JON STEWART: “Poor Al Gore: Global Warming Completely Debunked By the Internet You Invented.”

Plus, “Why would you throw out raw data from the eighties? — I still have Penthouse magazines from the seventies!”

UPDATE: Huffington Post suffers ClimateGate panic attack?

NOT LOOKING QUITE SO GOOD NOW: The Tiger Woods / Barack Obama Golf Digest cover.

UPDATE: Juliette Ochieng writes: “So who should be embarrassed to be photographed with whom? Tiger’s transgressions are not bankrupting the country or making us look weak to our enemies.” Yeah, each of ’em seems to have bet the wrong way on the other’s popularity trend . . . .

MICHAEL SILENCE: So, what happened to that whole White House transparency thing?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: “It is 150 years to the day since John Brown was hanged, and more Africans are being enslaved today than at the height of the infamous Atlantic slave trade.”

I BELIEVE THAT ILYA SOMIN MISTAKES MY POINT: “Some, like Glenn ‘Instapundit’ Reynolds in his response to my earlier post, argue that we need ‘irrational affection’ for government in order for it to work well. I am skeptical. A population that values its government for purely instrumental reasons can still give it the necessary support and defend it against external enemies.”

I don’t think this quite responds to my point. I was suggesting that, in an evolutionary sense, a state whose populace feels irrational loyalty is more likely to prevail against states whose populaces are purely rational. This doesn’t strike me as much of a leap. A parent who values a child for purely instrumental reasons can still give it the necessary support, but I suspect that evolution has favored those who feel irrational loyalty to their kinfolks, too.

Furthermore, a state whose populace feels irrational loyalty probably has greater threat-value when dealing with states whose populace is only rationally loyal. This is not a defense of nationalism on any sort of moral grounds, of course — merely a suggestion that efforts to get rid of it will be difficult. This is particularly true if, as seems likely to me, evolution has favored irrational group-loyalty (for basically the same reasons) over periods extending long before the development of the state, so that such traits are largely hardwired. One might work with, rather than against, such hardwired traits by trying replace loyalty to the state with other forms of irrational group loyalty (to a religion, a philosophy, a leader) but it’s not clear that’s much of an improvement.

UPDATE: Science fiction writer Sarah Hoyt emails:

I was thinking about this today at breakfast, actually, because I’m plotting my second space opera for Baen (no, first hasn’t come out yet) which involves a revolution — and wondering if a lot of the blind partisanship as well as the tendency for people to fall into cult of personality (No, not a new thing, recall attachment to Washington in revolutionary times) aren’t evolutionary remnants.

I think humans were designed by evolution to be loyal to a small group, a “tribe” (though most groups when humans were evolving were smaller than most tribes. Somewhere between extended family and clan) and for reasons of cohesion within the tribe to fall into hierarchical order — i.e. to be loyal to the “big man.”

I think this is responsible both for people’s tendency to fall in with the opinions of their social group seemingly without thought and for the “celebrity president” thing (Yes, Obama is perhaps the most obvious celebrity president, but Reagan had a bit of that to — and used it.)

In the light of this, a government like the US’s — of ideals and laws — seems like an aberration that goes against our evolutionary urges. So how we survive is a puzzle, and the visceral hatred so many of our citizens have towards the constitution and which most of the world has towards us is no longer surprising.

We are the muties… :) Must be brought back down to normalize the species.

Very consistent with what I was trying to say above, with an interesting twist.

SO 1972: Girl Makes Call On A Telephone Pole.

HMM: Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, ‘Confuse’ Consumers.

RESEARCH: All men watch porn, scientists find.

Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users.

But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not been seen it.

“We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn’t find any.”

Although hampered in its original aim, the study did examined the habits of those young men who used pornography – which would appear to be all of them.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

UPDATE: Related (well, sort of): Educated Women Are More Easily Sexually Aroused.

BIGGEST STORY OF 2009: The Rise Of The Virtual Newsroom.

CLIMATEGATE will now hit the EPA. “I cannot think of any instance where the EPA depended so heavily on non-EPA synthesis reports to justify proposed regulatory action in their almost 39 years of existence. As a result of this EPA decision, the EPA’s fortunes in regard to regulating GHGs are directly tied to the fate of the IPCC reports.”

ASTRONOMY: New Way of Detecting Exomoons Broadens Search for Extraterrestrial Life.

REVIEWING TURN-BY-TURN GOOGLE MAPS NAVIGATION on the Motorola Droid phone.

AUSTIN BAY: Triangulating Afghanistan. “President Barack Obama’s ‘new’ approach to Afghanistan is a surge in sheep’s clothing.”

Steve Schippert is more negative.

IN THE MAIL: From Tom Kratman, Carnifex.

REASON TV: How to Fix Health Care: Lasik Surgery For The Medical Debate. With Dr. David Gratzer, author of The Cure.

TOM VANDERBILT: In praise of automated backseat driving.

HIDE THE DECLINE! A new Silicon Graffiti video.

FALLING DOMINOES: Lawrence Solomon: Australia Ditches Cap And Trade In ClimateGate’s Aftermath.

NOW IT’S CARBON FRAUD IN DENMARK? Denmark Rife With CO2 Fraud.

BILL WHITTLE ON CLIMATEGATE: A warning from President Eisenhower.

HEH: GOP Introduces Geithner Penalty Waiver Act. “Congressmen John Carter (R-TX) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) yesterday introduced the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act, requiring that the IRS assess the same penalty against U.S. taxpayers that came forward in the UBS tax fraud investigation as paid by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to pay taxes on his IMF income — zero.”

DOG BITES MAN: Mickey Kaus: MSM Comes Through for Obama on Health Care Premiums.

A WORLD WITHOUT AMERICA: If you missed it last night, check out my interview with John Birmingham, author of Without Warning and the Axis of Time novels.

OUTDATED: H1N1 vaccine problems trigger review of public health emergency plans.

FROM POPULAR SCIENCE, a guide to pocket camcorders. They really like the Kodak Zi8. I’ve got one and like it too.