LONGEVITY UPDATE: Considerable progress for the Methuselah Mouse Prize, which seeks to do for longevity research what the X-Prize is doing for private spaceflight.

HELPING THE BLIND SEE: And we’re not talking about variable font size, here.

And speaking of eyesight to the blind, here’s another effort. But none are so blind as those who will not see.

UKRAINE UPDATE: Here’s an interesting column by former Solidarity figure and Polish foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek.

STILL MORE TIREBLOGGING — plus a long awaited photo of The Vulcanizer!

NOT OUT UNTIL JULY, but already number one on Amazon. The mind boggles.

TIREBLOGGING — A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON! Following up on yesterday’s report from Nigeria, Manan Ahmed writes on tire changing in Pakistan.

DARFUR UPDATE: “UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says current attempts to end the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region are not working.”

HAPPY FESTIVUS!

A CANADIAN CHRISTMAS MIRACLE: God bless us, every one, eh?

A CHRISTMAS CAROL, remixed by Doug Kern. Here’s the Ayn Rand version:

The ruggedly handsome and weirdly articulate Ebenezer Scrooge is a successful executive held back by the corrupt morality of a society that hates success and fails to understand the value of selfishness. So Scrooge explains that value in a 272-page soliloquy. Deep down, Scrooge’s enemies know that he is right, but they resent him out of a sense of their own inferiority. Several hot sex scenes and unlikely monologues later, Scrooge triumphs over all adversity — except a really mean review by Whittaker Chambers. Meanwhile, Tiny Tim croaks. Socialized medicine is to blame.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Okay, I can’t resist quoting the Richard Dawkins version, either: “Ghosts don’t exist. Scrooge does whatever he wants. Tiny Tim dies. Later, Scrooge dies. No one cares. The Christmas Carol meme lives on indefinitely.”

THANK YOU, STEVEN DEN BESTE. When I wrote that before, I was talking about stuff like this — really, a tremendous contribution to the blogosphere.

But thanks again, because the Den Beste example — with his complaints about the grinding effect of negative email, and how that contributed to his getting tired of blogging — has led a lot of readers to send me nice notes, and even donations, in the hope that it’ll encourage me to stick around.

They’re much appreciated. Thanks!

FISH. BARREL. Ka-Pow. Easy, yet strangely satisfying.

YES, IT’S ALWAYS SEEMED THIS WAY to me, too:

Ok, so here we have little Rudolph with an unfortunate deformity. All of the other reindeer laughed and called him names, shunning him from the tightly-knit reindeer community — right up until they have a use for the little mutant’s deformity! Then they suddenly declare they “love” him. Yeah, right. Just so long as his honker lights up the night sky!

Indeed.

ANOTHER NEAR MISS: Not so troubling in itself, as for what it represents.

RUSH LIMBAUGH BUSTED for cigar hypocrisy.

I AM NOT CONVINCED by Gregory Djerejian’s criticism of Rumsfeld and current troop-level policy in Iraq. But people in the Administration ought to be reading his blog because — unlike many in the media and elsewhere — he’s an honest critic who wants our effort to succeed. And one of the dangers of an unrelenting media assault is that it can lead you to tune out all criticism, simply because some of it is dishonest. That tends to produce serious errors.

And this is certainly true: “Elections are not a panacea leading to stability.” They’ll help a lot — and it’s certainly clear that Zarqawi, et al., fear them — but this is a lengthy process, not one of quick fixes.

IT’S A UKRAINE ROUNDUP over at Le Sabot Post-Moderne. And there’s more from Veronica Khokhlova, who has a report, too.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

ARE YOU AN OP-ED COLUMNIST LOOKING FOR MATERIAL to fill the obligatory end-of-the-year roundup column? Don’t stress yourself — just go over to Tim Blair’s, where he’s rounded up the best material from 2004 by month, with links! The column will almost write itself. Just drop a few bucks in his tipjar to show your gratitude. [Tipjar? You’re dreaming, right? — Ed. Hey, maybe they’ll be moved by the Christmas Holiday spirit! Oh, Puhleez. — Ed.]

A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE from Martha Stewart.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Rachel Lucas is the recipient of a very different Christmas message.

BILL QUICK TRIUMPHS over blogger burnout.

ADVENTURES IN JOURNALISM: Pajamas are worn.

MY BROTHER IS REPRESENTING NIGERIA in the tireblogging Olympics! I think he takes the gold medal with this entry. (This post will help to illustrate the contrast he describes).

I’ve been encouraging him to write a book on West African automotive culture for quite a while.

I told you that tireblogging was the next big thing!

DREAMING EUROPE IN A WIDE-AWAKE WORLD: Jim Bennett has a very interesting review essay in The National Interest.

Shockingly, it’s not, as such things often are, just a rehash of his recent book, but rather contains lots of actual new thoughts.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: A shamelessly pro-Bush rag?

GAYPATRIOT looks at the growing demographic clout of red states and suggests that gay activists need to tailor their message.

UPDATE: Related thoughts on demographics here.