APPLIANCE-BLOGGING, from the Insta-Wife. I’ll just note that I warned her that front-loaders are less reliable, but she liked the looks and the efficiency. Which was a reasonable choice.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “Two teams of US scientists have demonstrated silicon-based ‘thermoelectric’ materials that could convert waste heat back into electricity[1,2] – potentially giving a boost to the efficiency of everything from power stations to refrigerators. Until now, efficient thermoelectric materials have used pricier metals such as bismuth or tellurium. Switching over to silicon could have a global impact, allowing large-scale thermoelectric devices to be produced more cheaply.” I hope it pans out. (Via Nanodot).

CONGRESSIONAL STONEWALLING:

Florida law enforcement officials have been denied access to the office computers of disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley, despite a direct appeal to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for help in their investigation of sexually explicit messages sent to current and former teenage congressional pages.

Well, it’s only fair — Dennis Hastert did his best to protect William “Freezer Cash” Jefferson, too.

ANOTHER REPORT from South Carolina.

TEST-DRIVING THE Prius plug-in hybrid.

UPDATE: Related item here.

JONATHAN ADLER: “I also think conservatives should pay attention to how they believe respective presidential candidates would deal with the vast federal bureaucracy, large portions of which are staffed with civil servants who are hostile to a conservative governing agenda. Transforming government requires more than being able to give a good speech and make sound policy decisions.” He’s right — and though Jonathan is a Thompson guy, this is at the root of my worries about Thompson. He can give good speeches and make sound policy decisions, but his management abilities, as demonstrated in this campaign so far, have been less than stellar.

FINDING SMUGGLER TUNNELS along the border.

WHO WROTE RON PAUL’S NEWSLETTERS? Reportedly, it was Lew Rockwell. Not a huge surprise.

UPDATE: Related item from Robert Bidinotto.

LEGAL PROBLEMS FOR Vladimir Putin. Made worse, I suppose, by the fact that he’s stashed his billions outside Russia. The problem with despotism, I guess, is that it makes it hard to trust your own banking system . . .

IN THE MAIL: Mark Smith’s Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. It’s a special election edition, but I didn’t look to see if there was an explanation of Karl Rove’s coded messages to operatives, delivered via the New York Sun’s crossword section . . . .

BOB OWENS: HARPER’S DEFAULTS on Scott Horton’s credibility.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Bipartisan demands that Bush do nothing about earmarks:

The leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee are calling on President Bush to back away from threats to kill funding for lawmakers’ pet projects.

The pre-emptive warnings from the top Democrat and Republican on the panel are the clearest signs yet that President Bush could face a bipartisan backlash if he uses his executive authority to wipe out the more than $7 billion in earmarks.

Yeah, nobody wants that except the taxpayers . . . . The Republicans, in particular, who are behind this demand are the reason why the GOP lost in 2006, and if Bush listens they’ll be the reason why the GOP loses in 2008.

They won’t care, though, as long as they are permitted to suck unmolested at the government teat.

FORT DIX SIX UPDATE: “A group of men accused of planning an attack on Fort Dix face additional charges, including attempted murder, after a grand jury concluded there was evidence the men tried to kill uniformed members of the military.”

AT THE DETROIT AUTO SHOW: Taking a surreal and illegal test drive in a Chinese hybrid.

THIS ISN’T NEWS, but it bears repeating:

The United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.

The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.

The big problem is that the American workplace doesn’t make technical jobs attractive enough. The pay is okay, but less than that of other professionals, like lawyers. And the working conditions for engineers and scientists are generally quite poor — too much Dilbert, not enough Skunk Works. They act as if there’s a positive conspiracy to take all the fun out of it, according several of my friends who work in the area.

UPDATE: Reader Ken Braithwaite emails:

It got much worse after Sarbanes-Oxley. Suddenly we revamped all our processes to include “separation of duties” and other constraints ostensibly to prevent the merest possibility of fraud. But not really of course: really to provide ass-coverage at every level. But this applies as well in all sorts of situations where fraud is not an issue, like developers testing their code. The effect where I work has been disastrous.

People respond to incentives, and incentives were distorted at every level by SOX requirements.

It’s a metaphor for the society at large, I fear. And another engineer reader who prefers anonymity writes:

I would just like to say that yes, the pay could be better, and the old, dusty cubicles could be nicer offices, and I do feel like I live in a Dilbert strip. But the worst thing in my opinion is the management at my company, where the rewards and recognition for a job well done are few and far between. I’ve worked for over twelve years now as an aerospace engineer, and in that time I’ve had a fair amount of success on various projects, but have never gotten above a three on my performance evals.

I still think I would be bored doing anything else, but sometimes I just want to say screw it all and go use my abilities somewhere that I could make a lot more money. And I’m not alone.

One of my friends noted that engineers tend to do their best work — and their happiest — in a “skunk works” kind of setting where there’s a close connection between what they do and the actual making of stuff, with feedback both ways. He also noted that every company he’d ever worked for seemed to do its best to make sure that these kinds of settings didn’t exist . . . .

MORE: Bill Quick: “The tendency to denigrate the positions of those who actually make things work is endemic in the American business culture, which even after decades of supposed ‘streamlining’ is top-heavy with a relatively useless management culture.” I think it’s a problem that goes beyond just the business culture, but yeah.

JEFF SOYER transcribed the gun-control part of the Democratic debate. None of the Dems look very good.

UPDATE: From the comments:

They’re not “illegal guns.” They’re “undocumented firearms.”

Heh. No gun is illegal!

SHOOTING FOR THE MOON, with the Chevy Volt. An interview with Bob Lutz and Bob Boniface of GM.

HOW TO GET real French cheese.

A “GRIM STATISTIC” FOR HILLARY in Michigan: “Roughly 70 percent of Michigan’s African-American voters — a group that makes up a quarter of Michigan’s Democratic electorate — did not cast their votes for Clinton, choosing the ‘uncommitted’ option instead. Yet these voters weren’t uncommitted at all: in fact, according to CNN exit polls, they overwhelmingly favored Barack Obama, whose name did not appear on the ballot.”

TIGERHAWK OFFERS “A few short and obvious political observations following Michigan.”

DRAGON SKIN: The name is cool, but the body armor, not so much. That’s according to Michael Yon, who’s selling his on eBay, and emails:

This is what I think of Dragon Skin. I don’t want to see American soldiers wearing this body armor. It’s inferior to and heavier than alternatives. I spent about $4,000 for mine and just put it on Ebay starting bid: $1. I’ll be happy to get $2 back from it. When I go back to Iraq in a couple weeks, I will not be wearing Dragon Skin. The controversy over body armor is largely manufactured and is impeding the fielding of better body armor.

If I were the Dragon Skin folks, I’d be unhappy about this anti-endorsement from such a prominent source.

SHOULD HARVARD last forever?

HEH: “Kill six millions Jews in Germany, your name becomes a synonym with evil. Kill between 44 and 72 million Chinese, you get a café named after you. It’s a funny old world, eh?”

Related thoughts here.

SO I WATCHED THE PILOT EPISODE of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which I recorded the other night. Not bad, and Summer Glau makes a surprisingly credible Terminator robot. Well, maybe it’s not surprising considering her scarily-credible role as a biologically enhanced killer on Firefly/Serenity. Sorry — tried to switch to the Democratic debate, but couldn’t bring myself to watch another political show tonight. Ann Althouse was covering it if you’re interested, but even her heart wasn’t in it.

Gateway Pundit, meanwhile, showed a Terminator-like indefatigibility, and has some video that you may want to see.

And Dave Weigel blogged the Democratic debate, too: “Apparently, the biggest issue in Nevada is whether Clinton regrets what Edwards regrets he regretfully said about Obama’s regrets. This is a high-def root canal.”

And Megan McArdle was liveblogging the Democratic debate, too.

UPDATE: On the Terminator episode, a reader named Anna emails: ‘Just thought I’d let you know that it’s currently available for free on iTunes. I’m not sure how much longer it’s going to be free, but I’m downloading it right now.” Cool.

CELEBRATING THE END OF THE FORMAT WARS? A big sale on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks at Amazon. (Via TigerHawk).