MODERN EDUCATION: Boy Disciplined After Waving Gun-Shaped Pizza Slice. Well, it’s instructive, anyway.

A SURVEY OF Republican Presidential Candidates’ Positions on Higher Education. I’m surprised that Rick Perry’s proposal for a $10,000 bachelor’s degree hasn’t gotten more attention in the debates.

FRANK J. FLEMING ON THE NTSB: Hey, They Still Let Us Drive.

The National Transportation Safety Board wants a complete ban on cellphone use while driving, even on hands-free calls. Some will protest this as yet another government encroachment on freedom, but we should think twice before rocking the boat here.

After all, have you considered how lucky we are that the government lets us drive cars at all?

Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there, you’d get looks like you were Hitler proposing the Final Solution.

Even aside from pollution, the government wouldn’t allow the risks to safety. . . . Driving is basically a grandfathered freedom from back when people cared less about pollution and danger and valued progress and liberty over safety. They had different equations related to human life then: We could lose 10,000 men in a single battle in a war and call it a victory.

We’re talking foolhardy people who eventually sent men to the moon strapped to a giant rocket that had less computational power than it takes to calculate the trajectory of an Angry Bird. Their kids dangled from jungle gyms over pavement.

Face it: We’re just not those people anymore. We don’t do dangerous things where lots of people could be hurt . . . even if they’re really cool and fun ideas. You can say we value human life more now, but it’s probably more apt to say we’re much sissier.

Read the whole thing.

PAUL TASSI: How SOPA Could Ruin My Life.

Hi, my name is Paul, and I’m a small business owner. But my storefront isn’t quite of the traditional variety. Rather, it’s a virtual one, a website I built from scratch, and currently own and operate. . . . It’s a movie/tv/video game site that I started with a partner about three years ago. Since then, it’s grown to averaging between 2.8 and 3.2 million page views a month. Not a giant, but not bad for two people, and with ad revenue, it’s enough to live on.

But that might not be the case if the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) passes. My virtual small business, along with many others like it, might be history.

Why is this? Am I a pirate, who feeds my users stolen content every day and deserves to be slain by a new law like this? Not at all, and this is the fundamental problem with SOPA and other prospective laws like it (Protect IP most recently). . . . The fine print of the law says sites that distribute copyrighted content could be subject to summary censorship, ie Torrent sites and the like. But it also encompasses any sites that LINK to copyrighted content, which is the bomb that blows up any semblance of sense this bill might have had. . . . Watching the House debate this bill yesterday was beyond pathetic. These representatives, if they deserve to be called that, have no idea the amount of power they’re giving the entertainment industry. Or maybe they do, as most of their pockets are lined with donations from media behemoths, and have been for years in the hopes that someday, they might pass a law like this.

Tar. Feathers.

AT AMAZON, top holiday deals in music.

Also, gift cards.

FACEBOOK’S HIDDEN MESSAGES. I’d never noticed the “Other” folder before, and sure enough, I’d missed some worthwhile stuff (though it was mostly spam).

SPENGLER: Thomas Friedman and the Higher Education Bubble.

THE HILL: Ethics Panel Extends Maxine Waters Investigation.

REPORT: Sanchez drops out of Texas Senate race.

GLOBAL WARMING NOT SO HOT: Thirty-three Year Temperature Update – Well Below Computer Model Predictions.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): First Person: The Sacrifices I Made to Survive Hard Times.

MICKEY KAUS: Did Dems Secretly Punt on Light Bulb Ban? “Maybe Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats would just as soon that Congress put off the de facto ban on cheap, familiar incandescent bulbs until after the election. If the ban can drive the Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker into the Tea Party, who knows how many other voters it will annnoy. This would explain the strange lack of strong Dem opposition to a GOP rider that defunds the incandescent ban until Sept. 30.”

Of course, this also keeps it alive as an election issue, which isn’t likely to help Dems.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Hess writes:

In re: to your post about the ‘light bulb nightmare being averted’ (http://instapundit.com/133627/)

The ban remains on the books. All Congress has done is zero out the money to enforce it. All it would take is for the funding to be restored as yet another publicity gimmick – or slipped it unobtrusively in yet another multi-thousand-page omnibus – and the ban could -immediately- drop into effect.

If you were a major retailer of incandescent light bulbs, how many would you keep in your warehouses? How many are there now?

If you were a manufacturer of incandescent light bulbs, would you keep your production lines humming? Are they shut down already?

This all seems like chicanery and grandstanding; the Republicans get to chalk up a PR win, the Dems get to claim they’re being compromising and flexible, while bulb availability may still take a nasty hit due to regulatory unpredictability.

Hmm. Well, if you’re worried you can always still stock up.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: SOPA and the oblivious.

It’s a bad bill, all right. It’s a terrible bill – awful from start to finish, idiotic to the core, corruptly pandering to a powerful special-interest group at the cost of everyone else’s liberty.

But I can’t help noticing that a lot of the righteous panic about it is being ginned up by people who were cheerfully on board for the last seventeen or so government power grabs – cap and trade, campaign finance “reform”, the incandescent lightbulb ban, Obamacare, you name it – and I have to wonder…

Don’t these people ever learn? Anything? Do they even listen to themselves?

It’s bizarre and entertaining to hear people who yesterday were all about allegedly benign and intelligent government interventions suddenly discovering that in practice, what they get is stupid and vicious legislation that has been captured by a venal and evil interest group.

Yeah, no shit? How…how do they avoid noticing that in reality it’s like this all the time?

Well, only about 98% of the time, actually. I mean, nobody’s perfect.

IT’S EASY IF YOU TRY: Imagining A World Without Vladimir Putin. The question is, would what came next be better, or worse?

WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT “HIGH MARGINAL TAX RATES ON THE POOR,” are benefits lost with higher incomes really part of the “tax rate?” From the standpoint of the recipient, I see the impact, but still . . . .

RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT — AND IT WORKED! Our Long National Light Bulb Nightmare Has Been Averted — For Now.

TEN YEARS AGO IN INSTAPUNDIT: Washington Post runs editorial shamelessly recycled from Brady Campaign press release. “What’s more, it’s the second time the Post has done it if you count running this planted oped by former Clinton Justice Department official Eric Holder.”

CIVIL SOCIETY: Wisconsin Election Official Belittles GOP Lawmakers via Twitter.

AT AMAZON, top holiday deals in Kitchen, Home & Garden.

Also, markdowns on magazines.

UPDATE: A couple of readers were confused as to which kind of magazines. Heh.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Why Gingrich is wrong about Bain Capital, corporate takeovers, and private equity.

HMM: Democrats Cave on Keystone in Payroll Tax Cut Deal.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “I Won’t Believe My Boyfriend has a Wife and Kids.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Where Do The Skinny People Shop?

CHANGE: Fitch warns Spain and Italy of downgrade as Moody’s cuts Belgium by two notches. Spain and Italy were both told to brace for a debt downgrade after a leading rating agency concluded that a ‘comprehensive solution to the eurozone crisis is technically and politically beyond reach’.”

UPDATE: Video: Paul Krugman’s 2009 comments on Belgium and debt.

UP TO 60% OFF ON sweaters, scarves, and coats.

Plus, half price on the Cyclops Thor rechargeable LED spotlight. A good deal for $39.99. As my brother said when he was a caretaker at a nature preserve: “At night, candlepower equals authority.”

UPDATE: Bill Quick emails:

Glenn, on that Thor Spotlight – when you first listed it, it was $39, a good deal. When I linked it, the price had mysteriously risen to $49. Now it’s over $51. What with the $7 shipping, it’s not really such a good deal any more.

Do you think the volume you sent to that item caused them to jack the price?

I’ve never run across this before.

It’s called “dynamic pricing,” and it’s happened to me on occasion. The exact workings are a mystery but basically more demand means a higher price. But sometimes a thirdparty seller runs out and it switches to another one, and that may have been what happened here, as I don’t think (though I could be wrong) that it was shipping from Mack’s Prairie Wings before.