NEWT GINGRICH: Boycott NBC.

SAVE YOUR KNEES with an underwater treadmill. No, really.

CAFE AND MORE, at the Carnival of Cars.

MORE PROBLEMS for Eliot Spitzer.

ARNOLD KLING ROUNDS UP the best economics books of 2007.

IN THE MAIL: A copy of Mark Levin’s Rescuing Sprite, with a very nice inscription from the author. Thanks!

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE who don’t support Hillary. “Hillary is not just another professional woman of my generation, who ought to inspire sisterly empathy. She is a throwback to an earlier era, when women found their place through their husbands.”

Perhaps they see her as more Lurleen Wallace than Amelia Earhart.

UPDATE: The Insta-Mom emails: “I remember Lurleen Wallace. I was a citizen in Wallace’s Alabama. And Hillary Clinton is NO Lurleen Wallace!”

THE TEDDY BEAR THAT embarrassed Sudan.

I MENTIONED THE CHINESE AGE OF EXPLORATION the other day, and a reader informed me of this not-yet-published alt-history novel on that topic: 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. It could easily have worked out that way, and if you’d been watching things in, say, 1400 it probably would have looked like the way to bet.

UPDATE: A somewhat related item from Rand Simberg.

ANOTHER UPDATE: S.M. Stirling emails:

Noticed the bit on your blog about the Chinese “exploration” fleets of the 1400’s. In point of fact they didn’t do any exploration at all; they were prestige projects ‘showing the flag’ along trade routes that had been in operation for centuries, if not millennia.

Experienced pilots were available for every single mile. The Chinese did no exploration and had no interest in going anywhere they didn’t already know about; they were about as likely to find the Americas or sail around the Cape to Europe as they were to fly to the moon by putting their heads between their knees and spitting hard.

Furthermore, the reason they built very big ships was to impress the locals, not because of any technological superiority. Wooden sailing ships of more than about 2000 tons burden have severe technical problems and are less seaworthy than those of more moderate size; that’s why a 2000-ton ship remained “very large” well into the 19th century, when iron and then steel frames and hulls became available. The finest of the China tea-clippers, the Cutty Sark, was around 900 tons displacement.

Even in the late 1400’s, European ships were more efficient and the advantage increased over time. Eg., the ‘water-tight compartments’ of Chinese junks were of value only when the ship hit a rock. In between, they meant that the vessel couldn’t have a gun deck, and that moving cargo around was much more cumbersome.

The Chinese were an inventive people but not technologically inclined as a society. When the British stormed the Taku forts in the course of the Opium War, they found that the Chinese cannon were all fixed to baulks of timber (in a manner obsolete in Europe in 1400) and that the only models that could be aimed properly had been made under the direction of Jesuit missionaries in the 1600’s. And this in the country that invented gunpowder, and probably first used it as a propellant!

The Chinese were perfectly capable of casting cannon equal to those of the Europeans in the 1600’s, or for that matter the 1840’s — they had fine craftsmen who made large, intricate castings and had been using cast iron several hundred years before Europeans got around to developing the blast furnace. They just weren’t interested enough to do so, not until the gwailo marched into Beijing and molested their womenfolk and used the graves of their ancestors for an Aunt Sally.

The wages of isolationism.

THE “INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY” apparently enjoys limited respect with the American public:

Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women.

Interesting that women are less persuaded than men.

FROM ILYA SOMIN: More on how foreign libel and hate-speech laws threaten the free speech of Americans. “As a tentative proposal, I suggest that Congress consider the possibility of creating a federal cause of action for US citizens who have been victimized by a foreign libel or hate speech lawsuit attacking speech that would be legal in the United States under the First Amendment. The US writer should be able to recover any damages that the foreign court forced him or her to pay, plus legal fees, plus perhaps some amount of punitive damages in order to promote the goal of deterrence.”

CAPT. ED SAYS don’t dismiss the CIA tape-destruction scandal.

I don’t know a lot about this, but it’s possible further evidence that I was right to oppose Harriet Miers’ nomination. Well, that’s probably unfair — she opposed destroying the tapes, according to ABC. On the other hand, she’d be a Supreme Court justice now, which would be ticklish. As I argued, the path from White House Counsel to Supreme Court is not one that should be too short.

Should we abolish the CIA? Well, it’s probably too early to draw that conclusion.

UPDATE: A different view from reader Thom Wilder:

I think I preferred the cold war days when congress and the press, and the general public for that matter, had far less knowledge/scrutiny of what the CIA does. Secrecy is the only way an intelligence agency can do its job. If it’s actions are public, as now, then they become a mere political pawn. Can you imagine how the cold war might have turned out without the CIA or SAS having had the ability to perform it’s operations almost entirely out of view and out of scrutiny?

Gitmo and terror interrogation tapes are small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and they are better off kept secret, as they once were. Just as I don’t trust Congress to run a war via legislated, politically-motivated surrender dates and withholding of troop funding, I don’t trust them to run an intelligence agency via politically-motivated reports and knee-jerks to things like destroyed interrogation tapes. (I’ll take my chances entrusting the Military, and yes the CIA.) I don’t even trust Congress to have a single worthwhile thing to say about it one way or the other.

An intelligence agency by definition must operate in secret, otherwise there is little point to it’s existence, and little hope of actually gathering good intelligence. The CIA is perhaps now just another role-player in the daily political soap-opera that is our two-party travesty of a government has become, written and executive-produced by the left-biased MSM.

The old system rested on a degree of patriotism and self-control that is no longer present in our political class, including the media. It also depended on a willingness to discipline those who departed from the norms. That, too, is absent.

CONGRESS! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? An amusing parody.

AMAZON’S ‘BOTS DELIVER gift recommendations for girlfriends and wives.

DON’T TELL JONAH GOLDBERG: The Flying, Screaming Monkey Toy.

JAMES LILEKS:

Said the concerned public official: “This is not an ‘oops.’ I hate to differ, but yes, this is the technical definition of “oops.” This is the equivalent of thinking you won the Powerball and running up every credit card you have

“Lundgren said the trouble began in August when a clerk went into Mattson’s file to change the designation of the property, at 233 Lake St. E., from homestead to non-homestead to reflect its change in status after its sale.

“The clerk filled in the $18,900 proposed valuation, but then mistakenly hit the key to exit the program. The computer added four zeros to fill out the nine numerical spaces required by the software, thus indicating the value was $189,000,000.”

This generated new estimates of increased property tax revenues.

“Those three entities — which were counting on the $2.5 million in increased property tax collections — now face the daunting task of raising taxes or cutting budgets to make up for the shortfall.”

Good grief.

URBAN COUGARS IN THE DALLAS AREA:

Flyers now warn of the danger: A mountain lion sighting on the Allen-Lucas border that’s putting families on edge.

“We moved out here for the space and for our daughter so she can have a place to play and go hunt frogs, but now I can’t let her out,” said resident Jana Zettl.

It’s another David Baron moment. I’ve written about this before.

UPDATE: A different kind of cougar is roaming Dallas, as well. Rrrowr!

A CHRISTMAS TIP SUGGESTION FROM MY BROTHER: Tip your garbage collectors. “If anybody deserves a little extra credit for toiling in the cold, I think it’s them.” They certainly work harder this time of year, too.

My brother’s band, 46 Long, has a cool new website, too.

PRAISE FOR SELF-DEFENSE as incitement to violence. Sigh.

MIKE ALLEN: Why the New 35-MPG Fuel Economy Standard Is a Bad Idea. He thinks high gas prices will do a better job of encouraging economy. He may be right. Already sales of light trucks and SUVs are plummeting.

THIS SEEMS KIND OF UNFAIR: Last year, we interviewed Gordon Crovitz, and he described himself as “the last person in the country with ‘newspaper publisher’ in his title who nonetheless is an optimist.”

Now this: “People briefed on the matter said that both Mr. Zannino and L. Gordon Crovitz, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, would be succeeded by trusted lieutenants of Rupert Murdoch soon after the takeover was complete.” Though to be fair, he was optimistic about the Wall Street Journal as a newspaper. Still . . ..

BETTER ALL THE TIME: Phil Bowermaster rounds up all sorts of news you probably missed. Brighten up your weekend by reading it!

HEH: An objective look at Mitt Romney’s speech.

VIDEO: Voices from Anbar.

THOUGHTS ON “STEYNOPHOBIA” AND LIBEL TOURISM: “I think ultimately we are going to need some legislation — a federal cause of action against those who intentionally use foreign courts to attempt to suppress American free expression rights. We also need diplomatic pressure to be brought to bear against the countries that are the practitioners of this anti-democratic extortion racket and the countries that allow their courts and other official institutions to serve the purpose.”