DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

We have seen the future, and it sucks.

Archive for August, 2015

Ecology: Gene Tweaking for Conservation

25th August 2015

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Even the most conservative estimates predict that 15–40% of living species will be effectively extinct by 2050 as a result of climate change, habitat loss and other consequences of human activities. In the face of such drastic losses, scientists are debating the pros and cons of various, and often controversial, interventions. These include moving populations to help track hospitable habitats, and reinstating keystone species — those that have a large effect on ecosystem structure and function, such as top-level predators — into areas where they have long been absent. Even the revival of species that have recently gone extinct is being explored.

So far, an increasingly viable (and potentially less risky) option, which we call facilitated adaptation, has been little discussed. It would involve rescuing a target population or species by endowing it with adaptive alleles, or gene variants, using genetic engineering.

Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »

UK Islamist Leader Hamza Tzortzis Exposed on Ashley Madison List

25th August 2015

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A well-known British Islamist preacher, Hamza Tzortzis, has turned up on the Ashley Madison user list that was leaked by hackers earlier this week, according to his own Facebook page.

Tzortzis, who is a prominent member of the Islamic Education and Research Academy, which tours British universities, posted yesterday that he had been tipped off that his details were included in the leak, but he denied ever using the extramarital dating service.

Of course he didn’t. MRDA.

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Saudi Arabia Executes ‘A Person Every Two Days’ as Rate of Beheadings Soars Under King Salman

25th August 2015

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Perhaps he knows something we don’t.

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Thought for the Day

25th August 2015

Sales Are Grim

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Slaves as a Fringe Benefit

25th August 2015

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Although ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) publicized an auction for slaves (captured non-Moslem women and children) in June they have since replaced that with a printed price list. Young children are the most expensive going for up to $200 each. Adolescent girls cost about $125 and adult women go for under a hundred dollars. The catch here is the buyers are restricted to ISIL gunmen, as something of a fringe benefit. The sales are made with the understanding that the buyer can resell their slave for whatever they can get. It is also understood that ISIL slave owners can try to arrange for families to ransom the slaves for whatever the owner can get (usually several thousand dollars each). The June 2015 slave auction in eastern Syria sold 42 Yazidi women who were offered to ISIL men for between $500 and $2,000. So being allowed to buy a slave is quite a lucrative fringe benefit.

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 considered pagans. ISIL considers the Yazidis pagans but will enslave Christians as well. 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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Why Salad Is So Overrated

24th August 2015

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As the world population grows, we have a pressing need to eat better and farm better, and those of us trying to figure out how to do those things have pointed at lots of different foods as problematic. Almonds, for their water use. Corn, for the monoculture. Beef, for its greenhouse gases. In each of those cases, there’s some truth in the finger-pointing, but none of them is a clear-cut villain.

There’s one food, though, that has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.

It’s salad, and here are three main reasons why we need to rethink it.

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Californians Increasingly Can’t Get Into State’s Public Colleges

24th August 2015

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California once showed the world how a state could guarantee a college education for nearly every resident, but then it failed to provide the long-term funding to do it, said Martha Kanter, a former U.S. education undersecretary and California community college leader.

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Kerry Rated Worst Secretary of State by Foreign Policy Profs

24th August 2015

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Let’s wait and see how long it is before you see this in the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Although you’ve got to admit, it takes some talent to be worse than Hillary Clinton….

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IRS State Migration Data: Taxpayers Flock to Texas & Florida, Flee From New York, Illinois & California

24th August 2015

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Gee, I wonder why?

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How Obama Transformed America

24th August 2015

Phil Gramm lays it out.

The Obama transformation was achieved by laws granting unparalleled discretionary power to the executive branch—but where the law gave no discretion Mr. Obama refused to abide by the law. Whether the law mandated action, such as income verification for ObamaCare, or inaction, such as immigration reform without congressional support, Mr. Obama willfully overrode the law. Stretching executive powers beyond their historic limits, he claimed the Federal Communications Commission had authority over the Internet and exerted Environmental Protection Agency control over power plants to reduce carbon emissions.

When Obama empowered himself to declare Congress in “recess” to make illegal appointments that the courts later ruled unconstitutional, he was undeterred. In an action that Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon would have never undertaken, Mr. Obama pushed Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to “nuke” the rights of minority Senators to filibuster judicial nominees and executive appointments by changing the long-standing 60-vote supermajority needed for cloture to a simple majority.

American democracy has historically relied on three basic constraints: a shared commitment to the primacy of the constitutional process over any political agenda, the general necessity to achieve bipartisan support to make significant policy changes, and the natural desire of leaders to be popular by delivering peace and prosperity. Mr. Obama has transformed America by refusing to accept these constraints. The lock-step support of the Democrats’ supermajority in the 111th Congress freed him from having to compromise as other presidents, including Reagan and Mr. Clinton, have had to do.

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Bernie Sanders Takes Aim at ‘Greedy’ Koch Brothers

24th August 2015

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No mention, of course, of George Soros or Tom Steyer.

Sanders delighted a South Carolina rally of more than 3,000 people Saturday with his assertions that the Kochs and other “greedy” billionaires are destroying American democracy by infusing huge sums of cash into campaigns and election.

Like, oh, the Clintons?

The Vermont senator, who is pushing former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton from the left, called for publicly financed elections that would allow “anyone” to seek public office without “begging from billionaires.”

At least the Koch brothers don’t want to steal your money through taxes … unlike Bernie Sanders.

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Dinner and Deception

23rd August 2015

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In a playground for the superrich, I was an overpaid chaperone wearing a bespoke suit. Gluttony was common. So was sex; more than once we had to interrupt coitus in the restroom. Once a woman asked to leave her baby at the coat check. When the maître d’ explained that dinner lasted at least three hours, she stared back at him, unfazed. “Yes, I know.” Grown men wearing Zegna and Ferragamo would sit at the bar chanting, “We are the 1 percent!”

Another whine-whine-pity-me thumbsucker from the New York Times.

Edward Frame is a graduate student at the New School for Social Research.

I have no doubt.

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Title Nein From Outer Space

23rd August 2015

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The problem with nearly every government program or regulation is that it spawns a private sector industry to leach off the regulation, as well as a new constituency group to support the perpetuation or expansion of the regime.

Today’s example is the egregious Title IX sexual assault protocols for college campuses, which, as noted here previously, isn’t even a formal federal regulation. It proceeded from a “dear colleague” “guidance” letter from the Department of Education—an example of what legal scholars call the growing practice of “informal rule-making.” It may seem informal to you, but when you’re on the receiving end, with the threats and blandishments of the federal government coming at you, it seems about as “informal” as a request from Don Corleone.

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Tech Oligarchs Tightening Their Grip on Democrats

23rd August 2015

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The fundamental contradictions, as Karl Marx would have noted, lie in the collision of interests between a group that has come to epitomize self-consciously progressive megawealth and a mass base which is increasingly concerned about downward mobility. For all his occasional populist lapses, President Obama generally has embraced Silicon Valley as an intrinsic part of his political coalition. He has even enlisted several tech giants – including venture capitalist John Doerr, LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman and Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla – in helping plan out Obama’s no-doubt lavish and highly political retirement.

Silicon Valley is full of stinking rich Politically Correct granola-crunchers, the Democrites natural core.

“They don’t like Sanders at all,” notes researcher Greg Ferenstein, who has been polling Internet company founders for an upcoming book. Sanders’ emphasis on income redistribution and protecting union privileges and pensions is hardly popular among the tech elite. “He’s an egalitarian liberal,” Ferenstein explains, “These people are tech liberals. Equality is a nonissue in Silicon Valley.”

But not in San Francisco, where the Underclass doesn’t really appreciate the tech elite and their effect on the cost of living. And the Underclass is a core Democrite constituency, too.

Some conservatives, such as pollster Scott Rasmussen, see Republican backing for Uber as an opening for the GOP. Yet Ferenstein’s poll of Internet founders reveals that barely 3 percent say they are Republicans; 18 percent are libertarian, while nearly half are Democrats. Republican operatives peg the tech donors to be 9-1 in favor of Democrats. Talk about unrequited love!

The problem is that these tech whizzes were raised ‘progressive’ and that’s the way they’ve stayed, politically; they don’t appreciate that Republicans are the true supporters of entrepreneurship, while Democrites would really like to expropriate all that ‘undeserved’ wealth.

Overall, the hotbeds of the tech and information economies, including media, have become the financial bedrock of the Democratic Party. The 10 leading counties for Democratic fundraising in 2012 included, for the first time, Santa Clara, as well as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Given their domination of the ranks of wealthy people under age 40, one can expect that this power will only increase in the years ahead.

Unless they are rudely introduced to reality, which tends to happen to people as they get older.

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Thousands of Redheads Celebrate Their Recessive Gene at Festival in Ireland

23rd August 2015

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We need more recessives.

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Is the Left Self-Destructing? The Evidence From Britain

23rd August 2015

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More fun than watching the Hillary meltdown and the Democratic Party rage against the results of the Obama regime is to cast your gaze over to Britain, where the Labour Party seems to have forgotten the lesson of their 1983 election platform (which included a call for unilateral nuclear disarmament) which UK political junkies referred to as “the longest suicide note in history.”

Labour was crushed in that election, and having not been chastened by the recent election rout at the hands of the Conservatives and the Scottish nationalist party seems to be hankering for a repeat of 1983. By all accounts, the Labour Party is set to choose as its next leader Jeremy Corbyn, a deep-left radical who is generally regarded as completely unelectable if he indeed heads the Labour Party into the next election.

The pessimist in me says No. The fact that Labour gets any votes at all indicates that there is a deep streak of stupidity in the British electorate that will pull its fat out of the fire once again.

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Professor Who Compared Scott Walker to Hitler Is Teaching a Course on ‘Scholar Activism’

23rd August 2015

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

The graduate seminar will “explore the biographies and narratives of a diverse array of scholar activists, examine the sociopolitical and economic forces shaping their work, and consider what they have achieved and why,” according to the syllabus.

Raise your hand if you have any notion of how this has any bearing on a University education; I must confess I see none.

Hypothesis: I suspect that ‘Caitlyn Jenner’ will need to dredge up a hyphenated surname from somewhere if it intends to be taken seriously.

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Former National Security Adviser Scowcroft Endorses Iran Deal

23rd August 2015

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Is there a more Crustian name than Brent Scowcroft? Maybe Strobe Talbot. Or Stansfield Turner.

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The Times at Work

23rd August 2015

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When I wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book Between the World and Me, I noted that he was this year’s officially certified angry black. He is officially certified by the New York Times through Jennifer Schuessler, the Times culture critic and gatekeeper. Schuessler’s July 17 profile of Coates attests that Coates’s book “has had an almost frictionless glide straight to the heart of the national conversation.” (The official publication date of the book was July 14; Schuessler was on top of the story.) I wrote about Coates’s book in the City Journal essay “An updated racial hustle.”

Michelle Alexander is the author of The New Jim Crow, a book decrying the “mass incarceration” of blacks in the United States. Alexander was 2012’s officially certified angry black. She was certified by Schuessler an adoring profile when her book took off in paperback that year. I wrote about Alexander’s book in the Power Line post “Deep secrets of racial profiling (4).”

When the Times got around to assigning Coates’s dreadful book for review, whom did they turn to? Michelle Alexander, of course. It’s almost funny.

Imagine an immensely large circle of people in New York, each breathing the other’s exhaust.

The Times’s treatment of Coates’s new book represents a variation on an old story. Earlier this year Bryan Burrough’s book Days of Rage on the terrorist left prompted me to reflect on the role played by the New York Times as an instrument of celebrity propping up the revolutionary left. As a corollary, the Times is invested in protecting the reputation of the left. It is, shall we say, not given much to introspection regarding the impact of its judgments.

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Thought for the Day

23rd August 2015

Socialism Trash boatd copy

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German Woman Starts Living on A Train – Because She’s Fed-Up Paying Rent

23rd August 2015

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The German college student gave up her apartment in spring. “It all started with a dispute I had with my landlord,” Müller told The Washington Post via e-mail. “I instantly decided I didn’t want to live there anymore — and then I realized: Actually, I didn’t want to live anywhere anymore.”

Instead, she bought a subscription that allows her to board every train in the country for free. Now, Müller washes her hair in the train bathroom and writes her college papers while traveling at a speed of up to 190 mph. She says that she enjoys the liberty she has experienced since she gave up her apartment. “I really feel at home on trains, and can visit so many more friends and cities. It’s like being on vacation all the time,” Müller said.

Kids, these are trained professionals — do not try this at home.

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Cuisine and Empire

23rd August 2015

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Food has replaced music at the heart of the cultural conversation for so many, and I wonder if it’s because food and dining still offer true scarcity whereas music is so freely available everywhere that it’s become a poor signaling mechanism for status and taste. If you’ve eaten at Noma, you’ve had an experience a very tiny fraction of the world will be lucky enough to experience, whereas if you name any musical artist, I can likely find their music and be listening to it within a few mouse clicks. Legally, too, which removes even more of the caché that came with illicit downloading, the thrill of being a digital bootlegger.

Once, it felt like watching music videos on MTV was a form of rebellion in plain sight. Nowadays, the channel doesn’t play any music videos. Instead, we have dozens of food and cooking shows, even entire channels like The Food Network dedicated to the topic. Chefs have become elevated to the status of master craftsmen, with names that have risen above the status of their restaurants, and diners revere someone like Jiro of Jiro Dreams of Sushi fame the way a previous generation worshipped the guitar sound of a rock god like Jimi Hendrix.

The food scene today offers a seemingly never-ending supply of scarce experiences, ingredients, and dishes. Cronuts you have to wait in line for a few hours to get your hands on. Pop-up restaurants that serve only on a few nights a week for a few weeks, then disappear forever. Restaurants that you have to sacrifice a goat to just to get a reservation, and then they’ll actually take that goat you killed and prepare your entire dinner from it, nose to tail. A white truffle add-on that tacks $80 on to a single piece of cured hamachi, and oh, the truffle is only available for four weeks a year and came over on a gondola from Alba, Italy, and the hamachi is one of the last of three members of its species so you know, you should probably try it before…oops, sorry, the chef says someone just ordered the last of it. Yep, it’s that couple at the corner table, and that’s the last plate that she’s Instagramming right now.

Foodies are the new Cool Kids, or want to be.

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Five Serious Truths About Illegal Immigration That GOP Candidates Have to Accept

23rd August 2015

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Not to mention everyone else … but we’ve learned not to expect miracles from Democrites.

Hey, GOP primary losers, you better get out there fast with a real immigration plan, because right now you are losing to Donald Trump and that makes you the epitome of loserdom. But unlike Trump, you should be serious about ending the illegal immigration nightmare. His supporters are. Hell, his opponents are, too. Yet some of you haven’t just flirted with amnesty – Rubio tried yet couldn’t score, but donor class puffball Jeb Bush has gotten to third base with amnesty and is trying to round home.

Which pretty much reflects my thoughts on the subject.

HOWEVER, there are other viewpoints — one such is that of David Henderson, who (as with the other George Mason University economists that I follow) is usually pretty sound on most issues. I would recommend that you read it in order to have a good grasp of both sides of the question.

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Will Quebec Join the Ummah?

23rd August 2015

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A crucially important piece of legislation, Bill 59, is currently being considered by the provincial Assembly in Quebec. It isn’t getting much attention outside of Canada, but if it passes, it will effectively empower the Quebec Human Rights Commission to implement UN Resolution 16/18 in the province. At that point Quebec will fall into line with a number of Western European countries, who have already passed laws that enforce sharia rules against Islamic blasphemy.

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In China, Women Hired to Motivate Computer Programmers

22nd August 2015

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Maybe they know something we don’t.

We have a similar system in this country — the women are from HR, and promise that they’ll clean out your cubicle for you once they’ve escorted you from the building.

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Dresden Riots: Protesters in Germany Attack Refugee Buses Shouting ‘Foreigners Out’

22nd August 2015

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Looks like the open-borders Eurocrats are getting a little pushback.

Remember what happened the last time the Germans thought their government stabbed them in the back….

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The Hook

22nd August 2015

Freeberg nails it again.

A movement to outlaw all jobs that pay less than $15 an hour, would never attract enough support to survive. A movement to destroy the work ethic in children by awarding participation trophies, would suffer the same problem; it would eventually wither away and die. A movement to spare women from any and all responsibility, and help them blame men for all their problems in life, grant them legal authority to kill their unborn children no questions asked, ditto. All of these “movements” would need — have needed — a hook. A way to reel in those who care more about moral posturing than about politics, the ones who don’t pay attention, the ones who can be easily deceived.

It’s got to be about raising workers’ wages, building childrens’ self-esteem, empowering womens’ choices and demanding equal pay. Those “hooks” sell. Sure they are dishonest as expressions of the ultimate objective, but they’re being expressed to people who don’t have time or inclination to assess their sincerity, or lack thereof. So they have their hooking power. The clumsy-moderate sees the advertising, believes it if only on a tentative basis, starts to make an ego investment in it. That’s the hook. Once the ego is invested, good luck talking them out of it.

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Doing Well by Doing Good

22nd August 2015

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Scientists in the US have found a way to take carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and make carbon nanofibres, a valuable manufacturing material.

Their solar-powered system runs a small current through a tank filled with a hot, molten salt; the fluid absorbs atmospheric CO2 and tiny carbon fibres slowly form at one of the electrodes.

“Until now, carbon nanofibres have been too expensive for many applications,” he told journalists at the autumn meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

Carbon nanofibres are already used in high-end applications such as electronic components and batteries, and if costs came down they could be used more extensively – improving the strong, lightweight carbon composites used in aircraft and car components, for example.

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Yet Again, Americans Save French Butts

22nd August 2015

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Stone, Skarlatos and Sadler

What were the train people doing?

The actor, who has starred in French films such as Betty Blue, went on to allege that train personnel ran down the corridor and took refuge in a work car, locking the door and refusing to answer to passengers.

Americans: A pack, not a herd.

 

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USEFUL STUFF SATURDAY

22nd August 2015

Schrade Tactical Pens. One of these babies could save your life.

Hexayurt.

SpinChiller.

The Egg Calculator.

H0w to Build Your Own Cotton-Candy Machine. If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

GarlicShaker. Billed as ‘the iPhone of garlic peelers’. “Hey, Siri, peel me a clove.” Unlikely.

Turn the Apple Watch Into a Pocket Watch. More here.

All-Terrain Electric Skateboard. Supposedly.

Fold-Out Paper Sofa.

PotatoParcel. If you’re Irish, come into the parlor.

Bacon Scarf.

Stain Devils.

OnHub.

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Sweet-Smelling Secrets of Mosquito-Repellent Grass

21st August 2015

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US scientists have identified the chemicals responsible for the mosquito-repelling activity of sweetgrass, a plant traditionally used by some Native Americans to fend off the bugs.

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ISIS: Militants Destroy Ancient Monastery in Syria Founded More Than 1,500 Years Ago

21st August 2015

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Isis have demolished an ancient monastery founded more than 1,500 years ago in central Syria Friday near a town where the extremists abducted dozens of Christians earlier this month, activists and a Christian priest said.

The extremist group posted photos on social media Friday showing bulldozers destroying the Saint Elian Monastery near the town of Qaryatain, which Isis captured in early August.

Posted in Living with Islam. | 1 Comment »

Becoming David Bowie

21st August 2015

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Will Brooker is studying David Bowie by trying to live like him for a year.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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Scientists Pull Carbon Nanofibers Out of Thin Air

21st August 2015

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Rumpelstiltskin may have been able to spin straw into gold, but even he couldn’t pull carbon fibers from thin air. Yet that’s exactly what researchers at George Washington University have managed to do.

Led by Stuart Licht, researchers have created a solar-powered process that can turn carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to climate change, into solid carbon nanofibers.

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U.S. Marines Foil Apparent Terrorist Attack on French Train

21st August 2015

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On a train in northern France, a young Moroccan stepped out of a bathroom with an AK-47 (or similar weapon) and opened fire. Several people were wounded, but happily three [later reports say two] unarmed U.S. Marines were nearby and they disabled and captured the assailant….

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Must Skim Milk With No Added Vitamins Be Called ‘Imitation’?

21st August 2015

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Of course — if the government is involved.

The Ocheesee Creamery in the Florida Panhandle produces all-natural skim milk from grass-fed cows with absolutely nothing added, yet the state says they have to call it “imitation..”

And while they argue about it, the dairy is dumping hundreds of gallons of skim milk down the drain each week.

Creamery owners Paul and Mary Lou Wesselhoeft were in federal court Wednesday as part of their nearly three-year-old battle with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, which argues that skim milk isn’t skim milk unless vitamins are added to it.

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What Makes a Billionaire Bad? Just Add Government.

21st August 2015

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“Income inequality” is one of the populist issues du jour, even if there is a certain logical incoherence in believing that the growing income of rich people is somehow necessarily bad for poor people.

A new economic study suggests that, actually, we can calculate when a billionaire’s riches harm the poor and when they’re helpful. The “bad” billionaires aren’t the ones who flood the marketplace with cheap goods and jobs that some folks want to blame for all our ills. Those billionaires help the poor (by providing cheap goods and jobs, obviously). It’s the billionaires who get and keep their riches because of their connections to the government and through crony capitalism who create the most harmful consequences of income inequality.

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World’s Oldest Message in a Bottle Ever Found Finally Washes Up After 108 Years

21st August 2015

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The Revolution Will Not Be Emphasized

21st August 2015

David Cole blows the whistle.

Leftists truly understand the power of labels. They know that labels, properly utilized, have the ability to stigmatize and marginalize. “Cisgender” is a perfect example. The left has persuaded millions of people to use a term that essentially means “I’m normal.” To understand how ridiculous that is, consider this: By most accounts, there are far more people in the world who have some form of dwarfism than there are people who self-identify as “trans.” Yet there is no special label for those of normal height. Imagine if “little people” demanded that everyone of normal height had to use a label to define themselves as “not a dwarf.” Such an idea would be ridiculed from the get-go, and justifiably so.

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Be Careful What You Wish For

21st August 2015

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Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, funds its hundreds of planners out of garbage fees, which is why Portland has the highest garbage collection costs in the Pacific Northwest. But Metro also encourages people to recycle in order to reduce their garbage refuse.

As a result, Portland garbage has declined enough to threaten Metro’s budget. Metro’s response, naturally, is to tax recyclables, which would probably lead some people to stop recycling.

Funny how that works: When you tax something, you get less of it. You’d think that government employees would have realized that by now.

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The First Postmodern Political Machine

21st August 2015

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The Clinton political machine, like all machines, ultimately runs on money. Somebody has to pay the apparatchiks and loyal technicians who keep the wheels turning. In traditional machines, the money came out of the rough and tumble of local politics: You stroke City Hall, and City Hall strokes you. Private contractors who depend on city contracts, public sector unions, law firms, and Wall Street banks who manage city pension funds and peddle the city’s bonds: There is an army of special interests whose businesses do well when the Mayor is a friend. But the Clintons don’t do it that way anymore; they figured out something better.

The Clintons stand where money, influence, and celebrity form a nexus. When Hillary Clinton was running the State Department and Bill Clinton was shaking down contributors to the Foundation, the donors knew, or thought they knew, what they were getting. Now that Hillary is running for President, the donors have an even better idea of what good things might come to them—or what problems and complications could develop if they cut the Clintons off.

The machine gathers the cash that provides perches and incomes to Clinton loyalists; the loyalists keep the publicity machine pumping, keep the networks of contacts and patronage refreshed throughout the vast Clinton network, and staff what amounts to a permanent campaign. This is what party machines used to do: provide incomes for the army of operatives who would jump into action to make sure the machine stayed in office.

But the cash doesn’t come from a system of payoffs that go all the way from the cop on the beat up to the Board of Aldermen and the Mayor. The cash comes from donations and speaking fees. When the husband of the Secretary of State or potential next President calls about a special charity project, most people, even if they happen to be CEOs of major companies or senior government officials, take the call. More than that, there will be times when government and corporate officials will reach out and make the call themselves, rather than waiting passively to hear that the Clinton machine has an ask.

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Feds to Stop Calling Midget Raisins ‘Midget’

21st August 2015

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a regulation on Thursday to stop referring to midget raisins as “midget” after an activist group called the term offensive.

The government said the change was prompted by a request from the Little People of America, a nonprofit membership organization for people of short stature.

I am not making this up. (Cue Randy Newman.)

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Slovakia Will Only Accept Christian Migrants

20th August 2015

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Slovakia has announced it will only accept Christian migrants when it takes in Syrian refugees under an EU relocation plan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Ivan Metik said the Eastern European nation will accept 200 Christian migrants from camps in Turkey, Italy and Greece, as Muslim migrants would not integrate as easily into Slovakia’s predominantly Christian population.

There are a lot of Muslim countries in the world — time for them to step up to the plate, seems like.

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Massachusetts Obamacare Exchange Facing Legal Investigation

20th August 2015

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

Massachusetts Health Connector – the state’s failed Obamacare exchange – is faced with yet another challenge, this time a legal one. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is demanding the state exchange open its books in order to find out how the State government wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in a failed revamp of their healthcare exchange.

What’s to explain? They’re a state government. A Blue State government. Wasting hundreds of millions of dollars is what they do.

Although Massachusetts was the home of the Obamacare blueprint “RomneyCare”, the federal regulations imposed on the state broke an already working system and displaced thousands of Medicaid recipients.

Yeah, the Feds have a record of doing that.

While residents of the state were unable to get healthcare, the response from state officials was nonchalant. 41 days after the failed launch of the website Governor Patrick was asked about possible concerns with the exchange. His response was “No, none at all.”

He’s a black governor in a Democrite-run state. What could he possibly have to worry about? Tennis elbow? Having to wait for a tee time?

The skyrocketing costs and repeated malfunctions aside, the most disturbing aspect of the Massachusetts fiasco is the intentional concealment of the failures by the Commonwealth Connector Authority (CCA), the organization tasked with oversight of the transition.

Distburbing to whom? Not to anyone who has seen government employees (and their clients) in action before.

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Quotation for the Day

20th August 2015

It is diverting to speculate why such care is devoted to the breeding of dogs and horses while the human race prefers to reproduce itself in a largely indiscriminate and haphazard fashion.

— Randolph Spencer-Churchill

Well, Margaret Sanger did what she could….

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Superconductivity Record Sparks Wave of Follow-Up Physics

20th August 2015

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A superconductor that works at room-temperature would make everyday electricity generation and transmission vastly more efficient, as well as giving a massive boost to current uses of superconductivity such as the enormous magnets used in medical imaging machines.

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Disney Plans Galactic Domination With Endless Star Wars Spin-Offs

20th August 2015

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

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Oil Wars

20th August 2015

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Shortly after the Antiplanner commented on low oil prices last April, the Saudis admitted that their goal in flooding the market with oil was to drive out high-cost producers such as owners of shale-oil and off-shore wells. Now it appears that this policy has backfired on the Saudis, as their economy is hurting from the low oil prices while the shale industry continues to produce oil.

The problem for the Saudis, says one analyst, is that low prices might hurt high-cost producers, but the shale frackers “are mostly mid-cost.” thanks partly to new technologies. This means that, once they’ve made the initial investment in drilling and fracking, they can continue to extract oil, covering their operating costs even when prices are low and won’t be put out of business by a temporary surge in production in the Mideast.

Meanwhile, the Saudi government has seen its revenues decline by more than 30 percent. This has led Standard & Poors to downgrade Saudi credit ratings, saying that the country’s economy is “undiversified and vulnerable to a steep and sustained decline in oil prices.”

In the Bad Old Days, the oil under Saudi Arabia would belong to various European governments, and the Saudis would be wandering the desert on camels rather than buying up most of London and Paris. Which arrangement is preferable is left as an exercise for the reader.

Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Oil Wars

The Gold King Mine Fiasco: What It Tells Us About the EPA

20th August 2015

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We have written here and here about the EPA-caused spill of three million gallons of toxic liquid into the Animas River in Colorado. Private companies that have caused environmental disasters of that magnitude (or much less) have been criminally prosecuted; in some cases, individuals have been jailed. Will the EPA face similar accountability? Just kidding.

The EPA is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

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Rachel Dolezal 2.0? Shaun King, Activist for the Black Lives Matter Movement, Outed as a White Man

20th August 2015

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I see no reason why a white man cannot be an activist for the Black Lives Matter movement. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly those who feel that anybody involved in pushing for more privileges for black people really needs to be black to have any credibility, which seems to me an expression of racism barely disguised.

‘I’m a victim, your a victim, he’s a victim, she’s a victim, wouldn’t you want to be a victim to?’ seems to be the theme of the age.

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