LONGEVITY UPDATE: Longevity Gene Debate Opens A Trans-Atlantic Debate. “A trans-Atlantic dispute has opened up between two camps of researchers pursuing a gene that could lead to drugs that enhance longevity. British scientists say the longevity gene is ‘nearing the end of its life,’ but the Americans whose work is under attack say the approach remains as promising as ever. The dispute concerns genes that make sirtuins, proteins involved in controlling cells’ metabolism. Because of their metabolic role, the sirtuins may mediate the 40-percent-longer life enjoyed by laboratory rats and mice put on a very low-calorie diet. . . . Scientists not involved in the dispute say that sirtuins remain a field of vast interest, even if their relationship to longevity now seems considerably more complex than originally suggested.”

DEBATE THOUGHTS from Ira Stoll.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK, this response to Elizabeth Warren.

UPDATE: A reader sends this response:

Group of friends of Stanford football post on a board called thebootleg.com On the current events board, we have debated the Warren comments. here was my response:

“You built a factory out there? Good for you,” “Built a factory” is a summary for a lot of work. Put up equity, designed a business, took risk to buy land, get permits, pay property taxes and use taxes and permit fees. Then, bought a bunch of equipment and had it installed …and paid sales taxes. Hired some employees and paid them a bunch of money and paid payroll taxes on top of that. Bought a bunch of raw materials from companies that paid a bunch of salaries and a bunch of taxes. Building a factory is a huge private investment that pays the public a lot of taxes for the right to be built.

“But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.” Between fuel taxes, license fees, tolls and various taxes on transportation related activities, the roads budget is smaller than the total tax take.

you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; No, you did not educate them. You babysat them for 12 years. Then I hired them, taught them how to be responsible and show up for work, taught them how to communicate in clear sentences, taught them that there are rights and wrongs and (unlike with your schools) wrongs have consequences in the workplace. Then paid for extended education for my employees so they could continue to improve themselves and better add value to what we do around here.

“You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” Funny, my factory has 24/7 security guards because the last time it was broken into, the police did not even bother to take a report, they just said “call your insurance company”. As for fire? The closest fire department is 10 miles away. My insurance company requires that I have a full wet sprinkler system to qualify for insurance because there is no local fire protection.

“You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.” Well, that is not exactly true. When the AFL-CIO tried to unionize my workforce, they staged three days of noisy protests outside my factory. The police forces just stood around and watched as the protesters intimidated my workers, vandalized their cars and destroyed my property.

You say “we” like the government and society are the same. They aren’t. My company and my community and you politicians are not “we”.

Ouch.

FIDUCIARY FAIL? Al Gore blabs inside information about Apple — that the iPhone 5 will go on sale next month. Or setup?

BEST DEBATE LINE OF THE NIGHT: Governor Gary Johnson: My Neighbor’s Dogs Have Created More Shovel-Ready Jobs Than Barack Obama.

OH, GOODY: Pacific Markets Tumble After Wall Street Rout.

FOLLOWING UP ON SOME EARLIER POSTS, a Generator Buying Guide.

And you may want to take advantage of this this carbon monoxide alarm.

“IT WAS SORT OF DEATH BY MEDIA.” Thaddeus McCotter withdraws.

HERE’S A NEW REPORT on this weekend’s Tea Party gathering at Harvard Law School. It’s actually an eclectic left/right group, talking about constitutional conventions and amendments, co-sponsored by HLS and the Tea Party Patriots — but note that there’s also a Harvard Law School Tea Party group.

Meanwhile, on the subject of constitutional conventions and amendments, there’s also this new issue of the Tennessee Law Review, featuring contributions by everyone from Richard Epstein to Sanford Levinson to Randy Barnett. You can read my Foreword here.

STEPHEN GREEN IS drunkblogging the GOP debate.

UPDATE: Althouse is liveblogging too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Joe Gandelman liveblogged, too.

ANDREW MALCOLM: Oops, Obama touts his jobs plan today at an Ohio bridge that won’t qualify.

Related: Obama’s Bridge Collapse.

In the speech, in his usual pick-a-straw-man-and-beat-it-into-flinders fashion, Obama bemoaned opposition to infrastructure spending: “We are better than that. We are smarter than that.” If only that were true of his administration. No competent political operation (IOW, some other operation than this White House) would ever have allowed its principal to do this photo op. But apparently the “accidental” association with his Congressional Republican rivals was just too juicy to pass up. Or even do some basic fact gathering about to make sure it made sense.

For one thing, the river crossing in question is already slated for a new bridge. It’s been in the planning stages for years; the project is currently barely into the public comment phase. In fact, Obama’s own FHWA doesn’t expect it to start construction in 2015 or be completed until 2022.

The President did not explain how his ‘jobs bill’ will alter time so that the project can start creating jobs “right now.”

Worse, Obama, Carney, and Brudnage are flat-out wrong. The I-75 corridor is indeed outdated, but the bridge itself doesn’t actually need repairs:

Boy the staff work in this White House has really been going downhill.

POPULAR MECHANICS: Is The Light Bulb Ban A Bright Idea? “On January 1, 2012, new laws hit the books that will effectively ban 100-watt incandescent light bulbs. In the coming years, 75-, 60-, and 40-watt bulbs will be goners, too. In this investigation, PM takes you inside the years-long effort to build a better bulb. Plus, we put light bulbs—incandescents, CFLs, and LEDs—through our own brand of rigorous testing to sort fact from fiction with some hard data.” Plus this on CFLs: “Today, the gap between expectation and experience still exists in the world of CFLs. Studies by the Program for the Evaluation and Analysis of Residential Lighting (PEARL) trade group have shown that CFLs don’t always live up to manufacturers’ claims, particularly in life span.” That’s certainly been my experience. I started out a fan, but in my hosue they’re not lasting noticeably longer than incandescents.

Just remember, there’s still time to stock up!

AT AMAZON, bestselling books on survival skills.

INSTAVISION: My Michael Yon interview is now on YouTube.

RICHARD POSNER’S UNSPEAKABLE SENTIMENTS: “Unspeakable? Really? I hear it all the time… often from the same leftish professors who’ve made a point of loathing Posner. I’ve heard a lot of that loathing because my law school lies within the 7th Circuit, where Judge Posner sits… and where he will remain, because the place where his opinion really is unspeakable is (as Shea notes) before the Senate Judiciary Committee, if you want to get confirmed to a new judicial appointment.”

MAKING MICROPHONES: Making an Audio Icon: Inside Shure’s Stress-Test Gauntlet.

The SM58, a standard for live vocals known for its rugged design, is one of many products that Shure employees decimate on a regular basis. A few mics from every batch are brutalized in Shure’s destructive testing facilities to ensure they perform up to par. There they are scorched, smashed, frozen, and bathed in synthetic sweat.

Note the perhaps-correct use of the word “decimate” — though I doubt they really test 10% to destruction. Shure makes a great product, though I was always more of an Electro-Voice guy back in the day. Still use RE-20s in the podcast studio, though they don’t get much use these days.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Did the UAW Ring its Death Knell by Extracting $12,500 bonuses?

WELL, IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’RE BAPTISTS OR SOMETHING: Brooklyn Professors Condemn Police Monitoring of Muslim Student Groups.

21ST CENTURY SEX: “Over the past decade, sexy vampires and lusty werewolves have replaced mortals as the most popular romance heroes for women.”

UPDATE: Reader Drew Kelley emails: “Who’s afraid of committment now?” Heh.

LIVEBLOGGING THE ANTI-DURBAN CONFERENCE at The Tatler.

AT AMAZON, new releases in Movies & TV.

SIX QUESTIONS ABOUT NASA’s Falling Satellite. Plus, here’s one more plug for that paper on space debris that Rob Merges and I wrote for the Environmental Law Reporter.

LONGEVITY UPDATE: Anti-Aging Uncertainties Persist: New research raises further questions about the role of sirtuins in aging.

IS YAWNING ABOUT brain temperature regulation?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: PANIC? “That’s what we’ve been seeing on world markets since Thursday trading began in Asia; this morning it hit the US with the kind of sickening thud we remember too well from 2008. Amid the general hurricane of bad economic news a few things stand out. . . . I think the odds still favor outcomes well short of catastrophic and worst case scenarios — but the global economy is now in the catastrophe zone where speculation about such scenarios is no longer science fiction but becomes part of prudent planning.”