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BIG BROTHER UNDER YOUR HOOD: NHTSA To Push Mandatory Data Recorders In Cars.
FIVE NEW ADDITIONS to the Habitable ExoPlanets Catalog. “The online listing, called the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, celebrated its first anniversary today (Dec. 5). When it was first released last year, it had two potential habitable planets to its name. According to lead researcher Abel Mendez, the team expected to add maybe one or two more in the catalog’s first year. The addition of five suspected new planets was wholly beyond anyone’s expectations.”
Now if the warp drive technology, and the nanotechnology, can make enough progress in the next few decades, there might be hope for humanity.
MAGIC MIRROR: Know What You’ll Look Like in 30 Years — Maybe Then You’ll Max Out Your 401(k). “Using a facial aging algorithm, the web app snaps a photo of you with your laptop’s camera and then shows you what you’ll look like at 47, 57, 67 and so on, all the way to 107.”
DON SURBER: Fight For The Right To Be Left Alone.
DECEMBER 8TH IS Pretend To Be A Time-Traveler Day. “Walk up to random people and say ‘WHAT YEAR IS THIS?’ and when they tell you, get quiet and then say ‘Then there’s still time!’ and run off.”
IN THE MAIL: From Bonnie Breuilly-Pike, Dancing With The Spirits of Shadowplay.
HE SAYS “AMERICAN HEGEMONY” LIKE IT’S A BAD THING, and that’s not even the worst part of this response to Ross Douthat.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: GOP Scared Stiff By Copyright Paper.
The Washington Examiner reports that the staffer responsible for publishing the memo on the RSC website has been fired.
This is unfortunate. We were impressed by the original paper; it seemed like a sign that the Republican Party was sticking to its guns on innovation and free markets, even as it was courting new support from young voters. Firing the staffer who wrote the policy paper is an unforced error. The GOP should be doing everything in its power to convince voters that it is the party of innovators and dreamers, not the party of big corporations and crony capitalist lobbies.
For extra stupidity points, they’re not just “big corporations,” they’re big corporations that hate the GOP and try to destroy it.
RACISM IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: “Stop Being So Anglo.”
TAKE IT FROM A FORMER SHOE SALESMAN, the reason shoes are especially appealing is that unlike dresses, jackets, or sweaters, they still fit if you gain ten pounds. At least, that’s my conclusion as to why women are crazy about shoes.
UPDATE: Ann Althouse: Shoes are like the bad boyfriend who looks good but hurts you later. Women can’t resist that!
AT AMAZON, it’s the Christmas Corner.
Also, today only: Up to 75% off on Winter Coats. Winter is coming.
RICHARD LOWRY: Operation Humiliation: Obama’s Real Fiscal-Cliff Agenda.
What’s really humiliating for the GOP is that they aren’t smart enough to respond, even when the response is spelled out for them. And I mean over and over again.
RADLEY BALKO: In Which Harold And Kumar Go Into Hiding.
Well, dammit.
I was so very excited about all that sensible drug policy we were going to get out of President Obama in his second term. I mean sure, Obama had spent a good deal of his first term waging more raids on medical marijuana clinics in four years than Bush had waged in eight. And his administration defended DEA agents who point guns at the heads of children during drug raids. And his appointees continued to defend the carnage in Mexico as merely the consequence of good, sensible drug policy.
Sure. There was all of that. But there were also all of these progressive pundits who kept telling drug war reformers that they should go ahead and vote for Obama anyway . . . because they just knew, or at least they were pretty sure, or at least they had heard rumors, that maybe, possibly, Obama would turn the corner and show some leadership. . . .
You’d think that if Obama were going to “pivot,” simply leaving alone two states that overwhelmingly legalized pot and gave him their electoral votes would be the best place to start.
As for “bring some cases against low-level marijuana users….,” I think that means you, Harold and Kumar. Hope you guys aren’t dog people.
The Drug War is about control. Obama likes control.
CALLING FOR A TRUCE in the War On Men.
By the way, if this stuff interests you, you’re going to love the Insta-Wife’s forthcoming book, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream – and Why It Matters. I think it explores these issues in considerably more depth, in part because the Insta-Wife interviewed a lot of actual men. And because she’s really smart.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Resort Living Comes To Campus. “Real-estate investors and developers, hungry for new areas for growth, are finding a lucrative and previously untapped market in these areas surrounding college campuses, one marked by low inventory, booming enrollment and an increasing appetite for luxury living.”
When the borrowed money dries up, this’ll change. But hey, that’s true of everything in this economy . . . .
LABOR FORCE: Number Of Workers Aged 25-54 Back To April 1997 Levels. “In other words in the past 15 years not a single incremental job has been gained in this most productive and lucrative of age groups!”
How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?
CHANGE: Unions Lose Big In Michigan.
There are three big points to note about this unfolding story. For the past fifty years it was almost unthinkable that Michigan, home of America’s auto industry and one of the most pro-labor states in the country, would join right-to-work states. At the very least, this story seriously undercuts the narrative that America has turned decisively left under Obama.
Also worth noting is the fact that public-sector unions have significantly less support than their private-sector counterparts. Although Lansing passed right-to-work bills covering both types of unions, the bill covering public-sector unions only managed four votes against—a small minority of even the Democrats. The vote for the bill protecting private-sector unions was much closer. There could not be a more telling illustration of the deep trouble facing the public union movement.
As in Wisconsin, this is the beginning of the story rather than the end.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Reader Geoff Bowden writes: “Actually this is wrong. The vote was different because all the Democrats walked out. The same 4 Republicans voted against both bills and the same 22 voted for them both.”
FRANKLY, I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT SUCKED: Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum. But I’m sure what they replace it with will be worse, because that’s the first rule of school curricula.
IT’S KINDA LIKE A MIDEAST VERSION OF “FAST AND FURIOUS:” Arms, Allies, and the Horror in Syria.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Mother-Daughter Porn Team. “The money was part of the reason, but so was fun, and having sex with hot guys.”
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