THE RAINMAKERS: Government Cheese.

THOUGHTS ON DAVID BROOKS AND JOE BIDEN.

ERIC POSNER ON the International Criminal Court and Russian sneakiness.

SO I FINISHED CHARLIE STROSS’S SATURN’S CHILDREN the other day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Here’s a snippet of debate over evolution, from among the robots who remain after their human Creators are extinct:

“There’s no such thing as random mutation,” says Sinbad-15, launching itself into the debate at short notice. “Change a random instruction in a program, and what happens? It stops working. Complexity is irreducible. Yes, complex systems — like people — can design other complex systems, including ones that exceed their own metrics, but you’d have us believe that simple systems can generate complex ones if you simply break them often enough at random? Stuff and nonsense! Superstitious! Next you’ll be telling us that there were no Creators–”

“On the contrary! It is from the Creators themselves that the holy scriptures of evolution come to us, from the great prophet Darwin, peace be unto him, and his saintly disciples Dawkins and Gould. We have their holy scriptures to guide us, and they are most explicit on these points–”

“But we’ve got the engineering models! And the design schematics!” Sinbad-15 is clearly annoyed by Twin #1’s irrational and superstitious insistence that people evolved by accident. “We’ve even got the purchase orders! With this upgraded arm, I refute you!”

There’s also a cameo appearance by the Scalzi Museum of Natural History.

SENESCENT CELLS aren’t all bad.

MORE ON BARACK OBAMA AND BILL AYERS from Tom Maguire. “Barack Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers have worked closely together on education reform since 1995, and possibly since 1987. Obama has obfuscated and minimized this association in his public statements and on his website. Why the cover-up? We don’t know, since we aren’t sure what is being concealed.” We just know it’s something Obama doesn’t want us to think about.

THE GROWING PROBLEM of pet obesity.

WHY PEOPLE TEND TO overeat as they age.

A LOOK AT stem-cell research and life-extension.

KATIE GRANJU is now blogging at the News-Sentinel. Check it out.

SPY SHOT: The Scirocco TDI. Looks kinda like a Mazda.

FUNPLEX: An interview with the B-52s. Interesting interview, though Fred Schneider’s en passant dissing of “the red states” is kind of odd for a band from Athens that got most of its early support in the Southeast. Okay, maybe people don’t dance as hard at B-52s shows as at Webb Wilder shows, but that’s just because Webb is . . . Webb.

ALSO, BIGFOOT IS REAL: New Republic’s Winter Soldier Scott Beauchamp Is Back and He Swears It’s All True.

UPDATE: Bob Owens has much, much more. “Spencer Ackerman does a great job of parroting what Beauchamp has been saying all along, and manages to get a few digs in at the man who fired him as well. What he doesn’t do is prove his case. All in all, perhaps his greatest accomplishment was getting this four-page non-revelation published.”

THE TEN BEST CARS FOR 2008, from The Truth About Cars.

THE TOYOTA YARIS: Cheaper to own and operate than a Prius. But there’s a downside: “The Yaris may have won the cost of ownership battle, the Prius is still winning the war. Prius sales are killing Yaris sales, and while the Prius is no beauty queen, the Yaris is just as homely while also having far less interior room.”

DAVID HARSANYI: Let’s Chuck the Drinking Age:

What happens when presidents from more than 100 of the nation’s best-known colleges call on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18? Well, a brigade of hyperbolic mommies start screaming at them, that’s what.

In the Amethyst Initiative, college presidents have offered a rational, if counterintuitive, plan. Let’s stop treating young adults like wards of the state. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (naturally) replied: No debate allowed.

There is plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that the drinking age of 21 is counterproductive.

Yes. Read the whole thing. MADD has long since morphed from an anti-drunk-driving organization — a cause I supported — to an anti-alcohol organization, a modern Temperance Movement. And we know how that worked out last time.

UPDATE: Reader Richard Fagin emails:

Thanks for the link to David Harsanyi’s article on chucking the drinking age. Interestingly, as you noted MADD has become more of a modern day temperance movement than an organization trying to stamp out drunk driving. Along those lines, MADD has been agitating for many years to get the presumptive limit for blood alcohol concentration (BAC) lowered more than it has already. States that want federal highway money are now required to have a BAC limit of 0.08% BAC. This limit was mandated some 20 years ago, after a round in the 1970s of the presumptive limit being lowered to 0.1% from 0.15% BAC. As you would learn in any driving safety course, the risk of being in a traffic accident rises as the driver’s BAC increases. What is not emphasized is that the risk increase is hyperbolic: there is a distinct “knee” in the risk curve at about 0.12% BAC. Lowering the presumptive limit to 0.1% did almost all of the good. Further decreases will only criminalize marginally risky conduct. That, I think, is what MADD really has in mind. It’s not just get the drunks out from behind the wheel, it’s get alcohol out of the car altogether (and every place else, for that matter). As evidence of the latter, I can offer the crusade to have Texas enact open container laws. Until fairly recently, it was perfectly legal to drink (as in consuming alcohol) and drive in Texas, and to have open containers of alcohol in the passenger compartment. It was of course illegal to drive while intoxicated, but that wasn’t enough for the prohibitionists. Why penalize responsible passengers unless you’re on a crusade?

MADD has become a disgrace.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Debating the drinking age.

NEW FROM CHRYSLER: In-car Wi-Fi! “Robinson calls Chrysler’s early EVDO cellular router system a Trojan horse that portends the coming of viable mobile WiMAX, a wireless standard that makes WiFi look like dialup. That kind of speed and coverage could make in-car internet access commonplace, kill satellite radio and drastically change navigation. And it could happen as soon as 2012.”

HEH: Freak Out Your Friends With Fake Obama VP TXT.

UPDATE: It goes well with this: Obama Names Musician Rick Astley as Running Mate: “Self-proclaimed ‘greatest prank evar’ required 18 months, $390 million in prep work. . . . Pumping his fists downward in a striking motion as he spoke, Mr. Obama continued, ‘you just got Rickrolled, America!’ . . . Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal weblog DailyKos.com, has not been seen since Obama’s announcement.” Heh again.

FACTCHECK CHECKS Obama’s birth certificate.

POLITICO: Hillary gets stiffed.

Obama has often said, most recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on July 27, that Clinton “would be on anybody’s short list.”

But apparently not his.

“She was never vetted,” a Democratic official reported. “She was not asked for a single piece of paper. She and Senator Obama have never had a single conversation about it.”

Ouch.

BUT AT LEAST HE WASN’T TALKING ON A CELLPHONE: Drunk, High, Naked Driver Crashes Into Parked Car While Masturbating… But Wait, There’s More!

IN THE MAIL: Dean Karnazes’ 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days — and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! 50 marathons in 50 days. Good grief.

ROGER KIMBALL: Exit, pursued by a bear, or Fukuyama as Antigonus.

THE MOOG GUITAR.