SHOULD YOU continue to work out when you’re sick?

DO-IT-YOURSELF D.N.A.: “The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.”

THE RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE GAVE ITS ALL, BUT IT WASN’T ENOUGH THIS TIME: Retail Sales Plummet: “Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer spending, according to new data released Thursday. . . . When gasoline sales are excluded, the fall in overall retail sales is more modest: a 2.5% drop in November and a 4% decline in December. A 40% drop in gasoline prices over the year-earlier period contributed to the sharp decline in total sales.” Which is good news, right? But still, not a good Christmas season. Online did better, but still fell. Plus this: “The personal savings rate also climbed in November. Socking away more in the bank leaves less for splurging at the mall.” But we’re supposed to want people to sock away more in the bank, right?

HOPE YOU HAD A MERRY CHRISTMAS! I got some nice presents, including this cool USB microphone, which should make on-the-go podcasting fun and easy. I’d say that my family, overall, defied the trends by spending more than last year and giving a lot of gift cards. Of course, we’ve never been especially lavish gift-givers, being more into hanging out together at the holidays. At any rate, another excellent Christmas for us; hope yours was great, too.

ON PJTV, the Insta-Wife interviews Rep. Stacey Campfield about his paternity-fraud bill. Free to everyone, with no registration required.

SAYING GOODBYE to Boston Legal. I only watched it a few times; it was about as legally realistic as Ally McBeal, but I liked the chemistry between William Shatner and James Spader.

“SANTA” KLAUS.

REAL WORRIES: What if New York or California goes bust? “If California and New York State were businesses, they’d be going bankrupt. If you’re among the nearly 20 percent of Americans who live or work in these two states, the fiscal crisis is coming home for the holidays. And the worst is still on its way.”

THOUGHTS ON THE DECADE, from Jonah Goldberg: “It was during the oughts that Americans started drinking more bottled water than beer. As Susan McWilliams of Pomona College observes, you can tell something about a society that chooses clever water over humble beer. Bottled water is personal, inward-driven. Beer is social, outward-driven. Beer gets the party started. Water is the thirst quencher of choice for the solitary fitness addict, marching to the beat of his or her own drummer, digitally remastered for the iPod.” Some of us manage to drink both, of course . . .

MORE ON JOHN HOLDREN AND The “Insights” of Paul Ehrlich.

OBAMA’S RACE AGAINST THE ECONOMY: If a recovery begins too soon, a massive “stimulus” package might not be needed. Democrats consider that a bad thing.

A CHRISTMAS LINKFEST from The Anchoress.

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING that there would be no math. “Obama’s Job-Creation Program Flunks Basic Math: Caroline Baum.”

CHRISTMAS IN WISCONSIN. It was cold here over the weekend, but we hit 60 yesterday.

BORED? 99 cent downloadable movies.

ED DRISCOLL: The Emperor’s Wardrobe is Out for Dry-Cleaning.

LARRY LESSIG: Reboot the FCC!

RAND SIMBERG: A Truly Heavenly Christmas. “Apollo VIII will probably be remembered longer for its role in making humans aware of both the beauty and apparent fragility of their home planet. The three astronauts weren’t just the first humans to orbit another body – they were the first to see their own planet from far away, a tiny bubble of life in a velvet black and apparently sterile universe, and to show and describe it to others.” I remember being a kid and listening to this in Germany, on Armed Forces Radio.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

IRAQ MAKES CHRISTMAS an official holiday.

UPDATE: “Christmas without fear.”

KATE WINSLET IS offended by the term “statutory rape.” Plus, Nixonian feminism.

ERIC POSNER: “Home ownership policy of the Bush and Clinton administrations was, in essence, an attempt to pay low-income people to make a risky investment that they would otherwise rationally avoid. I cannot understand why anyone would think that such a policy would be sensible. In some cases, these people will do well and enjoy the upside of their investment, but in other cases they will do poorly, with the result that they will be worse off than ever.”

A BOLD MOVE FOR THE PROCRASTINATORS’ MARKET: The print-at-home gift card.

OVER AT PJTV, I talk about who’s been naughty and who’s been nice — rather more of the former, actually — in Congress this year. Plus, attractive seasonal headgear!

It’s free to everybody, with no registration required. Merry Christmas! Also on the show: Bill Allison and Rob “N.Z. Bear” Neppell.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, YADA, YADA:

In a New York Times Magazine profile of Robert Gibbs, the incoming White House press secretary, Mark Leibovich reveals that the Obama campaign emulated the “Bush model” of tight information control. Campaign manager David Plouffe acknowledged that they “talked a lot about the Bush model” inside the campaign and, like the Bush White House, sought to limit the spread of information internally so as to avoid the leaking that badly damaged the campaigns of Obama’s rivals.

There are other similarities. During the 2004 election, Dick Cheney famously kicked the New York Times off his campaign plane. Obama apparently did the same to three newspapers this fall–the Washington Times, the New York Post, and the Dallas Morning News–all of which had endorsed John McCain. At the time, the Obama campaign cited space concerns. But when Leibovich asked Gibbs whether reporters were kicked off the plane for considerations other than space, Obama’s spokesman first said “no” but later amended his response. “On occasion, yes,” Gibbs said, adding that such instances were infrequent. “I mean, were there occasions? Sure.”

Read the whole thing.