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On October 15, an armed man wearing a skeleton mask robbed a bank inside a Cincinnati Kroger, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America responded by calling the robbery “a wake up call to Kroger’s leadership to prohibit the open carry of firearms in its stores.”

I’m curious whether they thought that a ban would have been more effective at preventing the robbery than, oh, say, one guy with a pistol on his belt.

Where do these people come from? Is it something in the water?

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When then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saw fit to ram the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (now affectionately known as ObamaCare) through Congress, the country engaged in a substantive debate over the duty and role of government.

Did I say substantive debate? What I really meant was childish rancor and outrageous demands.

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Just about the entire Democratic Party is lining up to dump on Obama at the moment, including former President Jimmy Carter, who is obviously relieved that he’s no longer everyone’s go-to model for the worst president in modern memory.

Steve Sailer connects the dots.

A commenter recently speculated that the future history of political parties in the U.S. would likely follow the Central American model where they are superstructures for dynastic families to wage war on each other. For example, in the 1990s I read a fellow’s dissertation on Nicaraguan politics in the 1920s, and most of the family names of leading politicians from way back then were the same as the ones I was reading in newspaper accounts of Nicaraguan politics at present.

For further evidence, see Nunn vs. Perdue: An Awkward Political Rivalry

The Nunn and Perdue families have long been intertwined in Houston County in central Georgia. They had farms and went to many of the same churches and schools and the country club. Each had a famous politician: former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and former Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue. Despite their being from different parties, there was never much of a schism among residents.

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Hamburg has become the scene of street fighting between Islamic supporters of ISIS and expatriate Kurds.

The Other McCain is on the case.

Anita Sarkeesian (@femfreq) and Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) are feminist critics of the videogame industry who seem to be trying to cash in on the fact that they are feminist critics of the videogame industry. This involves portraying themselves as victims of horrific harassment and criminal threats. Who is engaging in this harassment? Who is making these threats? We don’t know, because it seems to be coming from a lot of anonymous online accounts, and I strongly suspect that some of these threats are fake. But whether it’s fake or real, the harassment is being blamed on the gamers who, using the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate, have been blowing the whistle on some of the sleazy tactics by which feminists have been trying to turn gaming into a Political Correctness Zone and — oh, just by the way — cut themselves in on a slice of the multimillion-dollar videogame industry pie.

I find it amusing that Anita Sarkeesian had to cancel an appearance somewhere because of death threats. Welcome to the world that ‘conservatives’ live in all the time; be careful not to step in the diversity.

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I’d like to know what business ‘the poor’ have buying a $1500 sofa in the first place. They don’t sound all that poor to me.

Scott Adams connects the dots, which as a cartoonist he’s allowed to do.

I’ve described in this blog how my B.S. filter works. I look for two sources to be in agreement. For example, if the news reports match my common sense view, or my observations, or the first-hand accounts from witnesses, I tend to believe the news. But if the news conflicts with my common sense or my observations I raise an eyebrow and try to keep it that way.

The ISIS story doesn’t pass my B.S. filter because it violates common sense that such a competent fighting force could suddenly emerge and bitch-slap professionally trained (or even poorly trained) military forces with such consistency. I have worked in large organizations and I know that the logistics involved – the planning, training, and resupplying are huge challenges even for organized armies. Did ISIS really figure out all of that while their communications are presumably monitored by the enemy?

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 Small-business are facing a sharp increase in disabled-access lawsuits in the wake of a federal appeals-court ruling that allowed so-called disabled “testers” — private individuals who aren’t patrons but visit businesses to check for violations — to take the owners to court.

Sounds like a great business opportunity for Vinnie and Guido to take care of for a modest weekly fee. What better public service than to change ‘testers’ into actual disabled people?

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As for “theological reasons” for sex slavery “according to the Sharia,” these are legion—from male Muslim clerics, to female Muslim activists. Generally they need do no more than cite the clear words of Koran 4:3, which permit Muslims to copulate with female captives of war, or ma malakat aymanukum, “what”—not whom—”your right hands possess.”

Not news for anybody who’s been paying attention rather than putting their fingers in their ears and yelling LA LA LA LA LA very loudly.

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I’d be more concerned if Africans didn’t seem so determined to convince us that it is.

Freeberg is not pleased.

Of course, it’s not a new thing for a Democrat politician to share a car with notorious criminals and not do anything about it.

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Islam is inherently totalitarian, and hence Muslim-dominated states likewise. This ought to come as no surprise except to those who aren’t paying attention.

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In 2012, seven scientists and engineers were convicted of manslaughter for things they said and did not say in the days before a major earthquake struck the mountain town of L’Aquila, killing more than 300 people. (Editor’s note: For more, see the author’s riveting feature story detailing the whole episode.) The first-level appeal is now underway, and here is what we know.

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The blood cells of cancer patients, reprogrammed by doctors to attack their leukemia and re-infused back into the patients’ veins, led to complete remissions in 27 of 30 people. That’s especially exciting because those patients had failed all conventional treatments.

This looks very promising.

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Nigeria is much closer to the West Africa outbreak than the US is, yet even after Ebola entered the country in the most terrifying way possible — via a visibly sick passenger on a commercial flight — officials successfully shut down the disease and prevented widespread transmission.

Usually Business Insider is Just Another Oxymoronically Named Lefty Rag, but they may actually be growing up into real journalists.

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The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has been producing detailed topographic maps for more than 125 years. Today they are nearly all digitized and free to download through the USGS Map Store, an incredible treasure trove for both map junkies and casual hikers alike.

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This sort of thing (and this sort of people) is why I don’t practice law.

It is also, I think, why politics is full of lawyers — the only career field where you can make a lot of money by being absurd.

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Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho has talked of her discomfort that the internet is made by humans who have a penis.

The former Martha Lane Fox, CBE, told the Radio Academy’s Radio Festival in Salford that she felt uneasy “that something that is now fundamental, like the water, for everybody’s daily life has been entirely produced by men.”

Alas, she’s right. Unlike Cuban cigars, which according to legend are rolled on the thighs of (female) virgins, internet packets arrive through a brutal, phallus-dominated patriarchy. It’s enough to make anyone queasy.

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More innovation from Amazon. No wonder ‘progressives’ hate it.

George Will finds that his bullshit alarm has gone off.

Wretched excess by government can be beneficial if it startles people into wholesome disgust and deepened distrust and it prompts judicial rebukes that enlarge freedom. So let’s hope the Federal Communications Commission embraces the formal petition inciting it to deny licenses to broadcasters who use the word “Redskins” when reporting on the Washington Redskins.

Using the FCC to break another private institution to the state’s saddle for the satisfaction of a clamorous faction illustrates how the government’s many tentacles give it many means of intimidating people who offend it. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, empowered to ban trademarks that “may” disparage persons, has already limited trademark protection of the Redskins’ name.

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Hey, it’s all about priorities.

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Most existing fusion devices slam together atoms using a tokamak, a magnetic device that contains the superheated plasma required for fusion to occur. Invented in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, it’s what most nuclear fusion devices use. The problem is, the energy required to sustain the reaction is almost as much as what’s created by the reaction.

Lockheed says they’ve figured out how to solve that problem, using their CFR, a jet-engine-sized device. They’ve changed the process for holding the plasma in a way they say has 10 times the output of a tokamak.They also say there’s no risk of a meltdown, and that radioactive waste will be considerably lessened.

More here.

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Aside from the obvious fact that government employees were obtained from the lowest bidder.

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Only Hillary Clinton can take a $225,000 speaking fee from a public university and then, in the speech, lament how high the cost of higher education is.

Your tax dollars at work.

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It really is the sort of news that made me want to weep into my skinny cappuccino and then pour it down the sink. After years of being told, and telling others, that saturated fat clogs your arteries and makes you fat, there is now mounting evidence that eating some saturated fats may actually help you lose weight and be good for the heart.

Everything bad is good for you. Michelle, put a sock in it.

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The highly respected Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota just advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles,” including exhaled breath.

Check it out.

Wiktenauer is an ongoing collaboration among researchers and practitioners from across the Western martial arts community, seeking to collect all of the primary and secondary source literature that makes up the text of historical European martial arts research and to organize and present it in a scholarly but accessible format. The Wiktenauer project started in 2009, later receiving sponsorship from the Historical European Martial Arts Alliance, and is named for Johannes Liechtenauer, grand master of the oldest known longsword fencing style; his tradition was also the best-documented of the early Modern era, the subject of many dozens of manuscripts and books over a period of more than three centuries.

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In 2011, the Chicago Tribune exposed a pair of Illinois teacher union lobbyists, Stephen Preckwinkle and David Piccioli, who substitute taught for one day and stood to collect nearly $1 million in state teacher retirement pensions from a severely underfunded system. The five Illinois pension systems have a $100 billion liability and the teachers fund may run out of money as early as 2029. Newspaper editorials, elected officials, the governor and citizens cried foul. Legislation was quickly passed to stop the abuse.

…

In order to understand this massive pension “reform misunderstanding,” we questioned the Public Relations Spokesman for the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) David Urbanek, who explained:

“Mr. Preckwinkle and Mr. Piccioli received a TRS pension following the enactment of House Bill 3813 because House Bill 3813, now Public Act 97-0651, did not stop them from collecting a TRS pension.” read entire email response

Read it.

Sure … with calls for sympathy and understanding.

Islam has no problem with slavery; indeed, substantial sections of shari’a deal with slaves and how to treat them,

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What does it tell you when the leader of the world’s best known rock band has a better grasp of modern tax policy than those responsible for making it?

The front man for the rock band U2 got some people’s Irish up after he defended the low taxes of his homeland. “Tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity we’ve known,” said the singer about the Emerald Isle. He’s absolutely right.

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The Daily Mail added a little further down in its story: “Some members of the South High School community said that the violent incident was the culmination of ongoing tensions between the eight per cent of Muslim students of Somali de[s]cent and the 20 per cent who are African Americans.” See also the local CBS news report (quoting a South High student: “I know it’s a pride thing between Muslims and black people. They want their pride back for something. I don’t know.”) and the local NBC news report (“students claim this brawl was more than just a food fight, telling KARE 11 racial tensions have been boiling between Somali and African-American students for some time.” On the other hand, the CBS story also quoted another student: “A big riot. It was all types of races.”)

I guess it’s not enough to be African-American, you have to be the right kind of African-American.

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They couldn’t get ‘diversity’ in there because it would make the title too long, but there is ‘diversity’ in it nevertheless.

It’s  like Homecoming for trendy memes.

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How reliable is academic research? Not very, it seems, after noting that the Journal of Vibration and Control, a reputable academic publication, had to retract 60 different papers over the summer.

…

Just how bad is the problem? It’s not just that few academics voted for Mitt Romney. At a recent meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Haidt asked the audience by show of hands to identify themselves by their political orientation.

He estimates the resulting ratio of liberals to conservatives at 267:1. If anything, it was probably worse, since many conservatives don’t want to be “outed” to their colleagues.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Pepsi is embracing stevia-leaf extract with a new soda called True, but you won’t find it at your local grocery store. Curious beverage fans will have to buy it on Amazon.

Speaking as an Amazon shareholder, I welcome our new artificially-sweetened masters….

Seriously, I hope that this product is different from all the other reduced-sugar products I’ve tried over the years. Pepsi is one of my few culinary indulgences, and in order to keep from looking like a beach ball I have to restrict the amount I drink in a day quite rigidly. It doesn’t help that most ‘diet’ alternatives taste like something that they ought to be paying you to drink, not the other way ’round.

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Treasures found on an ancient Mediterranean shipwreck suggest that the massive vessel met a stormy, violent death, and scattered remains over a much larger area than previously thought.

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Of course … that’s where the victims are….

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The NBC news crew that returned from Africa after one of its photographers contracted Ebola is reportedly under a mandatory quarantine now because Dr. Nancy Snyderman may have violated the self-imposed quarantine.

On Thursday in Princeton, New Jersey, Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical correspondent, was reportedly spotted by many people “sitting in her car outside of the Peasant Grill in Hopewell Boro”:

Perhaps we could start a new holding camp, á la Gitmo, for journalists — in Monrovia….

SlideBelts.

Kernel-Filtering Popcorn Bowl.

VSSL Outdoor Utility Tools.

DUXTOP Portable Induction Cooktop.

Magnetic Shoe Closures.

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Including maintenance costs, the Air Force’s total tab was $596 million before officials decided to park the planes, and ultimately sell them for scrap at six cents a pound.

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As is invariably the case these days in the wake of the terrorist violence, brutality, and atrocities carried out explicitly in the name of Islam, a host of dissimulating Islamist activists, other Muslims in a state of psychological denial, and apologetic Western pundits insist that the actions of the terrorist group calling itself al-Dawla al-Islamiyya (IS: the Islamic State) have little or nothing to do with Islam.

Not long ago, many such commentators also argued that the horrendous actions committed by the Nigerian jihadist group Jama’at Ahl al-Sunna li al-Da’wa wa al-Jihad, better known as Boko Haram (Western Influence is Sinful), had nothing to do with its members’ interpretations of Islam.

In all such cases, however, the perpetrators of these violent actions not only proudly insist that their actions are inspired by the Qur’an and the exemplary words and deeds of Muhammad himself (as recorded in the canonical hadith collections), but explicitly cite relevant Qur’anic passages and the reported actions of their prophet to justify those actions. Therefore, to argue that jihadist terrorists are not directly inspired and primarily motivated by their interpretations of Islamic doctrines and by clear precedents from early Islamic history, one must stubbornly ignore what the actual protagonists keep telling the entire world.

“Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ ears?”

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In an email announcing the contest, MoveOn urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” In its call for submissions, MoveOn declared: “The scale of the problem is clear. The corporate wing of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts keeps insisting that money is speech and corporations are people. Shadowy, unregulated front groups are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into elections.”

American Commitment has answered the call with a video starring Tom Steyer, perhaps the biggest left-wing gazillionaire funding Democratic campaigns in 2014. He is certainly the biggest hypocrite funding Democratic campaigns this year. American Commitment’s video contest submission is aptly titled “America’s biggest hypocrite.”

Petard, prepare to hoist. (Oh, and go vote for the video. You’ll be glad you did.)

Freeberg lays out some inconvenient truth.

My personal experience supports the thesis. Which made it a bit awkward when I learned about this, by way of a Facebook FOAF I don’t know myself, who put up a post making use of the militant-feminist cadence of “Oh how much I hate this thing, come gather around and help me hate it.” Does that mean the FOAF is a mil-fem? Probably not; knowing what I do know about our mutual friend, I count that as unlikely, albeit possible. But regardless, I don’t think my participation was any more welcome in that circle, than it is in a typical mil-fem round-table.

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First, of course, you have to pick the right exam.

Across a variety of experiments, psychologists have found that, in some circumstances, wrong answers on a pretest aren’t merely useless guesses. Rather, the attempts themselves change how we think about and store the information contained in the questions. On some kinds of tests, particularly multiple-choice, we benefit from answering incorrectly by, in effect, priming our brain for what’s coming later.

That is: The (bombed) pretest drives home the information in a way that studying as usual does not. We fail, but we fail forward.

…

Often our study “aids” simply create fluency illusions — including, yes, highlighting — as do chapter outlines provided by a teacher or a textbook. Such fluency misperceptions are automatic; they form subconsciously and render us extremely poor judges of what we need to restudy or practice again. “We know that if you study something twice, in spaced sessions, it’s harder to process the material the second time, and so people think it’s counterproductive,” Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College, said. “But the opposite is true: You learn more, even though it feels harder. Fluency is playing a trick on judgment.”

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The process has been certified as carbon negative by Trucost and NSF Sustainability, and actually costs less to produce than oil-based plastics, says Mr Campbell.

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On Wednesday, the Des Moines Register reported that the state’s insurance commissioner has approved Des Moines-based Wellmark to hike its rates between 11.9% and 14.5%.

The premium spike will affect 19,000 Iowans.

“That increase is for individual policyholders who have Affordable Care Act-compliant plans,” reports the Register.

CoOportunity, one of the main companies offering health insurance on the Obamacare exchange, will increase its rates 19%.

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Phone in hand, you next need to load it with a credit card, either by taking a picture of your credit card or by approving an existing card that’s already tied to your Apple Store account. Apple is the first vendor to support this loading system—possibly because it may be the first to get permission from the credit card brands to do so.

But this is where things get interesting. When the iPhone scans the number off your card, it doesn’t store it locally, or even on Apple servers. According to Apple sources, Apple mediates a connection to the payment network or issuing bank associated with your card, which then provides a Device Account Number.

If I understand it correctly, and I may not, this is similar to the Kerberos computer network security protocol. In operation, it is much like the way personal information, like passwords and social security numbers, are handled in secure computer systems: what is stored is not the actual information, but a hash of that information; for authentication, a hash of the submitted information is compared to the hash of the stored information — no actual information is either stored or transmitted.

Using per-device tokens means that only the bank that issued the card (or its payment network) ever has your card: You don’t have to trust Apple with it.

I would not hesitate to use such a system.

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Richman, who built his $10 billion company developing rental housing, lives in the Conyers Farm area, where the minimum lot size is 10 acres. Twenty-five donors paid $32,400 each to get their photo taken with the president. Others paid $10,000 for dinner.

It’s like he’s not even listening to himself, but just reading from a teleprompter loaded by the cast of Saturday Night Live.

“If Republicans win, we know who they’ll be fighting for,” Obama said. “Once again, the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class.”

Those two sentences are correct, but not in the way he arranged them.

Obama arrived from New York City — where he had attended a fundraiser with hedge-fund billionaires George Soros and Paul Tudor Jones — in a convoy of four helicopters that landed at the Greenwich Polo Club.

Sometimes it is good to be the king, even King Putt.

Steven Pinker turns over a rock.

Together with wearing earth tones, driving Priuses, and having a foreign policy, the most conspicuous trait of the American professoriate may be the prose style called academese.

…

No honest professor can deny that there’s something to the stereotype. When the late Denis Dutton (founder of the Chronicle-owned Arts & Letters Daily) ran an annual Bad Writing Contest to celebrate “the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles,” he had no shortage of nominations, and he awarded the prizes to some of academe’s leading lights.