SO WHEN DOES PRESIDENT OBAMA CALL GREG SMITH TO TELL HIM HIS PARENTS SHOULD BE PROUD?

You mean President Goldman Sachs? Not likely.

FLAG DESECRATION AND “the highest form of patriotism.”

CORRECTING human mitochondrial mutations.

VOTER FRAUD IN VERMONT: Blaming the Whistleblower. But of course.

AT AMAZON, it’s the spring Lawn & Garden event.

Also, external hard drives. Now with sizes up to 4 Terabytes. I remember back in the ’90s talking to a dotcommer friend who was bragging about having terabyte-sized databases. We were all impressed that anyone was doing anything denominated in terabytes. Now you can buy a hard drive that size for not much more than pocket money.

WAR AGAINST WOMEN: Woman Raped At Occupy New Haven. #Occupyfail.

UPDATE: I suppose that this should come as no surprise considering the signals that have come from the very top of the Democratic establishment:

At the exact moment Jon Favreau is receiving high praise in pre-inaugural media puff pieces, the 27-year-old chief speechwriter for President-elect Barack Obama (not Jon Favreau, the Hollywood actor/ director) finds himself in a minor mess over a photo from a recent private party showing him groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Rodham Clinton as an unnamed pal wearing an “Obama staff” T-shirt kisses and feeds her beer.

If you haven’t seen it, imagine the early stages of the barroom rape scene of “The Accused” with Jodie Foster. Or think prosecutor Mike Nifong’s graphic (though false) descriptions of the Duke lacrosse party. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson danced to a similar tune at the 2004 Super Bowl.

Fraternities have been closed for less.

Here’s the pic, in case you’ve forgotten. No word on whether Favreau was involved in helping accuse Republicans of running a “war against women.”

But the feminists didn’t get mad. Favreau was on their team, so he had privileges.

UPDATE: Jeff Miller writes that some feminists did complain. Not like we’ve seen lately. Not even close.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student Loans and Dating.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Cutbacks in Enrollment Redefine Graduate Education and Faculty Jobs.

Related: Student Loans: America’s Next Debt Bomb?

UH OH: New iPad could clog 4G Networks.

LOSS OF CONTROL: Professors Claim School Stole Online Course Materials They Developed.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: Show time for commercial spaceflight at hand.

The first privately owned passenger spaceship is on track for a test flight beyond the atmosphere this year, and nearly 500 people have signed up for rides.

Another company just closed on $5 million equity financing, enough to finish building a two-seater rocketplane called Lynx.

Both firms — and a half-dozen more — are looking at flying not just people, but experiments and payloads owned by research laboratories, businesses and educational institutes.

Faster, please.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: DNA nanotechnology-based nanorobot delivers cell suicide message to cancer cells.

HMM: American Express Denies Being Part of Conservative Radio Boycott.

SANTORINI: The Ground Is Moving Again In Paradise.

The Santorini caldera is awake again and rapidly deforming at levels never seen before. Georgia Tech Associate Professor Andrew Newman has studied Santorini since setting up more than 20 GPS stations on the island in 2006.

“After decades of little activity, a series of earthquakes and deformation began within the Santorini caldera in January of 2011,” said Newman, whose research is published by Geophysical Research Letters. “Since then, our instruments on the northern part of the island have moved laterally between five and nine centimeters. The volcano’s magma chamber is filling, and we are keeping a close eye on its activity.”

The world doesn’t need any more troubles. What is this, a John Ringo novel?

#GREENFAIL: Whistleblower alleges Fisker Karma pushed to market prematurely to meet DOE loan conditions. “Fisker has found itself struggling with a range of technical issues shortly after the launch of the company’s Karma extended-range EV, from faulty battery packs to pesky software updates. According to one former employee, that’s no surprise. According to GigaOM, the worker in question reportedly left the company because of a push to get the production model out the door to satisfy Department of Energy loan requirements even though the early cars had a range of technical issues that still required sorting.” Hmm. Stay tuned.

FROM WENDY BACH: Mobilization and Poverty Law: Searching for Participatory Democracy Amongst the Ashes of the War on Poverty.

HARVEY MANSFIELD: Democracy Without Politics?

SPEAKING OF THE PUBLIC PENSION CRISIS: NY Suicide Caucus Votes Down Cuomo Pension Reform.

If you needed more proof that arithmetic-deficient politicians and dysfunctional government are largely to blame for the disastrous state of New York’s finances, Albany Democrats have just supplied it.

New York’s Assembly Democrats have voted down Governor Cuomo’s pension reform plan, hammering yet another nail into the state’s financial coffin. The Assembly refused Cuomo’s suggestion to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 even though the governor stressed that his plan would save hundreds of billions of dollars in costs toward a pension plan expected to consume 35 percent of the government’s budget by 2015. In 2001, it was 3 percent.

Conclusion: “Wars against arithmetic don’t end well.” Arithmetic is for the little people.

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA admits defeat.

But reader Daniel McAfee sees a marketing opportunity: “They should market the current printed version as ‘The Sunflare Edition’ … Wikipedia’s not much use after the power goes out, now is it?”

HOPE AND CHANGE: IRS to Mom and Pop: Drop Dead.

Doing your taxes sucks. Paying someone else to do your taxes sucks, too. But you know what sucks most of all? Having the person who does your taxes go out of business (or dramatically raise prices) thanks to an IRS power grab.

Last year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) got into the business of licensing tax preparers. The IRS wasn’t granted the authority to do this by Congress, they just decided to go for it. At a time when unemployment is still awfully high, 350,000 people–many of whom are self-employers or own small businesses–will be hit by rules that axe their jobs or make it more difficult and expensive to keep their calculators clacking.

They don’t need no stinkin’ legal authority. Legal authority is for the little people.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: Are Pensions Busting Local Governments?

And since I haven’t mentioned it in a while, check out PensionTsunami.com for a roundup of news on the public pension crisis.

CAMPAIGN THEORY: “The more voters see of Obama, the more he drops in the polls. When he fades from the headlines, he gains.” That’s going to be hard to pull off in a general election.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE BLOOMBERG? Good way to show solidarity with the middle class!

CLOTHES, CANDY AND MORE: It’s the Easter Shop at Amazon.

Also, today only: Honestech VHS to DVD 5.0 Deluxe for $27.99. Convert your old videotapes to DVD.