LONGEVITY UPDATE: Sara Davidson interviews two scientists on prospects for giving people longer, healthy lives. They’re still talking about slowing the aging process, really, rather than actually repairing the damage due to aging, but that’s still progress. As the science advances, attitudes on this subject are clearly shifting.

I DON’T AGREE WITH THE ETC GROUP ON NANOTECHNOLOGY, but I think they’re right to call for caution before undertaking iron-seeding of the ocean as a means of stimulating plankton growth and carbon sequestration, something I mentioned a while back.

CHERRIES DIVINE: My cousin’s Internet cherry business gets a nice writeup in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I hadn’t realized they were focusing on the corporate gift market, but that makes sense.

MATTHEW PARRIS on why the terrorists will lose:

Have we not noticed how incompetent are Islamic governments and organisations the world over? Has it not occurred to us that if al-Qa’eda really were as wily and resourceful as we tell ourselves they are, and if their tentacles really did extend as wide and deep as some say, they would be on the advance — not battled into a stalemate by Western security and intelligence? If I were an al-Qa’eda activist I could have blown up Parliament or shot at least one of a range of prime ministers by now. Al-Qa’eda’s failure to infiltrate or penetrate Western structures has been complete.

There is a reason for this. Islam, in its more fundamentalist form, doesn’t work. Serious, committed Islamists are most unlikely to succeed within any structures but their own. Their own, meanwhile, are notoriously inefficient and corrupt. Only by lucky coincidence have much of the world’s known petrocarbons been found beneath Islamic nations, giving them what temporary influence they wield. How can any culture which despises modernity, hates mobility, distrusts individual liberty and autonomy, persecutes those who deviate from cultural or ideological norms, imposes a kind of brutal conformity on the way people live, love and work, and at a stroke disempowers 50 per cent of its people (women) from proper education and from all career opportunity so that every boy-child it produces is being brought up by a person who knows little of the world and only a fraction of what the boy must learn — how can such a culture bestride the 21st century, as Selbourne fears Islamism will do?

(Via Andrew Bolt).

A FRED THOMPSON PROFILE in the Nashville Tennessean. He’s clearly not one of those people who started running for President in eighth grade. . . .

HOW LIBERAL LAW PROFESSORS bolstered the individual rights theory of the Second Amendment. Here’s what Laurence Tribe has to say about Parker v. District of Columbia:

Should the case reach the Supreme Court, Professor Tribe said, “there’s a really quite decent chance that it will be affirmed.”

I certainly hope that’s right. Much more on the Second Amendment here.

THE FRENCH ELECTIONS: Nidra Poller is reporting.

But how much difference will they make, even if Sarkozy wins big?

SOME THOUGHTS, on the end of Byran Calame’s tenure as public editor at the Times. I’ll just add that I think the Public Editor position has pretty much been a waste, and that if they want it to amount to something — which I tend to doubt — they should name an outsider to the position. How about Matthew Hoy?

UPDATE: In an update, Surber doubts that Hoy would fill the bill: “Too tough a grader. He does not hand out Gentlemen’s Cs — and Pinch wants Gentlemen’s Bs for his staff. The public editor is the cop who tells people, ‘Move along, nothing to see here.'”

REORGANIZATIONS WITHIN THE INSURGENCY: Herschel Smith has observations. And read this earlier post, too, which makes an important point: “The much-heralded tribal split with al Qaeda is a positive sign in the Anbar Province, but it must be remembered that even if AQI loses in this showdown, the insurgency is not defeated.” It’s an ongoing process, as grinding down insurgencies takes time. I also wonder how much long-term progress we can make so long as Iran (and Saudi elements that aren’t quite the government, not not quite not the government) remain free to fund and supply the insurgents with near-impunity.

JULES CRITTENDEN: Impeach Bush!

GREEN NANOTECHNOLOGY is easy.

LOU DOBBS FOR PRESIDENT? Well, some people are enthusiastic.

SOME PRETTY AMAZING TORNADO VIDEO:

LOTS OF REPORTING FROM THE MILBLOGS CONFERENCE at Gateway Pundit.

President Bush made an appearance, too. Perhaps this will cool the military’s enthusiasm for shutting down milblogs. Perhaps not. (Via Jules Crittenden).

MORE ON EGYPT’S BLOG CRACKDOWN: “Initial ambivalence on the part of government security agents changed in November, said Mr Zarwan, when a cellular phone video appeared on dozens of Egyptian blogs showing two police officers apparently sodomising a detainee with a rod. A public outcry ensued and the officers are being tried for torture. Hossam Hamalawy, who writes a Cairo-based blog called 3Arabawy, said that, despite the crackdown, the bloggers are growing bolder.”

ZAWAHIRI: One percent of the way to his goal. Looking at Zawahiri’s quota for American casualties in Iraq, Don Surber is not impressed: “At this rate, al-Qaeda will meet its goal . . . in about 2353. I’ll be 400 years old then.”

MORE ON Islamists in the Balkans. “The ominous presence of Wahhabi missionaries, financiers, terror recruiters, and other mischief-makers bespeaks a fresh offensive in that tormented land.”

Our “friends” the Saudis. This needs to stop, or be stopped.

THE WASHINGTON POST SAYS DEMOCRATS’ MOMENTUM IS STALLING: “Not a single priority on the Democrats’ agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the ‘do nothing’ tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them.”

MORE CLAIMS THAT GEORGE TENET isn’t telling the truth.

Well, CIA directors are supposed to be good at lying. But then, they’re supposed to be good at keeping secrets, too.

INTERNET STEALTH CANDIDACY, CONT’D: Mickey Kaus: “Thompson could have given a post-debate interview to any news organization in the country. He picked Breitbart.com.”

IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE IT ALREADY, please take my reader survey. There are a lot of questions, but you can skip any you find too intrusive, and quit whenever you get bored. Though I admit that I’m curious to know the average number of tattoos and piercings among InstaPundit readers.

MARK STEYN: “If George Bush put a microchip in your garbage under the Patriot Act, there’d be mass demonstrations across the land. But do it in the guise of saving the planet and everyone’s fine with it.”

WAS THE L.A. COURT too hard on Paris Hilton?

CHINESE EXPORTS ABOUT TO PLUMMET? Reader Tom Holsinger thinks that’s quite possible in light of stories like this one: From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine. With this and the melamine scandal, there are certainly going to be reasons to avoid foods and pharmaceuticals from China.

ADDICTED TO SUSHI: It certainly looks like a delicious spread.

And since they’ve got sushi video, here’s some from my own local place. Is the sushi at the other place better — or is it just the adjectives in the report?