WELL, GOOD: Silicon Could Give Lithium Ion Batteries 10X More Capacity. Faster, please.

QUESTIONING WHETHER THE MUMBAI ATTACKS were really aimed at foreigners.

CARLETON COON IS SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE: Anthropologists and the military.

SOME NO-FRILLS TOYS That Every Child Should Have. They left out the Johnny Astro, though . . . .

FROM BOB OWENS, reflections on six months of carrying concealed.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, harmless conversations could get you suspected of terrorism. And they were right!

THE CARNIVAL OF RECIPES is up!

STRATEGYPAGE: The bad news from Africa. “The problems in Africa are pretty basic, but most Western leaders are unwilling to deal with them head on.”

SLOW-COOKER ADVICE: In response to some earlier recipe posts, people asked me about my All-Clad slow cooker. I like it, but it’s discontinued and the new model is awfully pricey. I got mine as a gift, but I don’t think I’d spend that much money on one, especially as Consumer Reports liked this Hamilton Beach better for under fifty bucks.

I do recommend this cookbook for slow-cookers, and here’s my recipe for Lamb-and-Guinness stew.

QUESTIONS ABOUT Sirtuin-enhancement drugs for aging.

HOMELAND SECURITY: “The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. . . . There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement.”

TRYING TO STOP DEFENDANT’S LAWYER FROM being paid? Doesn’t seem like part of a prosecutor’s job to me, but what do I know?

SOME THOUGHTS ON WHAT TO DO about those overgenerous / underfunded public pensions: “Why Isn’t Anyone Talking Later Retirement for Government Workers? . . . The irony is that much of the news around GM, Ford and Chrysler involves their huge defined benefit obligations. Much of the debate around whether to put more government money into these companies tends to come back to the issue of pension and health care payments to those companies millions of retirees. Private workers may end up working longer to balance out the good news that they are living longer. Yet there is virtually no discussion of this with regard to government and public sector workers. I imagine that is because government workers tend to be the ones who vote on their own retirement ages.”

GOOD QUESTION: With Hillary Clinton at State, who gets her N.Y. Senate seat? Well, Eliot Spitzer’s free . . .

GOOD NEWS! “Edmunds (via Dow Jones Newswires) estimates that the American new car market is down 28 percent in November, but up 1.9 percent from October.”

HIGHER EDUCATION and a “looming affordability challenge.” Will higher ed be the next bubble to burst, with student loans providing the easy credit that inflated it?

IF G.M. GOES DOWN, what will happen to the Corvette?

DETROIT-TO-DC CARAVAN, cancelled. “Remember the growing movement to caravan a few hundred of Detroit’s most fuel efficient vehicles to the automaker’s next meeting with Congress? Not happening. Interestingly, it wasn’t for lack of support. In fact, it was just the opposite.”

A RANGEL ROUNDUP: In case you were busy, you know, having a life over the weekend, don’t miss the editorials calling for Rangel to step down — here, here and here — and, by way of background, this scandal roundup. Plus, shades of pay-to-play.

ADVANCING PHOTONICS using nanomechanical devices.