SECRET SOCIAL SKILLS that successful people know.

MERRY CHRISTMAS: “I do think, at a certain point, you’ve got enough presents.”

JESSE FOX MAYSHARK remembers Christopher Hitchens: “He talked about reporting, he talked about Bill Clinton, he talked about Tennessee politics, which he turned out to know more about than me. That was no surprise. I got the feeling that if I had been a beekeeper from Ottawa, he would have known a lot about Canadian pollination problems, too. I finished my drink, and felt buzzed. There was a lot of gin in it. He tossed back the rest of his, and asked, ‘Another?'”

REVIEW: The Sig Sauer Concealed Carry Jacket.

JOEL KOTKIN: Heavy Metal Is Back: The Best Cities For Manufacturing.

NASA VIDEO CAPTURES COMET flying through Sun’s corona.

WILL OBAMA DENOUNCE THESE CORPORATE JETS? Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt have eight jets between the three of them, reports Mercury News. Plus a very special “public-private partnership” involving an airbase.

As I keep saying, I don’t want to hear one more goddamn thing about my carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, Drudge has been having fun with the Obama Family on a related front:

Worries about spending and carbon footprints are for the little people.

AIMING FOR THE optimal level of empathy. “I am as concerned about counterproductive empathy as I am by deficiency of empathy. I think empathy is a necessary attribute for humans to maintain a civilized society. But it is not an unalloyed good. It has to be tempered and empathetic feelings are not a substitute for rational thought.”

KATIE GRANJU IS giving away a Dell computer.

GREEN TRASH-TALK: Audi Chief Calls Chevy Volt “A Car For Idiots.”

YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATIONS: Some IRS advice. If you’re looking for places to make donations before the tax year ends, here are a few suggestions.

The Foresight Institute. I used to be on their board, and they’re a good outfit, promoting nanotechnology research.

The Institute For Justice. You’re for justice, right?

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

RECKLESS DISREGARD: The folks over at ThinkProgress Green are calling me “Koch Industries attorney Glenn Reynolds.” I suppose that’s not technically libel, since few people would think less of an attorney who – unlike me — was actually able to claim Koch Industries as a client. More likely they’re just trolling for links in the hopes of boosting their web stats before year-end. Sorry guys. I’m not going to reward lies with traffic. But this kind of thing is pretty much par for the course with ThinkProgress and Media Matters.

CLIMATE-CHANGE STORMTROOPERS GO AFTER VOLKSWAGEN. Ha. Before you followed the link, you thought I was engaging in hyperbole about the stormtroopers, didn’t you? But as you can see, I was merely being descriptive.

THE ATLANTIC remembers Christopher Hitchens.

So does Michael Totten. And Ron Radosh.

CLIMATEGATE BOMBSHELL: Did U.S. Gov’t Help Hide Climate Data?

SHOCKING NEWS: Ron Paul Loses Online Poll.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: 1987 Lamborghini Countach on eBay.

DAVE KOPEL: How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Leftie Populism Still Looks Like A Loser. “Today the Gallup Organization has a new poll out that helps explain why leftie populism always looks like a good strategy but never seems to get anybody into the White House. By a significant margin, voters continue — even in the midst of tough economic times and rising economic inequality — to think it is more important to pursue pro-growth policies for the economy than to reduce inequality.”

NTSB AND CELL PHONES: Fudging The Numbers? “I had looked at the NTSB’s data on distracted driving, which is where you’ll find the 3,000 figure, and learned that of the distracted driving deaths, only 995 were attributable to cell phone use.”

Related: The Nanny State wants your cell phones.

UPDATE: Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: NTSB cell-use ban proposal an overreaction, and a waste of time. “So even though no one could tell whether the driver was even looking at his phone before the accident, the NTSB is insisting that all cell phone use, including hands-free calling, get banned, even though phone calls had nothing to do with the accident at all. Why ban phone calls if the NTSB blames texting for the accident? Well, as it turns out, texting while driving was already illegal in these circumstances.”

MORE: “This is a day for rejoicing. The forces of liberty have overwhelmed the forces of a world so green one would not have been able to read a traditional book by a traditional light bulb.”

GENEROSITY: Know a young visionary who deserves a large grant? Deadline Dec 31.

JORDAN WEISSMAN IN THE ATLANTIC ON The Dark Side Of America’s Growing Social Safety Net.

TRADE WAR? China Slaps Tariffs On American-Built Large Cars And SUVs.

LARRY WEBSTER: U.S. Needs Better Drivers, Not Cellphone Bans.

And if you missed it, here’s my piece on the subject from yesterday.