DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the thought of a chick with blue nail polish and a tattoo on her hand owning an ‘assault weapon’….

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Sorry, but Brendan Greene-Walsh looks like the poster child of a SWPL beta male. At least we can be confident that they’ll have at most one child, whose name will no doubt sound like a fashionable disease.

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Four days before Christmas, the Friends’ world was rocked by the sort of violence they have devoted their lives to stamping out.

Vandals with an acetylene torch crept onto the project’s muddy construction site in the middle of the night. Working out of view in the meetinghouse’s freshly cemented basement, they sliced off dozens of bolts securing the bare steel columns and set fire to the building crane, causing $500,000 in damage.

Police detectives deemed the attack arson because of a series of confrontational visits from union officials days before the incident. They say the torch could only have been operated by a trained professional, and believe it was almost certainly the work of disgruntled union members. The city has assigned extra investigators to the case and is working with federal forensic experts to track down the vandals, said Michael Resnick, the city’s public safety commissioner.

Look for … the Union label….

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The military is perhaps as selfless an institution as our society has produced. But in its current form, Mr. Kane says, it stifles the aspirations of the best who seek to serve it and pushes them out. “In terms of attracting and training innovative leaders, the U.S. military is unparalleled,” he writes. “In terms of managing talent, the U.S. military is doing everything wrong.”

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The federal government has emerged as one of the most potent factors driving income inequality in the United States – especially in the nation’s capital.

The capital is totally under the control of the Federal government. If they can’t get D.C. right, why believe that they can get anything else right?

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And I do mean Read It.

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Hey, if it shit-cans the myth of diversity, I’m all for it.

But I shudder to think what sort of company would consider me a good fit for their culture.

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 The cargo of the train was owned by Bioversal Trading Inc., or its US partner Verdero, depending on what stage of the trip it was at. The companies “made several million dollars importing and exporting the fuel to exploit a loophole in a U.S. green energy program.” Each time the loaded train crossed the border the cargo earned its owner a certain amount of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs), which were awarded by the US EPA to “promote and track production and importation of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.” The RINs were supposed to be retired each time the shipment passed the border, but due to a glitch not all of them were. This enabled Bioversal to accumulate over 12 million RINs from the 24 trips, worth between 50 cents and $1 each, which they can then sell on to oil companies that haven’t met the EPA’s renewable fuel requirements…

Smart People doing Smart Things — at your expense. Aren’t you proud?

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Gives ‘techno’ a whole new meaning.

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Thieves who targeted Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus over the holiday break walked away with five iPads but apparently didn’t consider any Microsoft products worth stealing.

Which is why I own a lot of Apple stock and no Microsoft stock, even though I’ve been a developer on the Microsoft platform for over two decades.

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A question that I’m sure has been as much on your mind as it has been on mine.

An “ostrich-like dinosaur known as an ornithomimid would probably yield the most consumer-friendly cut of meat, while still maintaining a unique dinosaur taste.”

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The Obamacare employer mandate doesn’t go into effect until January 1, 2014, but the government requires businesses to track worker schedules for three to 12 months in advance.  That means many employers plan to get a jump start on avoiding Obamacare’s $2,000 per-worker fine by firing workers now, reducing employee hours, or replacing full-time employees with part-time workers.

Flap, flap, flap, flap, perch.

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In a classic tale illustrating the “law of unintended consequences,” a new report concludes that President Barack Obama’s $3 billion “Cash for Clunkers” taxpayer-funded boondoggle artificially drove car prices up, not down, and unleashed an “environmental nightmare” through shredding, not recycling, many of the 690,000 cars people traded in for an up to $4,500 car credit.

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

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While economics could have played a part in any decline, Eberstadt sees other things at play.  He points to the continuing fracture of the U.S. family structure. People of all ethic backgrounds are running from marriage and family formation. No way this couldn’t affect fertility rates. There may be lots of babies being born out of wedlock but you have to believe that most single mothers are not having multiple babies that way. They learn how to stop pretty quickly once reality dawns that their single motherhood won’t be like Madonna.

Let’s hope the Octomom is listening.

What does religious belief have to do with embracing children? Eberstadt says there is a strong correlation. Nones in the U.S. and Europe have matching low fertility rates while religious people in the U.S. have the same relatively high fertility rate as their counterparts in Europe. The problem for Europe is they have so many Nones. Our problem could be that we are catching up.

Why such a correlation? It could be that Nones look at this world and see nothing beyond it. This is it. There is no more. In Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, Alvy Singer is scolded for not doing his homework. “The universe is everything,” he says, “and if it’s expanding, someday it will break apart and that would be the end of everything! So what’s the point?” Such nihilism must do something to the psyche and to the desire to multiply. Woody Allen had only one biological child.

I am comfortable in a world where Woody Allen has only one biological child.

Face it, children are inconvenient. When my wife and I married we went to Europe a lot. When our first daughter came, we still went to Europe but less. Our second daughter has never been to Europe.

My, what a hardship.

For many people such things really matter. They want to be able to go to Europe or Bermuda or Patagonia. They want a new car every two years. They want a vacation house. Those inconvenient children can stand in the way of all of this. Even one child can stand in the way. Now think about two or three or four children and then ponder a future of vacations not in Paris but at the small lake down the road.

The horror! The horror!

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Dish.fm, a free iPhone app that launched in mid-December, highlights the top dishes at restaurants in San Francisco and New York by analyzing data from millions of posts on web services like Yelp, Foursquare and Instagram. The startup developed an algorithm to process natural language in restaurant reviews and perform sentiment analysis for specific dishes that are mentioned in order to find the most highly rated items on the menu.

Rhymes With Cars and Girls has an important contribution to our culture.

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And sometimes that’s the skill set that you need. Not all of us were born to be entrepreneurs.

A wise old Chief Petty Officer once told me: You can always tell who’s the pioneer — he’s the guy with the arrow in his back and his face in the dirt.

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And thoats. Don’t forget the thoats.

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There are copies available but kiddie porn involving small furry animals is easier to find.

The film’s live-action depictions of Uncle Remus and his fellow smilin’, Massah-servin’ black folk are embarrassingly racist.

Only to the SWPL crowd who see racism under every bush. The same people who will fall all over themselves praising Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky will run away screaming with White Liberal Guilt when face with a film that is far less bigoted and tendentious. I suppose the next targets will be A Day At The Races and Mississippi, all from the same period.

If you were born after 1980, you’ve almost certainly never seen it in full, and it’s unlikely that will change anytime soon.

Yet another sad truth about modern America.

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The ship was first spotted by fisherman, who had pulled some of the amphorae (terracotta, jar-like containers) out of the sea near the town of Varazze with their nets. After tipping off the Carabinieri Subacquei (police divers), the ship was examined using a Pluto remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and later by divers.

They found the vessel to hold around 200 amphorae. When tested they were found to contain a range of perishables including pickled fish, grain, wine and oil. While some of the jars have been broken, it appears that most of them remain sealed. The boat itself is also well-preserved, having been almost entirely covered in sandy mud, although there is some damage caused by trawler nets.

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First you have to knock it on the table to get the weevils out. Or am I thinking of something else?

An American company has developed a technique that it says can make bread stay mould-free for 60 days.

The bread is zapped in a sophisticated microwave array which kills the spores that cause the problem.

We have the technology.

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We have the technology.

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Boston’s Fox 25 reports that state officials in Massachusetts cannot confirm the location of 19,000 welfare recipients, which could be costing the taxpayers of Massachusetts roughly $7.6 million every month.

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

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According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act because it failed to

* Continually provide ready-made hot and cold gluten- and allergen-free food options in its dining hall food lines;

* Develop individualized meal plans for students with food allergies, and allow those students to pre-order allergen free meals, that can be made available at the university’s dining halls in Cambridge and Boston;

* Provide a dedicated space in its main dining hall to store and prepare gluten-free and allergen-free foods and to avoid cross-contamination

The ADA is one of the reasons that George H.W. Bush deserves to burn in Hell for all eternity.

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None of which were fixed by the latest ‘fix’.

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Starbucks … they’re everywhere.

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According to an analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education, in the 2011 fiscal year, 132 presidents of public colleges and universities made $344,000 or more — the income level that marks the divide between the bottom 99 percent and the top 1 percent. Private-college presidents raked in even more: 208 made $344,000 or more in 2010, with 36 of those making $1 million or more.

It’s no surprise that college presidents are receiving top dollar: More and more, a year’s college tuition is exceeding the annual salary that a student can expect to make in the first few years after graduation. (And that assumes the student can even snag a job requiring a college degree in this dismal economy.)

Scott Adams has a geezer moment.

Windows is just one example of something that feels ancient. Recently I was filling out some paperwork that required me to sign my name over and over and over. Why do they need so many signatures for the same process? It’s because someday someone might need to prove that I had to an opportunity to read some legalese that hasn’t ever been read by anyone but the bastard who wrote it. I’ll bet even the guy who paid the bastard to write it didn’t read it.

And they wanted you to fax it back to them, didn’t they?

Of course his Inner Communist comes out with the typical California solution: There Oughta Be A Law. *sigh* If only it were that easy. The past hundred years have made it clear that when the government gets involved in technology, the results are never a pretty sight.

Those who don’t bother to learn from history are doomed to vote for people who will repeat it. Unfortunately, they stick the rest of us with it, too.

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Just when you thought that the Land of Fruits and Nuts couldn’t get any more ridiculous….

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Democrats talk a good fight about ‘diversity’, but don’t practice it much.

Som Sabadell flashmob

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

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 Kolbe points to a survey by the Tarrance Group and Hart Research that concluded that U.S. adults favor a switch to a dollar coin by a two-to-one margin.

Uh-huh. And yet…

According to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, right now the U.S. Treasury has about $1.4 billion in unused and unwanted $1 coins. That’s so much inventory the federal government recently announced that it wound end its program of producing presidential $1 coins – or at least suspend it.

‘Unwanted’ by whom? The American public, obviously; they’re the ones refusing to use them. Which casts some doubt on the claim that two-thirds favor a switch.

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Lurking not far beneath the surface in the uproar over the 1% versus the 99% is the notion that once an American makes it to the top he or she is very likely to stay there.

But is that so?

Hint: No.

Of those who were in the top 1% in 1987 (and could be found in 2007 and had some income in 2007), 24% were in the top 1% in 2007 and another 37% were on slightly lower rungs but still in the top 5%.

So 75% had dropped out of the top 1%.

Among people ages 15 years and 18 years in 1987 who showed up as dependents of taxpayers in the top 1%, about 14% were in the top 1% as adults in 2007 and another 20% didn’t make it to the tip top but were still in the top 5%.

So two-thirds of people whose parents were in the top 1% didn’t make it as adults.

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The textbook in question is “Skills in English Writing Level 1″, which includes a map of the Middle East on which Israel is nowhere to be found.

The area we know as Israel is captioned ‘Occupied Palestine’.

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

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, shares his wisdom.

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens, observes one of Schiller’s characters sagely: “Against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.”

We all know the feeling.

(If you don’t know what vade mecum means, feel free to look it up.)

Mother Jones has a blind pig moment.

New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.

And a responsible opposing viewpoint here.

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And I bet Obama is thinking, ‘Sheeit, why did’t I think of that?’

Watch it. And this one.

I love the Internet….

Bob is on a roll.

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 When we remember our past selves, they seem quite different. We know how much our personalities and tastes have changed over the years. But when we look ahead, somehow we expect ourselves to stay the same, a team of psychologists said Thursday, describing research they conducted of people’s self-perceptions.

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Could be, could be: “The White House is expected to name a new U.S. attorney for Chicago soon from among four finalists. Whoever it is will be an insider compared to the man he or she will replace, Patrick Fitzgerald.” Basically, Fitzgerald is leaving the position after over ten years of putting governors (note plural) and other corrupt Illinois state officials (yes, I know, redundant) behind bars. And it’s… interesting… that this tradition is not scheduled to continue: all four possible replacements are fully integrated into the Chicago power structure.

Like the tide, Democrat corruption sometimes recedes, but always comes back — and always higher.

The Illinois Combine knows how to out-wait people, it appears.

Yes, indeed it does.

Freeberg encounters the Crust, and is Dismayed.

There is no significant change anywhere, even though the public at large is about as disenchanted with the way things are going, as they have been for quite some time. It’s like a bigger version of California. The electorate isn’t firing anyone, anywhere, and it isn’t because they’re pleased with the state of things. It’s because they’re tired. They’re not fixing anything because they don’t see how; and they refuse to admit that they don’t know what to do.

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In fact, according to UVL’s study, the Top Ten states with the highest outbound traffic are forced-unionism states.

Also, of course, they’re Democrat-run Blue States, so there may be other problems in the mix….

You need one of these. Now.

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Of course, the guy in question is Andrew Sullivan, poster-child homosexual ‘role model’ and Voice of the Crust. This is about as surprising as Obama getting millions from Hollywood — they’ve got money and they’re not afraid to spend it on Their Boy. Like David Brooks, David Frum, and Conor Friedersdorf, Sullivan has made a good living off of being on of the Left Coast’s favorite pretend-conservatives.

It would be interesting to see a geographical breakdown of where his contributions come from. It would also be interesting to see whether Maureen Dowd or Rachel Madow could pull the same trick.

Read it. And watch the video.

In a powerful moment that went viral on the sports web Thursday, two Italian soccer teams — including perennial power AC Milan — walked off the pitch mid-match after fans directed racist abuse at Kevin-Prince Boateng, a player of African descent.

He’s half German, half Ghanian, so he’s about as African as Obama, who has repeatedly played the racial victim card with far less excuse. Still, it’s refreshing to see professional athletes support their teammate. Perhaps European sports fans, famous neither for their intelligence nor their manners, will take the hint.

A comic that is far from comical.

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In praising Congress’s huge new tax increase, President Obama said Tuesday that “millionaires and billionaires” will finally “pay their fair share.” That is, unless you are a Nascar track owner, a wind-energy company or the owners of StarKist Tuna, among many others who managed to get their taxes reduced in Congress’s New Year celebration.

All of whom paid big bucks to the appropriate government officials, of course.

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