Busy today, but two items caught my eye:

You’d think the media would delve into this relationship a little. If John McCain kicked off his political career at the house of, say, a bomber of abortion clinics, you probably would have heard about it by now.

And, 

What fascinates me is how light the baggage is when one travels from violent radicalism to liberalism. Chicago activist Sam Ackerman told Politico’s reporter that Ayers “is one of my heroes in life.” Cass Sunstein, a first-rank liberal intellectual, said, “I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now – so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community.” Why, exactly, can Ayers and Dohrn be seen as “legitimate members of the community”? How is it that they get prestigious university jobs when even the whisper of neocon tendencies is toxic in academia?

Related: The youthful indiscretions of Peter Tatchell.

Update and video at Hot Air.

The Royal College of Art recently unveiled some eye-catching car designs. The concept below, by Paul Howse, is rather fetching, if perhaps a tad impractical. I mean, for one thing, where does the shopping go?

More. Related: Vintage Wheels, Smart Car Monster Truck.

Slightly indecent pulpy goodness. // Slow-motion lightning. // The art of jumping on eggs. From Nationwide, 1974. // Meat cake. Because it can be done. // Name that disease. Family fun. // Looks like human flesh, tastes like bread. Video. // Should boys be circumcised? A debate ensues. // Precision lasers and plausible deniability. // Falcon 1 launch and separation video. Private space travel inches closer. // 2081. The bliss of equality. // A children’s primer of Communism. (h/t, The Thin Man.) // The Ladybird Book of the Policeman. (h/t, Chastity Darling.) // The Umbuster. It’s an umbrella, it’s a knuckle duster. It requires a weapons license. // Black patent faux leather pillow. For the discerning fetishist. (h/t, Coudal.) // Handmade. A short film, plot unclear. // The Jose Vasconcelos Library, Mexico City. // Equipment for handling molten steel. // Audi Symphony. // There’s a monkey on the loose. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Washboard Sam.

Housing students by race seemed to me an odd approach to ending racial division.

Andrew Quinio, a UC Berkeley graduate, comments on the university’s absurd “diversity” programmes, and their fallout.

These resources and many others exist because UC Berkeley insists that it is simply tough to be a minority. According to the student resource website, “Many students feel isolated when they go to college and this experience can be intensified if you find yourself to be the only person of color in a classroom, department, or residential unit.” For the most part, however, the university’s exaggerated concern is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Minority students detect racial hostility where there is usually none after facing interminable insistence that such hostility is real.

Over the past few years By Any Means Necessary, a pro-Affirmative Action student group on campus, has organized several public hearings to expose racial hostility. Minority students testified about their experiences with prejudice and discrimination, but their testimonies hardly painted a picture of Jim Crow conditions. One student swore he was a victim of discrimination simply because his professor did not call on him when his hand was raised. Another cried “racism” after her student group was asked to move their event to a different part of campus due to scheduling conflict. The solutions to these problems, the students declared, were more special programs for minorities, greater funding for the Ethnic Studies department, and of course the resurrection of racial preferences in college admissions. Entitlement seemed to be the only way these minority students knew how to combat racism.

The abundance of resources aimed at dealing with the problem of race mistakenly provides confirmation that a problem exists to begin with. But maintaining the special perks for minority students may invite bigger problems than the ones the university currently perceives. Allocating resources based on race and ethnicity can create resentment toward minority beneficiaries, generating the very problem that the university believes exists. It also leads to the same negative perception inherent in affirmative action that minorities cannot succeed unless they are helped. In challenging these special benefits for minority students, one must be prepared to face a barrage of nonsensical pejoratives. Those who question these sacred programs are called racist, hateful, or in my case a “self-hating minority.” But nothing could be more self-hating than embracing perpetual victim status.

Given fallout of this kind, sceptics among us might wonder if the intended beneficiaries of “diversity” are not in fact the students but rather the proponents of “diversity” themselves.

The rest. Related: What to Think, Not How.

I was surprised to learn there’s sometimes quite a lot of fog in Dubai.   

Photograph taken from somewhere near the top of the Burj Dubai. 

More. Video.