READER BOOK PLUG: Bad Trip, from reader Bernard Brandt.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Christmas Corner.

Also, new Lightning Deals every hour, so keep checking back. (Bumped).

HEH: Glenn Beck, Urine Trouble Now.

ED MORRISSEY: If Congress Can’t Cut A Fiscal Deal, Game Over. “The core of this standoff is the budgetary process in Congress, which has run off the rails for more than three years. Despite the requirements of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 that both chambers produce a budget resolution each year, the Senate under Democratic control has refused to do so since 2009. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has opted to litigate budget conflicts through high-profile standoffs and crises, rather than through the normal process of budget adoption and conference committees.”

The Budget Act should be amended to eliminate Congressional pay whenever there is no budget. Pushing this would be good for the GOP. I’m mystified why they haven’t done it. Pass it out of the House and send it to the Senate. Hilarity will ensue.

INTRODUCING the new Internet teaching stars.

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT JUST GETS MORE EMBARRASSING: Holder’s DOJ Spanked for Possible Misconduct in New Orleans Police Prosecutions.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Help! My Husband Got My Sister Pregnant.

WAR ON MEN: At The University of Missouri:

Mizzou senior guard Michael Dixon was accused of rape in August, but the case was closed Nov. 16 after an investigation led Tracy Gonzalez of the Boone County prosecuting attorney’s office to conclude there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges, according to a Columbia police report obtained by the Post-Dispatch.

Dixon, who was never interviewed by police or charged, has been suspended from the MU basketball team since at least early October for what coach Frank Haith has repeatedly called violations of team rules.

His future remains unclear, and MU officials declined to comment Tuesday night.

Dixon is still attending classes at Mizzou and last week traveled with the team for a tournament in the Bahamas.

While MU was there, it became public knowledge that Dixon’s continued suspension had been administered by the MU Student Conduct Committee after a string of Twitter postings by former Tiger Kim English.

“The Univ of Missouri’s ‘student board’ is a joke,” he wrote in part in reference to Dixon’s status. “Acting and making a decision without actual facts. University should be ashamed!”

Read the whole thing.

ANTHROPOLOGY: Geek Researcher Spends Three Years Living With Hackers.

Coleman, an anthropologist who teaches at McGill University, spent three years living in the Bay Area, studying the community that builds the Debian Linux open source operating system and other hackers — i.e., people who pride themselves on finding new ways to reinvent software. More recently, she’s been peeling away the onion that is the Anonymous movement, a group that hacks as a means of protest — and mischief.

When she moved to San Francisco, she volunteered with the Electronic Frontier Foundation — she believed, correctly, that having an eff.org address would make people more willing to talk to her — and started making the scene. She talked free software over Chinese food at the Bay Area Linux User Group’s monthly meetings upstairs at San Francisco’s Four Seas Restaurant. She marched with geeks demanding the release of Adobe eBooks hacker Dmitry Sklyarov. She learned the culture inside-out.

Now, she’s written a book on her experiences: Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. It’s a scholarly work of anthropology that examines the question: What does it mean to be a hacker?

There’s an interview at the link.

SORROW: Lesbians Around The World In Mourning After Dolly Parton States That She’s Not Gay.

PARDON ME IF I’M UNMOVED BY fatcat musicians’ opposition to the Internet Radio Fairness Act. It’s about “fairness.” They’re against it. Screw the 1%!!! At some point, you’ve made enough money.

UNEXPECTEDLY! New home sales stagnant, cast shadow on housing. “New U.S. single-family home sales fell slightly in October and sales for the prior month were revised sharply lower, casting a faint shadow over one of the brighter spots in the U.S. economy.” Funny that the prior month’s numbers were “revised sharply lower” after the election.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: GOING AFTER ADMINISTRATIVE BLOAT.

J. Paul Robinson, chairman of Purdue University’s faculty senate, strode through the halls of a 10- story concrete-and-glass administrative tower.

“I have no idea what these people do,” said Robinson, waving his hand across a row of offices, his voice rising.

The 59-year-old professor of biomedical engineering is leading a faculty revolt against bureaucratic bloat at the public university in Indiana. In the past decade, the number of administrative employees jumped 54 percent, almost eight times the growth of tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Purdue has a $313,000-a-year acting provost and six vice and associate vice provosts, including a $198,000 chief diversity officer. It employs 16 deans and 11 vice presidents, among them a $253,000 marketing officer and a $433,000 business school chief.

Administrative costs on college campuses are soaring, crowding out instruction at a time of skyrocketing tuition and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans. At Purdue and other U.S. college campuses, bureaucratic growth is pitting professors against administrators and sparking complaints that tight budgets could be spent more efficiently.

“We’re a public university,” Robinson said. “We’re here to deliver a high-quality education at as low a price as possible. Why is it that we can’t find any money for more faculty, but there seems to be an almost unlimited budget for administrators?”

Because administrators are in charge of the budgets. All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

ED DRISCOLL: And Now a Word from Bill Clinton on the Dangers of Raising Taxes. “The ads not only write themselves if the 2012 GOP folds as badly as Bush #41 — they’ve already been written.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My Husband Is Sleeping With My Mother: E. Jean helps one woman realize she has found true love, joy—and freedom—in her husband’s affair.

RAND SIMBERG: The Politicians’ War On Science. “Now, in fact, I would prefer politicians who are conversant with science and its methods to those not, but even more I prefer politicians who are conversant with basic math, economics, and human nature, and have an aversion to wrecking the nation’s economy. And if they have to occasionally salute the sensibilities of people who believe that evolution is the work of the devil, I can live with that — particularly since we have a current president who does exactly the same thing, while flooring the accelerator toward the fiscal cliff.”

AT MODERN INK, an interview with husband/wife designers Josh & Lauren Podoll.

THE OLFACTORY EQUIVALENT OF “WHITE NOISE.”

I’VE NEVER BEEN THAT INTO RUNNING, and science seems to be backing me up.

GALLERY: The 11 Most Important Guns In History.

A BUFFALO WILD WINGS AD COMES TO LIFE IN MIAMI.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Danny Lasko, The Children of Hamelin. “Everyone knows the Pied Piper led them away. But no one knows what happened to them.”

IT NEVER DID THAT MUCH FOR ME: Long-distance runners lap up miles for the love of it. I enjoy sprinting, but I’m not built for distance.

CHANGE: Media Criticize Obama For “Fiscal Cliff” Intransigence. “News reports have also picked up on the president’s decision to campaign rather than negotiate and Democrats’ perhaps fateful decision to dig in their heels on entitlement cuts.”

SWATTING: A front page story in the L.A. Times about Patterico and some other dude named Cowell. More here.