I DON’T BELIEVE IT: NASA Solves The Mystery Of The Massive Light Clusters Off The Coast Of Argentina. Fishing boats? An obvious cover story. It’s really BLUE HADES.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Mugged By Reality.

INTRODUCING LIBERTARIAN JESUS: I told you to feed the poor, not create laws that steal from people to do it.

GET YOUR SHOPPING OUT OF THE WAY: At Amazon, the Holiday Toy List.

Also, bestselling car stereos.

And, deals on Blockbuster Movies, on DVD and Blu-Ray.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: “What I have right now is what I am happy with and I just want to know why I can’t keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else?”

IN RESPONSE TO MY FIGHTING OKRA T-SHIRT POST, reader Allen Paterson sends this definitive post on the subject.

I’M SURE IT’S THE JEWS’ FAULT: Who is to Blame for the Plight of Christians in the Middle East who are Being Attacked and Driven out by Muslims?

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: Here’s how Obamacare makes life hell for college profs. “Under the president’s health care law, employees who work 30 hours each week are eligible for health benefits. Since many adjunct professors teach enough classes to meet that bar, college administrators must choose between paying extra healthcare costs or cutting back adjunct work hours. For many universities–both public and private–the decision is an easy one: punish the adjuncts.”

MORE THOUGHTS ON STARSHIP DESIGN.

The internet has made it easier for like-minded dreamers to get in touch. Astronomers have discovered thousands of alien planets (including, possibly, one around Alpha Centauri B, which at 4.4 light-years away is part of the star system that actually is closest to the sun), and this exoplanet boom has caught the public’s imagination, as well as giving starship researchers a list of destinations. The rise of the private space industry, which aims to slash the cost of getting into orbit, brings hope that the sort of orbital infrastructure which would be needed to build a starship might one day be developed. And the involvement of DARPA, an arm of the American defence department, which is sponsoring a long-term project to develop the sorts of technology a starship might require, has brought money and attention.

Still waiting for my Mannschenn Drive.

OOPS! Obama’s Twitter Feed Hacked?

AIRLINES: Coach Seating Is Getting Even Worse.

READER BOOK PLUG: From Deirdre Mundy, Yeller.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON AND MANY OTHERS at PJ’s new Freedom Academy.

There’s also a book club. Here are Victor Davis Hanson’s top recommendations on military history.

And here are my book recommendations.

SPACE: Video: The Investor Who Saved Elon Musk’s Space Dreams. I’ve known Steve Jurvetson for years through the Foresight Institute. Great guy.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Why Is Everyone Avoiding Me Now That I’m A Widow? Because people have an atavistic fear that bad luck is catching, and because they feel awkward and don’t know what to say. In prior eras, institutionalized mourning rituals — and the sheer commonness of premature death — made this somewhat less pronounced. Now such things are unusual, and people have no template on how to act.

You see a similar phenomenon when you or your spouse is sick. When Helen had her heart attack, I noticed a lot of people withdrew, while many others asked questions which mostly seemed aimed at reassuring themselves that something like that couldn’t happen to them or theirs. It’s just human nature, but if you know someone who’s sick or widowed, try to reach out to them. You may worry about intruding, but odds are they’ll appreciate it.

MARC THIESSEN: Delaying The Individual Mandate Won’t Fix ObamaCare. “What a difference a few weeks makes. Remember when Democrats voted to keep the government shut down rather than accept a delay in the individual mandate? Now that the Obamacare implosion is dominating the news, they are falling over each to see who gets credit for a delay.” Apparently the terrorists, anarchists, and seditionists have won. But, after being called all those names, the GOP should extract a stiff price for going along.

THE “UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH” behind Matthew Shepard’s death. “Shepard’s tragic and untimely demise may not have been fueled by his sexual orientation, but by drugs. For Shepard had likely agreed to trade methamphetamines for sex. And it killed him.”

ACCIDENT OR POLITICAL PROTEST? 5 Killed, 38 Injured As Car Burns In Tiananmen Square.

AT THE STANFORD LAW REVIEW, an online symposium on Big Data and Privacy.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 172.

JOHN FUND: Can This Website Really Be Saved? Obama’s “tech surge” fixers say all will be well in five weeks, but IT experts are dubious.

THE ADMINISTRATION’S NEW GRAND STRATEGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

This is actually a strategy of breathtaking ambition. US administrations have tried for decades to reach an understanding with Iran, and from the time of the Balfour Declaration to the present day ending the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the impossible dream of diplomats all over the world. As for mitigating the horrors in Syria, the administration so far has had absolutely no success at that—and if anything the consequence of its peculiar mix of saber rattling rhetoric and practical passivity has been to make a bad situation significantly worse.

The new strategy abandons core goals of the first term—we aren’t doing much about democracy now and that whole idea of bridging the gap between the US and the Muslim world seems to have been left on the cutting room floor. At least the way the Times tells it, there is nothing here about a plan to deal with the terror threat. Will there be more drone strikes in Yemen or fewer? What will we do to mend fences with the Saudis?

There’s also a tension between the top two objectives. The tougher the US is on Iran, the more leverage it has pushing Israel toward concessions on the Palestinians. The more risks the administration takes and concessions it makes to get a deal with Iran, the tighter the Israelis are tempted to circle the wagons. Pursuing both objectives simultaneously risks a car crash, but then the Middle East is littered with wrecked cars from this and past administrations.

The most hopeful point is that from the President down there’s an awareness that the Middle East, important as it is, cannot be the be all and end all of American foreign policy. Asia matters, and although the NYT doesn’t seem to have raised these questions, the damage that uncontrolled NSA snooping (combined with inept data protection efforts) has done to our relationships in Europe also calls for some serious action.

So it’s just “smart diplomacy” all around, then.

MICKEY KAUS: Rubio Bails On Amnesty. “Ann Coulter seems willing to forgive Rubio–a sound tactical position, given that if you oppose amnesty you want to give its supporters an incentive to jump ship. For the record, I agree. But just between us, I don’t. I will never forgive Rubio. First, it’s pretty obvious he’s only abandoning amnesty because he has to face the voters. Like John McCain, who goes into comprehensivist remission every 6 years, he’ll be back pushing it as soon as the voting’s over.”

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