A $1 billion city without residents will be developed in Lea County near Hobbs, officials said Tuesday, to help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets.

I guess we can’t let China build all the empty cities.

Thomas Juffmann et al. fired molecules composed of over 100 atoms at a barrier with openings designed to minimize molecular interactions, and observed the build-up of an interference pattern. The experiment approaches the regime where macroscopic and quantum physics overlap, offering a possible way to study the transition that has frustrated many scientists for decades.

Sometimes the universe makes my toes curl with delight.

This is a new category, “Stuff we couldn’t do today.”

“Wikipedia has decided to delete the page titled ‘Forward (generic name of socialist publications.)’“

The page had existed for over a year before Obama decided to use the word for his campaign, causing sudden need to delete it. You can’t trust Wikipedia, folks.

Also, using “Forward” wasn’t a mistake by a stupid intern that couldn’t be bothered with a Google search. Obama’s handlers know exactly what it means and they’re using it on purpose.

Borepatch has endorsed Obama for President in 2012

And I mostly agree with his reasoning.

By nominating Romney the GOP has proven itself once again to be a creature of big government insiders and go along to get along beltway bandits. (This is my shocked face) Romney supporters point to Obama saying, “Look how bad he is”, while ignoring that for the most part Obama has merely maintained a course set by Bush who mostly followed the course set by Clinton who followed the one set by Bush. (See a pattern yet?) They offer no evidence that Romney would steer a different course and frankly I don’t think he would. The GOP insiders, like the Democrat insiders, are perfectly happy with the direction the country is headed, they just want to be the ones at the helm. (Graft is so much easier when you’re in charge)

This election, like all the others, it an illusion. You’re offered the illusion of choice but it’s between two sides of the same coin and the game is rigged.

Heads, they win and tails, you lose.

Among other things.

Have a listen! Friday, May 4th at 8:30 pm Central.

And May the fourth be with you.

“I’m not embarrassed,” she said. “I just think they’re stupid and their machinery is defective and they should learn to whisper when they’re talking about my crotch, or anyone’s crotch.” –Jeffrey Goldberg’s Mother-in-law

While the commie hippies are out trying to disrupt your work day today, take a moment and remember the millions of people murdered by communists in the 20th Century.

The worker’s paradise is always built on blood.

“The USPI is the first national peace index produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Similar in concept to the Global Peace Index (GPI), it uses “the absence of violence” as the definition of peace.
The starting point in creating the USPI was to imagine a perfectly peaceful state. In such a state there would be no direct violence, and thus no homicide and no violent crime. In addition, there would be no need for state violence against its citizens and therefore no need for the state to devote resources to violence containment. Thus, there would be no police employees and no incarceration. Finally, in a perfectly peaceful state, citizens would have no need to own firearms for the purpose of self-defense, and therefore there would be no ownership of small arms.”

Built on a rock solid theoretical foundation like that it’s no wonder the report is chock full of knee slappers like this:

“There were also slight reductions in the number of police employees and the number of firearm suicides as a percentage of total suicides, which suggests a fall in gun ownership.”

Then there’s this:

“Such a hypothetical state is aspirational rather than realistic, and as such the USPI scores reflect no moral judgement on the appropriate level of police employment, incarceration, or firearm ownership.”

They give higher scores (“bad”) to having more firearms. Seems like a moral judgement to me. I wonder where they get the firearms number? Hmmmm…

“There is no reliable state level data on small arms availability, small arms ownership, or small arms sales in the U.S. An accurate measure of gun prevalence cannot be calculated from administrative records alone. For this reason many studies on gun prevalence use a quantitative proxy. The proxy used in the USPI is firearm suicides as
a percentage of total suicides (FS/S). As this indicator varied significantly from year to year for some states, a five year moving average was used in order to smooth out the variance. More detail on why this proxy was chosen is supplied in Appendix B to this report.”

Oh, I see. Let me translate that: “Guns are bad, Mkay? So we’re just going to assume that the number of suicides by gun is some sort of proxy for the number of firearms owned. AND since those numbers made our statistics look stupid we’re going to massage them a little to make them less stupid looking.”

Of course their explanation for the five year average proves this is complete crap since by their own admission “this indicator varied significantly from year to year”.

Here’s a clue for you IEP: Firearms ownership isn’t dropping. In fact it’s just the opposite.

Your study is crap, your theory is crap and you are made of fail.