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“In some way, it seems trivial, but a reason why chins are so interesting is we’re the only ones who have them,” says Nathan Holton, who studies craniofacial features and mechanics at the University of Iowa. “It’s unique to us.”

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

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“The Middle Ages is a space where White Supremecy is legitimised. The maintenance of white privilege. The gamer community use ‘historical facts’ to legitimise this kind of literacy.” ~ Victoria Cooper

The author is a PhD candidate; most of what she is ‘knows’ ain’t so. The irony fairly drips.

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ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) recently got some media attention because they had beheaded two Moslem women accused of sorcery. For a Moslem the only thing unusual about this was how the women are killed. Public beheading is usually reserved for men. Sorcery, on the other hand, is quite common in the Islamic world, even though it is strongly condemned in the Koran. Many Islamic majority countries consider sorcery a capital (the guilty are executed) crime. But there’s a lot more to sorcery than that.

For example, back in 2013 Mehdi Taeb, a senior cleric in the Iranian government explained that the major reason so many nations went along with the increased economic sanctions against Iran was because Israel had been using magic to persuade the leaders of these nations to back more sanctions. Without the Israeli witchcraft, the sanctions would not exist. Taeb explained that the Israelis have used this magic before, as in 2009, against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was running for president. Many Iranians openly opposed Ahmadinejad, who won anyway. This, to Taeb, was proof that devout Moslems could defeat the Jewish magic.

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Adam Leitman Bailey, a Manhattan attorney who runs a real estate firm, says he looks to hire law school graduates who have grit, ambition and a resolve to succeed in the legal profession.

Considering some of the dreck they teach in the Ivy League these days, that’s probably a good idea.

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Top ObamaCare official Marilyn Tavenner, who until February was “administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that insures one in three Americans and has an annual budget of more than $800 billion,” will take over August 24 as the “top lobbyist for America’ health insurance industry,” taking over as “president and chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group whose members include Aetna, Anthem, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and many Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies,” the New York Times reports.

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I’m pretty sure that putting a purring cat on an injury is beneficial.

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Rub your hands together real fast, like Superman.

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

Oh, and then there’s this: HealthCare.gov Re-enrolled Fraudulent Obamacare Accounts—and Gave Some of Them Bigger Subsidies

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In America, it’s illegal to donate money to a candidate without first reporting it to the government. Even then, if you give more than is permissible you might end up in jail.  In this country, you can’t add trans fats to your foods or smoke cigarettes in your own bar. Here, Little Sisters of the Poor can’t tell the state they’d rather not buy condoms and bakers can’t tell a couple they’d rather not participate in their wedding.

But it’s completely legal to kill an unborn baby for convenience and then sell its parts for cash.

Quite frankly, I don’t see a lot of parenthood in their plan. Perhaps they ought to be sued for false advertising.

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St Swithin’s day if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain

St Swithin’s day if thou be fair, For forty days ’twill rain nae mare

Matt Gibson says what I’ve been thinking.

It’s official—words no longer have meaning.

As a proud member of society’s educated, progressive elite, I’m thrilled. Since Bill Clinton famously disputed the definition of the singular third-person present form of the verb “to be,” many of us have looked forward to a time when all words would be rendered completely meaningless. Thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts and his recent King v. Burwell ruling, that dream has finally been realized.

See, for too long we have allowed “words” and their “meanings” to obstruct us on our quest for social justice. The long, slow march to the Utopia of American Socialism will never end if we have to rely on “words.” There are simply too many of them and they all mean different things. That’s why this decision is so powerful—the “words” are still there, but they no longer “mean” anything beyond what we want them to mean.

Lileks.

That’s the part that brings you up short: all you can do is go on record, which in the end has the same impact as having your name on the passenger manifest of the Titanic. There is no point arguing with people whose worldview is based on their own dismay at having been dropped, against their will, in the society that’s seven-to-eleven years away from the imminent Utopia; the only problem they seem to have are things that aren’t problems, and even then their braying and snarking is just conspicuous signaling of Virtuous Positions. Every conversation is the equivalent of slamming down those 4+ Uno cards over and over and over.

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

For extra credit, look up how many Congressmen send their kids to public schools in D.C. That will tell you everything you need to know about government education.

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To this day, my biggest movie beef can be distilled to one inelegant, juvenile question:

“Why don’t they just kill That Guy?”

“That Guy.” His names are legion: Kasper Gutman. Darth Vader. The Sheriff of Nottingham. Mr. Potter (although Uncle Billy needed killing even more). Whoever the head guy is in all the Hunger Games flicks I’ve never seen because I’d be yelling, “You have BOWS AND ARROWS, ferchrissakes!” from the back of the theater.

Did you grow up when I did, when in every other movie, That Guy was the Evil Southern Sheriff Who Ran the Whole Town? There was no escape from his suffocating power and influence, his ominous chortle, and his giant belly (which took up a third of the drive-in screen). He decided who voted, who won, who went to jail, and who got off scot-free. And, of course, he was a Klansman or something like it.

If any genre was guaranteed to trigger my party-pooping protestations, it was this one. Think about it: Almost every character in these hicksploitation flicks is already heavily armed and surely knows of some holler where That Guy’s admittedly corpulent corpse could still be stashed undiscovered.

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In June 2015 ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) held a slave auction in eastern Syria. On sale where 42 Yazidi women, who were offered to ISIL men for between $500 and $2,000. Since the slaves were not Moslem they could not be married so their owners would use them for sex, housekeeping or whatever. ISIL was depending on Moslem scripture to justify this. Actually, ISIL is not alone as there is still a lot of slavery in the Islamic world. There is also a lot of hatred for non-Moslems especially those they consider pagans. ISIL considers the Yazidis pagans. It was with Yazidis that ISIL reintroduced slavery (of non-Moslems, especially “pagans” like Yazidis) into their new Islamic State. This may appall many in the West and to placate foreigners most Arab nations have outlawed slavery, despite the fact that it still exists and continues to exist with much local support.

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Colleges generally weigh teaching and research as more important, but “service” can play a significant role.

These are areas that universities should rightly take into consideration when weighing whether to make a person more centrally part of its core faculty. What is outside the realm of relevant criteria, however, are ideological litmus tests, which violate academic freedom and freedom of conscience. “Service” can’t be used to favor Democrats over Republicans (or vice versa); omnivores over vegetarians; pacifists over NRA members; or proponents of a gold standard over stalwarts of the Federal Reserve. The list of possible litmus tests is inexhaustible. But the list of actual litmus tests currently used by universities is pretty short.

There is now one in place at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). The test is for “diversity” and its close companion “inclusion,” both of which take up significant real estate in the university’s newly updated 2015-2016 promotion and tenure dossier guidelines.

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The Sinai-based Islamic State affiliate Wilayat al-Sina (Sinai Province) claimed responsibility for the firing of three Grad rockets at Israel on July 3. This attack, which caused no casualties, came closely after a large-scale assault by the group against Egyptian security installations in the Sheikh Zuweid area of northern Sinai.

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Europe wakes up.

As Europe struggles to deal with its immigration crisis, a majority of citizens in France, Germany, Italy, and Britain favor the cessation of the Schengen Agreement, which allows for free movement across borders of the 22 member-states of the European Union plus Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.

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On July 2, shortly after Friday prayers, thousands of devout Sunni Muslims marched to the Hotel Madimak. They broke through the weak police barricades surrounding the hotel, chanting “Allahu Akbar” (in Arabic, “God is the greatest”). When they reached the hotel, they set it alight, with policemen allegedly standing by and watching. The city’s Islamist mayor refused to send fire brigades to put out the fire. The assault took eight hours, without any intervention from the police, military or fire department. When what would later be internationally known as the “Sivas massacre” ended and the mob dispersed, 35 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals as well as a Dutch anthropologist, had died, along with two hotel employees. Two arsonists also died. Ironically, Aziz Nesin survived the attack.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, has the same diskile for the misuse of this term that i do.

The etymology of the word “privilege” is obvious if you think about it: “privi” – private; “lege” – legislation.  Private legislation.  (“Special privileges” is, therefore, a pleonasm.)  A person who is truly privileged, therefore, is a person who benefits from a special use of government force wielded in his or her favor.  This use of force is not generalizable beyond the individual (or small, closed group) for whom the privilege is created.  A genuine privilege is a benefit that government bestows on only an individual or on a small select group with the intention of benefiting that individual or members of that small group even if such benefits come at the greater expense of the general public.

 

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Most of the water de Blasio carries for his backers these days flows from city reservoirs. He has awarded the richest labor contracts in city history, and support for his 2017 reelection bid from the union recipients of his public largesse may ward off any primary challenge.

SEIU signed one of those contracts — valued, when combined with the nurses union, at $879 million. Hotel workers don’t have a city contract, but are pleased no doubt by the mayor’s enforcement war against hotel competitor Airbnb. And de Blasio, whose chief of staff used to work for Wilhelm at HTC, backed a bill this year that banned the residential conversion of hotels for two years, an unprecedented restriction on property rights championed by the union.

In another bow to a backer, de Blasio didn’t just deliver big bucks to the teachers union, he’s effectively surrendered the management of the schools to it, even letting it vet the parents chosen to sit on school committees. The mayor has a nonprofit that collects gobs of donations to support his policy initiatives, and the American Federation of Teachers is its biggest donor, giving $350,000 shortly before de Blasio announced the new teachers contract.

SEIU contributed its own, equally timely, $250,000 to what’s called the Campaign for One New York — though it, too, may require a name change, to the Campaign for One New Yorker.

Further evidence that every ‘reformer’ is actually for sale to the highest bidder.

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Well, let’s see — does she share her profits with her employees?

(Sorry, I knew I couldn’t write that with a straight face.)

Or maybe she’s waiting until she can get a tax break….

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Boko Haram violence has left over 600 dead in the last six weeks. Since Boko Haram began operating in 2002 they have caused over 13,000 deaths and they have little popular support even in the most conservative areas of the Moslem north. The army says it is still going after Boko Haram camps and bases. President Buhari unexpectedly ordered the army to stop using troops for manning highway checkpoints. This enabled Boko Haram gunmen to move more freely because the police did not replace all the abandoned army checkpoints. The early July checkpoint order was because the president felt that internal security is the job of the police and that the army was only helping out temporarily. Buhari is being criticized for the checkpoint order and for not acting to replace less capable military leaders and put more effective officers in charge. Buhari is a retired general and he knows how this works, but has said nothing about what he will do and when he will do it. This again raises questions about the ability of the government to coordinate army and police operations in the fight against Boko Haram. The new president now has to deal with accusations that the abandoned checkpoints played a role in the growing Boko Haram violence in the northeast.

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One of Guinness World Records’ more unusual awards was presented at the National Maritime Museum yesterday. After a 100-day trial, the timepiece known as Clock B – which had been sealed in a clear plastic box to prevent tampering – was officially declared, by Guinness, to be the world’s “most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air”.

It was an intriguing enough award. But what is really astonishing is that the clock was designed more than 250 years ago by a man who was derided at the time for “an incoherence and absurdity that was little short of the symptoms of insanity”, and whose plans for the clock lay ignored for two centuries.

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These days, it is quite dangerous for anyone with Far Eastern facial features to take a stroll on a Turkish street or to enjoy a plate of sushi. To angry Turks, every Far Easterner is a Chinese to attack.

In protesting China’s alleged ill treatment of Muslim Uighur Turks, angry Turkish Turks attacked a Chinese restaurant in Istanbul’s Tophane district. Cihan Yavuz, the owner of the (no longer) “Happy China” restaurant, almost in tears, told reporters: “We are Turkish. Our cook is an Uighur Turk … We do not even sell alcohol here … It seems I will close down the restaurant and leave.”

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The Irish keep grudges almost as long as Muslims.

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All together now:

FIRST

WORLD

PROBLEM

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The US Navy is planning to stop using crewed fighter jets in the coming years, according to Navy secretary Ray Mabus, turning instead to uncrewed aerial vehicles and drones to perform missions at sea, on land, and in the air. Speaking at the Sea-Air-Space 2015 conference on Wednesday, Mabus said that the currently used F-35 Lightning fighter “should be, and almost certainly will be, the last [crewed] strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.”

Well, that will certainly save a lot of money.

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The US Navy is developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, that can be launched from a cannon and “swarm” in a co-ordinated attack.

…

Wings unfold once the drones are in the air and then they can fly in formation.

…

US use of military drones has attracted criticism from human rights groups, who say that despite their highly targeted nature, innocent non-combatants are often killed in the process.

Innocent non-combatants are almost always killed in a war. Why this should come as a surprise to these people escapes me. But we live in a time where much less of that goes on, by orders of magnitude.

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Global Warming may be the only thing saving us.

Lileks.

When the grizzly at the Minnesota Zoo picked up a rock and smashed the glass that stood between him and having kid-kabob for lunch, maybe he was telling us something.

Reference: Minnesota Zoo bear slams rock into glass pane, shattering it ‘like a windshield’

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Claire Cain Miller is a representative promoter/consumer of the conventional wisdom (e.g., she pushed Ellen Pao). So, it’s worth noting how she begins her piece by assuming that human frailty and evil must be behind the disparate outcomes of algorithms. Progressives assume they are on the side of Science and Rationality, which have proven that all people are identical, so when robots discover differences, it must be due to Wreckers.

Progressives are at heart conspiracy theorists. They believe in data that agrees with their preconceived notions; when it doesn’t, it’s because of the machinations of Emmanuel Goldstein evil people, especially right-wing evil people (than which no people are, or can be, more evil).

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An outbreak of violence between Algeria’s Mozabite Berber and Chaamba Arab populations resulted in at least 22 deaths in the last two days, the deadliest such clash since tensions between the two groups emerged after the vandalization of a Berber shrine in late 2013.

A pointed reminder that the reason this region is Muslim is because it was invaded and conquered by Arabs.

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The Anti-Discrimination Center, a Manhattan-based non-profit, filed a lawsuit in federal court this week, claiming that New York City’s affordable housing program perpetuates “entrenched segregation.”

The lawsuit takes issue with a common policy in which affordable housing developers set aside 50 percent of the apartments in a new development for prospective tenants already living in the community district. This means access is “effectively prioritized for white residents” who already reside in neighborhoods with the best schools and amenities and “limited for African-American and Latino New Yorkers who do not,” according to the lawsuit.

One of the chief complaints against ‘gentrification’ is that it pushes out existing residents. This has sparked violent confrontations in, for example, San Francisco.

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As we know from countless historical novels, movies and costume dramas, the steps toward a duel are highly codified, starting with a real or imagined insult to a lady or one’s personal honor. After the insufferable affront comes the challenge, often accompanied by the “soufflet” or slap, the icy presentation of one’s card, and a demand for satisfaction, soon followed by the choice of weapons and the naming of seconds. Come the evening before the actual “rencontre,” at least one of the duelists, either racked with fearful misgivings or maintaining a languid sang-froid, will have settled his affairs so that he can spend what may be his last hours composing a letter to a beloved wife or mistress.

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This phrase is almost never used to describe one’s feelings. It is almost exclusively used to describe an opinion. “I feel like that would look better in blue.” “I feel like the Republicans hate poor people.” “I feel like we should have a media strategy instead of a product strategy.” It is used when there is the slightest hint of disagreement, or any opinion is expressed that the speaker is uncertain about. In either case, it is used as a verbal softening: a way to have an opinion without having an opinion. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just feel like you’re wrong.” You can question my idea, but you can’t question my feelings.

Tabletop Charcoal Grill.

Emergency Wrist Flotation Device.

Tactical War Hammer. Don’t know what I’d use it for, but I want one.

Survival Shoelaces.

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There must be some law that in order to get a government paycheck you have to be ignorant of fundamental economics.

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Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels instead of believers: and whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah—unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions. – Koran 3:28

Days ago, after the Islamic State [IS] entered the Syrian city of Hassakè, prompting a mass exodus of Christians, a familiar but often overlooked scene, took place: many otherwise “normal” Muslims joined ranks with IS, instantly turning on their longtime Christian neighbors.

This is the third category of Muslims that lurks between “moderates” and “radicals”: “sleepers,” Muslims who appear “moderate” but who are merely waiting for circumstances to turn to Islam’s advantage before they join the jihad; Muslims who are waiting for the rewards of jihad to become greater than the risks.

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How about — “Socialism: It’s Not Just For Old Rich White Guys Any More”.

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Make funny home video?

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As you might expect, your money goes farther in Red States.

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The Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Council is gambling $8.7 million on a project to alleviate pedestrian congestion that might exist in 5 to 10 years if we’re somehow able to build two additional light rail lines and they are operating at full capacity for 10 days a year.

That’s like buying flood insurance on the house you have yet to buy.

Moral: Don’t live in a Blue State. They take your money and they break your heart.

Richard Fernandez is on a roll today.

It appears that the world is having an outbreak of stupidity. In the imebecile olympics, America may well emerge best off by ironically being the least competent at being incompetent.  For example it is distracted right now by the problem of hauling down a 150 year old flag from a defeated government from several state capitols.  Someone said on Twitter that when he boarded an airplane in Paris everyone was preoccupied with the Greek exit, but when he alighted in Atlanta everyone was talking about Donald Trump. This lack of focus may allow the others to pull ahead in the race to the bottom.

…

Reverting to paper may actually improve security.  Consider why this might be so.

The great benefit of paper clearance forms (and one might add, paper ballots) is that it limits the ability of bureaucrats to play games with data.  The lower tech medium puts the kibosh on all the plans, mandates and improvements they are just dying to implement. All that gender stuff is hard to implement when you’re faced with a stack of paper reaching to the ceiling, besides making the information harder to leak, misuse or steal.  It disempowers the bureaucrats.

The fact that reverting to lower tech may actually improve security suggests that lack of money isn’t the problem, nor are the shortcomings of computer hardware. The biggest shortage plaguing the elites today is a deficit of intelligence. They are a menace to themselves and to the public; and are not even smart enough to know how dumb they are.

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And will it work on Wall Street?

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I am not making this up.

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All together now:

FIRST

WORLD

PROBLEM

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A recent arson attack did severe damage to a church in Israel on the Sea of Galilee, at the site where tradition says Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed five thousand hungry people. When it turned out that the perpetrators were zealous Muslims, the press dropped the story. Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.