NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Top Ten Space Finds Of 2009.

TEST-DRIVING THE AUDI E-TRON, a high-performance electric sports car.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Beer could be the new weapon against cancer.

PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER: Accepting Peace Prize, Obama Evokes ‘Just War’. We’re all Neo-Cons now!

IN THE MAIL: From Michael McFaul, Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should and How We Can.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Give North Korea A Chance.

While climate delegates are quarreling in Copenhagen, and President Barack Obama is collecting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, an important story is unfolding in relative obscurity, in North Korea. Furious over a confiscatory currency “reform,” citizens of the world’s most repressive state have begun publicly criticizing their government.

It is hard to overstate just how bold a move that is.

Indeed.

BARBARA OAKLEY: Take This Paradigm and Shove It.

JENNIFER RUBIN: “This is not an administration that takes bad news well.”

BYRON YORK: In Trouble, White House Searches for a Billionaire To Blame. Er, how about George Soros, then . . . .

TUNKU VARADARAJAN ON HEALTH CARE:

Medicare is not a bad thing, per se, but it is inefficient, costly, and fraud-ridden. If fully costed, no one would prefer a Medicare policy to a private plan. If subsidized, everyone would, and employers will tilt to make sure their employees subscribe to it. If so, this incremental Medicare approach would raise government-sponsored health insurance from about 60 percent (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans, and government employees) to 70 percent or more. So Republicans, libertarians, and others, beware: Much more than the camel’s nose in now under the tent.

This bill stinks. Kill it dead, and bury it at the crossroads with a stake through its heart.

EMILY BAZELON: Hope Witsell’s Sexting Suicide.

MORE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR lists.

JOURNALISTS AND rocket scientists.

MOE LANE: Brian Baird (D, WA-03) Bails out. “Interestingly, the six-term, 53 year old Congressman was not on the NRCC’s target-for-retirement list. He had three GOP challengers.”

ELECTRONICS BLEG UPDATE: My earlier posting of a reader request for books educating children in elementary electronics generated a lot of email. Here’s my distillation.

Reader George Coulouris recommends Forrest Mims’ Getting Started In Electronics. He also recommends the hydraulic analogy, which I was taught. Lots of readers recommended Mims.

Reader Andy Linnenkohl recommends Paul Horowitz’s The Art of Electronics, commenting: “It just doesn’t get any better than this. As a working engineer in the semiconductor industry I can testify to the fact that not a single engineer I work with does not have a very worn out copy of this book sitting somewhere on his desk. For the working professional it is their college education in one place. At the same time Horowitz and Hill have written a very readable, approachable treatment that is reasonable (I avoid the word “light” for fear of being drummed out of IEEE) on the math and more focuses on concepts at a elementary, logical and rational level. A parent and child could supplement any electronics learning with brief pulls from TAOE and would find the content to meet the learning needs without being too difficult to comprehend.”

Several readers recommend Usborne Electricity, and there’s also the Usborne Introduction to Electronics.

Snap Circuits also, as reader Wayne Padgett notes, come in a Student Training version that includes much more explanatory documentation. There’s even one for the advanced 750 model.

So there you are! I still wish someone would bring back Elementary Electronics, though.

VIDEO: Randy Barnett and Eugene Volokh on the constitutionality, or not, of a healthcare mandate.

DALE AMON REPORTS from the Virgin Galactic rollout at Mojave.

And if you missed it last night, here’s Rand Simberg’s piece in Popular Mechanics.

AN INCONVENIENT OSCAR.

ANDREW BOLT: Climategate: even Age readers aren’t buying the reporters’ excuses.

ABC NEWS: In Oslo, President Obama is Asked About His “Premature” Nobel Peace Prize.

At his press conference in Oslo, Norway, with Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, President Obama was asked by a local reporter about criticism that his pending Nobel Peace Prize is “premature” and how he can use the prize to “make some of your good intentions materialize?”

Plus, a Martin Luther King comparison — from Obama.

DANIEL DREZNER: Yeah, North Korea’s problem is that it’s not socialist enough.

COAL COMPANY LETS 500 WORKERS GO: “Which category does this job loss fall under: created or saved?”

CLIVE CROOK AT THE ATLANTIC: “The response of the climate-science establishment to Climategate has been disappointing if predictable. The guild mentality has come to the fore. Campaigns are under way to defend the integrity of science from a scurrilous smear campaign. The message is simple: you are either with us or you are a barbarian.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: ClimateGate: Was Data Faked?

LOTS OF MARKDOWNS on tools and home improvement stuff. I have the Gladiator workbench and cabinets in the garage, and have for several years. They’re very nice.