A remembrance of Edward Abbey [Front Porch Republic]

Cosmopolitan's 44 Most Ridiculous Sex Tips [Nerve]

White working-class voters don’t think Obama cares about people like them [Michael Barone]

Who is destroying the American middle class? [Zero Hedge]

The disadvantages of being too smart [Satoshi Kanzawa]

Act of war: U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus to slow Iranian nuclear efforts, officials say [Washington Post]

Why 'Nigerian Scammers' Say They're From Nigeria [Computer World]

"Selfish genes" indeed [Jared Taylor]

Untreatable Tuberculosis Reported In India [Medical News Today]

**

As Orwell said about the goose-step march of totalitarian armies: yes, it looks ridiculous, but you dare not laugh.

“Merchants have no country": Pat Buchanan on free trade agreements [American Conservative]

Cleaning up other people's landscaping efforts when you buy a house [Claire Wolfe]

Statistics Unmask Phony Online Reviews [MIT Technology Review]

Serial killers are not just a white male phenomenon [Amazon.com]

Love for Detroit doesn't pay the bills [The Detroit Shoppe]

"Vagina". If you can't say it, then don't legislate it. [MLive]

An essay advocating reform of Ann Arbor's one-party-monopoly electoral system [Ann Arbor Chronicle]

Many of the important details in Obama's autobiographies are bullshit says biographer [BuzzFeed]

Cops sure do hate dogs these days [The Agitator, KTBS.com]

Facebook wants users' cell numbers in bid to bolster security [CNet]

Escalation: Police Weapon Evolution as a function of Demographics [SBPDL]

Original Apple 1 Computer sells for $374,500 in Sothebys auction [WSJ]

Economists demonstrate exactly why bank robbery is a bad idea [Ars Technica]

We're all Kulaks now: The war on property rights [James Bovard]

Actual sword fighting techniques are not what you see in movies [ARMA]

Man bit by feral cat in Oregon now has plague [Seattle Times]

Film director Joe Cornish to make Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash into a movie [Deadline]

Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik says 'prison is like dying with your eyes open'  [NY Daily News]

The story of an ex-CIA agent's legal problems after she kidnapped a terror suspect in Italy. Now she's wanted by Interpol [Foreign Policy]

What Facebook knows about you [Technology Review]

The American Jewish Future: Orthodox, Right-Wing, Poor? [The Volokh Conspiracy, JTA]

Detroit Corporation Counsel's lawsuit to void emergency state aid agreement dismissed by judge [Detroit News]

A Handgun When You Can’t Buy a Handgun [Gunsamerica]

Another surfin' safari

Entrepreneur or con man? I admire this guy's industry and creative spirit, but it seems that he's a magnet for trouble too. [Seattle Times]

American Caste: A critique of Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, by Kay S. Hymowitz [City Journal]. Single mother-based families just are not able to make a go of it in post-industrial America.

"Solid-state revolution: in-depth on how SSDs really work" [Ars Techica] SSD's reduce latency between the CPU and the data storage tier.

Washington, D.C. city government needs to stop being a one-party monopoly if it wants to make any progress on its problems says Colbert I. King @ the Washington Post. I've been saying the same thing about Ann Arbor for a while now myself and largely for the same reasons as King.

Dogs use humans as their tools [Scientific American]

Why we're a minority now

Guys like this.

Things wot I learned on the Internet today

* Even terrorist's websites get hacked sometimes. Tough luck Tali-gangsters.

* Ann Arbor should stop trying to be  hipster heaven and just stay a nice place to live in the Midwest.

* It's not a good idea to have first cousins marrying each other.

* Detroit is not going to be "ready" for a white mayor  any time soon.

Guns Don't Kill People; Dangerous Minorities Do

Good point. Some timely observations from the SBPDL blog. And, sad to say, they are most likely correct observations about how things really go around here. Minus out the violent crime hotspots here in Michigan (Detroit, Flint, etc.) and this place would have the same crime stats as as a civilized social democracy like Sweden.

The decline and fall of the white working-class American family

From Kay S. Hymowitz's review of Charles Murray's new book on the decline of white society in America published at City Journal.

"In short," says Hymowitz, "America has become a segregated, caste society, with a born elite and an equally hereditary underclass. A libertarian, Murray believes these facts add up to an argument for limited government. The welfare state has sapped America’s civic energy in places like Fishtown, leaving a population of disengaged, untrusting slackers. It has also diminished upper-class confidence: the well-to-do dare not suggest they have a recipe for the good life. 'The underpinning of the welfare state,'  Murray writes, 'is that, at bottom, human beings are not really responsible for the things they do.' ”

It takes a lot of nerve to write stuff like this these days but I suppose someone has to.

Detropia

I find it is really odd how a certain type of white ex-Detroiter relishes the opportunity to masochistically chronicle the death, decay, and dismantlement of a once great city on film. But on the other hand such displays can get you noticed at the Sundance film festival and by the Huffington Post so there's that. Turn the camera around and speak into the microphone Ms. Ewing* and tell why you left Detroit?

*(Detropia's co-director Heidi Ewing is from Farmington Hills)

Well they're finally admitting what's been the case for a while now

Democrats set to openly abandon White working-class interests in favor of Obama's coalition of elites, ethnic and racial groups, and public employees union members.

Black women can't find enough decent black men to get married to

And so they don't get married at all. So says John McWhorter in this City Journal article. If they're so determined to marry black men or not at all then I suppose it serves them right. Too bad all the same though. If you choose by skin color alone then I guess you should be prepared to suffer the consequences of such a choice.

Is China’s One Child Policy Affecting Military Readiness?

Sure. It gives the PLA plenty of cannon fodder for military adventures all over the world if need be. The Chinese birthrate is so skewed in favor of males that a large percentage of these millions of men coming into adulthood will very likely never have wives. There simply aren't enough women.

Does Detroit needs martial law?

Unbelievable. The Detroit News reports today that from Friday morning until Sunday morning (a 24 hour period) 15 people were shot and six died in Detroit's neighborhoods. Martial law is about all that's left to the state government to reign in all the violence and I don't see that happening. Not yet anyhow.

Forshadowing an American race war?

That's what one movie review says about the latest in the hoary Planet of the Apes franchise The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I haven't seen it yet so I can't say that I agree with that view. At least in this case anyhow.  I but I will say that the whiff of such doings is in the air.

Terrifying prediction: "Global famine is going to force the use of our military as a police force organized to feed unknowable masses of people (until cold reality sets in as reserve food stocks evaporate)."

Yikes!

Eric Hammel blogging at the Best Defense blog on the Foreign Policy website is outlining a scenario where drought instigated famine causes mass migration from northern Mexico into the southeastern US. I hope that doesn't happen any time soon. With Obama in command and the better part of the US military deployed in central Asia a huge flood of desperate starving people would be impossible to manage. You couldn't shoot 'em and you couldn't turn 'em back and if you hold them in "containment facilities" they'll sue the pants off us just like the Guantanamo Bay inmates do. And as they give birth they obtain automatic residency rights anyway. What a nightmare.

"The only force on Earth with the inherent capability to police, process, house, feed, and move refugees on a mass scale," says Hammel, "is the U.S. military, but, though its reach is global, its capacity and stamina are nonetheless limited, probably to one or two major disasters at a time, not the overlapping rolling meta-disaster climatologists predict. (Remember, the only components of the Katrina effort that worked at all were the military responses, beginning with Coast Guard helicopters.)"

Sign of the times: The Gentrification of the Democratic Party

The new gentrified Democratic donkey

Although private sector labor unions are still a big influence on the Democratic Party the policies actually followed by Democrats once in office is distinctly anti-working class. Democratic Party politicos tend to work hardest for policies favored by the gentrified college educated professionals that inhabit the suburban areas. And  if you are a non-unionized blue, pink or white collar working-class stiff the Dems don't do much for you; you just don't have enough clout.

"...California, New York and Washington, D.C. represent progress due to the enlightened social and environmental rhetoric espoused by the media, academics and politicians based in these regions. But in reality,"says demographer Joel Kotkin, who studies these things," this new ruling class seems likely to create an American future that looks a lot like today’s Great Britain, with a significant affluent population concentrated in core cities and some affluent suburbs that lives an exciting life at the top of the world economy, surrounded by a large underclass and a fading middle class."

Modern Democrats will fight to the death to make sure urban, unionized public employees like bus drivers, cops, firemen, teachers and bureaucrats get top pay and benefits, and gold-plated retirements that they can take at age fifty in return for their money and votes. The rest of us peons with no clout get downsized, privatized, out-sourced,  and displaced by immigrants and are then told to shop at Wal-Mart for the best value for our food stamps. I wonder what FDR would say about all this? Wall Street banksters and well connected corporate CEOs are green-lighted to scam the system in every way possible. And then merely wrist slapped and then bailed out if they fail. It's no accident that in recent years as much money from the financier class goes to the Dems as to the Republicans. State socialism for the rich and laissez-faire for the poor.

"The genius of our ruling class", says Gore Vidal, "is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."

Indeed.

Weblog

Black men safer, healthier in prison than outside (Reuters)
Bottom line: Less alcohol, drug, tobacco use, and less violence; better diet and access to medical care. That is sad.

Lying liars tend to lie to you (James Brovard, American Conservative)
"Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer’s patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued."

The University of California is cutting back on many things, but not on its diversity programs (Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, via the iSteve blog)
"The main purpose of the UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion seems to be to buy for the academic identity racket the respectability that no amount of campus mau-mauing has yet been able to achieve. 'Area studies such as ethnic studies, queer studies and gender studies tend to be marginalized and viewed as less essential to the university than such fields as engineering, law or biology,' glumly noted the press release."

Salt cravings may be the origin of all human addiction behavior (Tim Barribeau, io9)
"All humans crave salt once in a while. The desire is hardwired into an ancient part of our brains, the hypothalamus, because we need it to keep our bodies working properly. Now it looks like some of the more addictive drugs out there could be co-opting this neurological system — which means our desire for salt is what underlies our cravings for everything from heroin to coffee."

Some thoughts on the higher-education bubble and the unemployment rate (Survival Blog)
"Combine those easy student loans with state-sponsored universities which create fluffy degrees in order to attract more debt-leveraged students, and you have a job market that will never recover. The student loan bubble will burst. And it will burst on the backs of young families just trying to survive."

The science of fanboyism (Slashdot)
Our brains unconsciously develop an affinity for products we choose over similarly attractive alternatives.

Mexican drug cartels now building their own military-style assault vehicles (John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, Small Wars Journal)
"Known alternatively as 'narco-tanks' (narcotanques), 'Rhino trucks,' and 'monster trucks' (monstruos), the crude armored vehicles emerging in Mexico’s cartel war are evidence of a changing tactical logic on the ground. 'Narco-tanks' are better characterized as improvised armored fighting vehicles (IAFVs)—portending a shift in the infantry-centric nature of the cartel battlespace."

Weblog

Some final thoughts on Grand Rapids' rampage serial killer Roderick Dantzler (Grand Rapids Press/MLive)
"By sawing off a big piece of his family tree and then blowing his brains out he at least somewhat mitigated the damages he caused. Those women Dantzler killed won't reproduce any further (good) and neither will Dantzler or his offspring (even better). His genes go into the ground with him and won't be passed along. And the thugophiliac skanks who bred with him won't be churning out any more copies of this creep or those like him. Sorry to be so blunt but that's the truth as I see it. Not much of a silver lining but there it is."

Dantzler's final act reminds me of a self-cleaning oven.

* Note: The Grand Rapids Press & MLive both deleted this post and most of the replies to it. Here it is preserved for posterity.

Here are some SFW photos of Dantzler's victims. All were white except for his own daughter who was mixed race.


Yeah, that'll show 'em!: Troy pro-millage group to hold book burning party if library millage loses (Detroit News)
Idiocy.

You can be friends or you can do business together as equals, but both? Unlikely. (Taki's Magazine)
"We are not all friends and we are not all equal, so if you want your boss to respect you as an employee, then you have to treat him as if he were the employer and not your friend. If you want to be friends with your boss, then quit. Otherwise he is going to take advantage of you as if you were his friend! But if you want to keep your job, try treating him like an employer; don’t listen to his problems, don’t tell him yours, and don’t call him Dick but rather Mr. Dick! Employers aren’t supposed to care about your feelings; they’re supposed to pay you."

Spending money like a drunken sailor (or soldier, airman or Marine) (Thomas Ricks, Foreign Policy)
The young service people just can't handle families, money or life in general. But they are terrific at war though.