THE ONION, AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD: Study Finds College Still More Worthwhile Than Spending 4 Years Chained To Radiator.  Barely.

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION 2015 IN SUMMARY: The 13 Most Ridiculously PC Moments on College Campuses in 2015.

BUT IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION THIS DOESN’T EVEN STAND OUT: Flashback 2013: “Climate Change” Expert Jailed for Conning EPA out of $900K.

AND NOW LET’S PUSH OFF THE ROCK, SHALL WE: The Artist Who Helped Invent Space Travel.

I THINK IT’S DEMENTIA: “You know, if we put the money into Alzheimer’s that we otherwise would put into some additional military asset, just think of the lives it would save,” Clinton said…

THE RIGHT TO BE OFFENSIVE: Charlie Hebdo editor: Censorship must not win. Paid for in blood. Are we at absolute moral authority yet?

AT THIS POINT, REALLY, IT SHOULD MAKE A LOT OF DIFFERENCE: Here’s the bottom line of the Hillary e-mail dump.

MAD DUCK: President Obama’s lame-duck drive for disastrous ‘success’.

THIS IS NOT NEWS TO ANY PARENTS OF BOYS WHO HAVE BEEN AWAKE THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS: And personally it p*sses ME off. Campus Turmoil Begins in High School. Oh, and we’re not doing girls any favors either.  You want to know why women fail at life and become unhappy adults?  Look to the mollycoddling of girls in most schools.

EVENTUALLY HE’LL REALIZE IT’S JUST DIFFERENT, NOT WORSE: The Web We Have to Save. The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?

I FOR ONE WELCOME: Erica, the ‘most beautiful and intelligent’ android, leads Japan’s robot revolution.

FASCINATING (AND SAD) STORY: An 18th-century outrage. Lèse humanité.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: It’s just like a Michelangelo! Epic New Year’s Eve photo of drunken carnage on the streets of Manchester spawns a string of ‘artistic’ memes.

Reminder: Theodore Dalrymple’s essays on life in 21st century England are warnings, not how-to guides.

(Via Maetenloch at Ace of Spades.)

DON SURBER: Boston Globe Sets Its Minimum Wage At $0.00 an hour.

DAVID AXELROD REMINDS EVERYONE HOW BIG A LOSER HILLARY CLINTON WAS EIGHT YEARS AGO TONIGHT.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Babysitter who forced boy, 13, to perform sex acts on her is spared jail.

SPENGLER: Saudi Arabia Stews In Policy Hell. “Last week’s mass executions in Saudi Arabia suggest panic at the highest level of the monarchy. The action is without precedent, even by the grim standards of Saudi repression.”

RACISM, SEXISM, AGEISM, AND ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Gun-controller Mark Kelly: ‘Middle-Aged White Men’ with Decreased Life Expectancy Cling to Guns.

FLASHBACK: Kurt Schlichter: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules. “That photo is me about ten years ago, standing in the ruins of a land where people rejected the rule of law in favor of the rule of force. I think a lot about my year-long deployment to Kosovo these days. I think a lot about people today who, for short term political points, cavalierly disregard the rules, laws and norms that made America what it is. I think a lot about how liberals, especially those who boo God, should pray to Him that those rules, laws and norms are restored. . . . Which brings us to America in 2015. It’s becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.”

Related: Yugoslavia’s Warning To America.

Also: “God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America. Of course we were a much more devout nation when (Otto von) Bismarck made that observation.”

PRETTY SURE THAT WAS THE INTENT: Donald Trump’s provocative first TV ad raises the temperature of GOP race.

Donald Trump’s ad begins with a shot of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Then comes a U.S. battleship launching a cruise-missile strike. From there it moves swiftly through an explosive montage: The suspects in the recent California terrorist attack. Shadowy figures racing across the U.S.-Mexico border. Islamic State militants.

The narrator, a deep-voiced man, speaks ominously: “That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until we can figure out what’s going on. He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our southern border that Mexico will pay for.”

The spot closes with the image of Trump thundering at one of his rallies, “We will make America great again!”

Wonder what the next one will be. . . .

A VERY COOL tornado photo.

OOPS: “Who needs feminists to destroy our sense of manhood when we have Christian conservatives?”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Chicago Sings The Blue-Model Blues: Mayor Rahm Emanuel desperately seeks a way out of the government union trap.

DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: State congresswoman who asks Hillary about Bill’s past labeled a ‘heckler’ and ‘disrupter’ by the Washington Post.

Related: President Obama to hold town hall on guns with Kathy Griffin sidekick.

THE ART OF THE DEAL: Trump: Iran deal was so bad it’s suspicious.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Whatever Happened To Latino Political Power? “Sure enough, in 2008 and 2012 about two-thirds of the Hispanic electorate backed the candidate who promised a path to citizenship. But Barack Obama did not deliver, even when his party controlled both houses of Congress, and then he earned the title “deporter in chief” by hustling nearly two million unauthorized immigrants back across the border. . . . More oddly still, the most prominent Latinos on the political stage are conservative Republicans who take a hard line on immigration enforcement. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida challenge what it means to be a Latino leader by promoting policies at odds with a majority of Latino voters, but nonetheless they are the sons of Latin American immigrants. To label them ‘traitors,’ as some activists have done, renders the term ‘Latino’ a political affiliation based on a litmus test, not an ethnicity that can claim the power of census numbers.”

To be fair, that’s what it is.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK PROFESSOR FILES FOIA ACTION TO GET LAW SCHOOL ADMISSIONS DATA, COLLEAGUES RETALIATE BY CHARGING HIM WITH RACISM: “After two professors emailed complaints about Steinbuch’s lawsuit — questioning his grading practices and whether he is biased against minority-group students given his research conclusions that the school has lower admissions standards for black students — an investigation into his grading and the bias complaint has begun.”

Sounds like something the legislature should look into. And it’s a debacle for the law school, particularly as people will tend to assume that whatever they’re hiding must be awfully bad — not just affirmative action admissions disparities, which most schools have, but something more serious, like false numbers reported to the ABA and bar examiners, or maybe Texas-style political admissions. Sooner or later, the truth will come out, of course, but in the meantime the speculation is likely to be intense, and bad for the school.

Meanwhile, this is bad enough, and if there’s racism here, it’s not Prof. Steinbuch’s:

Steinbuch is researching race-based admissions at the school.

His research shows the law school admitted black students with significantly lower admissions scores than white students over the 6-year period studied and that those students failed the bar exam at a rate twice as high as white students’, he said.

The school never informed students with low entrance scores of their lower likelihood of bar passage, and as a result certain students continued to enroll at the school “to their own financial detriment,” the lawsuit states.

Ouch.

FROM GARDEN & GUN: Cold Weather Cocktails.

SNAKE PLISSKEN, CALL YOUR OFFICE:  Escape from Chicago, the mess that Democrats made.

SAUDI ARABIA SEVERS DIPLOMATIC TIES WITH IRAN AFTER EMBASSY ATTACK.

Insert Kissinger Iran-Iraq War quip here.

And speaking of quips, Brad Thor tweets, “Can someone PLEASE get this important news into tomorrow’s paper so Barack Obama sees it & can figure out what 2 do?”

LEFT DEMANDS MEDIA START CALLING BUNDY GROUP ‘TERRORISTS.’

Related: “Did anybody ask Dems about this re Wisconsin?”

NIGERIA UNVEILS Africa’s Biggest Jesus Statue.

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JONATHAN HAIDT: Campus Turmoil Begins In High School.

A CHEERFUL NOTE: The Many Things That Could Go Badly Wrong for Europe in 2016. “It may not be a 1914-style powder-keg, but the continent is going to have to work harder than ever to defend—let alone build on—its achievements of the last 60 years.” May not be.

SAVE A SAMPLE OF HER DNA FOR ANTI-AGING RESEARCH: Elle Macpherson at 51.

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ED KRAYEWSKI: Armed Protesters in Oregon Occupy Remote Federal Outpost at Wildlife Refuge After Marching Against Sentence of Father and Son Ranchers; Justice Department appealed the sentence to get it extended to the mandatory minimum, which the district chief judge thought was “grossly disproportionate.”

Meanwhile, here’s the Tweet Of The Day.

SPOILER ALERT: 10 New Cars That Come With the Craziest Wings.

WELL, GOOD: F.D.A. Regulator, Widowed by Cancer, Helps Speed Drug Approval.

ALL STORIES ARE THE SAME: From Avatar to The Wizard of Oz, Aristotle to Shakespeare, there’s one clear form that dramatic storytelling has followed since its inception.

I suppose that’s a good thing for Hollywood, since, in order to generate maximum profits from globalization, today’s films come in so few flavors.

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

IN THE MAIL: From Steve White & Charles E. Gannon, Imperative (Starfire).

Plus, today only at Amazon: LifeSpan TR 1200i Folding Treadmill, $799.99 (47% off).

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 969.

WAR ON TERROR, ASIAN EDITION: Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown.

BLUE ZONE MELTDOWN: Puerto Rico’s Rolling Catastrophe:

Puerto Rico was already in default, and no one seems to have expected that it would make this payment in its entirety. But the official announcement underscores the fact that there is no end in sight for the island’s crisis. The appetite in Congress for a bailout or bankruptcy protection appears to be minimal, and it seems likely to stay that way for the near future unless and until Puerto Rico’s woes start to hit the mainland in a major way—a prospect that is not inconceivable, but which advocates of a no-strings-attached bailout have every incentive to exaggerate. So in the short term, the island will probably be forced to continue grinding it out on the backs of its own taxpayers.

In the medium term, as we have said before, there is a role for Washington in bringing Puerto Rico’s crisis under control. The guiding principle of U.S. government involvement should be “relief for reform“—that is, Puerto Rico should be eligible for meaningful assistance in servicing its debts if and only if it can make profound structural changes to the decrepit blue model governance system that landed it in this mess.

Well, once the ruling class can’t squeeze out any more graft, it becomes more receptive to change.

HEH: After The Trump Terror Vid, Can We Start Calling Her ‘Al Shabaab Media Advisor Hillary Clinton’?

I JUST ASSUME THAT THESE DEMOCRATIC TOWN HALL THINGS ARE STAGE MANAGED, WITH THE ACTIVE CONNIVANCE OF THE PRESS COVERING THEM: Hillary Clinton finds another young plant to pick at town hall meeting.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: New York Post: Why America is right to think Obama’s losing the War on Terror.

ANOTHER REASON TO RETIRE TO TENNESSEE:

Tennessee’s inheritance tax is also going away. The tax was anywhere from 5.5 to 9.5 percent of the estate left behind.

The Beacon Center of Tennessee fought the inheritance tax for years as an unfair double tax.

“This is a big deal because Tennessee is one of the last states in the country to come around and say it’s not fair to tax people when they are alive and tax them again when they die,” said Mark Cunningham with the Beacon Center. “A lot of people save up and work hard, and they want the money to go to their family, not to the government.”

There’s no income tax, either. And I’ve talked to the Beacon Center folks a bit — they seem to be doing good work on a number of fronts.

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IS THAT YOU, FOX BUTTERFIELD*? ‘I have to say what I have to say’: Donald Trump continues to defend Muslim ban despite policy being used to recruit terrorists in Al-Shabaab video.

Meanwhile, the House of Stephanopoulos is rewriting history once again. “Media Lies: ABC News Now Says Hillary Clinton Predicted Trump Would Be Used In Isis Videos.”

Nice shifting of the goal posts there, ABC.

* The Butterfield Effect strikes again!

ASHE SCHOW: 2015: A year of campus hysteria.

The ridiculousness started in February when Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis penned an article about “sexual paranoia” at colleges and universities. She bemoaned the campus climate of disregarding due process in favor of political correctness and the need to believe all accusers, regardless of the facts and evidence.

Kipnis was then accused by at least two students for alleged “retaliation.” The students claimed her article created a “chilling effect” on campus and discouraged accusers from coming forward. Kipnis was accused of violating Title IX — the federal statute that bans sex discrimination and is being used to force colleges to adjudicate felonies. She was not accused of sexual assault, but for somehow violating the law because a few students didn’t like her article.

Kipnis was eventually — and thankfully — cleared of the violation, but the message was clear: Dare to speak against the prevailing narrative and suffer painful consequences.

Kipnis was tied up in the same administrative hearing process that many young men (and a few young women) find themselves in when accused of sexual assault. Due process is seen as a hindrance to “justice” and discarded.

But just as Kipnis was vindicated by her employer, many of the male students accused of sexual assault saw their lawsuits dismissed by judges deferring to college procedures.

College has become a hostile educational environment for male students. And that hasn’t happened by accident.

DOES THIS MEAN DC WILL SOON BE LONGING FOR THE COOL TECHNOCRATIC CONFIDENCE OF THE MARION BARRY ERA? “With homicides surging more than 50 percent this year, it’s probably not a comfort to residents of Washington D.C. that their police force has dropped to its lowest levels in 10 years.”

MISSISSIPPI COUNCILMAN: ‘LET’S THROW ROCKS, BRICKS AND BOTTLES AT THE POLICE.’

Somebody’s obviously bucking to become the ambassador from France.

JOIN THE CLUB, ANGELA: Clinton email: Merkel despised ‘Obama phenomenon.’

SO THE WASHINGTON POST HAS A BIG STORY ON LAWYERS CHISELING VICTIMS OUT OF STRUCTURED SETTLEMENT MONEY and it even names one in particular, but doesn’t mention that he’s a Democrat.

SO, BASICALLY THE GOP’S OBAMA, THEN: New Yorker: Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist; He’s a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing.

FRENCH AMBASSADOR TO AMERICA BACKTRACKS AFTER DEFENDING BURNING OF EMBASSIES:

David Westin, call your office. (You too, John “Forgainst it” Kerry.)

THOU SHALL NOT MOCK THE NARRATIVE!

● WATCH: Mummers Parade Mocks Bruce Jenner in Comedy Sketch Singing ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady.’

● Outrage as official Times Square Ball Twitter account tweets the hashtag #BallLivesBatter.

Remember, as the Ayatollah  Khomeini famously warned, “There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”

Whoops, sorry, wrong totalitarian religion there, but it’s an easy mistake to make these days — “When politics becomes a religion, nonbelievers must be punished,” David Gelernter writes.

Or as the caption added to a photo of Bernie Sanders asks, “How can you separate church and state, when the state is your church?”

Related: And to bring this post full circle, “Why ‘Draw Mohammed’? The Artist Explains.”

PATTERICO: Please Help Me Thank Bruce Godfrey for His Efforts on Behalf of Free Speech.

AT SCIENCE: At C.D.C., a Debate Behind Recommendations on Cellphone Risk.

FOR THE SAME REASON I SO OFTEN END UP METAPHORICALLY SETTING FIRE TO SOMETHING ON MY BLOG: As much as I’d prefer the simple (and quiet) life, someone has to do it, and I can. Why ‘Draw Mohammed’? The Artist Explains.

SPEAKING OF SF/F FANDOM: This is what I mean (With “Amazing” Update).  (And that link is to The Liberty Zone, so language warnings are in effect, though Nicki uses swearing so creatively it’s almost poetry.)

WELL AT LEAST SOME THINGS AREN’T BAD: Trekkies rejoice: New ‘Star Trek’ stamps are coming in 2016.

SO, HE HASN’T WATCHED WORLD NEWS IN OVER 90 YEARS? Secret to a long life is not to worry, says 109-year-old.

THAT CHUNNEL WAS A BAD IDEA: New threat to British border as France builds first official refugee camp for 13 years.

AFTER YEARS OF THE MEDIA AND EDUCATION DISCOURAGING LOYALTY TO THE WEST WESTERN POLITICIAN WAKES UP: David Cameron: All Britons need to show loyalty in war against Isil.

IT IS A PILE OF HOT SOMETHING: President Obama’s Bizarro-World victory tour.

THE STATE VERSUS THE FREE MARKET: Proxy fight keeps ‘Taxi of Tomorrow’ on ice — even as Uber shows real future.

OUR MEDIA IS GOOD AT CREATING THESE: The myth of the cop killing ‘epidemic’.

TRUST THE POLICE TO SAVE YOU: You Can’t Make This Up (second item down.)  And I thought my kids’ schools had bad plans!

OCCUPY OREGON: Three of Cliven Bundy’s sons, militia seize federal building in Oregon.

Hey, we’ve established over the past few years that it’s perfectly fine to occupy public property when you’re working for social justice.

THOSE WILD EUROPEANS AND THEIR CRAZY GUN CULTURE: Gun sales up in 12 Swiss cantons. “Applications for gun permits in Switzerland increased by 20% between 2014 and 2015, according to a survey conducted in 12 cantons by Swiss public television, SRF.” Prediction: It will increase much more in 2016.

LEE STRANAHAN: Black Lives Matter: We Saw It Coming, Now Here’s What’s Coming Next.

HMM: Nigel Farage’s car wheels ‘were sabotaged in an assassination attempt’: Ukip leader lost control of Volvo when wheel fell off on motorway… and police confirm foul play.

AFTER YEARS OF GOING ALL-IN FOR VAGINAS, NOW THE DEMOCRATS ATTACK PENISES: Dems Take Aim at Erectile Dysfunction with Bills to Counter Abortion Restrictions.

One of these things is not like the other.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Donald Trump Is Not The Only Reason Bernie Sanders Is Losing.

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WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Disney Just Invented a Wall-Climbing Robot Spider Car.

FLASHBACK: When Bill Cosby Endorsed Hillary Clinton.

I’M BEGINNING TO THINK THAT THE REAL PROBLEM ISN’T THAT IRANIANS ACT THIS WAY, BUT THAT AMERICANS DON’T: Iranian Rioters Storm Saudi Arabian Embassy, Set It On Fire Over Execution Of Cleric.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The Middle East Couldn’t Possibly Get Worse. Could It? “We generally think of demonstrators as opponents of the government, but that isn’t necessarily true. (Occupy Wall St., for example, was basically an inept arm of the ruling Democratic Party.) Here, as in 1979, those who stormed the Saudi embassy were doing the Iranian government’s bidding. Note how the mob threw fire bombs at the Saudi embassy and ‘forced their way’ into the embassy, but then were ‘cleared by police.’ Likewise, they were allowed to start a fire that was then ‘swiftly extinguished.’ I am pretty sure that if Iran’s government wanted to protect the Saudi embassy, it could do so. . . . Of course, the United States is not responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world. The Middle East, in particular, is more than capable of bringing about disaster on its own. But it is hard to observe these events without wondering what Barack Obama was thinking when he decided to build Iran up as a regional hegemon, to seek an alliance with the mullahs, to release more than $100 billion in frozen assets to Iran’s government, to rescue Iran’s economy by procuring the end of sanctions, to bless and protect Iran’s ongoing nuclear program while posing no meaningful obstacle to the mullahs’ development of missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the United States, as well as to Europe. I don’t know how to reconcile these policies with a good faith intention to pursue peace in the Middle East or to advance the national security interests of the United States.”

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Fight Breaks Out At Newark Anti-Violence Rally.

The noon press conference was called by a group of activists led by Salaam Ismial, co-chair of the New Jersey Study Commission on Violence, and Abdul Muhammad, a longtime Newark anti-violence activist. In a release announcing the event, the two said they planned to ask Mayor Ras Baraka to “unleash his quality of life plan in addressing ongoing violence facing Newark residents.”

As the group spoke to reporters, however, a group of Baraka supporters including activist Donna Jackson and Tyrone “Street Counselor” Barnes began heckling and shouting from the base of the steps.

It soon evolved into an intense face-off between Jackson and Muhammad, which then erupted into a skirmish between members of the two camps. At one point, Barnes put his hands around Muhammad’s neck and pushed him to the ground.

You can’t make this stuff up.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Overwhelmed by ‘Migrants,’ Sweden Throws in the Towel as Europe Faces ‘General, Permanent Terror Threat.’

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ:

Has Greg Abbott been reading Kurt Schlichter or something?

UPDATE: From the comments: “All the Democrats have is higher taxes and gun control, and they don’t want to talk about higher taxes. So….”

SHOT: 10 photos of Carrie Fisher promoting “Return of the Jedi” at a Rolling Stone Magazine beach shoot, 1983.

CHASER: Carrie Fisher: I had sex with Princess Leia fans.

LYING LIARS GONNA LIE: Makers of The Hunting Ground Are in Denial About Their Film’s Flaws.

“There is no controversy.” This lengthy interview with The Hunting Ground producers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick could be distilled to that one line—a line the filmmakers desperately insist upon over and over again.

The interviewer, Robert Scheer, outs himself as both an unabashed admirer of their point of view and as someone who doesn’t believe what critics (at Reason, presumably) are saying about the film’s reliance on flawed statistics and dishonest sources. But he’s forced to confront the controversy—the one the filmmakers deny is a thing—anyway, not because he accepts it, but because so many other people are beginning to.

It’s a dishonest propaganda film. It’s not “flawed,” in the sense that they made a few mistakes. It’s exactly the film they set out to make, regardless of the facts. I mean, when even Variety calls it “agitprop that plays fast and loose with statistics and our sympathy,” you know the problem is more than a few “flaws.”

I DON’T THINK THAT THE BLACK LIVES MATTER CROWD HAS REALLY THOUGHT THIS THROUGH: Mississippi councilman says throw rocks at police chasing petty crooks in Jackson. “Let’s get rocks; let’s get bricks, and let’s get bottles. . . . And we’ll start throwing them, and then they won’t come in here anymore.”

Remember, the police, ultimately, aren’t there to protect the citizenry from the criminal class. They’re there to protect the criminal class from the citizenry.

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RATS ON THE WEST SIDE, BEDBUGS UPTOWN: “Elgin Ozlen, from Long Beach, posted a video on YouTube on Friday that shows more than 50 bugs crawling in the seams and along the sides of the mattress he says was in his room at the Astor on the Park Hotel on the Upper West Side.”

There’s an easy solution, of course.

CHANGE: Gun Sales Surge In Switzerland As Army Chief Warns “Arm Yourselves.”

IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG: 2015’s Worst Millennials.

FASTER, PLEASE: Gene Editing Offers Hope for Treating Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Studies Find. “Three research groups, working independently of one another, reported in the journal Science on Thursday that they had used the Crispr-Cas9 technique to treat mice with a defective dystrophin gene. Each group loaded the DNA-cutting system onto a virus that infected the mice’s muscle cells, and excised from the gene a defective stretch of DNA known as an exon.”

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Thanks to technology, we’re not going to run out of oil.

Why, it’s as if so much of the doomsday Malthusianisms of the early 1970s was simply nonsense generated by angry leftists butthurt at Richard Nixon being in the White House, and looking to short-circuit democracy as a response:

Related: 24 days to Al Gore’s ’10 years to save the planet’ and ‘point of no return’ planetary emergency deadline. “Gaia seems to be a ‘Gore denier’. How inconvenient.”

Think Rush Limbaugh’s going to have some fun when Al’s Doomsday clock expires?

UCLA STUDENT WORKING AT DAVID GEFFEN MEDICAL CENTER TOLD JEWS TO “GET THE F*** OUT OF HERE.”

Shhh…nobody tell her Geffen’s religion, or where his parents were born.

(Found via Iowahawk, who asks, “wonder what David Geffen thinks of this.”)

BRIAN DOHERTY ON GUN POLITICS: Public murders committed with guns are used to try to drive gun policy, even though gun policy is powerless to prevent them.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Gold Nanoparticles can be used to make straight v-shaped nanochannels a few nanometers across for next generation computer chips and devices.

THE AIRLINES’ CHECKED BAG FEES ARE IN LARGE MEASURE A TAX ARBITRAGE PLAY: “That’s because moving revenue out of fares and into ancillary revenue excludes that revenue from the domestic 7.5% excise tax on tickets…Eliminate the tax disparity and — since most aircraft don’t max out their carrying capacity — in ten years I’d bet that checked bags get rebundled back into the fare.”

(Via Virginia Postrel.)