HOW TO HAVE SEX IN A SNUGGIE. Wouldn’t your chances of having sex be drastically increased by avoiding Snuggies?

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEATH RAYS FROM SPACE: “Although 30 light-years is small on a galactic scale, Fields thinks it likely that Earth has been caught in a supernova ‘kill radius’ as many as a dozen times over our 4.5-billion-year history.” I can live with those odds, I guess, but it would be better if we were widely dispersed throughout the galaxy.

Related (well, sort of): Make Plans Now: Earth to Be Destroyed in 2049.

HOW TO make a Marshmallow Gun.

IN THE MAIL — well, in the sense that they’ve put it in the mail, anyway — is Michael Leahy’s new book, Rules for Conservative Radicals. He urges combining the tactics of Saul Alinsky with the morals of Martin Luther King. Via email, he says he favors an “Army of Pauls” as a less-violent-sounding take on an Army of Davids. I’ll be interested to read that, though I’m temperamentally inclined to view giant-slaying favorably . . .

DOUG MATACONIS: Yes, American Middle Class, Barack Obama Will Raise Your Taxes. “Much like George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama could come to regret his ‘Read My Lips’ Moment.”

SIGN OUTSIDE THE BONEFISH GRILL. I assume this reflects corporate policy, but I couldn’t find anything on their website.

HOPE AND CHANGE SAME: A KINDER, GENTLER RENDITION UNDER OBAMA. Plus, Lawless Surveillance, Warrantless Rationales (a critique of Obama continuation of Bush policies).

IS THE STOCK MARKET RALLY TOPPING OUT? My answer is, as usual, who knows? But this bit interested me:

However, traders have been concerned that on several days in the past week, market volume was dominated by heavy trading in low quality financial names, like Fannie Mae [FNM 2.04 0.12 (+6.25%) ], Citigroup [C 5.23 0.18 (+3.56%) ], AIG [AIG 50.23 2.39 (+5%) ] and Freddie Mac [FRE 2.40 0.16 (+7.14%) ]. “If you took the top traded stocks and gave them normal volumes, overall volume would be down 30 percent,” said Hogan.

So much of the “rally” is in junk-financial stocks for companies that are, basically, controlled by the government? I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it’s hard to see it as anything promising.

UPDATE: A reader sends this link, which leads to this post at Zerohedge. What it all means, if anything, is, er, above my pay grade.

DO ACCOUNTING STANDARDS rule the world?

UPDATE: Somewhat related item, here. “When someone says that ‘an activity is socially useless’, what he or she really means is that ‘I don’t understand the use for it so it should be banned’.”

TWO AMERICAS: “There’s the America where Los Angeles is in the middle of an ongoing drought, and is thus subject to strong water restrictions – which are being pushed by its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa (D). Then there’s the America where the mayor of Los Angeles was – illegally – watering his own lawn while everybody else’s was dying. And how does he explain this discrepancy? Heavy sleeping. No, really, that’s what Villaraigosa said.”

FOLLOWING UP ON HIS STAR WARS POST: John Scalzi’s Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs – Star Trek Edition.

But nothing beats this. I think it’s the halfhearted magic-marker on the side that really takes it to the next level.

CHARLES RANGEL UPDATE: CHARLIE’S MORTGAGE BARES HOME UNTRUTH.

Rep. Charles Rangel claimed on mortgage papers that a Harlem brownstone was his principal residence — even though he was living elsewhere at the time, The Post has learned. When the Democrat — who is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee — took out the mortgage in 1990, he said the property on West 132nd Street was his “principal residence,” records show.

But Rangel has been living since the 1970s in Harlem’s Lenox Terrace apartment complex, where he improperly amassed four rent-stabilized properties.

State law requires that rent-regulated apartments be the tenant’s residence. “I will reside in the Property (on 132nd Street) for at least six (6) months of every calendar year,” read Rangel’s mortgage contract with Citibank, which is on file with the city.

The terms of the $60,000 loan appear to be normal for that time, but lenders say claiming principal residency when you live elsewhere is a serious breach.

So, mortgage fraud?

UPDATE: “Rangel is in hot water here, and Democrats are doing their best to ignore this situation.”

Plus, Charlie’s angles: Rep. Rangel’s contempt for the rules needs to be reined in. “There are two sets of rules for Rep. Charlie Rangel – the ones he writes for everyone else and the ones that are, or were, beneath his compliance, powerful personage that he is. Over the past year, Rangel’s cavalier disregard of tax and ethics regulations became increasingly evident as his personal affairs were brought to light. There was a harrumphing alibi for each lapse, but the excuses became ever lamer as they mounted.”

IT’S TOUGH BEING A ROLE MODEL: “If only every blogger could link to stories the way Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit does. The libertarian blogger, with his hundreds of thousands of readers, offers up dozens of daily snippets that typically consist of a single sentence and a link. Sometimes it’s a headline or even a single word — ‘Heh.’ As a result, those being linked by Reynolds report above-average click-through rates to their content.”

Sending people elsewhere has been my philosophy since the beginning. They tend to come back. Meanwhile, I’ll note that the problem goes both ways — newspapers often lift story ideas from blogs without any credit.

THIS SITE CLOSED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.

TEST-DRIVING THE Power Wheels Mustang for kids. I would have liked an electric car when I was a kid. We got the Insta-Daughter a Barbie Jeep when she was 3, and it went over very well. When she outgrew it, we gave it to a nephew, whose dad converted it to an “Army Jeep” with a can of olive-drab spraypaint. I don’t know what ever happened to it after that, but it certainly held up well.

TIM NOAH: A CIA SWITCHEROO? “I spent two days trying to get an answer out of the Justice Department, expecting at any moment to be told that of course this was a clerical error and of course the Obama administration wouldn’t try to pull a fast one, especially given the near-certainty that it would be found out. But nobody was willing to discuss the matter at all. Finally, I got referred to the CIA, where Little finally said, in an e-mail, the following: ‘The documents that the former Vice President requested are being processed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.’ In other words … the CIA hasn’t released the documents Cheney requested. Or, rather, it released one but not the other.”

MORE ON Snow Leopard, Macs, and Malware.

TRAVELING IN EUROPE, Roger Simon writes that he finds Al Jazeera better than CNN. Damning, but not surprising. “Al Jazeera was clearly better, more honest, more informative and more entertaining than CNN International or the BBC. And kinder to the US. In fact, it wasn’t even close. Also, since much of the news they reported was coming from the Middle East, they seemed better informed about such things as the death of the Iraqi Shiite leader Hakim (they referred to Saddam Hussein flatly as a fascist, something you rarely hear on CNN) and the Al Qaeda suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia (they had nothing but withering contempt for Al Qaeda – no pussy-footing ‘insurgent’ rhetoric for them).”

JOKING ABOUT CHAPPAQUIDDICK: Like Ted Kennedy did. “All the funniest comedians wear neck braces.”

BALDILOCKS: What the sowers of racial discord have wrought.

Speaking of racial discord: Memo about a ‘black agenda’ in mayor’s race roils Atlanta. “It’s not hard to imagine the outcry that would have erupted had any group of conservatives proposed a ‘white agenda.’ Still, the memo, which argues that the African-American community should rally around a single black candidate to ensure that an African-American prevails, has caused a tremor in a city that prides itself on being ‘too busy to hate.'”

And more racial-discord-sowing here. Sigh. I remember when it was supposed to be about color-blindness and fairness. Now it’s about something very different.

THE ABSENT-MINDED CHAIRMAN: Charlie Rangel wins the personal lottery. “When normal people happen to ‘find’ their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you’re Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth.”

IT’S A RECESSION WHEN THEY CAN’T SELL DIAMONDS. It’s a depression when they have to have fire sales on cubic zirconia.

RON ROSENBAUM: Fellow liberals, we’ve been rope-a-doped by Sarah Palin. “They fell into a trap because all too many were blinded by their class-conscious, snobbish disdain for Palin, who, whatever else you think of her, is one cagey operator.” Considering what she accomplished using nothing but a Facebook page (!) I guess she’d have to be.

SAY, MAYBE THERE WAS SOMETHING TO ALL THAT “AXIS OF EVIL” TALK: UAE Seizes North Korean Weapons Shipment to Iran. “The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean-manufactured munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades bound for Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions, diplomats said. . . . Iran is under three sets of UN sanctions for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process to isolate a uranium isotope needed to generate fuel for a nuclear power reactor or, in higher concentrations, to make a weapon.”

STACY MCCAIN: “Good God! I remember when Matt Cooper used to be a journalist! Now he’s doing some kind of pathetic Twitter haiku?” I remember when, instead of “journalists,” we had reporters, who actually reported things.