THOUGHTS ON obesity and the brain.

FUTURE: NASA and DARPA Plan ‘Hundred-Year Starship’ To Bring Humans to Other Worlds And Leave Them There Forever. Well, sort of.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Johnson writes: “I bet the Republicans will have to sit in the back.”

SECURITY: Tabasco Spicy Salt Landed Me In Hot Water At Airport Security.

GUTSY: A Pre-Election Day Prediction: Massachusetts Will Retire Barney Frank.

GOOD VIBRATIONS: Vibrations Slow Bone Aging?

MAC OWNERS, DON’T GET COCKY: New Java trojan attacks Mac OS X via social networking sites. Possibly not that major, but a reminder that Macs aren’t invulnerable, and that you need to exercise reasonable care in what you click on regardless of platform.

REVIEW: New MacBook Air still skinny on power.

HOPE: These Are The Only 5 Countries Whose Pension Systems Can Survive.

AUTOBLOG GREEN: GM’s Chevy Volt advertising might work today, but it’s incredibly shortsighted.

LAMPPOSTS: 65% Favor Getting Rid of Entire Congress and Starting Over.

WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER TRUST the photos hotels post online.

WALT MOSSBERG: New Macbook Air is like an iPad laptop.

IN THE MAIL: The Fun of Dying: Find Out What Really Happens Next!

“STRANGER DANGER” AND THE DECLINE OF HALLOWEEN: No child has ever been killed by poisoned candy. Ever.

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they’re willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child’s vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, “dangerous.”

Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves—at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside, to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners, in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The Costco veggie trays and plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza.

And it blazed the way for adult-supervised everything else. Let kids make their own fun? Not anymore! Let’s sign our toddlers up for “movement” classes! Let’s bring on the extracurricular activities, travel soccer and manicure parties for the older kids. Once Halloween got outsourced to adults, no kids-only activity was safe. Goodbye sandlot, hello batting coach! . . . We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn’t dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too.

Read the whole thing.

NEW YORK CITY’S DUMB GUN LAWS could get dumber. Which is an accomplishment!

CBS NEWS: Poll: Independents Drive GOP Midterm Advantage.

PETER SUDERMAN: ObamaCare: Political Trouble for Moderate Democrats? Well, not so much for moderate Democrats who voted against it.

UNLIKE ANDY GRIFFITH, NOT RUINED BY POLITICS: Sale: I Love Lucy, the complete series.

CHANGE: TARP plays well for Dems in wealthy N.Y. suburbs. Nice to see that they stuck it to the fatcats.

DANIEL BLATT: Could Disgruntled Gay Voters Impact Close Blue State Elections? “Obama rode a wave of hope that, once elected, he would sign legislation designed to bring positive change for gay Americans. Yet once in office, he failed to deliver.”

UPDATE: Obama says views on gay marriage are “evolving.”

WHAT WOULD MILTON FRIEDMAN DO? More “quantitative easing?” Really?

IT AIN’T SO, JOE: “Vice President Joe Biden is an affable fellow, which sometimes makes his tendency to exaggerate the truth somewhat amusing. However, Biden’s latest tall tale is as unamusing as it is wrong.” Shockingly, it’s not the case that “every single great idea” of the last century came from government. “It is not surprising that Joe Biden, an individual who has spent his entire career in government, possesses a child-like devotion to the federal government’s capabilities.”

GOOD GRIEF: Barbara Boxer faces ethics complaint for telling teachers to send students to work for campaign.

CHARGES OF absentee ballot fraud in Pennsylvania.

CONGRATULATIONS TO the Award-Winning Mercatus Center.