A REVOLUTIONARY DISCOVERY: BROILED PIZZA: “The only equipment you’ll need is a cast-iron skillet and your oven’s broiler. You’ll preheat the skillet on the stove over the highest possible heat for 20 minutes, then put the pan under the broiler upside down. A pizza slides on top of the pan’s underside, and goes under the broiler for just 1 minute and 35 seconds. It comes out cooked through and bubbling, with artfully charred edges and crust (right) and a chewy inside. And you’ll be amazed.”
Archive for 2011
February 10, 2011
WHAT POSSIBLE JUSTIFICATION IS THERE FOR KEEPING THIS PUBLIC HEARING SECRET? Secrecy sought in Illinois trooper crash case.
A workers’ compensation arbitrator assigned to hear the case of an Illinois state trooper involved in a high-speed crash that killed two teenage sisters sought to keep a public hearing on the case secret.
Authorities say state trooper Matt Mitchell was driving 126 mph, talking on his cell phone and e-mailing when he caused the crash that killed 18-year-old Jessica Uhl and 13-year-old Kelli Uhl of Collinsville on Nov. 23, 2007. He is seeking worker’s compensation because of injuries suffered in the wreck, claiming the crash has left him with limited mobility.
Arbitrator Jennifer Teague wanted to keep the public hearing on his claim secret, according to e-mails obtained by the Belleville News-Democrat through the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
“We are going to do it on the sly with no press,” Teague wrote in an e-mail to her court reporter.
It’s like the insiders look out for each other instead of the taxpaying public or something.
BULLYING AND HIERARCHY: “Kids near the top do the most tormenting while kids at the top do the least. Once you reach the top you can kick back and let those below you fight it out.”
IN THE MAIL: The Storyteller of Marrakesh: A Novel.
CPAC PRESSER: The Great Pigford Fraud.
A REMINDER: If you buy through the Amazon links on this site, or the search box in the right sidebar, you’ll be supporting InstaPundit at no cost to yourself.
BUY THIS SATELLITE: And bypass dictators with free Internet?
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: First programmable nanowire circuits for nanoprocessors.
ED DRISCOLL: “No bombs fell on this American city.”
TANTRUMS of an angry Sun.
TODAY ONLY, A 42″ Panasonic Plasma HDTV for $599. I have one of these in the bedroom (I think I paid $999) and overall I think I like it better than the much more expensive JVC I have in the basement. It’s nearly as good on the HDTV channels, and it handles non-HDTV channels much better for some reason.
UPDATE: Reader Matthew Davidian writes:
We got the same model a month and a half ago from Amazon and we are extremely pleased with it.
You didn’t mention one of the best things about that model: it plays Netflix, Amazon VOD, You Tube, etc.) right out of the box, so you don’t need a separate Roku box. Although we still have a Western Digital TV Live Plus hooked up to ours to play back DVD’s from our library which we have ripped to a 2TB Western Digital network drive.
Between NetFlix and the Western Digital, our cable box has been feeling left out recently.
We paid $800 for it in December when it was on sale, at $600 it is a steal. I wish I had another room where I needed a TV so I could buy another one!
I must have the older model, then, or else I need to read the owner’s manual . . .
BLACK PANTHER CASE UPDATE: Freedom of Information Act FlimFlams at the DoJ?
Eric Holder’s Justice Department has even politicized compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. According to documents I have obtained, FOIA requests from liberals or politically connected civil rights groups are often given same day turn-around by the DOJ. But requests from conservatives or Republicans face long delays, if they are fulfilled at all.
The documents show a pattern of politicized compliance within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. In particular, I have obtained FOIA logs that demonstrate as of August 2010, the most transparent administration in history is anything but. The logs provide the index number of the information request, the date of the request, the requestor, and the date of compliance.
Read the whole thing. And there’s more in this interview on PJTV:
LOOKING FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA’S “BUDGET CUTS?” Get out your magnifying glass.
DIDN’T CASS SUNSTEIN PROPOSE SOMETHING LIKE THIS? Secret Plan To Kill Wikileaks With FUD Leaked.
IS IT A “LIE” IF NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD BELIEVE IT?
One of Washington’s biggest lies about federal spending will be endlessly repeated in coming weeks by President Obama, congressional Democrats, special interest advocates and the liberal mainstream media. The myth is that the federal budget really cannot be cut except on the margins because government programs are managed efficiently, with minimal waste, fraud and abuse, and they deliver essential services that cannot be provided any other way. Two reports focusing on federal job training programs — one from the Government Accountability Office and the other from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. — that were made public Wednesday put the lie to such claims.
I mean, if Congressional Democrats want to go out and tell the American public that “government programs are managed efficiently, with minimal waste, fraud and abuse,” well. . . you won’t need to cue the laugh track for that one. It’ll cue itself.
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Retrospective: How Earmarking Went From Stylish To Banned.
It may have looked like boom times for earmarkers in 2006, when they carved out a record $29 billion in projects — but little did lawmakers realize that a perfect storm of events the year before had set the clock ticking on pork.
What one anti-earmark operative called the “perfect storm” of runaway spending, lawmaker malfeasance and high-profile bad spending in 2005 set the stage for the slow decline of earmarking, culminating in this year’s moratorium on the practice.
It’s not “mission accomplished” time, because I’m sure they’d like to return to their old wicked ways. But it is a victory.
PorkBusters victory logo by Karl Egenberger, a great designer who also did the original PorkBusters logo. If you’re looking for a designer, send him some work!
UPDATE: GOP Freshmen to Leadership: Business As Usual Is Over.
Related: Freshmen to GOP leadership: We were serious about ‘read the bill.’
Plus, no more voting Present: “I mean I knew it was coming up. I could have just said ‘I’m here’ and not hit ‘yay’ or ‘nay.’ But I hit the ‘no.’ The big thing that we have to do is make sure that anything we’re voting for we know darn sure what we’re voting for.”
CHANGE: Baltimore man accused of plotting to blow up military recruiting station in Md.
A Baltimore construction worker was charged Wednesday with plotting to blow up a military recruiting station in Maryland after the FBI learned of his radical leanings on Facebook, joined his plot and supplied him with a fake car bomb that he tried to detonate, federal officials said.
Antonio Martinez, 21, a U.S. citizen who recently converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Hussain, declared on his Facebook page that he hates “Any 1 who opposes Allah.” Those kinds of postings, brought to the FBI’s attention, sparked an intensive investigation involving an undercover agent, a secret informant and a chilling plot to kill military personnel in the United States because they were killing Muslims overseas, according to an FBI affidavit filed Wednesday.
Read the whole thing.
SARAH PALIN: Gays Should Be Welcome At CPAC. I don’t know why anyone’s surprised at this — her record as Alaska Governor was pretty gay-friendly.
BIGGEST TERROR THREAT: HOMEGROWN ISLAMIC RADICALS: “The largest threat to the U.S. is no longer Osama Bin Laden, according to the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCIC), Michael Leiter, but is now Anwar Al-Awlaki, the head of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group based out of Yemen. The increased threat that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses revolves heavily around its ability to attract and reach U.S.-natives who want to be trained in terrorism techniques, and who could fall beneath the radar of intelligence circles more easily.”
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: ‘Green’ Lobbyist Who Shaped Energy Dept. Policy Hired by Bailed Out Bank.
THE WORLD THAT DOESN’T WORK? Postal Service warns of default as losses mount. “The U.S. Postal Service warned Wednesday that it may default on some of its financial obligations later this year after reporting yet another quarterly loss. . . . The agency has been suffering from an ongoing decline in mail volume, which has undercut revenues, while retiree health care costs have been straining its reserves.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: In Praise Of Cheap Food.
BIAS IN ACADEMIA: AN EMAIL:
I email you from time to time, either with links to my blog, or with comments about your posts. Every time, I say “don’t use my real name”. This is solely because I am an academic, and I positively fear my colleagues learning my real political preferences.
In Megan Mcardle’s story (that you link) she has the following passage:
Haidt notes that his correspondence with conservative students (anonymously) “reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s”: He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal. “I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote.
I have used this comparison myself, it is apt, and it doesn’t just apply to students. You hide yourself in plain sight. You make comments that are carefully crafted to allow you to make small talk, and which will allow your colleagues to think you’re in agreement with them, but which nevertheless satisfy your own sense of integrity. You never lie. You just make comments and allow them to draw their own conclusions. A classic example is the way I’ll make comments about politics, saying things like “I don’t trust politicians, period.” My liberal colleagues will nod and agree. We’re all in agreement, they believe. It gets easy after a while. You make comments about Marxist ideology that are really rather neutral, such as how you see similarities between Marx’s views, and something else. You leave it unstated that in fact you think this is appalling, while they nod and smile at the continuing relevance of Marxism in today’s society. Everyone is happy. I don’t feel quite so happy when someone says something about “stupid fucking conservatives” (I’m quoting exact words here), but I just nod, and say “ugh-huh”.
I’ve just been watching the first series of Mad Men, and I’m struck by the gay guy Salvatore Romano, and how similar his behavior is to me, only I’m hiding my politics, not my sexuality. There are also the classic moments, whereby fellow believers in academia carefully try to work out if you are one of “us”. I remember one guy who heard me comment on how some architecture reminded me of something I read in The Fountainhead, which was enough to alert him. Later we went out for a drink. I remember the nervous moment (for both of us) where he finally came out and asked me, “so what are your political / economic beliefs?” I chickened out, tempered, and said, “well, perhaps more to the center than most academics” and countered, “what are yours?” Reassured, he was willing to admit to conservative leanings. Then I was willing to admit it too. Then at last we could talk about our true feelings, with it clearly and openly stated that (of course) none of this was ever, ever, ever, to go beyond our own private conversations. (I also learned to never ever, in future, mention Rand within hearing of any academics, in case I accidently revealed myself again.) In another case, the vital clue was our shared interest in science fiction, and over the weeks there followed careful probing concerning which authors we liked, until we eventually discretely revealed ourselves. Now he lends me books saying “don’t let any of your colleagues see you with this.”
When (if) I get tenure, I toy with the idea of coming out of the closet. I don’t think I will though. Perhaps my job will be more secure, but I have to live and work with these people for years to come. I prefer to work in a friendly environment. I don’t want to be the token conservative, and I don’t want to be the one who speaks at meetings while everyone else rolls their eyes and exchanges meaningful glances.
Needless to say, don’t under any circumstances use my real name if you choose to refer to my email. Thanks!
I’m happy to teach at a place where you can be both openly gay and extremely conservative — as one of my colleagues is — and not worry. It’s too bad so many other institutions fall short of this standard. But, you know, as with the gays, you need people who have the courage to come out of the closet before it’s really safe.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Your readers account of being a conservative in academia’s closet made me wonder about three things. First, is such an account more likely to spark new tolerance for conservatives by the left in academia or a witch hunt to identify the conservative heretics? Second, how is the covergence of the higher education bubble, more state legislatures going to the GOP and a hard left academia going to play out in the state schools? Third, how does the ‘Army of Davids’ work when ‘David’ is in the closet?” Depends on when he opens the door, slingshot in hand.
But yeah, smart administrators understand that intellectual diversity on the faculty is a good thing, for purely self-interested reasons alone. Back in the 1990s when I was writing a lot of second amendment stuff, somebody tried to get my dean to fire me, saying that I was fomenting domestic terrorism. But my dean told me that he was glad to have me writing that stuff, because when alumni or legislators talked about ivory-tower liberal faculties, he could just send ’em a copy of my “Critical Guide To The Second Amendment.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Don Surber emails: “Friends of Dorothy, meet Friends of Ayn.”