CHEVROLET still makes a nice Corvette. Though I think I prefer the old styling to the new model.

SO ON MY ADMINISTRATIVE LAW EXAM THIS SEMESTER, one of the questions involved a proposal for subjecting hospitals to rate-of-return regulation like utilities. Though the question was just a vehicle to get students to show that they understood how that works, and related issues like “gold-plating” and stranded investments, as I’ve graded the exams I’ve gotten the uneasy feeling that someone might actually propose this . . . .

Another question involved the Milo Barbell Company facing FDA regulation of its weight equipment as a “medical device” because it affects the structure and function of the body without chemical action.

A JEWEL AT THE HEART OF QUANTUM PHYSICS. “The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated, ‘scattering amplitudes,’ which represent the likelihood that a certain set of particles will turn into certain other particles upon colliding. These numbers are what particle physicists calculate and test to high precision at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.”

Consequence: “You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.”

ADVICE: Don’t Wrap Your MacBook’s Cable Around The Power Brick.

ANDREW MOSEMAN: I Don’t Want Smartphone Subsidies to Die—but They Should. “It would be a good thing for smartphone users if the current model starts to crack. But, in turn, we need to free our minds from the tyranny of the two-year upgrade cycle. I’m currently eligible to upgrade my outdated iPhone to a new device at contract price. I’ll probably do it, partly to keep the unlimited data plan I’m grandfathered into and also partly because of the allure of $199, which just doesn’t sound that expensive. Although the phone subsidy is voodoo economics, there’s an instant gratification part of my brain that wants it to endure. I don’t want to pay $650 for a new iPhone 5S. I want to pay $199 and deal with the monthly payments some other time. So I’ll buy it. And when I buy it, I’ll already have my mind on the next round of the cycle, tracking how many new generations will debut before I’m eligible to upgrade again. To accept the two-year contract cycle is to accept everything that stinks about the smartphone experience: High monthly bills with no good way out and being tethered to your carrier’s upgrade schedule.”

POLL: ObamaCare Has Lost The Uninsured. “Let that sink in: What that means is that regardless of how bad the old system—the system that for whatever reason left them uninsured—was, a majority of people without health coverage now think that Obamacare makes it worse.”

HISTORY: The Romans Were Stranger Than You Think. And they were much more like us than the Greeks. . . . But the mores of Hollywood are much like those of the Roman slave state.

CHANGE: Tesla Motors’ $40,000 mass market electric car set to debut in early 2015.

SPACE: JEFF BEZOS LOSES A ROUND. “In a battle of technology titans for the right to lease a historic NASA launch pad in Florida, SpaceX has beat out competitor Blue Origin, the US space agency said Friday.” That doesn’t happen often.

REASON TV: Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe On The High Cost Of College. “If we are lending money that ostensibly we don’t have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don’t exist, I might suggest that we’ve gone around the bend a little bit.”

AT AMAZON, music download deals.

I DON’T THINK THIS IS REALLY MUCH OF AN ISSUE: How Will Air Traffic Control Deal With Commercial Space Flights?

SPYING: How CIA Culture Allowed a Rogue Mission Gone Wrong. “In American culture, the words ‘rogue CIA mission’ call to mind squads of agents ready to take out targets, run guns, and rig elections—often for agendas too unsavory to be public. But even if rogue agents were amoral, at least they were thought to be capable. Recent allegations have upset the established idea of a rogue CIA operation, and this new version is somehow more insidious: This time, it’s amateurs playing a global spy game and getting people hurt.”

Like the Secret Service, their competence has lately come into question.

SRIRACHAPOCALYPSE: Sriracha shortage? California holds the hot sauce, and foodies are fuming. Luckily, I stockpiled as soon as word got out this might happen.

SPYING: White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership. “The Obama administration has decided to preserve a controversial arrangement under which a single military official is permitted to direct both the National Security Agency and the military’s cyberwarfare command despite an external review panel’s recommendation against doing so, according to U.S. officials. The decision by President Obama comes amid signs that the White House is not inclined to place significant new restraints on the NSA’s activities and favors maintaining an agency program that collects data on virtually all phone calls of Americans, although it is likely to impose additional privacy-protection measures.”

ORIN KERR: The Reasoning of the Utah Opinion Partially Striking Down and Rewriting the State’s Bigamy Law. “I’ve read over the opinion, and it is quite unusual. For example, I don’t recall another legal opinion that relies extensively on Edward Said’s theory of ‘orientalism’ to interpret the U.S. Constitution (see pages 10-23). More broadly, the judge’s reasoning is surprisingly hard to tease out. There are pages and pages of discussion that end with the court saying that all of the previous discussion is irrelevant because something else is relevant, followed by pages of pages on that second issue, leading to no obvious point. It’s definitely different.”

COMPETENCE: Mandela memorial security scandal: ‘There were no checks.’

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 219.

SHOOTER AT ARAPAHOE HIGH DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE: Arapahoe High gunman held strong political beliefs, classmates said. “In one Facebook post, Pierson attacks the philosophies of economist Adam Smith, who through his invisible-hand theory pushed the notion that the free market was self-regulating. In another post, he describes himself as ‘Keynesian.’ . . . Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing ‘you republicans are so cute’ and posting an image that reads: ‘The Republican Party: Health Care: Let ’em Die, Climate Change: Let ’em Die, Gun Violence: Let ’em Die, Women’s Rights: Let ’em Die, More War: Let ’em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?'”

They keep hoping for their Tea Party gunman, but . . . .

MEGAN MCARDLE: No Antibiotics, No Sexual Revolution.

Most of us, if we think about it at all, probably attribute the rise in premarital sex to The Pill, among other factors. But before the birth control pill, there was another invention that was just as necessary: antibiotics.

The sexually transmitted diseases of yesteryear were pretty nasty. If you’re interested, you can Google up images of tertiary syphilis, but I don’t recommend it unless you’ve got a strong stomach. The initial symptoms of various common STDs were also unpleasant, and in women, could severely impair your fertility. You could use condoms, of course, but then, you could also use condoms to prevent pregnancy.

Then suddenly STDs weren’t so risky. You might have to make an embarrassing visit to the doctor and get a shot, but that’s nothing compared with horrible treatments using arsenic or mercury that were mostly ineffective. It’s no coincidence that the sexual revolution seemed to come to an abrupt halt when AIDS entered the scene. And as I understand it, AIDS is relatively hard to get compared with other STDs.

Without antibiotics, any chance sexual encounter could lead to a permanent disease that, among other things, would probably make it hard to find a long-term relationship partner. In that world, we’d probably have a lot fewer chance sexual encounters.

So thank antibiotics for your open heart surgery — but while you’re at it, thank them for your sexual freedom, too.

Well, and unless things improve, you can wave goodbye to all of that. . . .

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Five Years Ago Today: Al Gore Predicted the North Pole Will Be Ice Free in 5 Years. “Today Cairo had its first snowfall in 100 years.”

HAVE WE REACHED PEAK SCHADENFREUDE YET? “Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.”

Tom Maguire emails: “ObamaCare is a riddle wrapped inside a joke wrapped inside a laughtrack.”

UPDATE: Okay, this quote was too good not to bring in: “Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney. It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.”

AT AMAZON, Headphones Under $100.

Also, Digital Cameras Under $250. And, if that’s too expensive, Digital Cameras Under $100. Some surprisingly decent ones, actually.

Plus, today only: 75% off Coats & Jackets. For men, women, and kids.

And, also today only: SINGER One Easy-to-Use Computerized Sewing Machine, $179.99 (64% off).

JAMES TARANTO: PolitiFact’s Forked Tongue: The site once vouched for its “lie of the year.”

PolitiFact.com, the Tampa Bay Times’s “fact checking” operation, is out with its “Lie of the Year,” and it’s a doozy of dishonesty: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.’ ”

Just to show how fast the news can move, back in September this columnist tweeted: “If ‘I didn’t set a red line’ isn’t named ‘Lie of the Year,’ @PolitiFact is a state propaganda agency.” “I didn’t set a red line”–the reference was to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, in case you’ve forgotten–didn’t even make the top 10. Yet our September tweet proved to be mistaken: We cannot fault PolitiFact for the lie it chose instead.

Which isn’t to say PolitiFact doesn’t function as a state propaganda agency. For in the past–when it actually mattered, which is to say before ObamaCare became first a law and then a practical reality–PolitiFact vouched for Barack Obama’s Big Lie. . . .

Lots of people wrote opinion pieces endorsing ObamaCare, and some are still at it. Apart from the substance of the arguments, there’s nothing wrong with that. But selling opinion pieces by labeling them “fact checks” is fundamentally dishonest. In this case, it was in the service of the most massive consumer fraud in American history.

Indeed. If this sales job had been done by a private business, they’d all be broke and in jail.