Amerika

I think the straight link is out of date. People need to be able to mouse over a link, or see a preview or content summary, because there’s tons of stuff out there on the net and it’s all shouting for our attention.

• Barack Obama’s Teleprompter’s Blog

  Our president uses his teleprompter more than any other president in history. Without it, he tends to sound like a bumbling idiot. (With it, he ain’t so hot either — I’m not impressed by people using “colour words,” or flash emotional language, instead of communicating hard facts.)

• I was a skunk addict, at least I think I was

  “I was addicted to skunk weed for four years. That it’s taken me three weeks of shouty headlines about Julie Myerson’s son to remember this tells you pretty much everything you need to know about dope-smokers.” Out of control accuracy, and hilarity. If dope and alcohol were a great way to go through life, more people would do it. Instead, like anything else, it becomes a crutch that enslaves.

• How We Got Here (Rubinism Must Die)

  Liberals awaken to the fact that the Clinton economic miracle, created by Robert Rubin, also created the next two depressions by overvaluing parts of our economy. “Along with former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin and Summers compose the high priesthood of the bubble economy. Their policy of one-sided financial deregulation is responsible for the current economic catastrophe.” Even more than deregulation, they encourage asset inflation, whether Enron or the dot-com boom being irrelevant.

• The union stranglehold on the California budget

  “The reason California has budget stalemate and a deficit is not because Republicans won’t raise taxes (the Democrats already have), it’s because Democrats have a spending problem– they can’t spend enough to please their union handlers.” People are afraid to attack unions because they believe they brought us deliverance from bad working conditions. What’s more likely is that not being at third world levels of disorganization and undervalued labor did that. Unions are now parasites who have effectively killed our automakers.

• US Post Service looks for new ways to cut losses

  A victim of affirmative action, the Postal Service did everything it could to hire people on the basis of color, gender, and so on — but not competence. As a result, it got saddled with a boatload of lazy and inefficient people who are replacing the older group, which is people who like many schoolteachers may have had more lucrative options but preferred a low-stress workplace. When people make decisions this stupid, you have to cheer the fail.

• How many generations does it take for traits to solidify?
  

  Forty years after the start of the experiment, 70 to 80 percent of the foxes are now Class IE – the “domesticated elite”. When raised with humans, they are affectionate devoted animals, capable of forming strong bonds with their owner.

  These “elite” foxes also exhibit domestic features such as depigmentation (1,646% increase in frequency), floppy ears (35% increase in frequency), short tails (6,900% increase in frequency), and other traits also seen frequently in domesticated animals.

  This experiment revealed how it takes only a few generations for a trait to become more prevalent given a rigorous selection attractor. But when you think about it, since populations bloom exponentially, whatever does breed takes over very rapidly. Also has interesting implications for the universal aspects of domestication.

No-culture is still culture that wants to destroy other cultures | Clean air extends lifespan