Slaughterhouse of the Rising Shorties

What will they come up with next? Just what you probably don’t want to deal with first thing in the morning, a flying alarm clock.

Who needs extradition? “A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it,” if they are accused of a crime in the US. If that is so, why did the Feds wait until Skylarov came to the United States to arrest him?

Navigate By Numbers. A great quote.

Everybody Loves Dinosaurs. Here’s a mummified dinosaur, complete with skin and tendons! Scientists hope there may also be mummified muscles and organs. But wait, there’s more! As a bonus, we have a bus-sized fossilized sea predator.

Preach On! DeanDad pointed me to some inspired writing on at Tiny Cat Pants (don’t you love that name?), but I found Bradford Plumer’s commentary on my own.

News You Can Use. I’ll be crossposting this link over at BridgetMagnus.com, but thanks to the MetaFilter crowd for Landlord-Tenant Law in Every State.

So much for making fun of the Canadians. Not only is their dollar doing a lot better than ours, their health system is better than ours too, both in costs and results. And yet every presidential candidate except Kucinich wants to give us “mandatory giving money to insurance companies”.

Just what I needed! Toyota has built a robot that plays the violin. Elsewhere, someone has — for reasons known only to them — made cactus out of yarn.

Catch 22. On one hand, we have kids dying because drugs are not tailored to them. On the other hand, what parent wants to sign their kid up for experimental drugs?

What’s that line again, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? I don’t know what to make of the revised WIC guidelines — the first major changes since the 70s — but I’m pretty sure that if the current administration is involved, it is probably not what it at first seems.

If you really care about education, you need to read this book. The nice folks at D-Ed Reckoning point out that Zig Engelmann’s book will finally be published. Learn the true story about a system that won’t admit it’s failures or anyone else’s successes, and get a bonus side order of My Pet Goat.

Happy Holidays, folks.