WELCOME TO THE NEW ECONOMY: Fact of the Day: Even on Less Than $15,000 per Year, 56% of 18-24 Year Olds Have Smartphones.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: ON THE NEW SPINSTERS blog, Gena Lewis compares university sexual harassment rules to Saudi adultery law in a surprisingly persuasive post.

UPDATE: Some kind of link-screwup. If you want to read Gena’s post, go here and scroll down.

BLUFF, CALLED: Christie: Buffett Should ‘Write a Check and Shut Up’.

HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRESS: Hate speech section of Canadian Human Rights Act nears repeal.

OUT TODAY: The new Playstation Vita.

CHANGE: Florida Drivers Shelling Out Nearly $6 A Gallon At Some Gas Stations.

SCORING TONIGHT’S DEBATE: The Candidates Were Fine, but CNN is a Joke.

HAVE BAD CARS GONE EXTINCT? That’s what technology and market competition will do for you. If allowed.

METAPHOR ALERT: No Shovel For Obama. “It was a rather odd sight: as an array of museum officials, including former first lady Laura Bush, took up shovels at the groundbreaking for the first national museum dedicated exclusively to African-American history and culture, the nation’s first black president sat watching, no shovel in hand. . . . Protocol does not seem to have played a role. Turns out, presidents throughout history have wielded shovels for groundbreakings.”

SCIENCE: Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results May Be Due to Bad Cables. See, when you build an expensive accelerator, you want to go with the Monster Cables. Sure, they cost more, but they save you a lot of embarrassment in the long run. . . .

COMPENSATION and blood donations.

STEPHEN GREEN IS drunkblogging the last GOP debate of 2012.

TECHNOLOGY: Deadly Avalanche Highlights Airbag.

The weekend avalanche that killed three skiers near Stevens Pass, Wash., was the single-deadliest such accident in three years, but it highlighted a safety device that likely saved the life of a fourth skier caught in the slide. Three skiers were buried alive in Sunday’s avalanche, which occurred outside the boundaries of the Stevens Pass ski resort. Skier Elyse Saugstad, however, had time to deploy her “avalanche airbag backpack” as the onrushing wall of snow struck.

Well, good.

AT AMAZON, top deals on HDTVs and video.

INSTAVISION: The Three Principles That Make The Tea Party Tick. I talk with Prof. Elizabeth Price Foley, author of The Tea Party: Three Principles. What the Tea Party is about, why it’s winning, and why it’s okay that there’s not a Tea Party Candidate for President this time. Plus, a Bearded Spock appearance.

INFOGRAPHIC: A guide to Mad Men bed-hopping.

I MISSED THIS THE OTHER DAY: How Starbucks Became The Darling of American Gun Owners. “In states that allow open carry for licensed gun owners, Starbucks has refused to put up signs in protest – though some other businesses have. Gun-control advocates have started a boycott, but gun owners are answering with a ‘buycott.’”

Well, Starbucks should be rewarded for refusing to bow to bigots.

BESTSELLERS IN digital photography and video.

BROKEN PROMISES: President’s Estimates Versus Actual Unemployment After Stimulus.

GOOD: Researchers discover what cancer cells need to travel. “Researchers have identified two key proteins that are needed to get cells moving and have uncovered a new pathway that treatments could block to immobilize mutant cells and keep cancer from spreading, said Richard Cerione, Goldwin Smith Professor of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine.”

CRONY CAPITALISM (CONT’D): Documents show Obama’s FCC used regulatory muscle to destroy LightSquared’s competition.

NICK GILLESPIE: Three Ways To Take Birth Control Out Of The Presidential Race.

FASTER, PLEASE: Experimental Drug Helps Prevent Brain Injury.

IF THE ECONOMY’S IMPROVING, why is dependency on the government growing? If you’re selling big government, that’s an improvement.

COULD GAS PRICES hit five dollars a gallon?

NICE WORK, SQUIRRELS. OH, AND SCIENTISTS. Russian Scientists Grow Pleistocene-Era Plants From Seeds Buried By Squirrels 30,000 Years Ago.

POPULAR MECHANICS: Your Car Is Spying On You, But For Whom?

Cars equipped with telematics systems such as OnStar or Hyundai Blue Link have two-way links to service providers that relay GPS data. The operators of these services do, indeed, have the ability to see where you are, how fast you’re going, and what state your car is in mechanically. They can also track and remotely disable a stolen vehicle. The Nissan Leaf uses a similar two-way connection to regularly send data on usage and location to Nissan, which the company uses for future electric vehicle development. But these services aren’t supposed to work without driver permission. The car can initiate a call in an emergency situation, such as when an airbag is deployed, but otherwise the driver must authorize an external connection to the vehicle.

Companies have been caught snooping, though.

They’ll keep it up unless it’s too expensive.

OUT: “OPERATION CHAOS.” IN: OPERATION EQUILIBRIUM. I don’t actually think this is a good idea, or that a brokered convention would be good for anything except pundit fantasies.

LOUIS WOODHILL: Gasoline isn’t going up — the dollar is going down. Plus this: “Right now, the threat posed by rising gasoline prices is not just to family budgets. An even greater danger is that the government will use escalating oil prices as an excuse to do something stupid.”

HE’S A SCIENTIST — you can’t expect him to be good at math: “If Gleick obtained the other documents for the purposes of corroborating the memo, why didn’t he notice that there were substantial errors, such as saying the Kochs had donated $200,000 in 2011, when in fact that was Heartland’s target for their donation for 2012? This seems like a very strange error for a senior Heartland staffer to make. Didn’t it strike Gleick as suspicious? Didn’t any of the other math errors?”

UPDATE: Judith Curry on Gleick’s “Integrity.” “The end result of Gleick’s actions are to cede the high ground to Heartland, especially in light of the fact that Heartland had invited Gleick to a debate shortly before the theft of the documents occurred.”

EAT MORE TURMERIC? Curcumin Boosts Neurogenesis In Aged Rats. Any way, it’s hard to argue with this: “What we really need: Ways to make younger and healthier stem cells that can be injected into the body in various places as we age.”

CHANGE: Buyers hang on to new cars longer than ever.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I’ve listened to the stats for over two years now. I am guessing there are quite a few guys like me. My household income is comfortably in the top 2% for the nation (hey, it’s Northern NJ. You need to make $250k just to own a house around here. Well, NOW you do…). I drive a 1998 Ford Explorer. The sport model. I’ve owned it since it was new and it’s got 160k miles on it. My wife has the “new” car, bought in 2008 when our first child was born. It’s a Toyota.

I’m a dirty finance guy, so I guess that means I should driving a BMW (Audi is the car of the last 5 years, actually). When your income is tied to the fortunes of the market and the country as a whole, current “riches” do not entice you to overspend. My house is also modest, and it makes me sad to see people who overextended themselves being given all sorts of second and third chances to stay in a house they never deserved in the first place.

Keep my name off it if you choose to comment me.

Punishing virtue and rewarding vice — that’s the policy these days.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Obama’s Buffett Rule Is Vaporware. “The President has not actually proposed a tax policy that fits this principle. Neither his budget nor the tax proposals released by Treasury include any policy specifics to establish a new minimum 30% tax rate for those with income > $1M. . . . It’s OK to call on Congress to enact a policy that you describe only through broad-based principles. But when you do this you cannot also claim ‘We won’t be adding to the deficit.’ The only way you can legitimately make such a claim is if you offer a specific proposal to back it up.” This is more like voting “present.”

NATURE FAKERY: “The vogue of environmentalism stems from two ancient myths disguised today by a thin veil of scientific authority.”

IN THE MAIL: How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians.

FROM JAMES TARANTO, THE TWEET OF THE DAY: Weird religion: Satan is against America. Normal religion: “God damn America.” (Bumped).

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Damaged U.S. Passport Chip Strands Passengers: “Damaging the embedded chip in your passport is now grounds for denying you the ability to travel in at least one airport in the U.S. Though the airport can slide the passport through the little number reader as easily as they can wave it in front of an RFID reader, they chose to deny a young child access to the flight, in essence denying the whole family. The child had accidentally sat on his passport, creasing the cover, and the passport appeared worn. The claim has been made that breaking the chip in the passport shows that you disrespect the privilege of owning a passport, and that the airport was justified in denying this child from using the passport.”

That sounds like statist language, doesn’t it: “disrespect the privilege of owning a passport.”

Privilege? Tar and feathers, at least, is a right, not a privilege. What’s the name of the officious idiot behind this? Make it public.

UPDATE: Here’s the officious idiot.

TESTIMONY: Scott Pace on Lightsquared and GPS.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Canada’s Long-Gun Registry Fades Out.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON PETER GLEICK’S GLOBAL-WARMING FAKERY: “I hardly know what to say about the latest developments in the Heartland document dump. Profanity seems too weak, and incredulity too tame. . . . Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it’s no good to say that people shouldn’t be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions? When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths–including lying–to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right.”

Plus this: “After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else.” Indeed.

Also, from John Hinderaker: “So, Peter Gleick: if I am wrong, sue me. If I am right, apologize for fabricating a document and attempting to perpetrate a hoax, and retire from public life.”

And Jonathan Adler observes: “This is just incredible (and not only because Gleick was chairing a working group on scientific integrity at the time of his actions). . . . Much of the clmate science community seems unable to condemn Gleick’s conduct (see, e.g. here), just as some environmentalist groups and climate activists have a hard time acknowledging the frequent exaggeration or ‘sexing up’ of climate studies to accentuate the threat posed by climate change. (And I say this as someone who believes climate change is a problem and supports appropriate policies to address the threat.)”

SHOULD I FILE THIS UNDER “HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE?” These Are The Insanely Expensive Cars That GWU Students Drive. “Students at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. don’t just complain about easy grades, they also drive cars so nice you’d think their campus was the parking lot of the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. In the photo composite above is about $1.2 million worth of automobiles allegedly belonging to college students. Do your best not to hate them.”

IF YOU FAILED TO STOCK UP ON INCANDESCENT BULBS, you can still take advantage of this.

Also, today only: Panasonic DECT 6.0 PLUS Link-to-Cell via Bluetooth Cordless Phone, $54.99. I’ve got an earlier model — no bluetooth-to-cell connection — and it’s quite good.

UPDATE: Will Collier writes:

That Panasonic phone you’re linking today is very nice, and makes it easy to cut the landline cord. We have ours Bluetooth-linked to an old cell phone that we ported our old home number to, saving us a good $20/month on AT&T’s ridiculous landline charges. Works just like a “regular” phone line, and you can buy additional phones to put around the house if two aren’t enough. My only complaint is that the built-in answering machine doesn’t work for “cell-only” mode.

Interesting. And reader Colin Frazier writes:

Anyone who
1. has dropped home phone service in favor of using a mobile phone AND
2. has a larger-than-two-room home AND
3. has pants without pockets (that is, someone who is a woman :-)

will love the Link-to-Cell functionality. I got one for my parents. They use it with no land line and two cell phones. They drop their cell phones by the Panasonic base station when they walk in the house and they connect automatically. Inbound calls ring all their cordless ones. Likewise, they can make calls out through their cell phones from any cordless set. You can even easily transition to or from the cell phone to take a call on the road or to finish one at home.

That’s cool.

RAND SIMBERG: FakeGate: Can’t Hide This Decline. “Peter Gleick adds yet more fraud to the warmists’ resume.” It seems to me that people who were confident in the science would behave differently.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Gun culture spreads in India: Indians own about 40 million guns, second only to the U.S. Rising incomes, along with crime and fear of terrorist attacks, have fueled firearms purchases..

Perhaps one day soon the right to arms will be recognized as an international human right.

HEH: I Am a Nigerian Scientist. I Need Your Help Processing a $9,500,000 Climate Research Grant.

Related: Take a close look at the crisis manager that lil’ ol’ Peter Gleick has taken on: Chris Lehane, who worked for the Clinton White House during Whitewater and Monicagate.

Also: Meet the criminal defense attorney who’s representing lil’ ol’ Peter Gleick: John Keker, who defended Enron’s CFO Andrew Fastow.

Well, they’re both experienced with fraud and coverups.

A FRACKING TIMELINE:

Last week, ProPublica posted a big fancy chart about hydraulic fracturing on its website that purports to show that “government involvement with the drilling technique goes back decades.” (By “drilling technique” we assume they’re referring to hydraulic fracturing, even though, as a point of fact, hydraulic fracturing is not a drilling technique.) It’s a less-than-veiled attempt to provide cover for the claim that it was the federal government, not private industry, that facilitated the growth of shale development. But as we already know, that claim lacks merit. As Professor Michael Giberson of Texas Tech University has observed, the federal government’s role was “merely convenient to technological advancement and not necessary.” (emphasis added)

And, as it turns out, the chart is defined more by what it omits than what it includes. So, we decided to make our own timeline to provide everyone with a little more context (and facts) about the history of hydraulic fracturing, not to mention its incredible safety record.

More at the link.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama’s Double Talk on Sky-High Gas Prices.

When gas prices hit $4 a gallon in 2008, candidate Barack Obama said it was due to previous failed energy policies. Now that prices are heading still higher, President Obama calls it progress.

Already, pump prices are higher than they’ve been in previous years, suggesting they will top $4 soon and possibly reach an unprecedented $5 this summer.

President Obama is starting to notice the political implications. So he sent Robert Gibbs — now a top campaign adviser — out to tell the public not to worry.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: Congressional investigations sought over IRS ‘assault’ on tea party groups.

Well, when the President jokes about auditing his enemies, you can expect the worker-bees to pick up on the message. I warned at the time that the President’s thuggish “joke” would cause a loss of faith in the IRS.

DOUG BANDOW: End College Sports’ Indentured Servitude: Pay “Student Athletes.”

DAVID HARSANYI: Hey, Wait — Aren’t High Gas Prices What Democrats Want? Yeah, but they don’t like to admit it in an election year.

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Michael Shermer reviews Peter Diamandis’ and Steven Kotler’s Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.

DON SURBER: “Glenn Kessler called Mitt Romney a liar for accurately quoting Barack Obama.” Well, that’s dirty pool, isn’t it? Bringing up a statement that’s no longer operative?

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN I’D SEE HEADLINES LIKE THIS: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the President’s Secret Army. And they were right!

SO WHERE ARE ALL THE STORIES ABOUT THE “WEAK DEMOCRATIC FIELD?” Quinnipiac: Obama Barely Ahead of Romney, Santorum.

OOPS: Someone Forgot To Obtain A Waiver.

JAMES TARANTO: Mystification and Triumphalism: Why the left can’t handle the truth about social conservatism. I’m no social-con, but the media spin is pathetic.

Taranto continues:

Krugman and Alter were both born in the 1950s, which is to say that they are both baby boomers. Both were too young to be protesting on campus in 1968, but both are old enough that the triumph of contemporary feminism and the sexual revolution coincided with their formative years. That is to say, both presumably cast their lot with the cultural left in its moment of triumph and in the belief that by doing so, they were putting themselves on the side of progress.

That was an understandable thing for them to believe given the times and what one assumes were their predispositions. But while feminism and the sexual revolution have been great for high-status men like Krugman and Alter (full disclosure: and this columnist), and for those women who place a high value on professional careers, things have not worked out so well for those who are less privileged.

That is a truth so undeniable that it can even slip past the editorial filters at the New York Times.

That is big. On the other hand, there’s no love for Bill Bennett among the Pickup Artist community. Then again, that’s consistent with Taranto’s point, isn’t it?

(And I do like the way he uses the “full disclosure” trope as a way of quietly bragging that he’s big with the ladies . . . .)

UPDATE

THE AUDACITY OF OUTRIGHT LIES: White House spokesman Jay Carney had the audacity to say, “the President didn’t turn down the Keystone pipeline” even though that’s exactly what he did. On Facebook, Jim Treacher comments: “Jay Carney used to be a journalist. Why is he so bad at lying?”

Related: White House seeks to deflect blame over rising gas prices.

MICKEY KAUS: “You say Latinos are key swing voters in swing states? How about lower-income whites? Fivethirtyeight.com‘s Nate Silver notes that ‘low income whites are concentrated in swing states ….’ If a presidential candidate loses these voters by, say, Hispandering on immigration, he loses, no? Maybe Mitt Romney’s strategists have seen the same numbers. . . . I’m not saying that a candidate should choose immigration policy on the basis of what will win him an election. It’s supporters of an immigration amnesty who are constantly and unashamedly urging that calculation.”

I THOUGHT THIS MEME WAS PLAYED OUT. I guess not.

BEWARE OF “Taxation-Shock Syndrome.”

CHANGE: Montgomery College forced to revamp ‘Occupy’ class. “Montgomery College is revising plans to offer a summer class on the Occupy Wall Street movement — geared toward high school students — after residents complained that the class is promoting the Occupy movement’s agenda to students.”

I’ve got an alternative syllabus.

DAVID BROCK explains it all.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

I just found (via Overlawyered.Com) that the New Orleans Rave prosecution has ended in humiliating defeat for the prosecution, with the plea-bargain they managed to extort now being struck down. I consulted on some earlier proceedings in this case with the ACLU and the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund. (Here’s an earlier story by Janelle Brown of Salon, and here’s a piece Dave Kopel and I wrote in National Review Online calling for President Bush to fire the U.S. Attorney involved — he quit first.)

The entire prosecution was a disgrace — and proof that the New Orleans U.S. Attorney’s office has too much time on its hands, or a deeply distorted sense of priorities, something that I hope Congress will remember at budget time.

Accountability is for the little people, alas.

AT AMAZON, loads of coupons.

THE HILL: Critics say Obama doesn’t speak for all women on birth control.

NOW HOW ABOUT AMERICA? How the European Internet Rose Up Against ACTA.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland sent a letter to his fellow leaders in the EU Friday urging them to reject ACTA, reversing Poland’s course with the controversial intellectual-property treaty, and possibly taking Europe with them.

“I was wrong,” Tusk explained to a news conference, confessing his government had acted recklessly with a legal regime that wasn’t right for the 21st century. The reversal came after Tusk’s own strong statements in support of ACTA and condemnation of Anonymous attacks on Polish government sites, and weeks of street protest in Poland and across Europe.

The seeming overnight success came after both years of work by European NGOs, and the spark of the SOPA/PIPA protests in America (which included Wired.com).

ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is an international treaty that was negotiated in secret over the span of four years. While the provisions are currently public, their genesis was hidden from democratic scrutiny, and most nations signed on to ACTA without any chance for their citizenry to review or comment on the process. Beyond its undemocratic origins, it’s often unclear how ACTA’s requirements would be implemented, or could be implemented without creating a technical architecture online that restricts speech. For instance, ACTA’s harsh DMCA-like provisions against anti-circumvention could effectively render some free software, which by its nature can’t support DRM, illegal in the Western world.

A cynic would suspect that was much of its purpose. How about making this a campaign issue?

ROGER KIMBALL: The Great American Novel?

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: A Ring On A Guy’s Right Hand: What Does It All Mean?

BILL QUICK RELUCTANTLY CONCLUDES THAT it’s time for Newt to bow out. I have to say, though, I’m surprised at the number of Newt signs I’m seeing around here all of a sudden.

IN EUROPE, excluding free software?

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do Competitive Eaters Have Unusual Stomachs?

BARACK OBAMA: The Greatest Gun Salesman in American History?

UH OH: New research on Japanese quake ominous for Pacific Northwest.

Detailed analyses of the way the Earth warped along the Japanese coast suggest that shaking from a Cascadia megaquake could be stronger than expected along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, researchers reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“The Cascadia subduction zone can be seen as a mirror image of the Tohoku area,” said John Anderson, of the University of Nevada.

Anderson compiled ground-motion data from the Japan quake and overlaid it on a map of the Pacific Northwest, which has a similar fault – called a subduction zone – lying offshore.

In Japan, the biggest jolts occurred underwater. The seafloor was displaced by 150 feet or more in some places, triggering the massive tsunami. But in the Northwest, it’s the land that will be rocked hardest – because the Pacific coast here lies so close to the subduction zone.

“The ground motions that we have from Tohoku may actually be an indication that there could be much stronger shaking in the coastal areas of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon,” Anderson said.

Cities like Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., are far enough from the coast that they might dodge the most violent hammering. But all of the urban areas sit on geologic basins that can amplify ground motion like waves in a bathtub.

And remember — earthquake concerns aren’t just for the West Coast, what with recent East Coast shocks, and of course the threat of a big New Madrid quake.

Here’s my earlier post on earthquake preparedness. More here. Plus, some recommended gear. More here. Also, here’s some advice from the LAFD, although their excellent PDF booklet seems to have vanished.

UPDATE: Here’s the LAFD booklet, thanks to reader Tim Ryan.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Why They Seem to Rise Together: Federal Aid and College Tuition.

Long before I knew it was called the “Bennett Hypothesis” I knew that colleges and universities increase tuition to capture increases in federal and state financial aid. I attended numerous meetings of university administrators where the topic of setting next year’s tuition was discussed.

The regnant phrase was “Don’t leave money sitting on the table.” The metaphoric table in question was the one on which the government had laid out a sumptuous banquet of increases of financial aid. Our job was to figure out how to consume as much of it as possible in tuition increases. This didn’t necessarily mean we were insensitive to the needs of financially less well-off students. A substantial portion of the money we captured would be reallocated as “tuition discounts” or “institutional aid.” That is to say, just as Andrew Gillen observes, we combined Bennett Hypothesis-style capture of external student financial aid with “price discrimination.”

And we did all this in the pursuit of educational excellence. It was a large private university in the shadow of world-ranked neighbors and it was attempting to pull itself up in the world of prestige and influence by its bootstraps. There were townhouses that needed buying; laboratories that needed building; faculty stars that needed hiring; classrooms and residence halls that needed refurbishing; symphonies that needed performing; grotesque modern sculptures that needed displaying; and administrators that needed chauffeuring.

Increasingly that last.

HAMMER AND TONGS: Newt Gingrich Goes After Obama.

SO IF THE PRIMARIES ARE HURTING REPUBLICANS SO MUCH, WHAT EXPLAINS THIS? Rasmussen tracking poll shows Romney and Santorum within 2 points of Obama.

It’s not just the Republicans who have a weak field, I guess . . .

RULES FOR BACKSEAT DRIVERS.

Most people don’t like it.

LOVE WILL FIND A WAY: It’s the only way you’ll get Britain’s only woman commando out of her green beret – marry her!

AT AMAZON, IT’S the Home Improvement value center.

OUT OF TOUCH? Richard Lugar: Earmarks are “bogus issue.”

THE JOY OF Steak ‘N’ Shake.

OUT: UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS.

IN: Social Security Disability.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN WE’D SEE HEADLINES LIKE THIS. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! White House apologizes for Quran burning.

IS MARRIAGE ONLY FOR the rich and well-educated?

FAMILY TALK, southern style.

DAN MITCHELL: The Higher-Education Bubble and Third-Party Payer.

DEBATING civilian drones in the United States.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Would Real Space Combat Look Like?

DEREK THOMPSON IN THE ATLANTIC: False Recovery 2.0: It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like 2011.

PUTTING A MACHINE GUN on a “green” military vehicle.

A PULITZER PRIZE for PJ Media?

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Oil Market Panic.

U.S. SUPREME COURT takes college affirmative action case. “The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to consider whether the University of Texas at Austin has the right to consider race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. Those bringing the case hope the Supreme Court will restrict or even eliminate the right of colleges to consider race in admissions – a prerogative last affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2003 in a case involving the University of Michigan’s law school.”

More here.

IN THE MAIL: From Robert Kagan, The World America Made.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON PETER GLEICK’S HEARTLAND FAKERY: “Mmmm. Taste it: the Real-and-Fake cocktail. Much better than straight real, which is quite bland. No kick! And ‘climate change’ is so very, very important.”

UPDATE: In Apologizing for Global Warming Hoax, Peter Gleick Blames His Victims.

SOME GOOD NEWS from Nigeria’s North.

SOMEHOW, I THINK THIS ROBERT HEINLEIN QUOTE IS WORTH REPEATING ONE MORE TIME:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

You know?

A.W.R. HAWKINS: Are We Armed Because We’re Free, Or Are We Free Because We’re Armed?

UPDATE: Reader Drew Kelley emails: “Yes.”

THERE’S MORE TO NOTHING than we knew.

It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.

Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it.

Just don’t get too far beyond the data.

MOUTH GEAR: Improving the Tongue Drive for paralyzed people.