ARE WHOOPIE PIES the next cupcake?

PJTV: Growing Young: Can Our Own Cells Reverse Aging?

FOLLOWING UP ON YESTERDAY’S PRINTER POST, Tony Daniel (author of Metaplanetary and Superluminal, among other things) writes:

I bought the exact same Brother laser printer as you a few months ago for much the same reasons. I’ve been printing out multiple drafts of my chapters on it and it’s been great.

Here’s a trick. There’s a little optical sensor on the toner cartridge lower left side that tells the printer the toner is low. I covered that over with a little piece of tape, and got nearly 700 extra pages out of the initial cartridge the printer came with. I read about this in a couple of reviews of the printer at Amazon and elsewhere, and it worked like a charm.

Plus, you get to feel totally cyberpunk for a couple of seconds!

That’s usually about as long as it lasts for me.

UPDATE: Reader Janet Glazier writes:

I use a Brother Laserjet Color HL4070CDW printer for my business and the cartridges are $100 a pop per color. I just tried the suggestion of covering the window and it worked!!! Further research on the internet indicates you can get anywhere from 700-1000 more pages. Reading Instapundit this morning (which I do every morning) has just saved my business probably $2000 this coming year. How can I ever thank you enough! I didn’t even have to use tape. I just colored it in with a black sharpie. THANKS!!!

Glad to help!

CHANGE: Indiana government positions surpass factory jobs.

WHAT’S GOING ON with Obama’s space budget cuts.

CHANGE: Rasmussen: 43% now strongly disapprove of Obama, same as Bush when he left office. “Imagine how unpopular Obama would be if the press and the late night comedians (who are at least as important as the press) treated Obama as they treated Bush.”

UPDATE: Desperation time:

This was the candidate who created a cult of personality, who told us he represented the “New Politics,” who was going to eschew politics-as-usual, and who would be post-partisan, post-racial, and post-ideological. Now he’s a handful of votes away from a humiliating defeat. No wonder it’s desperation time. His possible failure would not be a mere political failure; it would be the obliteration of his own mythology.

Should he squeak it out, Obama’s “victory” would come with a heavy price. Gone is the image of a policy sophisticate (try watching that Bret Baier interview a few times without wincing). Gone is the “moderate” moniker. And gone is the notion that he’d usher in a new era of less contentious and less corrupt politics. (It’s a new era, perhaps, but hardly a better one.) There is no mistaking now the depth of the campaign deception. The public has figured out what he is all about. And increasingly, they dislike what they see.

Yeah, he’s even managed to disappoint me, and my expectations weren’t all that high.

IF YOU’RE CONCERNED ABOUT OBAMACARE, here’s who to call.

BECAUSE OF DUMB CAMPAIGN-FINANCE LAWS, among other things, Mickey Kaus will be taking Kausfiles private.

WHATEVER MEN DO, IT’S WRONG: Involved Dads Can Hurt Mom’s Self-Confidence. “Research published in Personal Relationships found that when a father spent a lot of solo time with his child and the mom perceived him to be a competent caregiver, the woman had a lower self-competence rating.”

IDIOTS: Computer glitch blamed for years of police raids on elderly Brooklyn couple’s home. “A computer database glitch has sent police to the home of an elderly Brooklyn couple more than 50 times since 2002, sheepish cops admitted today. Walter and Rose Martin endured the most recent raid on Tuesday, when four cops showed up looking for a suspect. Two officers broke a window in the back of their Marine Park home. Police are still investigating why the couples’ address shows up in their database when some suspects’ names are keyed in.”

The Martins should be entitled to randomly break down the doors of 50 elected officials in New York in recompense. Or maybe 150, as treble damages.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Reflections from the KGB Museum in Vilnius. “Standing in the cellar of the KGB prison, admiring the ingenuously designed torture cells, retracing the final steps of the prisoners on their journey from the condemned cells to the execution yard, it’s impossible not to think of Vladimir Putin bemoaning the fall of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. Putin made his career in the same KGB that murdered and tortured for decades in Lithuania and its neighboring republics; the longing for the good old days must sometimes grow unspeakable.”

NOT MUCH PRESS COVERAGE, THOUGH: A major demonstration against honor killiings in Palestine.

CALIFORNIA: Poll: Boxer Suddenly In Trouble. It’s telling that she’s basically tied with all the GOP competitors. But don’t worry — President Obama will be campaigning for her!

DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN: “If you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing.”

VIDEO: Frank Luntz: The Unabomber Has A Higher Approval Rating Than Members Of Congress Right Now.

JIM TREACHER: Do Not Interrupt Obama When He Is Filibustering.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Report: Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel. If I were the Israelis, not only would I bomb Iran, but I’d do so in such a way as to create as much trouble for China, Russia, Europe and the United States as possible. Are the Israelis less obnoxious than me? I guess we’ll find out soon enough . . . .

PLEDGING civil disobedience against ObamaCare.

FACT-CHECKING THEIR ASS: President Obama Promotes OFA Astroturf Campaign (with Bonus Plagiarism). At the link, a list of papers duped into publishing astroturf letters from Organizing For America. I hope that Big Journalism will contact each editor and ask them if they’re going to print something indicating the astroturf nature of these letters.

Plus, from the comments: “Are you supposed to sign the letter ‘Ellie Light’?”

DON’T LIKE IT? LINE UP AGAIN:

MONTREAL — In recent years, the few fully veiled Muslim women who had dealings with Quebec’s health-insurance board could choose to be served by a woman to avoid exposing their faces to a man outside their family.

But in the latest example of the province’s growing resistance to the accommodation of minority religious practices, the insurance board on Tuesday announced the end of the policy after the provincial human rights commission said it has no duty to acquiesce.

“From now on, for a woman who is veiled with a niqab or a burka and comes to our office asking to be photographed by a woman, the answer is no,” said Marc Lortie, spokesman for the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec. “Line up again, or come back another day.”

The news follows last week’s expulsion from a French-as-a-second-language course of an Egyptian woman who insisted on wearing a niqab during class.

I guess that’s the French influence.

REPORT: JOSEPH CAO will vote “No” on ObamaCare.

UH OH: Latvia government collapses amid economic crisis.

GOODBYE, CORNHUSKER KICKBACK: “How stupid must Ben Nelson feel tonight? He sold his soul in return for a kickback, he’s reviled in his own state and will likely never again be elected, and now his bribe has been removed from the hot mess that is the healthcare bill.”

REMEMBER MICKEY KAUS ON THE WELFARE / TERRORISM CONNECTION? Panamanian murderer caught in D.C., lived off federal subsidies. “A Panamanian murderer who escaped a prison in the Central American country has been captured in the District, where authorities say he used a fake Social Security card to obtain federally subsidized housing and cruised around town in three luxury cars. The FBI was led to 36-year-old Juan Barrera by an anonymous caller who claimed Barrera was planning to fire a rocket launcher at a Metro train, according to an affidavit recently filed in Greenbelt’s federal court.”

FESS PARKER HAS DIED.

Some further thoughts from Rand Simberg. Parker’s big fame was a bit before my time, though I do kind of remember the Daniel Boone show. And here are some thoughts relevant to the health care debate, from the actual Davy Crockett.