Michelle Malkin blows the whistle.

Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease—only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later.

Hospital officials, who came forward “in the interest of transparency,” initially cited workflow and information-sharing problems for the botch. “Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses,” the statement noted. “However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records interacted in this specific case.”

Mysteriously, after taking special care to get their facts straight before releasing the statement, the hospital backed off a day later. The very specific communications flaw in the medical records software—which apparently had prevented some staff from accessing Duncan’s travel history from Liberia—suddenly disappeared.

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Did lead poisoning cause the fall of the Roman Empire?  Probably not.

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Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven’t penciled out. Fusion power designs aren’t cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

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I am not making this up.

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Chickens coming home to roost….

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Memorandum that Orthodox Christians have been resisting Muslim aggression for 1400 years.

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The political double standard for speakers on campus is reaching a tipping point. Many more people than you think are fully aware that a convicted cop killer is speaking at Goddard College while a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist has now been told he can’t speak at Scripps.

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Startup Alphabet Energy is billing its new product, announced on Tuesday, as the world’s first industrial scale thermoelectric generator, which means it is powerful enough to be used at remote oil, gas and mining sites. Called the “E1,” the device uses the latest in material science and nanotechnology to capture waste heat from the exhaust stack of a diesel generator, and the material inside converts that heat into usable electricity.

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Robinson was fired from his head basketball coaching job in Oregon State in May with three more years remaining on his contract.

ESPN coordinating producer Chris Farrow praised Robinson as a “credible” voice to the cable giant’s college basketball coverage, citing his “experience at the Division I coaching level,” as well as his “insight and understanding of the game.”

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

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In a marriage based society, getting sexual access to the most attractive women requires men to work hard to signal provider status.  After the wedding, men feel the responsibility which comes with the position of head of the household.   Both of these are extremely powerful incentives for men to work hard and maximize their earnings.  However, we have moved from a marriage based/incentive structure for men to a quota/coercion based society.  As a result, we are seeing a shift in men’s attitudes about work.

Pretty soon only homosexuals will bother getting married.

Freeberg connects the dots:

Progressives have done the same thing with fatherhood that they’ve done with charity: Taken the spirit out of it, made it into a system of obligatory payments to some agent that may or may not have the trust of the person making the payments; but, they’re obligatory so what does it matter.

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The defense against militant Islam is not a new thing.

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Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, famously argued that since everyone favors equality of one sort or another, the key question is: Equality of what? A fierce argument in the wonkosphere over income inequality illustrates the need to be clear on this point.

It’s really very simple: It means that person X has more then person Y when the speaker doesn’t think that person X deserves to have more than person Y.

But as I was sitting there listening to them, I realized that there were certain things that no one would dare to say out loud in front of that group. Everyone in the room was white, so as a thought experiment, I imagined myself saying in a conversational manner, “You know, I really prefer the company of white people.” Fortunately, I never act on such foolish impulses. If I had, I almost certainly would have been asked to leave.

Yet a black person who an expressed a preference for his own race would not have been sanctioned. His statement wouldn’t even draw much attention. It’s racist for a white person to prefer white people, but not for blacks to feel the same about their own race. There’s no symmetry to the rules.

When the full nature of these rules is teased out and exposed to the light of day, the irrational absurdity of the whole business is plain for all to see. It must remain a Thing That Cannot Be Said, because saying it brings the reigning cultural paradigm to full consciousness, where everyone can realize just how stupid and harmful it is.

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Some of these are obvious. Some of them are painful.

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A Saturday morning debate between Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) and his Democratic challenger, Amanda Renteria, was hosted in Spanish, the Fresno Bee reports.

The debate, hosted by Univision Fresno at Fresno State in Bakersfield, Calif., the Fresno Bee wrote, was “conducted entirely in Spanish.”

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

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From the early 1970s, I have always been fascinated by Islam, and had visited Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Central Asia, and Western China amongst many other places to photograph mosques, tombs and other examples of Islamic architecture. In those days, I had the mistaken belief that Islam was a parallel faith to Christianity, and that adherents of both religions worshipped the same God. What I saw, heard and read during and after my visits to Pakistan dispelled this view and drove me headlong into the anti-Islam and counter jihad lobbies where I remain today.

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You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

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Remember that next time elections roll around, people. This isn’t rocket science.

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Unfortunately, for many of our remote ancestors, the absence of effective transportation, such as railroads and container ships, meant that they had no choice but to survive on a local diet and, in the process, put all their agricultural eggs into one geographical basket. This was always a recipe for disaster. The Roman poet Virgil in his Georgics described how, in bad years, weeds invaded the land, voles and mice spoiled the threshing floor, cranes and geese attacked the crops, goats ate the young vines, and moles, toads and ants each feasted on or undermined the farmer’s work. (Virgil could also have discussed fungus, insect pests and other problems.) Of course, whatever survived these pests could be damaged or wiped out by summer droughts and winter windstorms, as well as snow, hail or heavy rain. Even in good years, Virgil observed, a field might be accidentally set on fire.

No matter the location or agricultural system, local food for local people not only meant that most people struggled with famine and malnutrition – it also meant many were well aware of the undomesticated local plants they could use as either supplementary or emergency food sources. In the words of economic historian Peter Garnsey: ‘Peasants have always been systematic foragers on uncultivated land [including fallow fields], in woods, marshes and rivers.’ (1) Indeed, for the average European peasant, with the exception of poisonous or very bitter plants, ‘anything that grew went into the pot, even primrose and strawberry leaves’ (2). According to a recent survey, despite their absence from official statistics and the ‘routine underestimation’ of their importance, many ‘wild foods’ are still ‘actively managed’ by nearly one billion people whose annual income would probably not pay for one evening’s dining at NOMA or Coi.

…

The fact that food snobs now need to revert back to the famine foods of old should not be viewed as an indictment of our modern food production system, but rather as astounding proof that, today, that system feeds middle-class consumers better than most kings in history. Far from wearing sustainable adornments, all the emperors of SOLE food really offer us in the end is an unaffordable witch brew that caters to the palates of people with too much time and money on their hands.

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ONE of the most notable demographic trends of the last two decades has been the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. According to a large-scale national study conducted since the late 1970s, it has taken longer for each successive generation to finish school, establish financial independence, marry and have children. Today’s 25-year-olds, compared with their parents’ generation at the same age, are twice as likely to still be students, only half as likely to be married and 50 percent more likely to be receiving financial assistance from their parents.

A Voice of the Crust argues, as you would expect, that the prolonged immaturity that modern culture fosters (conveniently feeding as many people as possibly into dependency) is actually a good things. Any resemblance to the introductory sequences of The Hunger Games is purely coincidental, of course.

This is too pessimistic. Prolonged adolescence, in the right circumstances, is actually a good thing, for it fosters novelty-seeking and the acquisition of new skills.

For ‘novelty-seeking’, read ‘circuses’. For ‘new skills’, read ‘the constant search for something, anything, that will allow us to get a job’. The problem with the ‘new skills’ mirage is that success in life depends on some very old skills indeed, skills that today’s prolonged adolescents aren’t getting.

Studies reveal adolescence to be a period of heightened “plasticity” during which the brain is highly influenced by experience. As a result, adolescence is both a time of opportunity and vulnerability, a time when much is learned, especially about the social world, but when exposure to stressful events can be particularly devastating. As we leave adolescence, a series of neurochemical changes make the brain increasingly less plastic and less sensitive to environmental influences. Once we reach adulthood, existing brain circuits can be tweaked, but they can’t be overhauled.

So the Clerisy want to keep young people as plastic as possible for as long as possible, in the hopes of producing the New Soviet Man, or at least a sufficiently reasonable facsimile that will support, rather than challenge, the Crust.

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I was perplexed by this parenting style. After all, most parents seem to take the opposite approach, letting their children bathe in the glow of tablets, smartphones and computers, day and night.

Yet these tech C.E.O.’s seem to know something that the rest of us don’t.

…

I never asked Mr. Jobs what his children did instead of using the gadgets he built, so I reached out to Walter Isaacson, the author of “Steve Jobs,” who spent a lot of time at their home.

“Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things,” he said. “No one ever pulled out an iPad or computer. The kids did not seem addicted at all to devices.”

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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The concept of a skin-tight form-fitting spacesuit has long been common in science fiction; now people are actually building them.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, does what he does best.

A mere lifetime ago George Orwell could write of England having “a culture as individual as that of Spain.” Today’s England—and the rest of the British Isles is very little better—has a culture about as individual as that of an airport departure lounge.

Eric Raymond lays out some inconvenient truth.

Males have, on average, about a 150% advantage in upper-body strength over females. It takes an exceptionally strong woman to match the ability of even the average man to move a contact weapon with power and speed and precise control. At equivalent levels of training, with the weight of real weapons rather than boffers, that strength advantage will almost always tell.

…

Firearms changes all this, of course – some of the physiological differences that make them inferior with contact weapons are actual advantages at shooting (again I speak from experience, as I teach women to shoot). So much so that anyone who wants to suppress personal firearams is objectively anti-female and automatically oppressive of women.

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Yet another analysis of why suburbs suck by somebody who has never lived in a suburb.

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The “walrus crisis” is the Left’s latest effort to bully us into electing Democrats. Because…they’re going to do something about the walruses, I guess. Hard to say what. Chase them back onto the ice, maybe.

Koo koo kachoo.

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In which they are not unlike journalists and politicians.

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Anti-discrimination legislation and preferences for government programs are no doubt under preparation.

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Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you weightist bigot.

The tart green Granny Smith apples benefit the growth of friendly bacteria in the colon due to their high content of non-digestible compounds, including dietary fiber and polyphenols, and low content of available carbohydrates.

Reason enough, I suggest, to avoid them. My wife favors Gala apples, about which I have not heard any vile rumors of healthful effect.

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You will note that there were no cases of Ebola before the anti-smoking bigots took over the Clerisy. Coincidence? I think not.

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You’d expect people who use a keyboard throughout the day, for pretty much every working day of their lives, to have some faint understanding of what to call the big, flat buttons on the rectangular plastic hedgehog sitting in front of them. But no.

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Hotel WiFi sucks. If you do any traveling, you’re aware of this. Though, from what I’ve seen, the higher end the hotel, the worse the WiFi is and the more insane its prices are. Cheap discount hotels often offer free WiFi, and it’s generally pretty reliable. High end hotels? I’ve seen prices of $30 per day or higher, and it’s dreadfully low bandwidth. These days, when traveling, I often pick hotels based on reviews of the WiFi quality, because nothing can be more frustrating than a crappy internet connection when it’s needed. But, even worse than the WiFi in your room, if you’re using the WiFi for a business meeting or event — the hotels love to price gouge. And, it appears that’s exactly what the Marriott-operated Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville did. Except, the company went one step further. Thanks to things like tethering on phones and MiFi devices that allow you to set up your own WiFi hotspot using wireless broadband, Marriott realized that some smart business folks were getting around its (absolutely insane) $1,000 per device WiFi charges, and just using MiFi’s. So, Marriott then broke FCC regulations and started jamming the devices to force business folks to pay its extortionate fees.

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But you knew that.

Mark Steyn looks at the dweebs who guard our borders. He is not impressed.

The legendary Gord Sinclair, longtime news director of CJAD in Montreal, had a ski place near Jay in northern Vermont, and he invited his engineer on the show to come down and visit him. “What’s the purpose of your visit?” asked the agent at the small rural border post.

“Oh, just a relaxing weekend at my boss’ place,” said Gord’s colleague affably, and then chortled, “although I don’t know if it’ll be that relaxing. He’ll probably have me out in the yard chopping wood all day.”

So the immigration agent refused him entry on the grounds that he would be working illegally in the United States.

They all had a good laugh about that back on the air on Monday, but it took forever to straighten out. A single man with contacts in the United States: He says he’s coming for the weekend, but we all know any Montrealer would willingly trade a job at Quebec’s Number One anglo radio station for casual yard work in Vermont, right?

And yet the unemployed guy from an Ebola hot zone gets in.

Egg-on-a-Stick Cooker.

Yonanas fruit gelato maker.

Paparazzi-Thwarting Reflective Visor. And about time, too.

BeachSafe.

Wallet Ninja. I’m a sucker for these cute little gizmos.

King Jim Wearable Futon.

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Here are five indicators that despite the rosy picture being painted of the Obama economy, things still aren’t booming for the average American:

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Almost a quarter of Americans think taking their state out of the union is a swell idea, a Reuters/Ipsos poll told us not long ago. But why go yourself if you can kick the other guy out? So Fox News hired Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research to ask 1,049 registered voters if they thought booting a state or two to the curb was just good sense.

Of the 17 percent who thought that was a fine idea, there was an overwhelming favorite for who gets tossed from the moving vehicle: California.

Now there’s a program I could get behind.

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What today’s enthusiastic locavores ultimately fail to understand is that their “innovative” ideas are not only up against the Monsantos of this world, but also in a direct collision course with regional advantages for certain types of food production, economies of scale of various kinds in all lines of work and the fact that pretty much anything they can achieve in urban environments can be replicated at lower costs in the countryside. These basic realities defeated sophisticated local food production systems in the past and will do so again in the foreseeable future.

A lot of dreams disappear when you actually run the numbers.

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The standing consensus of genre historians is that general readers are likely to turn to fantasy during times of anxiety and dissatisfaction, preferring to look away (the “it’s my high school, but with zombies/werewolves/vampires” direction of urban fantasy) or behind (the “it’s another time and another place, but it looks/sounds/smells like medieval Europe” direction of high fantasy) rather than ahead to what they perceive as an unwelcoming, problematic future. Fantasy doesn’t offer an alternate view of tomorrow. It provides an escape from it.

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

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According to new research, the sense of smell is the canary in the coalmine of human health. A study published today in the open access journal PLOS ONE, shows that losing one’s sense of smell strongly predicts death within five years, suggesting that the nose knows when death is imminent, and that smell may serve as a bellwether for the overall state of the body, or as a marker for exposure to environmental toxins.

So don’t say that we didn’t warn you.

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We could go on and on refuting fact after fact, but the facts are unimportant. The leftist is creating a narrative. As a marketing guru will tell you, Facts tell, but stories sell. It’s a lesson the leftist has learned well.

Even more disturbing, in recent years, this method of “argumentation” has increasingly become the first tool pulled out of the toolbox. No longer does the leftist feel as compelled to make real arguments. All he needs to do now is shout “Racist!” or “War on Women!” and his job is done. He walks away feeling smugly satisfied of his own politically correct superiority, and the untrained observer is left addled at best, and possibly even swayed by the narrative.

So why they are so vicious?  Why do people who self-describe as “compassionate” direct such vitriolic hate and assaults at their ideological opponents? How they can justify painting you as such a monster?

Simple: To them, you are a monster. You must be.

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Civet coffee is among the most expensive coffees in the world—a cup can cost $80. Coffee beans that have passed through the digestive tract of this cat-sized creature native to southeast Asia make a remarkably smooth brew, producers and aficionados say. But the cost isn’t just financial. Although civet coffee, also known by its Indonesian name, kopi luwak, originated with beans collected from the feces of wild animals, increased demand has encouraged producers to keep the animals in cages and force them to subsist on a nutritionally deficient diet of coffee beans.

A noble endeavor.

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While the “seven-year rule” is nothing more than mythology, dog owners (and media outlets) continue to use it for its simplicity — it’s convenient, after all, to have a “one size fits all” method of understanding our pets’ equivalent stages of life. In reality, contextualizing a dog’s age is a bit more complex.

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

Read it. And watch the video.

For everyone who presumes that democratically elected governments are generally manned by people who would recoil at the mere thought of committing gross injustices against innocent people, watch this short video on civil forfeiture from the Institute for Justice to test the robustness of your presumption.

Steve Sailer has uncovered another plot in the War on Women.

It’s almost as if women prefer to work hard in return for tangible rewards, such as a paycheck or their loved ones’ well-being. If you want people to work hard just for the satisfaction of being Right on the Internet, well, you’re probably going to wind up with a lot of men.

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Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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OKCupid discovered earlier than most what data could tell us. As data has become more entwined with our humanity, and vice versa, it’s easy to forget what the point of it all is. Having, say, a central repository of friends’ birthdays so we don’t have to keep them in a separate calendar seems to be about little more than convenience. But Rudder and OKTrends showed that Big Data had more to offer. With every decision we make online we leave a trace about our intentions, conscious or otherwise. When all those traces are gathered together into one central space, they form a reservoir of knowledge about who we are.

Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘do the math’.

After graduating, he followed friends to Texas, where he worked on a financial graphing tool (more Excel) and thought about becoming a baker. But the people he worked with at the bakery weren’t his style. “I just couldn’t handle the hippies. I never smoked pot or anything and I can’t deal with the searcher mindset, especially in a work environment where I was like, ‘I gotta get this done,’ and they were like, ‘Dude, man, we get paid by the hour.’”

I’ve had the same experience.

“There isn’t really, like, a thread. I’ve definitely never planned any of this stuff out,” Rudder said, looking back. Rice, though, does see a throughline. “I think there’s a method for thinking that he can bring to bear on any given task. Whatever dissimilarities there are between the various kinds of things that he’s doing, they’re definitely united in that they allow for a systematic approach.”

Living proof of Scott Adams’ principle that the best way to live is to have strategies rather than goals.

Steve Sailer turns over a rock.

The Urban Institute has a new report out to promote HUD Secretary Julian Castro’s speech calling for debasing home mortgage credit standards. But its snazzy data tools just make it easier to see what a huge role Hispanics — especially Castro’s mentor, Clinton HUD Secretary and then Countrywide Financial director Henry Cisneros — played in the Housing Bubble and Bust.

As is traditional, the Federal government attempted to ‘fix’ something that wasn’t broke, and wound up burning all of us.