ARNOLD KLING ON AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: “Compared to the United States, other developed countries, particularly in Continental Europe, put up more regulatory impediments to entrepreneurs, particularly the important subset of entrepreneurs that I will define below as change agents. In underdeveloped countries, regulatory impediments are compounded by crime and corruption, creating an environment even less conducive to entrepreneurship. . . . If the United States is exceptional because of our entrepreneurial culture, then our natural allies may not be in Continental Europe, in spite of its democratic governments and high levels of economic development. China seems more dynamic than Europe, but I would argue that China’s government-controlled financial system ultimately is not compatible with American-style entrepreneurship. Instead, we may have more in common with other nations of the Anglosphere, as well as such entrepreneurial outposts as India, Israel, and Singapore.”

THEY’RE STILL CALLING FOR A BOYCOTT OF PILOT OIL, in response to Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam’s membership in an antigun mayors’ group organized by Mike Bloomberg.

Some of the other members are pretty iffy, but I think this is really bad for Haslam’s statewide ambitions for a simpler reason. His weakness is that he’s seen as a country-clubby guy who cares more about how other rich guys feel about him than about how the voters feel. The Bloomberg thing is just fodder for that.

MAGICAL REALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Chester takes a look at the Iraq study group.

WOULD GROWING OLD BE SO BAD, if people treated you like you were young?

A QUIZ ON DIVERSITY in higher education.

ROWAN CALLICK: “The Democrats are being lauded in Europe and much of the Americas as the heroes of the hour, rescuing the USA from those mad neocons. But in most of Asia the perception is quite different — of the Democrat majority as a threat, an enemy of trade, and a busybody across a broader range of issues than the Republican human rights campaigners with their predictable religious focus. In China especially, where the mid-term election itself attracted little media interest, its outcome is now starting to arouse loudly expressed concern about the future relationship of the two great powers.”

CENTCOM IS DEMANDING A RETRACTION FROM A.P. over bogus Iraq reporting.

BALL OF WHACKS: I got one of these in the mail, too, but unlike Virginia Postrel, I haven’t used it and blogged about it.

TROUBLE NOT THE BLOGGER IN HER LAIR: A lesson that Alcee Hastings hasn’t learned. Yet.

Blog criticism of Hastings has been persistent and harsh enough that he responded Nov. 20 by blasting “anonymous bloggers” in general and conservative Michelle Malkin in particular. “I hope that my fate is not determined by Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Barone, [Matt] Drudge, anonymous bloggers, and other assorted misinformed fools,” he wrote in a five-page letter to House Democratic colleagues.

The may have done more harm than good to Hastings’ cause, however, because Malkin answered in kind with a post that labeled Hastings a “fool” and his letter to colleagues an “unhinged rant.” She included plenty of background links on the Hastings bribery case and current criticisms of his leadership bid.

“It isn’t just right-wingers objecting to the possibility of a convicted judge for sale chairing the House Intelligence Committee,” she wrote. “In peacetime, Washington can chalk up Hastings’ resurrection to business as usual. In wartime, Washington has no business doing business as usual.”

Hastings is an obviously bad choice. He’s also the perfect target for hostile bloggers — a guy with a really lousy record who’d rather people didn’t think about it, whose every complaint just provides an opportunity to remind people how lousy that record is.

A LIFETIME IN JAIL FOR PORN, in that “Christianist” bastion, the People’s Republic of China.

WELL, THIS SUCKS: “Dave Hermance, the lead engineer of Toyota’s hybrid vehicle development in the U.S., died on Saturdaywhen his small plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles. He was instrumental in bringing the Prius to the U.S., and his passing is a blow to Toyota’s hybrid vehicle program.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “So what passes for international Western morality these days? Not much.”

It has never been much more than a cloak for America-bashing.

THE LATEST Blawg Review is up!

PAUL BOUTIN: “A week ago, I went for a spin in the fastest, most fun car I’ve ever ridden in—and that includes the Aston Martin I tried to buy once. I was so excited, in fact, that I decided to take a few days to calm down before writing about it. Well, my waiting period is over, I’m thinking rationally, and I’m still unbelievably stoked about the Tesla.”

A VIDEO CARNIVAL? Reader Daren Heidgerken emails:

You have done a number of digital camera “carnivals”, how about one on video cameras? I have a new baby and would like to get a simple, decent quality one to send movies to the grandparents.

Any thoughts on that? I’m not really up on the latest there, but I don’t have to be, if my readers are! As I noted in this post, James Lileks has, and likes, the new Sony compact HD video camera — and if I were taking baby videos I’d definitely want to do it in HD, since regular video will be looking old and crappy within a couple of years as HD becomes the norm. (I think there’s a somewhat newer model than the one Lileks has, too.)

If you’ve got any advice, put “video carnival” in the subject line.

DON’T COUNT PAPER OUT YET: I’ve written before on the virtues of paper as an information-storage system, but here’s something that sounds really cool:

Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in “rainbow format” as coloured circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played. The encoding and decoding processes have not been revealed.

Using this technology an A4 sheet of paper could store 256GB of data. In comparison, a DVD can store 4.7GB of data.

Paper: The information storage technology of the future! Er, as long as all of this doesn’t turn out to be some kind of scam, anyway.

IS THIS A TREND? Another town passes looks at an ordinance calling for all citizens to own guns.

MICHAEL BARONE:

I’ve just finished reading Robert Gates’s memoir, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. It’s a well-written, thoughtful book, leavened by occasional injections of nerdy humor. Gates was a career CIA employee on the analysis rather than the operations side of the agency, and the only CIA analyst ever to become director of Central Intelligence. He specialized in the Soviet Union, though he never set foot in the U.S.S.R. until May 1989. His rapid ascent was amazing. . . .

The picture I get of Robert Gates from his book is that of a careful analyst, one who sees American foreign policy as generally and rightly characterized by continuity but one who sees the need for bold changes in response to rapid changes in the world–and doesn’t look for answers from the government bureaucracies. He is very much aware that we have dangerous enemies in the world, and he was willing over many years to confront them and try to check their advance.

Follow the link for much more.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Pejman Yousefzadeh. “Iraq will be the biggest front-page challenge for Robert Gates as he prepares to assume his new responsibilities. But military transformation is a tremendously consequential issue that should receive more attention in light of Secretary-designate Gates’s appointment than it currently does.”

A LOOK AT the politically divided academy.