CARBON TAXATION without representation. How about we require that delegates to the U.N. General Assembly be democratically elected?

YALE’S REALLY RICH. TOM SMITH OBSERVES: “I have thought of asking Yale to stop writing and asking me for money. But why should I? I like getting the letters. They fill me with a kind of awe. They remind me that greatness comes to those who dare to ask for more than anyone can possibly think they deserve. They fascinate me. What can they possibly say to make me think I should send what $50, $100? to the people who are making 28% a year on $22.5 Billion? They say they need the money, which cannot be true, except in the sense of me and the beggar. I am astonished.”

SCRAMJET PROGRESS: I could go for the two-hour New York to Tokyo flights. The missiles, not so much.

AL QAEDA IN LONDON: “Investigators examining the bungled terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow six months ago believe the plotters had a link to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which would make the attacks the first that the group has been involved in outside of the Middle East, according to senior officials from three countries who have been briefed on the inquiry.”

“Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” is what the New York Times calls Al Qaeda in Iraq.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM RADIO, the latest PJM Political is now online.

CARMAGEDDON: Who wins when a 2001 Ford Escort and a 2002 Chevy Cavalier collide?

Hint: Not Matthew Hoy.

CIVILIZATION AT RISK: “So without any real standards, anyone has a right to declare himself or herself a journalist.”

Yep. Which is pretty much how it works now. Journalism isn’t a profession, it’s an activity — and often those who engage in it for a living act pretty unprofessionally. Or just write lame, self-serving columns.

UPDATE: A response from Chuck Simmins.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch.

And Bill Quick comments: “Your reputation wasn’t murdered, dummy. It was a victim of suicide.” And here’s an intimation of an agenda:

This goes back to lobbying for H. R. 2102, now in the Senate. The bill would provide legal exemptions and a federal “shield law” for journalists, but only for “professional journalists.” Anyone not making a living at journalism would not be covered. More here.

Next comes the push for licensing legislation. It’s an attempt at establishing a monopoly protection act, and reserving freedom of the press for “professionals.” Funny, I don’t recall such an exclusion in the First Amendment–but that’s what they’ll claim as they go forward.

No doubt.

MORE: Hell, Big Media types can’t even read money.

LET THEM EAT CAKE: Ron Bailey reports from Bali: “Is threatening to confiscate their patents really the way to encourage companies and inventors to invest in creating the innovative low-carbon energy technologies that world is being told are vital to stopping dangerous climate change?”

A DEM DEBATE ROUNDUP: “Democratic presidential hopefuls called for higher taxes on the highest-paid Americans and on big corporations Thursday and agreed in an unusually cordial debate that any thought of balancing the federal budget would have to wait.”

A BIG CHRISTMAS GPS sale at Amazon. Maybe I should crack and finally buy one. But I’m pretty good about finding my way around, and I’m afraid my skills will atrophy if I have a box on the dashboard telling me where to turn. Am I wrong?

UPDATE: Lots of responses, so I’m bumping this. Reader Jane Woodworth says I’m right to worry:

I recently bought a car with a GPS system, automatic headlights, a camera that shows you what you are backing into, a keyless ignition and a few other current conveniences.

I can say categorically that I am now too stupid to drive an ordinary car. As evidence I took my business partner’s car recently, and not only left the lights on but left the car running until the battery died.

I am now absolutely too dumbed down to drive a lawn mower, never mind a normal car. I say fight the urge.

Matthew Cowles says not so much:

Yes, it’s possible that a person’s navigation skills might atrophy as a result of using a portable GPS. But I’ve been a flight instructor and consider my navigation skills pretty good, and I’d still say that that’s a bit like being afraid that getting a typewriter will cause a person’s penmanship to deteriorate.

Portable GPSes aren’t useful all that often because, pretty much by definition, people mostly go to places they’re familiar with. But when they are useful, they’re very useful indeed.

I have a review that’s about a year old (and therefore not directly useful) of the Magellan 2200T that explains my opinion.

Tom Ussery says don’t worry:

Do yourself a favor and get one. I thought the same until I bought an Acura TL with the navigation system. I have never looked back, and my manliness, and internal compass-direction finding ability has just been enhanced, not hindered.

That’s a relief. Reader Henry David says go for it:

I have had two Garmin Nuvi 660’s ( one was stolen ) and would not drive without a GPS.

Two big deals – 1. Traffic report is great !!! I check out where the congestion is before I head off.
2. The device calculates and updates my arrival time – I don’t have to guess if I’m running on time, and 3. It counts down miles to the next waypoint.

Of course I’m in LA and its very very big with lots of alternate routes if you have a heads up.

Well, that describes Knoxville, too. And Mason Kidd says I’ve got it backward:

Concerning your post on getting a GPS. I too thought the same thing – that with a GPS unit I would become reliant on it and lose my skills with directions. We got a new car with a navigation system in it, and I’ve found the opposite to be true. Having a map in front of me while driving allows me to visualize things much better, and remember the layout of those streets better in the future. The key has been to not actually use the turn-by-turn directions unless really necessary.

Good suggestion.

MORE: Reader Rick Lang emails:

I’m a retired AF F-15 Pilot and thought pretty much the same as you. My wife however is “directionally challenged”, so when we bought her a new car, I went ahead and got one. I thought it was pretty cool, find the nearest McDonalds or Gas Station. Not really necessary though. But when we took her car and my dad to my son’s college graduation and while we were transiting Austin, he went into hypoglycemic shock. Two clicks on the GPS and we’re getting turn by turn to the nearest hospital. Long story short ALL my vehicles have one now.

Good point.

STILL MORE: Some further thoughts from Kim du Toit, whose situation seems like mine.

THE FRED THOMPSON CAMPAIGN apologizes.

NOT QUITE BRINKS SECURITY: “A female homeowner who shot a male intruder in her back yard in October 2006 spoke to KNBC’s Laurel Erickson on Wednesday, one day after a jury found the man guilty of all charges. Nadine Teter shot Michael Lugo twice in the stomach and once in the leg after he broke into her Canyon Country home. Lugo broke the lock on Teter’s door and barged in. She fled to the back yard with her gun, according to police. . . . Teter said she thinks that every woman should carry a gun. . . . ‘I was not going to get raped. I was not going to get murdered. There was no way — and I didn’t,’ Teter said.”

ANOTHER FAKE MASSACRE IN IRAQ? They’re as common as presidential debates this fall.

DAVID GULLIVER: “You know, if the general election is Hillary against Huckabee, Hillary just might prove correct in her thesis that many Republican women will vote for her.”

I WAS JUST CLEANING OUT MY OFFICE and looking at the September, 2007 issue of the ABA Journal, in which the war on terror received a D+. Now I see that the ABA Journal has made Alberto Gonzales its Lawyer of the Year.

ANOTHER DEBATE? Jeralyn Merritt is liveblogging the Democrats in Iowa.

MAN SHOOTS RED-LIGHT CAMERA — in self-defense?

UPDATE: Not just an isolated phenomenon, apparently. Albuquerque reader Karim Fattah emails: “Maybe the red-light cameras can be recycled and used as targets at shooting ranges. That’s about the only way they’ll be popular with the public.”

LEE HARRIS ON UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: “It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.”

QUESTIONS POSED by big universities with bigger endowments: “In the present circumstances, the administration and boards of these schools now control the money because the endowment is managed by internally controlled entities. Accordingly, the most important voice at Yale would have to be the estimable and much-respected David Swenson, who has managed the Yale endowment to astonishing annual returns of over 20% for 10 years. Yale’s endowment is about $22.5 billion. What does this mean for the future of governance at Yale? I wonder.”

MORE ON HONOR KILLING IN CANADA:

Several Canadian Islamic groups have had the decency to deplore the slaying, which seems to have been carried out with the collusion of Aqsa’s brothers. Yet in an exquisite demonstration of moral equivalence, Shahina Siddiqui, the Canadian-based executive director of the Islamic Social Services Association of the United States and Canada, said:

“The strangulation death of Ms. Parvez was the result of domestic violence, a problem that cuts across Canadian society and is blind to color or creed.”

Oh, no, it doesn’t, Ms. Siddiqui, not this type of domestic violence, nor this particular crime: This was Shariah-based justice meted out to a Muslim girl for defying her fundamentalist father.

It was, and it shouldn’t get a multi-culti pass.

THIS IS JUST WRONG: “Amazon.com may not offer free delivery on books in France, the high court in Versailles has ruled.”

ROBERT KAPLAN ON CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS: “It is obvious that a military can only fight well on behalf of a society in which it believes, and that a society which believes little is worth fighting for cannot, in the end, field an effective military.”

Read the whole thing. Though where he says “society,” he’s talking more about elite segments thereof.

VITAMIN D UPDATE:

PEOPLE should sit outside in the middle of the day to help stave off potential deadly medical conditions, an Australian researcher says.

Current recommendations about when people should be exposed to the sun the most were wrong and did not allow people to get enough vitamin D, according to David Turnbull, a research fellow at the University of Southern Queensland’s Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health.

Vitamin D, when absorbed through the skin from UV rays, has been found to help prevent various cancers, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. . . . “In the US, between 50,000 and 60,000 people die each year because of issues relating to not getting enough sun exposure,” he said.

Last month, researchers from King’s College London released a report linking vitamin D with slowing ageing in women.

The British study found more sunshine could also cut the risk of age-related illnesses such as heart disease.

I’ve always been skeptical of the extreme sun-phobia we’ve seen from dermatologists, etc. This suggests that I was right — but read the whole thing.

A LOOK AT THE ten worst gadgets of 2007.

I’m not sure about the Pleo, though — as I noted here before, people like it, except for the torture films.

ELON MUSK REPORTS on what’s happening with SpaceX. (Via Rand Simberg, who has some suggestions.)