PATRICK RICHARDSON: Is Science Fiction Getting More Conservative?

Oh, and on a related note, you can get Baen books in Kindle format via the excellent Baen Books website, which also has a lot of free ebooks.

FASTER, PLEASE: Study: Blocking “rogue gene” may stop cancer spread. “The culprit gene, called WWP2, is an enzymic bonding agent found inside cancer cells, the researchers explained in their study, published in the journal Oncogene on Monday. It attacks and breaks down a naturally-occurring protein in the body which normally prevents cancer cells from spreading. In tests in the laboratory, the UEA team found that by blocking WWP2, levels of the natural inhibitor protein were boosted and the cancer cells remained dormant.”

MIKE HUCKABEE SNORTS WITH DERISION AT LIBERTARIANS.

Helen and I talked with him, back when PJTV was young, about his feelings for libertarians and libertarianism. That video is now available on YouTube.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Kill Off The Bottom 100 Law Schools. That won’t happen. And I’m not sure it should. Truthful information about graduation, employment, and loan-repayment rates should be enough. Or just make student loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, and let the schools eat the loans when that happens. Then the problem solves itself.

WOMAN NEARLY DIES from a hickey. A hickey? Dracula might call that a hickey.

SPEEDING UP RNA Nanotechnology.

AT BIG GOVERNMENT, A Pigford Primer.

RAHM EMANUEL is back on the ballot.

POLITICO: ObamaCare Unpopularity Jumps By 9 Points. “Fifty percent of Americans have unfavorable views of the law, according to a joint survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. Opposition to the law jumped 9 percentage points from last month and is the highest since April, when Kaiser began asking the question every month.”

NOW THAT IT MIGHT HURT THEM, Democrats want to change the rules on redistricting.

PREDICTION: Henrik Fisker: Plug-in vehicle sales will take off like iPhones, flat-screen TVs. We’ll see.

12 OSCAR NOMINATIONS for The King’s Speech.

IN THE MAIL: Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex.

PROFESSOR ANN ALTHOUSE DELIVERS A SOUND THRASHING: “History tells us” something that history doesn’t tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven.

So vigorous debate about Piven’s ideas is really important, but it better be the right kind of debate by the right kind of people and most certainly not that terrible, terrible man Glenn Beck. She’s very lofty and serious, so, while she should be challenged, she must be challenged only by lofty and serious individuals, and of course, Glenn Beck is not one. . . .

Does lofty, serious, intellectual sociology involve looking at evidence and analyzing it rationally? Linking the Tucson massacre to hot political rhetoric was a rash mistake made by demagogues — you want to talk about demagogues?! — demagogues who were slavering over the prospect of a right-wing massacre that would prove politically useful. . .

So Piven should not have called for “something like” Greek-style riots, and it was good of Glenn Beck to point out that Piven crossed the line, right? I mean, we’re dedicating ourselves to serious, undistorted analysis here. That’s what you said you wanted, didn’t you?

Sociology does not enjoy an especially elevated reputation in the academy, and the American Sociological Association provides an object lesson in why that is. And these people can take anything except rational examination of their arguments.

UPDATE: And just to be sure that the focus stays where it belongs, lets remember what those Greek riots she was calling for were like:

At the same time, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country’s budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.

Witnesses said hooded protesters smashed the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens and hurled a Molotov cocktail inside. The three victims died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, the Athens coroner’s office said. Four others were seriously injured there, fire department officials said.

Just so we remember who’s actually advocating violence here. Shame on the American Sociological Association for trying, however ineptly, to obscure that point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Prof. Jim Lindgren comments:

So let’s see if this makes sense:

1. Frances Fox Piven advocates left-wing violence by the unemployed against the government.

2. Glenn Beck criticizes her for this, calling such talk dangerous.

3. Then an unstable unemployed left-wing radical engages in violence against the government.

4. Glenn Beck then repeats his criticism of Piven.

5. Finally, the Am. Sociological Assn blames Glenn Beck for his criticism of Piven AND indirectly for the left-wing violence.

The logic of the Assn escapes me.

Indeed.

CHANGE: An Ugly Side Effect of New 1099 Law: More Tax Evasion.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Hitting the wall on tuition hikes?

In a recent College Board-commissioned opinion survey, overwhelmingly parents and students understand that college opens doors to more economic opportunities and a more successful life, but most believe the cost is out of reach or worse, have no clue how much college costs. The complexity of financial aid formulas is seen as an impenetrable code. Fewer than half (46 percent) of parents surveyed in the survey, “Cracking the Student Aid Code: Parent and Student Perspectives on Paying for College,” were confident they knew the cost to attend a public college in their home state.

That’s because the system is organized to hide the cost.

BIRTH OF THE BLUES: Walter Russell Mead on Obama, Boston, and the Puritan roots of the American liberal vision.

For the Puritans, the construction of a godly society was the first order of business. The state was not the enemy of liberty; the state was society’s moral agent. . . . New England government was charged with the creation of a moral society. There was nothing that was not its business: how much did a master pay his apprentices? Who celebrated Christmas? Who was cheating on his or her spouse? The duty of government was to make society live right; the university, the pulpit, the newspaper — these were to be the allies of government in the struggle for good.

From Cotton Mather to JournoList. I had some related thoughts here.

FRED SIEGEL: How Public Unions Took Taxpayers Hostage.

RICHARD DAWKINS ON THAT KENTUCKY RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION CASE. All I can say is, Dawkins’ views on what the law should be bear little or no resemblance to what the law actually is. Interesting to see the BoingBoing commenters pushing back. I like this one: “I can’t help but think of the equally-religious beliefs held by adherents of particular operating systems, text editors, and programming languages.”

And this: “Oh, just come out and say it, you want to discriminate against a certain class of people even though there is no real objective logical reason to do so. You get an ick factor. Which is eminently stupid.”

And as far as I can tell, Dawkins is going out of his way to suggest — without quite saying — that a man who writes about the Big Bang as possibly divinely inspired is nonetheless some sort of Young Earth Creationist. But here’s what Gaskell says in the very passage truncated by Dawkins: “I have a lot of respect for people who hold this view because they are strongly committed to the Bible, but I don’t believe it is the interpretation the Bible requires of itself, and it certainly clashes head-on with science.”

Dawkins seems to have completely misrepresented Gaskell to buttress his argument. Really, one would expect better from someone devoted to reason above all.

UPDATE: Down in the comments, where I had missed it before, Dawkins backs off somewhat. Nonetheless, I think his post is quite unfair. Nor is he the first to do this. I think creationism is unscientific — but so, of course, is scoring points by trashing those with whom one disagrees. Sadly, however, it is often effective.

TODAY ONLY: Any season of The Simpsons for $13.99.

KEEP AN EYE ON HER: New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez: We ‘are not under-taxed; the government has simply over-spent.’

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON RESPONSES TO THE MOSCOW BOMBING. “Enough passive security means that the activities they are meant to protect cease to be viable. For life to continue at all, the major reliance must shift to pro-active measures: the identification of malefactors through intelligence and breaking up plots before they happen.” What struck me most in the reports I heard yesterday was that the Russians moved aggressively to get the airport operating normally very soon after the attack. I think that’s a good approach; I feel that we wouldn’t have done as well. But I hope I’m wrong.

WIRED: Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General.

Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry’s legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster’s demise, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a lower court’s pro-RIAA verdict.

Until recently, Verrilli also was leading Viacom’s ongoing and flailing $1 billion copyright-infringement fight against YouTube. . . . And in 2008, Verrilli told a federal judge in Minnesota that merely making copyright works available on file sharing networks amounted to copyright infringement — and that no proof of somebody else downloading those files was required.

It is no great surprise to me that the Obama Administration likes a lawyer for Big Entertainment. Those who were hoping for someone who would embody the fierce moral urgency of change, however, may be disappointed. Again.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Happiness, Productivity, and the Obama Competitiveness Initiative.

MEGAN MCARDLE: THE VALUE OF HEALTH-CARE EXPERIMENTS:

Ezra sees these as the beginnings of the sort of experimentation that is going to allow us to figure out what works, and thereby control health care costs. I see them as admirable local efforts that are unlikely to go anywhere.

The history of social science–very much including public health studies–is littered with exciting programs that promised to both significantly improve the lives of the targeted populations, and to save money. Yet you will notice that spending on things like health care and education is still going up, while the major reforms that have succeeded in either changing lives or controlling costs have been extraordinarily blunt: things like the EITC, where we just give poor people money; or welfare reform, where we stop doing so.

Why don’t we have more revolutions in human affairs? For starters, because these revolutionary studies are usually working with a pretty small number of patients. This means that there’s going to be a lot of variance–some will, by chance, show good results; some will, by chance, seem like disasters. The programs with “good results” will survive and get written up by social science journals and people like Atul Gawande; the programs that end up costing money will collapse and disappear into a welter of administrative embarassment. Note that I don’t say that this is what has happened in the case of these particular programs. The problem is, with small programs like this, it always has to be at the back of your mind. That’s one of the major reasons why promising pilot programs are so rarely replicated successfully.

You see this in education, too — there are these great principals who turn around seemingly hopeless schools, but somehow it never scales into a general approach. Maybe what matters is finding good people, and letting them do their best, without a lot of government involvement. Naw . . . that’s crazy-talk!