Miscellaneous and Fast

• Get tight: The 7 Habits of Highly Frugal People.


• Lonesome Dove: A primer on dealing with rude behavior.


• Michael Labeit on Day One of the French burqa ban.


• DarkoV has found a suspicious looking character... in his passport.


• Eclecticity: The Power of Words.

Quote of the Day

Seek simplicity and then distrust it.

- Alfred North Whitehead

Service If and When It's Convenient

View From the Ledge has some customer non-service stories. [I must note that the service I've had over the past year has been, on the whole, quite good.]

Compliance in All Things 101

Ann Althouse on some Chicago schools that won't permit students to bring lunch from home. [Be a rebel. Eat a cookie.]

Don't Be a Stranger

Unhappy Hipsters has found the ultimate unwanted guest room.

California's Crisis

Victor Davis Hanson writing of California on the razor's edge. An excerpt:

Consider also regulation. In a vast state of 20 million in 1970 few cared that there were new building code rules and mounting new labor statutes. All sorts of innovative bureaucracies came on line. I remember the mosquito abatement jeeps spraying pools suddenly everywhere to stop mosquito-born disease; the country dog people were out in force checking for licenses and shots on your farm to eradicate even the rumor of rabies. Now fast forward to 37 million residents, with a vast new government superstructure. and we have become both the most and the least regulated. The poor broke highway patrolman sits on the corner, straining his neck to find a cell-phone user who is a sure thing for a $200 hit. Yet he would hardly wish to drive two miles away along a rural pond where a dishwasher is tossed in open daylight — the former involves money and the law-abiding, the latter nothing but all sorts of unimaginable costs and trouble.

True? Or Merely Wishful Thinking?

Amon Munyaneza: Cold calling is dead.

Of Course, It May Affect the Armadillo Population

If you have ever driven across Texas, you will understand why they are considering the nation's highest speed limit.

Camps

There are some groups of decision makers that can be divided into the following camps:

1. The usual majority;


2. Those who start neutral but always go with the majority;


3. Those who will always dissent;


4. Those who will vote for the last position they hear;


5. Those who seldom pay attention;


6. Those who seldom speak; and


7. Those who will embrace any course of action that doesn't require them to work.

Immigration: Europe

The immigration issue in Europe continues to grow: Italy is upsetting its EU partners by planning to issue visas to thousands of North African immigrants.