A NANNY ON HORSEBACK: “Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.”

ISN’T IT ILLEGAL TO THREATEN VOTERS? Caucus for Biden, or he may kiss you!

THOUGHTS ON Kipling.

ABOUT A GAZILLION READERS have sent me this link to a report of an anti-military lawyer trashing a Marine’s car. All I can say is, it’s gobsmackingly vile, if true.

DANIEL DREZNER: Should celebrities set the global agenda?

I’ve got a one-word answer.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: Tennessean Sid Evans is moving south to take over Garden & Gun magazine. We get that; it’s not bad — somewhere between Town & Country and Sports Afield, with a touch of not-so-politicized Vanity Fair added in. And where else can you find out about Winston Groom’s favorite shotgun? (Via Michael Silence).

JOHN TIERNEY on the proposed Science Debate 2008: “I can’t imagine the candidates’ handlers are happy with this prospect, given how much extra work it would mean for them in bringing the candidates up to speed. Politics attracts lawyers and liberal-arts majors, not science whizzes.”

OF HILLARY AND P.G. Wodehouse.

FRED THOMPSON’S CLOSING ARGUMENT TO IOWA VOTERS:

(Via The Corner.)

UPDATE: Peter Robinson likes it: “Thompson has sat himself down, looked into a camera, and spoken for a quarter of an hour, calmly and straightforwardly making his case. I myself find this impressive—in a way, moving. Thompson seems to have stepped out of the eighteenth century. He trusts voters to think. And if the comments on YouTube are at all representative, plenty of people agree.” But enough?

FRANCE VS. SYRIA.

REMEMBERING the election before Pearl Harbor.

TOM MAGUIRE: “Where’s the lefty traffic? (I blame Dick Cheney).”

A LOOK AT How and why knots form. There’s math.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “The Iraqi interior ministry lauded its achievements over the past year on Saturday, saying that 75 percent of Al-Qaeda’s networks in the country had been destroyed in 12 months. Ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf also outlined sharp falls in the numbers of assassinations, kidnappings and death squad murders.”

BENAZIR BHUTTO apotheosis.

WHEN THE CORPSE TWITCHES, the jaws snap: “Record Industry Goes After Personal Use . . . the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.” The brain’s been dead for a while, though.

UPDATE: “I guess I won’t be buying that iPod, then.”

TIM BLAIR: “If you can’t laugh at murderous fanatics, what can you laugh at?” Those who run PC-interference for murderous fanatics?

MIKE HUCKABEE and the wages of sin.

WHY LAW PROFESSORS ARE HAPPY: “It is striking that job satisfaction among academics is high not only relative to those in private practice, but also relative to graduates employed in ‘public service,’ which is often viewed as a career path chosen in large part to maximize personal happiness rather than income.” Of course, the data involve Yalies, who are presumptively weird, so . . . .

MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT TO MYSELF: A copy of Propellerhead’s Reason 4 software. I’ve been happily producing podcast music — “stingers” and “bleebles” as they’re known in the trade. It’s very intuitive and easy to use. By the way, you can get a free copy of the software synth I’ve loved for years — the ReBirth RB-338 — here. All you have to do is register on the site.

UPDATE: Reader John Marcoux emails:

From a long ago email to you, I related how, in a conversation with Paul Van Dyk at a club in Chicago, I learned that many of the great European DJs, including Paul, run Reason on Apple notebooks (see pic below).

I fooled around with it but found it harder to master than you apparently have. Maybe it works better on an Apple. For dabblers (at 67, that’s me) this Amazon item is pretty good and only $30. Won’t run on Vista.

Yeah, there’s a lot of good cheap software out there. Meanwhile, I certainly haven’t “mastered” Reason; I’ve just figured out how to get some sounds out of it that I like. That’s step one . . . . I didn’t realize so many DJ’s were using Reason, though — I thought it was more Ableton Live or Final Scratch, but I’ve been out of touch with the DJ scene for a few years. I blame blogging.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader David Preiser emails:

You’re right about Reason. It’s a great studio tool, and a lot of pros on the creative end use it (as opposed to editors and sound guys, and studio mavens, I mean). If you ever do composing or create midi files elsewhere, Reason is great for making them come alive. And it is very intuitive, but only if you’ve ever worked with real equipment, even a little bit, which I know you have. The key feature that got me making noise within minutes was the Tab button. If you’ve already discovered that, you’ll know what I mean when I say that anyone over 25 who has ever handled real equipment will be forever grateful to the folks at Propellerheads for that one.

Yeah. Reason simulates a rack of hardware, and when you hit “Tab” it rotates to let you look at the back. You can see cables connecting the different pieces of virtual equipment, and repatch them by clicking and dragging. (And when the rack flips around, the “cables” jiggle, which is a nice touch that Reason has had since earlier versions.)

MORE: Here’s a short Reason video.

HOW CLEAN IS YOUR ELECTRICITY?

BILL KRISTOL’S NEW YORK TIMES COLUMN GIG IS CONFIRMED, and Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts. Plus, a response to the NYT review of his book.

FRED THOMPSON corrects the media. “Today I had this story written about me regarding what I said at a Town Hall event in Burlington, Iowa by a reporter who wasn’t even at the event.”

THE GREAT FALL OF CHINA: They’re still big, just not nearly as big as we thought. Walter Russell Mead looks at the implications.

UPDATE: Sam Dinkin has further thoughts.

WARNER BROTHERS goes copy-protection free with DRM-less MP3 downloads at Amazon. This is a good trend.