CLINT EASTWOOD LOSES RESPECT: “Would Dirty Harry ask for a handout?”

MICHAEL YON IS still on the Medevac issue.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Protesters Heckled Outside Super Bowl.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “PAUL KRUGMAN is now writing that the Bush Administration is Enron writ large. I think he’s just hoping for another fifty grand.”

PUSSY RIOT: Feminist Punk Band Become Unlikely Putin Foil. (Via Ann Althouse).

“I’M A BIGOT — BUT FOR THE LEFT.”

EUROPE: Greece has reached the latest of many last ditches this weekend.

UPDATE: Greeks Inch Closer To Default. “On one level, this is entirely amazing. As has been exhaustively explained everywhere, including this blog, Greece is currently running a primary deficit–meaning that even if they defaulted, their budget wouldn’t balance. And since defaulting would cut off the flow of credit, they’d actually be worse off than with almost any of the austerity plans proposed by their creditors. So watching them threaten to walk away is somewhat reminiscent of that famous moment from Blazing Saddles.”

SO IF A MAN GETS DRUNK AND SLEEPS WITH A WOMAN HE WOULDN’T HAVE SLEPT WITH SOBER, it’s humorous grist for jokes about “beer goggles” and “coyote ugly.” But if a woman does the same thing, woe unto anyone who suggests it wasn’t “date rape.” It’s nice to see people pointing out the contradiction in the comments.

UPDATE: A reader points out that that’s not the only double standard:

A former high school teacher has admitted to raping one of her students , but she won’t be serving time behind bars nor will she be forced to register as a sex offender.

On Thursday Brenda Ray pled guilty to three counts of rape.

Ray was arrested last summer for supplying a 16-year-old boy booze, cocaine and pot in addition to having sex with him off-campus on at least three occasions.

Officials say the victim was in Ray’s English class back in 2007 at Rio Rancho High School.

Ray taught at Cleveland High in addition to RRHS before she quit last summer before her arrest.

Ray pled guilty to the charges against her on Thursday and as part of her plea deal she was sentenced to three years probation.

While prosecutors asked she have to register as a sex offender Judge George Eichwald gave her a pass.

No double standard there. I’m sure a male teacher would have gotten exactly the same punishment for the same behavior.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Melissa R. writes:

I read the Frisky column you linked last night regarding date rape and it made me sick to my stomach. I’m a woman, and the selfish mindset of so many of my fellow women is despicable. There is no thought given to the plight of the man in question, nor to the ACTUAL victims of rape whose victimization is cheapened thanks to this insufferable cult of victimhood.

As evidence of the double standard that exists between men and women and what constitutes “rape,” I wanted to draw your attention to the 2002 “romantic comedy” 40 Days and 40 Nights. It starred Josh Hartnett as a young man who decides to give up all types of sexual gratification for Lent. The entire movie is about Hartnett’s character trying to maintain his celibacy while his friends try to trick him into having sex (they even set up a betting pool). The situation culminates in what I consider one of the most disgusting scenes in the history of film, when the ex-girlfriend of Hartnett’s character cuffs him to a bed and has sex with him on the fortieth night, thus forcing him to break his vow and lose the bet (and cheat on his new girlfriend taboot).

I stress again, this is supposed to be a “romantic comedy,” so the scene is supposed to be funny. “Ha ha, the guy who’s been obsessed with sex for the past forty days is going to get it, even though he doesn’t want it with this girl! ha ha!” If the gender roles had been reversed and it had been Vinessa Shaw’s character who was tied up and made to “lose her bet,” courtesy of her ex-boyfriend, it would be fodder for the Lifetime Network. But since it’s Josh Hartnett on the receiving end, it’s geared toward Comedy Central.

It’s disgusting. Anyone who actually laughed during that scene needs their head examined.

So if anyone tries to deny that such a double standard exists, I always point them toward this movie and tell them to watch that scene, then ask themselves, “If his character were to go to the police to claim date rape, would he get a fair hearing? Or would he be laughed off?”

It’s nice to see the discomfort on their faces when they realize that yeah, it would be the latter.

Gee, I’m sorry I missed that film. . . .

THIS LOOKS COOL: Chicks With Guns.

LOVE LESSONS FROM the 4Chan crowd. (Via Parijata Mackey on Facebook.)

IS GRATITUDE THE SECRET to avoiding a marital rut?

AT AMAZON, Gift Ideas and Markdowns for Valentine’s Day.

CECIL ADAMS ON LIGHT BULBS:

1. Although halogen bulbs don’t offer much of an energy savings over ordinary incandescents, compact fluorescents sure do, and you’d be a fool not to use them whenever you could. Me, I’ve got ‘em all over the house, including right here in the desk lamp.

2. Telling me I have to use them — production and import of conventional 100-watt incandescent bulbs were effectively banned Jan. 1– is a pointless intrusion on my personal rights. . . . The net social benefit of legislating incandescent bulbs out of existence is likely to be negligible.

Well, not entirely pointless, as big contributors have invested heavily in “green” replacements. But there’s still time to stock up until supplies run out.

I also notice that Cecil has found, as I have, that the lifespan of CFLs hasn’t lived up to the promises.

ALTRUISM: “The research shows that good deeds among men increase when presented with an opportunity to copulate. Theoretically, this suggests that a good deed is the human equivalent of the peacock’s tail. Practically, this research shows how societies can encourage selfless acts.”

DAVID OLSON: Supreme Court Should Limit Congress’s Copyright Power. Indeed.

Rob Merges and I had a piece on this a while back.

ADVICE ON dating while in grad school.

ARMADILLO AEROSPACE got to 82km high. Pretty cool.

APPARENTLY, MY “MAKERS AND TAKERS” COLUMN SUCKS, and I should kill myself or something.

UPDATE: Reader Tad Wert writes: “You might as well give up. When your critics start throwing “nuance” at you, you know they’re not hearing a word you’re saying.” Well, mostly I’m surprised that a professor of political science seems entirely ignorant of Mancur Olson.

Also, see my Is Democracy Like Sex? piece, though in retrospect I think I was a bit too optimistic there. [Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!]

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Quick is less surprised.

WHEN THE HR OFFICE addresses restroom etiquette.

AT AMAZON, bestselling audiobooks.

DRINK A GLASS OF RED WINE WHILE SITTING IN THE SUN (CONT’D): Lack of Sunlight, Vitamin D Tied to Stroke Risk. “The sun gets a bad rap, but sensible sun exposure is probably the way to go.”

Related: Study finds high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in seniors.

SEXIST OPPRESSION: Men Will Spend Twice As Much As Women For Valentine’s Day.

NSFW: A gallery from the topless Davos protest by Ukraine’s Femen protesters.

11 MILLION SLICES: Inside Domino’s Super Bowl Day Pizza War Room.

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS pose with their most iconic image.

BIGOTRY WILL SLIP OUT: CNN’s John King calls Romney, ‘Governor Mormon.’

IN THE MAIL: Golden Reflections.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: It’s Takers vs. Makers and the Takers Are Winning.

Inspired by Charles Sykes’ A Nation of Moochers.

HMM: Nigeria oil line on fire; militants claim attack.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama’s isolation leads to skewed decisions. “Obama prefers getting information and making decisions by staying up late and reading memos rather than meeting with people — a temperament that’s a liability because face time with the president is one of his major sources of political capital.”

GWYNETH PALTROW Enters the Mommy Wars: ‘Compromise…To Be a Wife.’

Gwyneth Paltrow has stepped out of a magazine’s pages and into the mommy wars.

In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the movie star and mother of two, revealed that she advised a girlfriend — an unnamed fellow actress — that she needs “to compromise…to be a wife.” She also talks about being home when her husband returns from work as a way to maintain her marriage and family.

Her words are rubbing a number of moms the wrong way, with some accusing Paltrow of being judgmental and out of touch.

Funny, but nobody seems to think there’s anything wrong with saying that you have to compromise to be a husband. . . .

GREEN PAYOLA? Sierra Club took $26M from gas industry to fight coal-fired plants. It’s like they’re just political mercenaries or something. Next they’ll be taking Arab money to oppose Canadian oilsands development.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Stopping Nosebleeds With Bacon. “A new medical study recommends a method called ‘nasal packing with strips of cured pork’ as an effective way to treat uncontrollable nosebleeds.”

I don’t know why I didn’t see this sooner.

AT AMAZON, Science-Fiction Bestsellers on Blu-Ray.

Also, today only, up to 65% off on cashmere. For women and men.

LAMAR SMITH’S PRIMARY OPPONENT: A reader writes:

You mentioned this guy before, and now he’s officially filed to take out Lamar Smith in TX-21.

He’s not only making an issue out of SOPA, but Smith’s Internet snooping bill.

Not working for the guy, and no need for a h/t.

Site: http://sheriffmackforcongress.com/

“A Buck to Crush SOPA”:

I met him once back in the 1990s at a Second Amendment event in Arizona. Seemed like a nice guy.

UPDATE: Here’s more on Mack’s candidacy.

SEE THE 5 most politically controversial Super Bowl ads of all time.

AND THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN SAYS THANK YOU: Harvard Professor Attacks Mitt Romney As “Stealth Tea Party Candidate.”

WELL, AMERICA CAN HOPE: Stock Market Predicts Defeat For President Obama. The Insta-Wife was just saying that she thinks the stock market is rising because it’s pricing in an Obama defeat in November.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

THE HORROR OF cheap energy from shale gas.

THE GREAT ASIAN GOLD THEFT CRISIS. This is in Britain. I wonder if anything similar is happening in the United States.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I haven’t done any research myself, but there was a story on the radio late last year about burglars targeting Indian households in the Atlanta area because they were presumed to have more gold on hand. Metro Atlanta has a large Indian population.”

EQUAL JUSTICE: One Rule For TSA Managers, One Rule for You. “As we’ve mentioned here before, the almost daily parade of would-be flyers who are stupid (or forgetful) enough to unintentionally carry a gun or some other contraband through a TSA airport checkpoint has become tedious. As in hardly even newsworthy any more. The poor absent-minded schmucks are arrested, given the full prostate exam, their guns are confiscated and they’re charged with a felony. Their gun rights: gone baby, gone. It’s the same story over and over, right? Well not quite. Not if you’re a TSA manager. Once again, with monotonous regularity, we learn that there’s one set of rules for government employees and then there are the standards the rest of us are held to.”

GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE:

When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.

There was a horrified silence. The birds stopped singing. The Minister adjusted his tie. The Permanent Secretary looked at his watch. Professor Mackay looked as though he wished the plush sofa into which he was disappearing would swallow him up entirely.

Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.” The biggest tax increase in human history had been based not upon a mature scientific assessment followed by a careful economic appraisal, but solely upon blind faith. I said as much. “Well,” said the Professor, “maybe we’ll get around to doing the calculations next October.”

They still haven’t done the calculations – or, rather, I suspect they have done them but have kept the results very quiet indeed. Here’s why. . . . The UK policy’s mitigation cost-effectiveness – the cost of abating just 1 Kelvin of warming if every nation pursued the UK’s policy with the same cost-ineffectiveness – works out at $108 trillion per Kelvin abated

Read the whole thing.

HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Obama condemns violence in Syria, can’t secure UN Security Council resolution.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: ‘The Army asked that the letter not be read from the pulpit.’

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: CHUCK SCHUMER GOT THE MOST ENRON MONEY OF ANY DEMOCRAT: This story from the New York Daily News talks about why he got it. “Two months after Kenneth Lay, then the boss of Enron, held a Texas fund-raiser for Chuck Schumer, the senator-elect asked for a review of federal power contracts that eat into utility company profits. A Schumer spokesman denied any quid pro quo, but Enron officials praised the senator’s action in 1998 and said his letter asking for the review was a signal he was keeping a campaign promise to push for energy deregulation.”

ROMNEY wins Nevada.

MARK LEVIN EMAILS that his book, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, will be #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for another week.

RICK SANTELLI: What’s wrong with the jobs number: The labor-force participation rate. Obama is suffering “shrinkage.” Explained by Leo Cullum.

I’VE BEEN GETTING ILLITERATE AND ANTISEMITIC EMAILS in response to this link. Without even looking, I knew that Glenn Greenwald had written something about it. And I was right!

UPDATE: I can just add that if George W. Bush had listened to me instead of being a weenie, we’d be a lot better off. Instead, we had to wait until Barack Obama was President to start killing Iranian nuclear-weapons scientists and mullahs. If only Obama had appointed a tough-talking Secretary of State Atrios!

ROSS DOUTHAT: The Media’s Abortion Blinders. “In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person — and certainly no self-respecting woman — could possibly question or oppose. . . . Three truths, in particular, should be obvious to everyone reporting on the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy. First, that the fight against breast cancer is unifying and completely uncontroversial, while the provision of abortion may be the most polarizing issue in the United States today. Second, that it’s no more ‘political’ to disassociate oneself from the nation’s largest abortion provider than it is to associate with it in the first place. Third, that for every American who greeted Komen’s shift with ‘anger and outrage’ (as Andrea Mitchell put it), there was probably an American who was relieved and gratified. Indeed, that sense of relief was quantifiable: the day after the controversy broke, Komen reported that its daily donations had risen dramatically. But of course, you wouldn’t know that from most of the media coverage. After all, the people making those donations don’t exist.”

UPDATE; Reader Tagore Smith writes:

I’m going to stay out of the argument about abortion, because I think other people are going to cover any point I might make. But I’d like to point out that advocacy for breast cancer research is not entirely (or should not be entirely) uncontroversial. It’s not that I want women to die of cancer- my mother died of a non-sex-specific cancer this year, and all I can say is that I wish she hadn’t. I’m still single, and I’m not ashamed to say that I loved my Mom more than I loved anyone else. Someone else very close to me had a breast cancer scare last year- a biopsy revealed that the growth was benign. So I am certainly not against saving women’s lives through research.

But I am male, and I seem to recall that men die of cancer quite a lot more than women do (I’m not an expert on this subject, so I could be wrong about this.) It seems to me that there is a limited pie available for cancer research, and that quite a lot of that pie is already going to breast cancer research. I think that advocating that more dollars ought to go to breast cancer research _should_ be controversial. The message sent, otherwise, is that men are expendable. I don’t see big blue-ribbon prostate cancer campaigns all that often. Maybe it’s just that the prostate is not as sexy as the boob….

Good point, and one that’s been made here before.

#GREENFAIL: 100 Tories revolt over wind farms. “Critics say wind farms are inefficient because the wind cannot be guaranteed to blow at times of greatest energy demand. They are also said to be unsightly, blighting the landscape. Wind farms are also accused of forcing up energy bills while swallowing disproportionate amounts of taxpayer-funded subsidies.”

A CLEAN-BURNING COOKSTOVE THAT’S specially designed for use in the developing world: “These stoves reduce smoke and harmful gases by up to 80 percent, reduce fuel use by up to 60 percent and reduce cooking time by up to 50 percent compared to traditional cooking fires and stoves.”

UPDATE: Reader Perry Beeson points out that you can get it on Amazon. Might be good for disaster-prep.

ANOTHER UPDATE: here’s the spec sheet. (PDF).

JASON PYE: Obama Goes Christianist on Tax Policy.

AT AMAZON, $100 off Rosetta Stone Level 1-5 language sets.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Law Schools Shrink Part-Time Programs After U.S. News Closed Rankings Loophole.

ANONYMOUS SPIES ON, RECORDS FBI-Scotland Yard conference call.

The online vigilante group has released a 17-minute clip of a Jan. 17 conference call between investigators discussing evidence gathered against members of the group as well as upcoming plans for arrests. The group also released an e-mail sent out by an FBI agent to law enforcement agents around the world with a phone number and password for accessing the conference call.

The FBI has confirmed to the Associated Press that the recording is authentic.

AnonymousIRC, a Twitter account purporting to be connected to the group, sent out a tweet on Friday with a link to an audio recording of the call, followed later by a message that read, “The FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.”

My guess is, a mole.

UPDATE: When is a hack not a hack?

ZILLA OF THE RESISTANCE HAS MOVED.

CHANGE: Bill Maher Turns on Occupiers, Denounces Them as D-bags That Should ‘Get a Job.’ Wait, I thought they embodied hope-and-change?

YET ANOTHER COLLEGIATE RACIAL THREAT HOAX.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth had told TODAY’S TMJ4 the threats made towards African-American students at UW-Parkside were a hoax.

The sheriff stressed that there was absolutely no danger to the students at UW-Parkside due to this threat. Through the investigation detectives were able to determine that there never was a threat of harm to students at UW-Parkside.

An investigation led authorities to question a female student about the threats. The student allegedly told authorities she had made the hit list because she was not satisfied with the initial response from a resident assistant when that resident assistant was shown the rubber bands that were said to look like a noose. The suspect wanted greater attention to that issue.

Authorities have not arrested anyone in this case. UW-Parkside police said they are trying to protect the perpetrator Friday evening. The name of the woman involved is being withheld in order to provide the opportunity to remove her from campus.

Why are they trying to “protect the perpetrator?”

BLOOMBERG CEMENTS PLACE as Nanny State King.

Meanwhile, a reminder: “A recent study found that mayors belonging to Bloomberg’s group have been arrested at a much higher rate than Tennessee handgun-carry permit holders, for crimes ranging from perjury and embezzlement to child sexual assault.”

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

AT AMAZON, the new laptop releases for 2012.

LAWSUIT: Defendant Breached a Duty Not to Shoot Bottle Rockets Out of His Anus.

PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION: Milwaukee man with a concealed-carry permit shoots a robber in a store… but the store had a sign prohibiting weapons. The prosecutor made the right call. In Tennessee the signs have to be quite specific to have legal effect, but I don’t know about Wisconsin. The FAQ makes it seem that any language is okay so long as the sign is prominent.

Plus, from the comments: “Interesting that the shop with a ‘No Guns’ sign is the one getting robbed.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: How Deleting My Facebook Profile Saved My Love Life.

PHIL BOWERMASTER: Human beings are capable of amazing things. Don’t make excuses. Do something amazing.

GREEN NEWS: Civic Hybrid driver Heather Peters wins $9,800 judgment from Honda in small claims court.

IN THE MAIL: From Eric Maisel, Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning.

WEAK: Obama job approval among uncommitted voters at 20%; Update: Obama 44, Santorum … 45?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: New York Times Romney-Bashing Continues. “First he was a robot programmed to accomplish the dark and devious theocratic schemes of the Mormon Church. Now they say Mitt Romney isn’t Mormon enough. . . . A modicum of self-awareness or fairness in the editing process would have caught and redressed the obvious bias of this piece, but apparently that’s not how the Times approaches political stories these days: any stick will do to beat the man who increasingly looks like the next Republican nominee.”

Any weapon to hand.

FRIDAY NIGHT DOCUMENT DUMP: White House gives up more Solyndra docs. “Amid threats by a top House Republican to pursue contempt charges, the White House on Friday sent lawmakers more internal documents related to the $535 million loan guarantee to failed solar firm Solyndra. The White House, in providing the 313 pages of documents, again denied that approval of the loan guarantee in 2009 was influenced by politics, an allegation that Republicans have repeated for months.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Why the official 8.3 percent unemployment rate is a phony number—and what it means for Obama’s reelection.

MARK STEYN: So Obama wants to be his “brother’s keeper”? I have an idea for him! “For a start, when he says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That’s what he was living on at the time of the 2008 election. So all the president has to do in terms of shared responsibility is put a $10 bill in an envelope and mail it to Nairobi or Mombasa or wherever and he will double his brother’s salary.”

LIST: Home Improvement How-To Books.

REAL ESTATE UPDATE: New super-Earth detected, ‘best candidate’ for supporting life.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Did Stainless-Steel Appliances Get So Popular?

PETER BERKOWITZ: Sex Smears And The Rule of Law at Yale. More of the former than the latter, alas. “If Yale and other institutions across the country were fulfilling their promise to educate students, then their faculties would teach that riding roughshod over due process shows ignorance of or contempt for the rule of law. Professors would be teaching that the presumption of innocence is rooted in a commitment to treating individuals as ends in themselves and not as a means to advancing some social goal or another, even if that goal is given the name of equality or justice. And students would be learning that our established and legitimate justice system does not presume guilt, because to do so is to fail to appreciate the limits of human knowledge and the propensity of those who wield power to abuse it. The need to restore due process on campus—and in the directives of the federal government—is urgent.”

UPDATE: Reader John Lucas writes: “A red light violator facing a $50 fine gets more due process than a student at Yale (or most other universities) now.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers writes: “I’ve wondered what would happen if every male athlete at Yale looked around a classroom and noticed a young woman looking at them and than filed an ‘informal’ complaint. Under the Yale rules that ‘looking’ at well-built athletes could be a sexual crime. Since the athletes don’t know for sure, shouldn’t they file to protect themselves and then get victim status?”

IS THE SUSAN G. KOMEN FOUNDATION the Left’s latest Wisconsin?

Related: James Taranto: Big Sister Is Watching You: Totalitarian feminism and the smearing of Susan G. Komen. “In truth, Komen was under no obligation to fund Planned Parenthood. Its decision not to do so was not punitive and did not even appear to be. The episode is reminiscent of George Orwell far more than Joe McCarthy. Komen’s actual aim was to extricate itself from the divisive national battle over abortion by severing its connection with a leading combatant.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: As Obama Crows, Real Story Is 10.5 Mil Jobs Deficit.

Obama likes to blame his predecessor for this. And true enough, 4.4 million jobs disappeared during the 2007-08 panic. But after Obama took office, an additional 4.3 million jobs disappeared. So when Obama says “we’ve added 3.7 million new jobs,” he’s not giving you the full story.

We are still 5.6 million jobs below where we were at the peak in 2007. Add to that the 4.9 million new jobs that would have had to be created just to soak up new entrants into the workforce, and all told we have a jobs deficit of 10.5 million.

Read the whole thing.

WELL, WHY CHANGE NOW? “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he would not bring a budget to the floor for a vote this year, the Hill reports, which would make this the third straight year without such a resolution.”

SCIENCE: Study: Sex with Your Ex Can Be a Good Thing. “Researchers at the University of Arizona looked at post-breakup psychological adjustment and ongoing contact among 137 married adults who had recently separated. As you’d expect, people who accepted the breakup were generally better adjusted while those who still pined for it weren’t. But that’s not all: for those who didn’t accept the breakup, making a clean break (the advice everyone gives after a breakup) didn’t leave them any happier than trying to keep up a friendship. And if they stayed in touch with their exes, they were actually doing better if they kept having sex with their partner.”

So in your pre-nup, be sure to provide for post-separation sex. Which I think is the punchline from an old New Yorker cartoon.

ARTIST SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER: Controversial Artist Depicts Obama Trampling The Constitution.

SPENGLER: Lessons About Iran From Hitler.

CLIMATE-CHANGE CHANGE: Global Warming Engine Unexpectedly Slows.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “Blatant violations of international human rights where terrorists are concerned — only it’s Sweden, not the United States, that’s involved.”

AT AMAZON, 30% off on Kindle accessories.

Also, Spotlight Deals on Blu-Ray.

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Monsanto lobbyist uses power as FDA food czar to target Amish.

ZEROHEDGE ON THE WARPATH: Implied Unemployment Rate Rises To 11.5%, Spread To Propaganda Number Surges To 30 Year High.

OBVIOUSLY RACIST: “White Parties” in Davos.

A DEVIOUS NOTION! Scott Walker supporters advocate writing in Scott Walker’s name in the primary that will determine who will be his recall opponent. “Wisconsin’s system of open primaries means voters do not have to share a political party’s affiliation to vote in its primary. So, there’s nothing to stop Republicans from voting in a Democratic recall primary — and from writing in Walker’s name.” Then Walker can run against himself!

IDENTICAL TWIN STUDIES reveal mechanisms behind aging. “In a recent study led by Uppsala University, the researchers compared the DNA of identical (monozygotic) twins of different age. They could show that structural modifications of the DNA, where large or small DNA segments change direction, are duplicated or completely lost are more common in older people. The results may in part explain why the immune system is impaired with age.”

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Grills & Smokers.

FROM GREGORY BENFORD, a space science fiction reading list.

HEY, WAIT — I READ MUTANT 59 AND THIS DOESN’T SOUND SO GREAT: Amazonian Rainforest Fungus Eats Polyurethane, Potentially Solving a Big Landfill Problem.

LIST: Favorite Classic Science Fiction.

UPDATE: Had the wrong link before. Fixed now. Sorry!

SOUNDS MORE LIKE STERILIZATION THAN MALE BIRTH CONTROL.

The procedure: a few zaps to the balls with a high-frequency ultrasound and POOF! His swimming friends who threaten your womb with gestation disappear! Well, that’s what happened to male rats in a recently published study. After each rat had two ball-zapping treatments, researchers found that the rat’s sperm count was zero and its sperm-making germ cells were eradicated. (Yay! I think?)

Scientists believe these same results may possibly translate to men, but the risks and full effects of the treatment are still unclear. I am definitely a little confused. After we detonate our partner’s sperm and sperm-producing cells, are we supposed to resurrect them at a later date with a please-friendly-sperm-come-back-to-life incantation if we decide to have babies together?

Like I say, if it works in humans at all it sounds more like a non-invasive replacement for vasectomy.

THE RACE TO BUILD A REAL STAR TREK TRICORDER. “The two groups announced this month that they are joining forces to launch the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, a $10 million competition to build a handheld, mobile device able to quickly diagnose a range of health problems and measure real-time information such as respiratory rate and blood pressure.”

EDUTOPIA: “Shop” Is Not a Four-Letter Word.

TOM FRIEDMAN WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: China’s Pollution Problem Is Visible From Space. “World Health Organisation guidelines suggest that PM2.5 levels above ten micrograms per cubic metre are unsafe. The boffins have found (as the map shows) that almost every Chinese province has levels above that. Indeed, much of the country’s population endures air so foul that it registers above 30 on the PM2.5 scale, with Shandong and Henan provinces topping 50. Because these readings reflect the average pollution that a typical resident in a province is likely to endure during a given year, they underplay the sharp spikes in pollution that are seen on particularly dirty days, when spot readings go much higher. That is why Beijingers should take little comfort from the fact that the capital’s pollution measures only 35.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: No Money Down!

With public university administrators continually arguing for tuition increases to counter state appropriations cuts, it seems far-fetched that their budget problems could be solved by eliminating student tuition and fees altogether.

But that’s the idea put forth by a group of students from the University of California at Riverside, who in January proposed a new funding model for the University of California system that seeks to solve two of the system’s biggest problems: unpredictable and large decreases in state appropriations, and the steady increase in tuition costs.

Under the students’ plan, called the UC Student Investment Proposal, students in the system would pay no upfront costs for their education but would agree to pay 5 percent of their income to the system for 20 years after graduating and entering the workforce.

Well, this would give universities some skin in the game.