu-Jamal. The problem, as Bill Otis explains, is that Adegbile led a street campaign to denounce the policeman Abu-Jamal killed, Officer Daniel Faulkner, and the police in general, as an occupying fascist army.

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Missing?

Arkansas- Mike Beebe (D)

Connecticut- Dan Malloy (D)

Delaware- Jack Markell (D)

Hawaii- Neil Abercrombie (D)

Kentucky- Steve Beshear (D)

Massachusetts- Deval Patrick (D)

Minnesota- Mark Dayton (D)

Missouri- Jay Nixon (D)

Oregon- John Kitzhaber (D)

Rhode Island- Lincoln Chafee (D)

Vermont- Peter Shumlin (D)

Virginia- Terry McAuliffe (D)

Washington- Jay Inslee (D)

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Much of what you hear about the minimum wage is completely untrue.

First, people should acknowledge that this rather heated policy discussion is over a very small group of people. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are about 3.6 million workers at or below the minimum wage (you can be below legally under certain conditions). That is 2.5 percent of all workers and 1.5 percent of the population of potential workers. Within that small group, 31 percent are teenagers and 55 percent are 25 years old or younger. That leaves only about 1.1 percent of all workers over 25 and 0.8 percent of all Americans over 25 earning the minimum wage.

Within that tiny group, most of these workers are not poor and are not trying to support a family on only their earnings. In fact, according to a recent study, 63 percent of workers who earn less than $9.50 per hour (well over the minimum wage of $7.25) are the second or third earner in their family and 43 percent of these workers live in households that earn over $50,000 per year. Thus, minimum wage earners are not a uniformly poor and struggling group; many are teenagers from middle class families and many more are sharing the burden of providing for their families, not carrying the load all by themselves.

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Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behaviour of subsequent generations.

A Nature Neuroscience study shows mice trained to avoid a smell passed their aversion on to their “grandchildren”.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, call your office.

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So many gang members have been priced out of the neighborhood, he said, that their presence can be hard to spot during the week. But on Fridays and Saturdays, they make a pilgrimage back to their roots. They ride in from El Sereno, Eagle Rock, even the Inland Empire, to hang out. Each Monday, trash cans and stop signs wear fresh “ExP” graffiti.

“It becomes a weekend gang,” Arellano said.

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I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t have a gun.

I guess we’re all Trayvon Martin now — except for white people, of course.

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And try to keep up….

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With just two days before America hits the debt ceiling deadline, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced on Tuesday his desire to raise it.

“The goal here is to increase the debt ceiling,” said Boehner. “Nobody wants to default on our debt.”

Republicans = Democrats with a variable time delay + hot air.

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Some patients in California are finding out that once they’ve managed to sign up for a health insurance plan through the state exchange, it still may be difficult to determine whether or not a doctor actually accepts their insurance plan.

Obamacare — the gift that keeps on giving.

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Researchers at IPCMS in Strasbourg, working with a team from the Institut Parisien de Chimie Moléculaire (CNRS/UPMC), have produced an LED that consists of a single molecule.

While it’s unlikely ever to serve as a display, the molecular LED is an important step forward in miniaturising components to provide optical communications in molecular-scale computing, the researchers say.

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Can you say ‘collectivist’? I’m sure you can.

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’ — Benito Mussolini

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Can they cope with a nail through your sidewall?

Steve Sailer exercises his fisking pen on a Voice of the Crust.

I am an American, Calcutta born. I’m writing a book about immigrants in New York, dedicated to my two American sons. I want them to know why we came here and how we found our place in this new land. I want them to know about the teachers at the Catholic school in Queens who called me a “pagan,” and the boy there who welcomed me to the school by declaring, “Lincoln shoulda never let ’em off the plantations,” and the landlord who welcomed us to the country by turning off the electricity.In other words, the most important family memories that these sons of a prominent author are having inculcated in them is that they are Victims of Whites. That’s the most important legacy to instruct your children in in the 21st Century.

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There are three basic ways in which Obama’s behavior exceeds that of any his predecessors.

The first is that Obama is using executive orders and actions to alter his own legislation. It’s one thing to claim that you are forced to act because Congress will not. It’s quite another thing to re-write the law after Congress has done what you asked–and after you have offered, time and time again, to entertain formal amendments to the legislation. Obama has simply invoked executive authority to cover up his own errors. That’s unprecedented.

The second way in which Obama’s abuse of executive power is different is that he has done it to prevent the legislature from acting. It is now widely acknowledged that the president issued his “Dream Act by fiat” in 2012 not just because Congress wouldn’t pass his version of immigration reform, but to outflank Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who was preparing his own version, embarrassing Obama among Latino voters. Such pettiness is rare.

The third way in which Obama’s behavior is unusual is that he commands sweeping executive power on some issues while arguing, on other issues, that he has no power to act. The president’s recent speech about the NSA surveillance programs is a prime example of such self-contradiction. There is no constitutional doctrine behind the president’s executive orders, actions, and omissions: there is just pure, cynical political expediency.

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Remya Jose, a 14 year school girl from Kerala, has created a simple pedal-powered washing machine which came about due to her dislike to wash clothes by hand. Her invention is not only a washing machine, but can double up as an exercise machine as well.

All your yuppie urges satisfied at wonce. Win-win!

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The concept was first presented as a corollary of his broader “Parkinson’s law” spoof of management. He dramatizes this “law of triviality” with the example of a committee’s deliberations on an atomic reactor, contrasting it to deliberations on a bicycle shed. As he put it: “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.” A reactor is used because it is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot understand it, so one assumes that those that work on it understand it. On the other hand, everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to add a touch and show personal contribution.

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The key to bones’ strength is that they are made of a repeating pattern. Light materials like foam have a random structure, which is why they collapse if any pressure is applied. The researchers tried a variety of patterns, including cubes, pyramids and honeycombs. They were able to use a lithography machine to create at least 10 different options made of a polymer covered in an aluminum compound. They found that some buckled under pressure while others fractured.

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From the “If you did this, not only would you be facing jail time but your state’s attorney general would send out a press release about it” files, a Mesa, Ariz., police officer who is receiving monthly worker’s compensation checks and successfully arranged for a medical retirement is racing in triathlons.

To quote John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia: ‘Get a government job!’