UH OH: 1.2 Million Jobs Are Still Missing.

BRINGING JERSEY SHORE to N.Y.U. Law. “Inflation is a bitch — when I was growing up on Long Island, we had these girls at our parties for free.”

DAVY JONES’ LOCKER: Full Of Oil?

IN TODAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL, my review of Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not A Gadget.

ERIC SCHEIE: Where’s the Brave Art World That Stood Up to John Ashcroft? First, they’re wimps. Second, they regard the people who terrorize and silence them as their moral superiors.

ANGER WITH OBAMA REGIME RE-IGNITES SECESSION TALK — in Vermont.

NICK SCHULZ: Hard America, Soft America, and Recovering the Case for Capitalism.

MARTHA COAKLEY: “In deep trouble.”

Related: Does Coakley Oppose Care For Rape Victims?

UPDATE: Pushing around reporters? That’s smart.

ANOTHER UPDATE: MA Union Guy: Sshhhh, Lady! I’m Voting for Brown, OK? Just Doing My Job Here. Now Beat It!.

MORE: Grassroots revolt.

ILYA SOMIN: How “Negro” Became a Taboo Word.

DOUG FLUTIE Endorses Scott Brown.

COOL PHOTO: A Martian Dune Field.

MARK STEYN: Darkness Falls.

VIDEO: Pelosi’s a horrible woman, says … Jack Cafferty. “This is twice now in less than a week that he’s gone off on Madam Speaker for government waste and corruption. I ask this with some trepidation, but … is Cafferty turning into a tea partier?”

JOE GANDELMAN on Conan O’Brien.

PROPPING UP THE TREASURY MARKET with your IRA? Can this be true?

DEREK LOWE: The Sirtris Compounds: Worthless? Really?

As followers of the drug industry know, GlaxoSmithKline famously paid $720 million to buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals in 2008. Sirtris is the most high-profile shop working on sirtuins and resveratrol-like pharmacology, which subject has received a massive amount of press (some accurate, some scrambled). I’ve been following the story with interest, since the literature has me convinced that the aging process can indeed be modified in a number of model organisms, which makes me think that it could be in humans as well. And I also feel sure that advances in this area could lead to many profound medical, social, and economic effects. (GSK, though, is going after diabetes first with the Sirtris deal, I should add – among other reasons, the FDA has no regulatory framework whatsoever for an antigeronic, if I can coin a word.)

But whatever the state of the anti-aging field, doubts have crept in about the wisdom of the Sirtris purchase. Last fall, a group at Amgen published a study suggesting that some of the SIRT1/resveratrol connections might be due an an experimental artifact caused by a particular fluorescent peptide. Now a group at Pfizer has piled on in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. They’re looking over resveratrol and a series of sirtuin activators described by the Sirtris group in Nature. . . . Basically, these folks have thrown down the gauntlet: they claim that the reported Sirtris compounds do not do what they are claimed to do, neither in vitro nor in vivo, and are worthless as model compounds for anything in this area of study. So what is GSK going to have to say about this? And what, if this paper is at all accurate, did they buy with their $720 million?

Read the whole thing.

NEW YORK TIMES: FLOATING A FORD CANDIDACY IN NEW YORK. He’s a smart guy, and perhaps better suited for New York, where his family baggage matters less, than Tennessee, where it’s well known. Of course, but for his airport meltdown/confrontation with Bob Corker I think he would have been elected in Tennessee — it was very close.

Our Harold Ford, Jr. podcast interview is here.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “They have done a lot worse than Ford in the past and could do worse than Ford now. He ain’t perfect, but look at who is representing that state now. Any way you cut it he’s a step up from that.”

THE FRUITS OF SOCIALISM: Venezuela plans blackouts in Caracas, oil town.

ANOTHER SUCCESS FOR CENTRAL PLANNING: Chinese gender imbalance will leave 24 million men unable to marry. We wonder: Why didn’t anyone see this coming? Why, indeed?

Science had better come up with an answer soon!

Meanwhile, a reminder to Thomas Friedman — this is what happens when those politically difficult but critically important questions get answered by dictators . . . .

ED DRISCOLL: The Ominous Parallels.

WELL, I HAD PLANNED TO COVER THE TEA PARTY CONVENTION IN NASHVILLE NEXT MONTH FOR PJTV, but nobody’s responded to my emails, and now I hear it’ll be closed to the press. Oh, well. People want to know what I think about this event; so far, not that much. We’ll see.

UPDATE: Okay, I got an email from Judson Phillips who says that Gov. Palin has asked for things to be open to the media, and that they’ll be back in touch with me soon on PJTV coverage. So we’ll see.

JIM TREACHER is a very cruel man.

AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, HE WON’T BE MISSED MUCH: Lane Kiffin ditches Tennessee for USC. Reader C.J. Burch writes: “Say what you want for Phil Fulmer. Tennessee was where he wanted to be, It was his dream job and his favorite place in the world.”

UPDATE: Students, fans greet Kiffin with obscenities. “Dozens of students and fans marched into the Neyland-Thompson Sports Complex on Tuesday night chanting obscenities at Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin, who was informing his players about his departure to Southern California.”

CIVIL RIGHTS: Coates Speaks As Best He Can.

EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI: Chuck Simmins is following it.