The funny thing is that most modern, new American traffic lights are in black cases as well...

As an auto driver who cycles, the part that I've had trouble with, is when the cyclist zips out across a cross street from behind a row of parked cars (and sometimes, heading the wrong way) at full bicycle-speed.

in dark clothing, after dusk, without proper reflectors or a helmet, naturally

But evolution doesn't care about groups. It only cares about genes.

Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the more conventional level of the individual... As of yet, there is no clear consensus among biologists regarding the importance of group selection.

SPLC-designated hate group? This is the same SPLC that calls Ayaan Hirsi Ali an hateful extremist, mocking her experience with female genital mutilation, for speaking out about such matters in the context of the Islamic world, right?

I'm afraid the once-proud SPLC has squandered all moral authority.

Would it be okay to totally destroy someone's career for ideological reasons if that someone (quietly, clandestinely, without fanfare or any indication) donated $1,000 to a California campaign in favor of Prop 8?

Would it be okay to launch an Internet-wide Two Minutes' Hate against them to put pressure on their employer? (Assume, perhaps, that they're in some leadership position â" like, say, CTO.)

While I won't disagree with the sentiments about how feasible it is to conduct business, as I've never attempted it in the described territories, I have a very close friend attempting to regain custody of her child where, at the father's request, the judge agreed to postpone the case from December until the end of turkey-hunting season.

This is a special local quirk for the jurisdiction, but more generally, when the degree of social cohesion in an area is just a bit too good then the good-old-boy networks turn into a source of abuse, not of strength.

Damn son, you really still think America is all that?

I'm not sure what failure of reading comprehension would make someone believe I'm suggesting "america is all that."

However, let me throw some names out there. First of all, by population: China. India. Our neighbor: Mexico. Then, just some of the worst: Venezuela, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Uganda, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Honduras, Nicaragua, Kenya, Turkey, Myanmar, Guatemala, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uzbekistan, Ecuador, Madagascar, Lebanon, Iran, Tanzania, Belize, Zambia. Albania. Brazil. Colombia. Peru. Vietnam. Senegal. Argentina. Malawi.

All of these have justice systems worse than one where cops policing for profit is a matter of routine. Hell, even Japan will just interrogate you until you confess (99% of arrests in Japan lead to confessions). The world is just that damn sad.

Any time you deal with the cops, you've already lost. Hell, in some places in the US, they send kids to jail and then bill their parents for the jail stay when the kid is found innocent. And inner-city cops have a saying: "you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride".

Of course, if this were in the US, the police might just seize everything anyway, hold a trial against the property (instead of against the photographer) and then auction it off for profit.

And the saddest part is, this is still well above average for a justice system.

It's one thing to fire the guy for the contents of the videos. It's another thing entirely to report on the guy getting fired by deliberately editing together clips to strip them of their context and make the guy out to be as much of a monster as possible in the service of manufacturing outrage for your yellow journalism.

But these days - in America at least - intellectuals trained in the same classical tradition as Winston Churchill are derided as beholden to the white male patriarchy. Hell, even figures previously associated with high minded ideals and liberty like Thomas Jefferson are now considered personas non grata. Meanwhile, the typical modern university does its best to train Alinskyite radicals.

Of course intellectuals are disdained. Thought is dead.

I hear that at Facebook, if your project fails, you're drawn and quartered, which mathematically is twice as bad.

While it is unfortunate for the opposition candidate to flaunt the Constitution in such a manner, note that we can also see the establishment candidate, Evita Peron^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Hillary Clinton, is actually proposing to amend the Constitution in order to reverse a Supreme Court decision which allowed a group of people to advocate against her as a political candidate. She also has designs on her political opponents' second amendment rights.

Luxury housing is always the first to be built in a highly constrained, under-built market like New York City. If you need to strongarm the city to get any development done whatsoever then you're going to focus only on the highest-value projects.

It upsets peoples' sense of egalitarianism, but it's still better for the overall housing situation than nothing. Of course, building enough housing on all levels of the market makes too much sense and will continue to be disallowed.

Benjamin Frankly surely would have been pissed if he knew that his name was stamped on the ass of a megaship designed to carry everything from wind-up frogs to American flags all made in China while the American's shipped back raw materials and money.

*ahem*

"No nation was ever hurt by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous." -- Benjamin Franklin

The unemployment rate for people working at Facebook is high? The mostly-computer-programmers-in-Silicon-Valley employment rate? Not buying it.