Read it.

Paging Rand Paul … Paging Rand Paul….

Read it.

Can an Obama administration subsidy be far behind?

Read it.

What do they know that you don’t?

Read it.

US brass-hats have decided when the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter” will finally be ready to take on the ancient A10 “Warthog”: in another three years, give or take a little.

My prediction is that the game will be rigged to make sure that the F-35 wins. Nobody in the hierarchy can afford to have its pet pig appear without enough lipstick to disguise its innately porcine nature, even if it has to be added with Photoshop.

Jim Goad takes a shot at Most Politically Incorrect.

Like a hypersensitive black gay snail, Vester Flanagan II left behind a slimy trail of perceived grievances, slights, and microaggressions that culminated in last Wednesday morning’s live televised murder of a white female reporter and her white cameraman.

The apparent creature of a social-media age where not only is everyone hypersensitive, they’re also a star, Flanagan filmed the killings himself, posted the video online, bragged about it on Facebook and Twitter, and faxed a 23-page manifesto to ABC News before ending his life with a bullet to the head during a high-speed police chase.

…

But here we have a black man using anti-white slurs and killing two white people LIVE AND ON CAMERA because he says he wants to start a race war. Surely this is equivalent to the Charleston shooting and the press would be all over the racial angle like ants on candy, right?

You’re a naïve little lamb if you think so, dollface. This story is less than half a week old and already it’s mostly been “disappeared” from the top of the news cycle, whereas the Charleston shooting had dominated the news for much of the summer. And whereas the Charleston mass murder led to calls for snuffing out all symbolic remnants of the Confederacy because shooter Dylann Roof had posed with a little Rebel flag in a few sullen selfies, the fact that Flanagan’s apartment allegedly contained a rainbow flag has not led to similar demands to snuff out all expressions of gay pride. Nor has it led to mass rallies about saving “white bodies” from the predations of race-obsessed lunatic blacks.

http://www.savagechickens.com/2015/08/counting-the-steps.html

Read it.

Unlike many economists, who would confine “revenues” to “user fees,” business people don’t care where the revenues come from. They are just as happy to count tax dollars and loans as revenues. On the other side of the equation, where economists count all costs, both internal and external, business people are perfectly happy to shift costs on to others and then only count the costs that they themselves (or their companies or government agencies) have to pay.

Thus, someone who promises to “run a government like a business” isn’t promising to end deficit spending or stop ridiculous projects whose costs are far greater than their benefits. They aren’t even promising to cut costs by doing such things as renegotiating union contracts or streamlining environmental regulations. After all, businesses see unions and regulations as just a “cost of doing business,” and so long as the costs apply to everyone, they actually benefit big businesses that can more easily absorb them than small ones and thus reduce competition.

Let us just keep that in mind.

Ross Douthat has an interesting take.

THE Donald Trump phenomenon is a great gift to pundits because it can be analyzed and criticized in so many different ways. But two shorthands seem particularly useful. First, Trump is essentially using the Republican primary to run a third-party campaign, not a right-wing insurgency. Second, Trump’s appeal is oddly like that of Franklin Roosevelt, in the sense that he’s a rich, well-connected figure — a rich New Yorker, at that — who’s campaigning as a traitor to his class.

Read it.

For decades the medical profession has largely treated addiction as as a chronic brain disease. The US government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse characterises addicts as compulsive drug seekers and users who continue taking drugs despite harmful and unwanted consequences. “It is considered a brain disease,” the institute says, “because drugs change the brain; they change its structure and how it works.”

Dr Marc Lewis, a developmental neuroscientist – perhaps most famous for detailing his own years of drug addiction and abuse in Memoirs of an Addicted Brain – strongly refutes this conventional disease model of addiction. His new book, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is not a Disease, argues that considering addiction as a disease is not only wrong, but also harmful. Rather, he argues, addiction is a behavioural problem that requires willpower and motivation to change.

Odd to see this in the Guardian, Voice of the Crust and bastion of ‘progressive’ thought.

Read it.

So all of you people who shop a Whole Foods STFU about it.

Read it.

For some reason I don’t associate ‘Middle East’ and ‘beer’.

Read it.

Just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years to your life, according to health experts.

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

Personally, I don’t see that the way things are trending in the world makes it worth all that much effort to extend my stay.

Read it.

Can’t say that  I mind.

Read it.

Most explanations for the rise of hookup culture focus on, well, culture—the steady ascent of social liberalism since the 1960s, especially among the upper classes, and the decline of traditional norms surrounding courtship and dating.

Mixed in with this cultural story, however, is a more straightforward demographic one. According to the writer Jon Birger, one reason a certain slice of today’s young people—well-off college graduates in urban centers—is having so much casual sex is that there is shortage of men among their ranks. The female-heavy gender ratio among the yuppie elite makes it easier for men to find sexual partners, and thus less likely to take the time and effort to court them.

No need to respect the cow when milk is free; no need to even think about cows when milk is free.

In a world in which children are an expensive luxury or an unfortunate byproduct, the formation of a family is of no importance. Hence marriage is of no importance, despite the noise the issue generates; and women are on their own, the end for which ‘feminists’ have been striving for half a century. ‘Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.’

Read it.

Forget Whole Foods. The Germans have created a store with eco-conscious customers in mind. Well, at least in Berlin—the newest home of Original Unverpackt (Original Unpackaged). You won’t find any paper or plastic bags here—or any kind of bags for that matter. This new grocery store creates zero waste by allowing customers to purchase exactly how much they need, reducing waste in their homes.

Original Unverpackt doesn’t carry any products under popular brand names; instead, they carry mostly organic products. Original Unverpackt stocks their shelves using a bulk bin system with an assortment of fruits, vegetables and grains. Even shampoo and milk are dispensed from refillable containers according to Salon.

Salon? Better get a second source to confirm.

Read it.

“This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible,” said study co-author Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. “From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension.”

Read it.

Some of the anti-glutenists argue that we haven’t eaten wheat for long enough to adapt to it as a species. Agriculture began just 12,000 years ago, not enough time for our bodies, which evolved over millions of years, primarily in Africa, to adjust. According to this theory, we’re intrinsically hunter-gatherers, not bread-eaters. If exposed to gluten, some of us will develop celiac disease or gluten intolerance, or we’ll simply feel lousy.

Most of these assertions, however, are contradicted by significant evidence, and distract us from our actual problem: an immune system that has become overly sensitive.

Read it.

Two programmes taught at Washington State University have set out clear restrictions upon the language students can use, banning terms such as “The Man”, “Coloured People” and “Illegals/ Illegal Aliens”.

The terms have been forbidden by certain professors on the basis that they are “oppressive and hateful”, according to one of the syllabuses reported by Campus Reform.

Yet another reason to avoid the Left Coast.

Breikss also bans the use of the words “male and female” in the course.

The Thought Police are alive and well and in control of certain parts of the educational system.

Read it.

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

Richard Fernandez looks under the media radar.

The news spotlight is on the US electoral drama.  Everything outside the circle of media brilliance is momentarily in shadow, most especially Obama administration’s governance record.  They persist in a singular state of invisibility.  Scandals, domestic crises, foreign conflicts — none have been resolved.  It is just that the newspapers don’t talk about them any more.   Matthew Continetti of the National Review thinks that the normally raucous anti-war groups, even Obama himself, have fallen deliberately silent.

…

The War — if one can call it that — exists without being acknowledged.   China, South America, Russia, the border, inhabit the same limbo.   These, like massive shadowy cliffs,  have faded into an out of focus background under shallow depth of field coverage of the media lens.  All we see sharply are the tiny, minutely defined candidates under a harsh glare. Occasionally actual events intrude in the form of attention-grabbing tragedies that have inexplicably multiplied.

We shudder at the sight of drowned Syrian children washing up on Libyan beaches; shake our heads at asphyxiated truckloads abandoned by people smugglers who took the money and ran; wonder at what the meltdown in China might portend.  But we shudder without much understanding; these tragedies seem to have a kind of meteoric quality, arriving from parts unknown and vanishing to the same distant parts of the media solar system.

The more widely read know these portents are merely the tip of the iceberg, visible simply because they ride above the water.  There’s a vague realization that what really matters is under the surface; inside the imploding countries of the Middle East, unfolding in Eastern Europe, or hatching in Beijing.  We know the real reservoirs of broken humanity pools are in regional sumps, too poor and exhausted to run any further.  The size of Syrian refugee camps in Jordan defy belief; literally stretching out of sight.  But that’s all it is, a picture on a page.

Read it.

Yet another attempt to use technology to perform an end run around evolution.

Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

It’s not uncommon down through history to have a farm population scratching out a marginal living using traditional means off land that a few bright guys then figure out can more profitably be repurposed for other uses. The peasants are driven to emigrate by insiders cashing in on the value of the land. The most famous example were the Enclosures in Britain, but NAFTA’s destruction of small corn farmers in Mexico is a more recent instance.

Read it.

Yet another reason to take your shotgun with you when you go outside.

Read it.

If Google sees that you’re searching for specific programming terms, they’ll ask you to apply for a job. It’s wild. Here’s how it works.

Actually, it makes a great deal of sense. I wonder whether the NSA does the same thing? (Oh, right, government agency … no sign of intelligent life — so, nah.)

Steve Sailer points out some inconvenient truth.

A general assumption of the moderate conventional wisdom over the last half century is that average black performance is dragged down by specific impediments, such as poverty, crime, culture of poverty, parental taciturnity, lead paint, or whatever. One would therefore expect blacks without those impediments to score equal with whites.

But a close inspection of the social science data suggests that the world doesn’t really look like that. For example, above is the 2013 federal National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for 12th graders in Reading. Blacks who are the children of college graduates average 274, which is the same as whites who are the children of high school dropouts.

‘Progressives’ are all about science, except when it disagrees with their preconceived notions, in which case RACIST!

Read it.

Well, think about it.

Read it.

The ideal airplane doesn’t need a runway. Since Kitty Hawk, the standard design of a fixed-wing airplane assumes the plane will build momentum and lift by accelerating along an open stretch of land (or sometimes sea), and will need to land by decelerating along a similar smooth path. To free airplanes from runways, they need a different way to get airborne, and in this concept vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) plane from XTI aircraft, promises just that: a business-sized five passenger plane, with tilt-rotor engines that let it fly like a plane but takeoff and land like a helicopter.

The video is mostly fluff. Feel free to ignore it.

The Denver-based company proposed TriFan 600 plane will seat five passengers, as well as a pilot. They envision an airplane that can travel up to 1,200 miles, with a maximum speed of 400 mph and a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet. Three ducted fans will lift the airplane into the sky in about 90 seconds, and then two of those fans will tile from parallel to perpendicular, propelling the plane forward in the air, no runway required. A sliding door will cover the third fan, so that it doesn’t interfere with the aerodynamics of the plane in flight.

Read it.

You can lead a kid to Political Correctness, but you can’t make him drink.

The course is part of the portfolio for the new vice president of diversity programs, Jabar Shumate, a former press secretary to President David Boren (an ex-U.S. senator) who will be making between $200,000 and $250,000 a year, the Associated Press reported.

The Crust take care of their own.

AllTopRated.

Wallet Ninja Pro 26-in-1 Multitool.

Microfiber Waterproof Pet Car Hammock.

BullseyeBore. I could use one of these; I can’t drill a hole straight to save my life.

Furoshiki Shoes.

High Tech Ice Cream Scoop.

Read it.

According to a recent article in The Daily Mail, the Islamic State has promised that it will soon debut a new method of executing its prisoners….

Techniques used by ISIS to torture or kill prisoners are always modeled on those used by Mohammed and his companions, as described in the Koran or sahih (authentic) hadith.

Think of Mohammed as Tony Soprano with camels.

Read it.

Richard Fernandez turns over a rock.

They come from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Kosovo. Forth they stream from Bangladesh and the Muslim parts of Burma. They sail past Indonesia and Malaysia toward the hell-hole of Australia. A huge number are making their way overland through Macedonia and Serbia and are even now burrowing under the frontier wire of Hungary. On they come in boats from Libya, South Sudan, Eritrea and Nigeria, pausing only to catch their breath in Greece, Italy and France before going onward to the Promised Land. Not Israel in this case but Great Britain and Germany.

They come from everywhere, even in Europe masses of people have fled the fighting in Ukraine, half a million from Donetsk alone.  They are swarming everywhere.  The director of Human Rights Watch asks, ‘why does nobody care’ not just about the masses of refugees themselves the carnage they are fleeing from?  After all, the West cared enough once so what changed in the interim?

…

What changed in the interval was Western confidence in the normativeness of its values and its ability to intervene in global events. The political delegitimization of Operation Iraqi Freedom added to the disappointment in the Arab Spring has pretty much soured the West on anything except watching the tragedy passively unfold. The “skepticism about America’s right, power and duty to lead the world”, the logical consequence of ‘no more Vietnams’, ‘no more Iraqs’  is no mas, period.

This has set the stage for a self-sustaining chain reaction in failing states.  For example, thousands of Pakistani Christians are stuck in Thailand, persecuted at home and unwelcome abroad; even in the West, perhaps especially in the West.  Refugees often carry with them the last, best hope of their failing countries. They are too frequently the repository of the its greatest human capital, the seed corn of lands plagued by the new locusts.

Read it.

On August 21, 2015, what could have become yet another Jihadist massacre of Europeans was prevented at the very last second. Not by the country’s authorities, but by random travelers. An armed militant Muslim on a train to France was overpowered by some of the male passengers, among them several unarmed American soldiers, just before he could start shooting people. Ayoub El Khazzani, a Moroccan national, has been charged with attempted murder of a terrorist nature. The police believe had carefully planned a terror attack.

Mr. Khazzani was known to the security services prior to this incident. Yet they still did not manage to stop him. He was able to move freely in the EU between different Western European countries. He joins the rising number of Muslim terrorists who were able, or in his case nearly able, to carry out terror attacks, despite already being on terrorist watch lists. Why? Because there are just too many Jihadists out there. The authorities cannot stop them all. French authorities are concerned about a truly spectacular Islamic terror attack, perhaps on the scale of the September 11 attacks in the USA in 2001.

On this day in 1928 damned near every country in the world signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, promising to eat Raisin Bran for breakfast ‘outlawing war as an instrument of national policy.

And, of course, since that time we haven’t had any wars. Way to go, world.

Read it.

Sort of a self-correcting problem.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

I’m on it.

‘Fat is bad for you!’ ‘No, fat is good for you!’ Makes you wonder about the ‘scientific consensus’ alleged to be behind ‘climate change’.

Read it.

‘I’m a victim, you’re a victim, he’s a victim, she’s a victim, wouldn’t you like to be a victim too?’

Read it.

Guess the Saudis aren’t bend-over-and-spread-em folks like most ‘Western” governments.

Read it.

The first three-dimensional computer model of how a solid tumour grows, mutates and evolves has been developed by scientists who say it will help them to understand how lethal cancers develop resistance to drugs and chemotherapy.

A mathematical construction of the complex evolution of a cancerous tumour has already pointed to the most dangerous tumour cells being those where the DNA mutates in such a way that the cells break away to move around the body, the scientists said.

Read it.

Sort of a self-correcting problem.

Let this be a lesson to us all.

Read it.

Researchers at the US Mayo Clinic demonstrated a method to turn cancerous breast and bladder cells benign, according to their study published in the Nature Cell Biology.

The study, which although in its early stages has been hailed by cancer charities as “crucial”, works by focusing on the PLEKHA7 protein that clumps healthy cells together.

Led by Panos Anastasiadis, researchers found that when the usual sequence of cell regulation is disrupted, cancerous cells quickly occur and multiply out of control, but by adding mircoRNAs molecules scientists were able to prevent cancer.

Read it.

Let them ask the corpses at Charlie Hebdo how ‘gun control’ worked out for them.

Indeed, let them ask the corpse of Fusilier Lee Rigby whether ‘gun control’ makes you safe.

Actually, come to think of it, gun control for black people (like the shooter in this case) would probably be a good idea. They seem to be doing most of the gun crime, judging by law enforcement crime stats. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Read it.

After the trial, the couple, who own the post office in Llangernyw, near Abergele, both said they would do the same thing again. Mr Baines, 44 said: “I wouldn’t let them get away next time.”

His wife, 43, added: “I hit one of them with the bat then my husband took it from me. I just wish I’d hit him harder.”

Even Brits can act like Americans when the chips are down.

Read it.

On Wednesday, Burger King reached out to its rival McDonald’s, proposing that the two chains come together to create a hybrid of their signature burgers, the Whopper and the Big Mac. McDonald’s declined Burger King’s proposal to make the so-called McWhopper, which was publicized in full-page ads in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

We’re not too upset about McDonald’s rejection, though, because really, the McWhopper just isn’t that exciting. We’ve got a few ideas for way more outrageous (yet totally marketable) unions between fast food chains.

Time magazine is not too far gone when they’ve got sufficient humor left for things like these.

Read it.

The question thus becomes whether the Iran deal modifies the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Furchtgott-Roth presents a good case that it does.

Obama doesn’t pay any attention to the law, why would he pay attention to a treaty? Assuming that he even knows it exists?

Steve Sailer lays it out, so to speak.

The New York Times Magazine has a giant article on tennis player Serena Williams by Claudia Rankine (pictured at right) that serves as yet another illustration of my observation that while many female journalists routinely crusade on the surface against sexism, racism, etc., a close reading of their most passionate articles suggests that their highest priority in demanding a cultural revolution to overturn society’s oppressive values is that they want to wind up being considered hotter-looking.

In most cases, it doesn’t work.

Read it.

Joost Niemöller’s latest essay takes a look behind the scenes in the “migration” crisis, paying particular attention to the role played by Qatar in expediting the movement of Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe.

Read it.

If you like your flexible spending account … you might not be able to keep your flexible spending account.

Obamacare’s looming “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans threatens to hit 1 in 4 U.S. employers when it takes effect in 2018—and will impact 42 percent of all employers by a decade later, according to a new analysis.

And many of those employers will be subject to the heavy Obamacare tax because they offer popular health-care flexible spending accounts to workers, which, ironically, are designed to reduce the income tax burden to those employees.

As a result, the co-author of the analysis expects the health FSAs to start being phased out and “largely disappearing” over time by companies looking for reduce their exposure to the Cadillac tax.

Obamacare: The gift that keeps on giving.

Read it.

People silently struggle from all kinds of terrible things. They suffer from depression, ambition, substance abuse, and pretension. They suffer from family tragedy, Ivy-League educations, and self-loathing. They suffer from failing marriages, physical pain, and publishing. The good thing about politeness is that you can treat these people exactly the same. And then wait to see what happens. You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t need to make a judgment. I know that doesn’t sound like liberation, because we live and work in an opinion-based economy. But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.