And who made that so easy? Monday, I noted the artificial-looking nature of the anti-"Zionist" protests that have been going on across college campuses, but had to admit I was in no position to speak about funding. Fortunately, Francis Menton of The Manhattan Contrarian has taken a deeper look at who might be providing financial and other support for these criminal mobs. I like how the post starts by clearly stating why it is worth taking such a look: The protests certainly give an appearance of being well-organized and equally well funded. For example, large numbers of identical newly-orde ..read more

I have long praised a happy result of the free market: It discourages racism. Two memorable examples I have brought up here include commercial desegregation in Houston (when segregation was called "bad for business") and the universal reach of the Sears catalog across the South. Both of these show capitalism blunting the force of segregation, or helping end it outright. Notably, thanks to a recent John Stossel article, we can now add a historic example of capitalism actively resisting Jim Crow due to the power of self-interest: Image by Unknown Photographer, via Wikimedia Commons, pub ..read more

Over the weekend, I heard a podcaster speculating on reports that someone was paying people to stage pro-Hamas "protests," i.e., tresspass, squat on, and vandalize college campuses, while threatening Jews or counter-protesters. Given the overall looniness of this day and age, any headlines to that effect would remind me of Poe's Law: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake for the genuine article. Only now, one often needs to replace the emoji with a reputable source and creationist w ..read more

Recently, I decided I needed a good fried rice recipe. As usual, I found some promising-looking recipes to go through, with the view of combining the best parts of each for something all my own and very good. Perusing the eight I found while out for a walk, this one at Gimme Some Oven really stood out, because it discussed several of the finer points and why each was important, rather than going off on some tangent as is often the case with online recipes. NOT the author making fried rice. (Image cropped from photo by Kelly Cookson, via Wikimedia Commons, license.) I annotated: This ..read more

Image by Patrick Tomasso, via Unsplash, license. Miss Manners tersely addresses a reader's question about a polite way to respond to the point-of-sale panhandling that has become so common today. Notably, the reader is being subjected to donation requests on every visit to a grocer he visits almost daily! The reader is completely correct on etiquette grounds that this practice is rude due to the "implication that one is being miserly" and because "Some people who would like to give generously are simply not in a position to do so, and shouldn't feel embarrassed." Miss Manners's resp ..read more

Earlier in the primary season Trumpists encouraged or aided Green crusader/anti-vax conspiracy nut RFK, Jr. -- first as a primary challenger to Joe Biden and then as an independent candidate for the Presidency. They did the latter because they saw him as doing more damage to Biden's prospects than to Trump's. I disputed that idea months ago, in part due to the kind of voter that finds appealing the likes of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump -- and historically, George Wallace and RFK, Sr. This morning, I ran across a piece at UnHerd that on what it calls "the growing RFK Jr. coalition." It com ..read more

About a year ago, Florida enacted a draconian anti-immigration measure that, as I put it, "conscript[s] many otherwise productive Floridians for border patrol duty." Predictably, this is now damaging its economy: About a year ago, Florida Governor and then presidential candidate Ron DeSantis passed one of the toughest crackdowns on immigration in the country. SB1718 punishes employers who use undocumented labor and forbids undocumented people from having a driver's license. Many local Florida businesses say the new law has led to workers leaving the state, hurting their bottom line. "A lot ..read more

Over the weekend, I learned from science advocate Kevin Folta's X feed that Greenpeace has won a battle in its long-running crusade against golden rice. Folta points to an article about this crime against humanity in Reason magazine: Golden rice could help prevent childhood blindness, illness, and death, but Greenpeace has campaigned to ban it for a quarter of a century. (Image by the International Rice Research Institute, via Wikimedia Commons, license.) Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activist groups have logged a win in a crusade that could ultimately blind and kill thousands of ..read more

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. Our first notebook comes from Nat Bennett, from whom I got the following quote, which is today's Quote of the Day in my planner: There's a very specific reputation I want to have on a team: "Nat helps me solve my problems. Nat get things I care about done." At the link above, he describes how he goes about acquiring such a desirable reputation in a post called, "Why You Need a WTF Notebook." The notebook of which he speaks helps him keep track of problems he notices upon joining a team, which he simply collects as he becomes acclimated and better able to figure out whi ..read more

Occasionally, I run into advice I wish I'd encountered years before, and a Forbes piece titled "5 Ways To Work Effectively With Someone You Really Don't Like" would certainly fit that description. Interestingly for this one, wishing I'd encountered the advice and whether I would have profited much from it at the time are two different matters. For example, as the first person from my lower middle class family to attend college, there was a lot I didn't know about regarding professional norms because, on top of being very introverted, I simply hadn't been exposed very much to those norms: And ..read more