Read it.

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

A new survey reports that if Congress raises the current minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10, there will be catastrophic effects. Among private employers paying the minimum wage, 38% will fire workers, 54% will reduce the number of employees they hire, and 65% will raise the prices on the goods and services they provide.

The survey, conducted by Express Employment Professionals, also revealed that among employers including those who pay minimum wage and those who pay more, if the minimum wage is raised, 19% would fire workers, 39% would cut their hiring, and 51% would raise their prices.

The Congressional Budget Office said last month that even raising the country’s minimum wage gradually to $10.10 by 2016 would see employment numbers plummet by 500,000 workers by the second half of 2016. Other estimates say that there is a 70% chance that the number of 500,000 could zoom close to one million.

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One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state is that there are so many laws and regulations that no one can possibly know what they are, let alone obey them. Thus everyone is a criminal, and only the despot’s discretion separates the solid citizen from the criminal. Unfortunately, the United States is rapidly approaching–if it has not already reached–this dystopian status.

Read it.

Obamacare patients are discovering that many doctors, hospitals, and top cancer centers do not accept the plans they purchased.

“It’s so frustrating,” Terri Durheim of Enid, Okla., told CNN. “It’s not doing me a lot of good.”

Durheim is not alone. Obamacare’s so-called “narrow networks” are designed to limit customer choices to push patients into cheaper choices in an effort to control costs. Earlier this year Washington Post health writer Sarah Kliff warned that “Obamacare’s narrow networks are going to make people furious – but they might control costs.” A McKinsey and Co. study finds that more than one in three (38%) Obamacare plans permit patients to select from just 30% of the largest 20 hospitals in their geographic region.

That’s why they call it the Affordable Care Act. Care you can’t get is always affordable.

John C. Wright exhumes the body of a decayed critic to hang, draw, and quarter it, as was done with Cromwell after the Restoration.

The kind reader may well wonder why any time or effort should be spent on dissecting a review over half a century old, worthy of no attention and no memory. That we must answer only after reading the review itself.

…

So why does Mr Wilson sneer that this is matter fit only for children? As I said, I suspect it is because his passions are corrupted with modern pollution, and in him they do not mediate between the appetites and the reason. He is not capable of having the proper, apt and fitting stock response to high and noble matter, and so he must react like Gollum tasting the mystic waybread of the elves, and spit it out as ashes with a curse.  He is one of C.S. Lewis’ ‘Men Without Chests.’

Read it.

 All this talk about raising the minimum wage has very little to do with reality. Raising it will not create a single job—if you aren’t earning a wage, making yourself more expensive is not going gain you a job—and will not likely cause anyone’s wages to rise. It’s hard to find anyone who is actually willing to contradict those claims, because they stem from basic price theory: Less of the same good will be purchased at a higher price than a lower price.

The timing is also incredibly bad. Business is already dealing with huge cost increases because of Obamacare. Many businesses are in full protest mode. Plus, employment markets are soft.

Economic growth in general is under downward pressure, with even past growth rates being revised downward. Economic growth is so pathetic now that Janet Yellen, the new head of the Fed, took a page from the Soviet playbook and suggested the bad weather itself is what is to blame—a line still used by Zimbabwe to explain its perpetual woes. It’s a heck of a time to force higher wages on businesses.

‘Hey, we’ll just pass a law! That will make everything better!’ Yeah, right.

 What the editorial suggests is that higher wages need to be forced on business because otherwise managers would not understand their own interests. Businesses makes thousands of decisions every week regarding inventory, real estate, websites, accounting, product development, marketing, research and development, and vastly more, but, according to the minimum wage idea, they are clueless about how to manage the wages and salaries of their own workforce with an eye to profit maximization. For this, businesses need government to tell them what to do.

Do you see the presumption here? It is that the Department of Labor—not a profit-making firm but one run by people whose wages and salaries are dictated by law rather than markets—is in a better position than the private sector to know what the market demands. That’s implausible on the face of it, unless you fundamentally believe that markets are dumber than governments and that the price system is nonfunctioning.

That lack of basic economic understanding is only the beginning of the frustrations that economists have when looking at these debates. The urge to boost the minimum wage is driven not by economic considerations but political ones. It is a favor thrown toward unions and large corporations—institutions that already enjoy or pay high wages—at the expense of smaller companies or unemployed/marginal workers who have a hard time gaining any kind of foothold in the market.

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The company’s lettuce bot rolls slowly (1 mile per hour) down a row of lettuce plants, with a camera pointed at the ground. One set of algorithms determines whether or not the robot is seeing a plant, another set of algorithms determines if the plant is a weed or not (to about 98 or 99 percent accuracy) and a third set of algorithms determines when the correct moment is to inject the deadly dose of fertilizer on the weed.

We have the technology — or soon will.

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Unlike color that we usually think of, which arises from paints and dyes absorbing certain wavelengths of light and reflecting the remainder, structural color is created when an object’s very nanostructure amplifies a specific wavelength. Cells in the cotinga’s feathers have a series of tiny pores spaced just right so that blues (and not much of anything else) are reflected back to our eyes. Because of this, if the feathers were thoroughly pulverized, the formation of pores and therefore the color would be lost. It also means that the same color could be produced from an entirely different material, if one could recreate the same pattern made by the feathers’ pores.

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This is extremely significant for two reasons:

1. Asian-Americans now realize that affirmative action is bad for Asians. I don’t think they realized this a decade ago, but they realize it now.

2. Democratic Party is a coalition of minorities and special interest groups controlled by a liberal white elite. I have always predicted that at some time in the future, the minority groups would become more assertive. I admit that I assumed that it would be Hispanic votes who would be the first to assert themselves, but it turns out that Asian-Americans are the first to revolt.

The Identity Politics chickens come home to roost.

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Rather startling to see such concern over the security of a coin these days. (Other than a bitcoin, that is.)

Read it.

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

Read it.

If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Sarah Hoyt notices that her Bullshit Detector has gone off.

First of all there is much to be said against the concept of “cultural tolerance.”  Oh, sure, there is no earthly reason to despise someone for the food they eat or the clothes they wear (unless they eat live children or wear clothes made of ditto.)  There is no reason to consider some language backward (well, there are languages without verb tenses for past and future, which must be pure h*ll to manage modern life in, but that’s something else. Normal human habit in these situations is to borrow like mad.)

In fact, most of the type of thing you learn about other cultures in school aren’t something you should well… have an opinion of any sort about, unless it’s aesthetic.  I hate south American decoration on fabrics.  This doesn’t mean it’s bad.  It’s an aesthetic opinion.  I’m also not particularly fond of the things Scandinavians do with furniture.  Aesthetic opinion.  My kid likes it.  It’s… what you like.  I can say “Bah, no Swedish straight lines, thanks” when shopping for a table.  That doesn’t mean I despise the culture.  Oh, and some African carved masks give me the holly gibbies.  (Though I rather like animal carvings.  Go figure.)

None of this is lack of tolerance.  I like what I like.  You couldn’t pay me to wear a ball cap, for instance, and that’s the culture of my adopted people.

But this is all the level they can teach in school.  First of all because the units for world culture or geography or whatever start in elementary and rarely go beyond middle school.  Do you really want to discuss genital mutilation with your elementary school daughter?  I wouldn’t.  Do you want to explain how the concepts of personhood and individual value vary across the world?  Or course not.

Worse, the teachers are often fluffy internationalists, having been taught what I call “tourist multiculturalism.”  They believe that “culture” is clothes and crafts and food.  Or, as I kept running into when they told me to teach the kids their “culture” and I replied I was, that they were perfect “US Geek.” They got upset, and wanted me to teach them Portuguese culture.  (Why this would trump the culture of their father whose family has been here since the 1600s is a mystery.) They have some vague idea culture is genetic.  And they lack the historical knowledge to realize that is one of the most racist ideas ever.

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Reason readers are likely already familiar with the perverse federal subsidy system that doles out billions to major agribusiness nationwide. When ag subsidies began, in the 1930s, then-Secretary of agriculture Henry Wallace called them “a temporary solution to deal with an emergency.” That temporary solution has now lasted nearly a century, in both good and bad times for farmers, and even today when farm household incomes greatly exceed our national average.

But less well-known are the federal efforts to directly aid pork producers. The swine flu surplus buy-up was unfortunately not an isolated incident. In fact, when the country started experiencing drought, USDA stepped in to buy an additional $100 million of unwanted pork.

Were public school kids, service-members, prisoners, and other recipients of federally purchased food demanding more pig on their pizzas? No. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was clear about the motivation: “President Obama and I will continue to take swift action to get help to America’s farmers and ranchers.” No doubt many other industries wouldn’t mind the administration paying them for products they’re having a tough time selling.

Read it.

 On the day of his inauguration in 2009, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would be “the most open and transparent in history.” It did not take long for that promise to be tossed aside, and it has been clear for quite a while that this administration is perhaps the most secretive in history. A new analysis by the AP of how the administration responds to FOIA requests confirms that it is becoming even more secretive each year:

The Obama administration more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

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

Mark Steyn is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Speaking of “secession”, it is possible to have an honest difference of opinion about Moscow’s claims upon the Crimea, which was transferred from Russia to the Ukraine in 1954 as little more than a bit of internal housekeeping within the Soviet Union. But it is not possible if one is the Government of the United States or the United Kingdom. London, Washington and Moscow signed something called “the Budapest Agreement” in 1994, guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty in return for the newly independent nation giving up its nuclear weapons. By “guaranteeing”, I mean that Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, and Britain and America committed themselves to seeing that Russia did so. It was shortly after the USSR went out of business and in the heyday of all that talk about the new “unipolar” world. The agreement wasn’t a big news story at the time, and one can argue that there was no reason for London or Washington to get mixed up in the redefined relationships of a hastily deSovietized empire. But the fact is they did sign it, and great powers should not give their word unless they intend to keep their word.

They have now broken it, as Vladimir Putin knew they would.

Read it.

On February 23rd 17-year-old Byron White allegedly killed a Seattle man for his cell phone then complained that the cell phone “was not a nicer model.”

Here’s  Byron White:

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

Read it.

Well guess what? Growing pot is very carbon-intensive.  Says Mother Jones:

You thought your pot came from environmentally conscious hippies? Think again. The way marijuana is grown in America, it turns out, is anything but sustainable and organic. . .

Bummer, man.

Read it. And watch the video.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (“Party of Liberation”) is an international Islamic organization whose goal is the establishment of a worldwide Caliphate. Like the Communist Party, it sees itself is the vanguard of a world revolution that will bring about the dominance of its ideology. As I have pointed out in the past, much of its party program — not to mention its rhetorical style — has been lifted wholesale from venerable tracts of International Socialism.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has been banned in Muslim countries, but thrives in tolerant Western hosts such as Britain, Australia, and Denmark. The HuT march and demonstration shown in the video below took place in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, on Friday March 14th. An estimated 500 participants took part. Men and women were kept separate.

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Just shy of a decade ago, a retired rector named George Regas stepped into the pulpit at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, a few days before the November election and let fly with some good, old-fashioned fire and brimstone. The targets of his passion: President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Also, “conservative politicians.” Not to mention “the religious right.” Regas described war as “the most extreme form of terrorism.” Speaking in the voice of Jesus Christ, he said, “The killing of innocent people to achieve some desired goal is morally repudiated by anyone claiming to follow Me as their savior and guide.” He went on to condemn poverty, defend abortion rights, and so on.

What happened next will surprise you only if you just fell off a turnip truck: The IRS came knocking. It threatened the church’s tax-exempt status, demanded all kinds of paperwork, and carried on an investigation that lasted more than two years—and cost the church $200,000.

The saga of All Saints could soon be coming to a community near you.

Read it.

Being a black Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry.

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

Read it.

FlickrTennessee whiskey maker Jack Daniel’s is an unsurprisingly big fan of a local law that basically defines whiskey by standards set by Jack Daniel’s. Under current Tennessee law, only locally-made spirits fermented from mash of at least 51 percent corn, aged in new charred oak barrels, filtered through maple charcoal, and bottled at a minimum of 80 proof can legally be labeled “Tennessee whiskey.” Not coincidentally, that’s “almost to the letter the process used to make Jack Daniel’s,” The Associated Press reports.

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

This writing of one company’s business process into the law is known as ‘crapitalism’, although you won’t year any of the Usual Suspects, right or left, admit that.

As predicted, the Crimea (which was only given to Ukraine by Khrushchev within my lifetime) has decided it wants to return to Russia.

As might be predicted, the head of the American Democrat Party (Barack Hussein Obama. Um, um, um.) won’t accept any such expressions of democracy. Nor will the EU, although their commitment to democracy has long since died a lingering death.

Under pressure, the Crust cracks and reveals its true nature for all to see. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

And it would appear that the Cossacks are back.

Read it.

In Bryan’s blog post Predicting the Popularity of Obvious Methods, he suggests that social scientists are more likely to pursue non-obvious methods when the obvious methods don’t provide the answer that they like. In the spirit of his post, the use of non-obvious or overly sophisticated methods can signal that the researcher kept trying until they got the “right” answer. The skeptical might view this as a warning sign about the research.

Most people do not consume research firsthand. Instead, it is filtered through the media. Journalists also have preferences over answers. If a newspaper doesn’t like the answer that research provides, they have wide latitude to ignore it. This means that one can infer the preferences of the media by the research that they do cite. Instead of sophisticated methods being the “tell,” journalists show their preferences by citing weak research.

Let that be a warning to us all.

Read it.

As if parents with school-age children don’t have enough to worry about already, what with whether or not their children are eating enough vegetables from the red-orange subgroups, or ensuring that they participate in as little physical activity as possible, now we have a scourge Planet Moron has been following for some time:

Imaginary weapons.

Some might dismiss the threat posed by imaginary weapons, however they’re not taking fully into account the many pretend deaths that could result if schools didn’t act quickly and decisively to neutralize the non-existent threat.

Take for example, the boy caught red-handed with an imaginary bow and arrow.

Look, you could put out a make-believe eye with that thing.

Read it. And watch the video.

Passed in 1920, the Jones Act was created to protect the U.S. shipping industry by mandating that only ships made in the U.S. and flying the American flag can deliver goods between American ports. This means that a ship from China can only make one stop in the U.S. at a time – it would be unable to unload goods in Hawaii on the way back from Los Angeles.

The law has negatively impacted the Hawaiian economy and now lawmakers are fighting back.

Laws passed to favor one group over another, if they don’t match actual market conditions, result in either smuggling or destruction of the very trade they are intended to constrain. Somehow, politicians never seem to learn this. (Of course, since this is a long-term problem and they’re only interested in the short term [i.e. how much money and votes can I acquire to keep me in office two years from now?], they have absolutely no incentive to pay any attention to it.)

Read it.

Health, if it’s possible to spend at all (e.g. in pursuit of career success), is extremely illiquid. But as I will argue today, status is so liquid — so easy to transact, and in real time — that it plays a fundamental economic role in our day-to-day lives.

…

The point I’m trying to make here is that social status is not arbitrary. Instead, it’s grounded, very concretely, in the biology of honest signals – and as such, it’s subject to very real constraints. Wild swings of status are possible, but they’re mostly the stuff of stories. Our daily lives are governed by much smaller — and more predictable — gains and losses.

Read it.

But of course we want gay Scouts and gay Scout leaders. It’s only fair.

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To people more worried about kids who are falling through the cracks altogether, doing slightly less than we could for the most gifted might not seem like a pressing problem. But if the study is right that exceptional youthful ability really does correlate directly with exceptional adult achievement, then these talented young kids aren’t just a challenge for schools and parents: they’re also demonstrably important to America’s future. And it means that if, in education, we focus on steering all extra money and attention toward kids who are struggling academically, or even just to the average student, we risk shortchanging the country in a different way.

“We are in a talent war, and we’re living in a global economy now,” Lubinski says. “These are the people who are going to figure out all the riddles. Schizophrenia, cancer—they’re going to fight terrorism, they’re going to create patents and the scientific innovations that drive our economy. But they are not given a lot of opportunities in schools that are designed for typically developing kids.”

The transformation of children into a ‘public good’ is now complete — they aren’t individuals any more, but a natural resource that must be exploited, like shale oil. The same people who can’t leave a seam of coal in the ground without digging it out and burning it, whatever effect that may have on the actual people who live there, are transferring that same attitude to ‘our children’.

Read it.

You know who you are.

Mark Steyn points out a teensie-weensie double standard.

A couple of days ago, you’ll recall, we featured current controversies over a metal cross retrieved from the rubble at Ground Zero, and a roadside cross marking a fatal accident in Lake Elsinore, California. American Atheists and the American Humanist Association are suing over both outrageous provocations.

On the other hand, as far as I’m aware, American atheists and humanists have no plans to bring any separation-of-church-and-state suits against the City of Minneapolis, for its observance at City Hall last month of “Hijab Day”. Female members of the city council wore the hijab, as did the Chief of Police, Janeé Harteau, a lesbian who recently married her “favorite sergeant”, Holly Keegel. I have no idea what Sgt Keegel wore for Hijab Day. Maybe she went as the Grand Mufti.

Hijab Day grows a little bigger around the world each year. Its purpose is to enable the rest of us to show our support for women who choose to go covered. In reality, for most Muslim women around the world, the choice is made for them – by men. In Afghanistan under the Taliban, women were forbidden by law from ever feeling sunlight on their faces. Maybe most of them would have “chosen” not to feel it anyway, but we’ll never know, will we?

George Will lays out some inconvenient truth.

Nearly two-thirds of households receiving food stamps qualify under “categorical eligibility” because they receive transportation assistance or certain other welfare services. We spend $1 trillion annually on federal welfare programs, decades after Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that if one-third of the money for poverty programs was given directly to the poor, there would be no poor. But there also would be no unionized poverty bureaucrats prospering and paying dues that fund the campaigns of Democratic politicians theatrically heartsick about inequality.

Read it.

We’ve written about cancer survivor/Obamacare victim Julie Boonstra several times. Today Henry Payne adds to the story and draws the appropriate lessons in “The war on Julie Boonstra.” Payne notes how Boonstra, “a schoolteacher, has come under assault from Democrats and their media allies decrying her as a liar and an ignoramus for failing to embrace her new, Obamacare-approved plan.”

Freeberg is always worth reading.

It’s a bit regrettable that they believe in some kind of fight between good and evil inland, and then it seems once we’re talking about overseas situations with the prospect of war emerging, evil suddenly vanishes and anyone who makes an issue out of it must be some kind of “warmonger.” That dog won’t hunt. Evil exists, and it’s always been exceptionally talented at convincing the casual observer it doesn’t.

But she’s figured out how Obama’s snookered her generation. Vote for the magic-man, shed your tears of exuberance and happiness on 11/5/08, help end war and stick it to these evil corporations. She’s figured out the downside of voting friends into power and enemies out of power; that government works according to the interests of politicians, by its nature, and you can’t have it working for you unless you’re a politician. She’s beginning to understand that people who aren’t politicians need to keep government small. It’s on us. The politicians aren’t going to say “Okay that’s it, we’re interfering in their lives enough.”

The way these youngsters see it, though, is not like that. They say “not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.” And then, while I can’t pretend to speak for this shirt-burner lady, I’ve noticed many among them are all-on-board when the time comes to consider the next tax increase. They want to stick it to those evil corporations.

Read it.

‘Well, we wanted to make sure everybody was properly indoctrinated with the guilt of White Privilege, and make sure they appreciate the contributions that People Of Color have made to the progress of civilization, and, um, you know, that kind of stuff.’

According to the Washington Post, Gates told teachers common standards could transform U.S. education and reduce the number of students who require remedial courses in college.

The problem is not the standards — we’ve got plenty of standards — the problem is the teachers. This is like telling the Arabs ‘all you have to do is get your tactical doctrine right and you’ll start winning again’.

Read it.

I could see this in Georgia, or Texas, but Connecticut? What kind of an idiot parks a car where falling ice can damage it? She must be one special snowflake.

Worx Hand Cleaner.

Portabe Door Jammer.

Rainmaker.

Microchip Activated Pet Feeder. I am not making this up.

SnapRays Guidelights. Unfortunately, they’re still at the Kickstarter stage.

QuickKey.

The Reg has the skinny.

Birthed by the Bill and Melinda Gates charitable foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge”, the Sol-Char eschews the water-guzzling methods employed in the lavatories favoured by wealthy Westerners. It’s meant for users in hot equatorial areas where water is scarce and so, sadly, is proper sanitation in many cases.

Rather than a watery pan, then, a Sol-Char user deposits his or her offerings into a “reaction chamber”. Then, eight mighty parabolic mirrors focus the rays of the tropical sun down onto a “postage stamp” sized collector where the blazing combined beams are fed into fibre optic cables. These then blast the ravening photons into the chamber, achieving power output of 700 watts – comparable to that of a microwave oven – and heating the offerings up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit.

This zapping treatment swiftly converts the chamber’s smelly, unhealthy contents into a wholesome, well-nigh miraculous poo-based charcoal substance known as “biochar”.

Biochar is splendid stuff, it seems.

Read it.

About fargin’ time. The fact that teen metabolisms start later then adults or kids is not news. And it’s not as if any of them have an after-school job to go to anymore.

Read it.

That’s the most positive thing I’ve heard about these changes to date. After all, if the ‘experts’ who have been screwing up our education system for the past fifty years don’t like them, they must be headed in the right direction, right?

Read it.

Imagine: You receive an e-mail from the friend of a friend, asking if he might stay with you for a week or so while visiting your town on business. “Of course,” you say, but caution him that your home can be a bit hectic: you have two children and two dogs. Your friend’s friend says he understands, and is grateful for your hospitality.

Now imagine your guest arrives and within days, informs you that his religion precludes him from living with dogs: you will have to remove yours from your home, at least for the duration of his stay. What do you do?

If you’re like most people, most likely you will suggest that he might more comfortable at a hotel. You may offer to ask other friends of yours if he might stay with them. What you are not likely to do is take the dogs to a kennel, or, should he extend his visit, give them away.

On the other hand, you might think, you do not know this man very well. What if he should become violent if you refuse his request? What if he were to hurt the dogs? What would you do then?

This is not entirely a hypothetical situation. Rather, it illustrates the conditions Western countries increasingly confront in the face of growing Muslim immigration, and the pressures democracies face in balancing their ideals of equal rights with often-undemocratic demands of Islamic culture.

Fold in the fact that under his religion, in a rightly-ordered society your position would be about that of a Negro in the Jim Crow South. Enjoy your stay.

Read it.

The boarded up building in the photo sits a mere 6 blocks from the White House on prime real estate but it’s been empty for 30 years! What’s the problem? The building is owned/controlled by the Federal government which often doesn’t even know what it owns, lacks the incentive to control costs and whose bureaucratic strictures make selling difficult even when motivation exists. – See more at: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/wasted-resources.html#sthash.liL34h0A.dpuf

Read it.

One of the barriers to the continuing shrinking of electronics is that as you pack more features into a smaller space, you also pack more heat into that space. That makes heat a hurdle standing in the way of our ability to keep Moore’s Law going for as long as possible.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have found that a single-atom-thick graphene coating on either side of a copper track – a graphene-copper-graphene sandwich – gave a 24 per cent better heat conduction than copper alone.

Joseph Allen takes a peek at the man behind the curtain.

Of all the millions of ways to be an asshole, the status quo regards “racism” as the most alarming. Put on your X-ray specs and you’ll see the contagion everywhere. According to a recent study, 10,000 “racist and ethnic slur terms” are hurled on Twitter daily. Imagine all the tender sensibilities withering in the heat of those Tweets.

As it turns out, the most commonly used term is “white boy,” which comprises a full 48.9%, followed by “paki” at 11.7% and “whitey” at 7.9%. “Coon” and “nigga” came in at a paltry 3.2% each. So much for affirmative action.

Read it.

Well, it had to happen.

‘Sasha’ is pretty cute — too bad she has a boy’s name … apparently brains skipped a generation in her family.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Read it.

These look pretty cool.

Read it.

How ’bout that Global Warming, huh?

Read it.

One problem for the scientific community is that much of it seems to have thrown in its lot with liberalism, but then wonders why its members experience high levels of distrust.

Read it.

They hadn’t actually played the game. The union reps, the line managers, the HR goons. It didn’t matter. They sat him down and fired him anyway, for creating a game that none of them bothered to play.

For David S. Gallant, this is the single most egregious factor in his unhappy journey from the land of employment and stability to the rough country of uncertainty. In retrospect, a month after the event, he understands that writing a game about his crappy job as a call center “meat popsicle” might not have made him friends in high places at the Canadian Revenue Agency. He knows now that talking incautiously to the Toronto Star about why he made I Get This Call Every Day was an act of naiveté.

Looking back, he can regard the grinding political machine that generated an angry comment from the Canadian Minister of National Revenue, no less, and he can appreciate the inevitability of his own termination.

He knows that if he’d instead posted a song or a poem or a comedy routine on YouTube, the bosses would have watched that, and might have understood what he was trying to say to them. If he’d created something that told the same story through a more traditional form than a game, he’d probably still be in a job.

But he still wishes they’d at least taken the time to play his game.

Steve Sailer draws an important distinction.

While American geopolitical thought tends to divide the world up morally into the Democratic (whoever is on our side) and the Evil (vice-versa), Russians tend to strategize geographically in terms of Land (Mother Russia) v. Sea (those deplorable Atlanticists).

This dichotomy leads to endless paradoxes. For example, Russian grand strategy has traditionally been obsessed with making the country less of a land power by obtaining non-Arctic ports such as St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Port Arthur, and Sochi, which is why Sevastopol in Crimea is such an emotional subject for them.

And yet the land-bound Russians never achieved their ultimate goal of taking Constantinople and thus securing a sea route to the Mediterranean. In contrast, the nautical British have held the strategically comparable Rock of Gibraltar at the opposite entrance to the Mediterranean for 310 years, and they appear to be in no hurry to give it back to Spain.

In the American mind, land powers are seen as militarist, brooding, and no fun: Sparta, Prussia, the Soviet Union, and now Putin’s Russia. In contrast, sea powers are the good guys, the cool kids: Athens, Holland, England, and America.

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