HAPPY HALLOWEEN: This is still a classic.

By Molly Lewis.

CELLPHONES: A False-Rape Antidote?

A young mother has been jailed for making two false rape claims within hours of drunkenly sleeping with a friend’s partner.

Ashleigh Loder, 25, wasted at least 100 hours of police time by inventing the assaults.

She first told officers she had been attacked by two strangers in an alley before changing her story to say a man she knew had forced her to have sex in her home.

However the friend she had accused was able to prove his innocence because he had filmed the sexual encounter on his mobile phone.

The footage showed Loder, a mother-of-two from Bideford, Devon, was a willing and active sexual participant.

She was drunk on vodka and invented her story because the partner of the man with whom she’d had sex was a friend.

She feared the consequences of the other woman finding out what they had done.

It’s not rape just because you later wish you hadn’t done it. And these cases seem to be becoming more common, which makes me wonder if they were just as common before cellphones, but never shown to be false.

WELL, THAT’S WHY I MARRIED HER: “White Chick Gets It!”

GOOD: People living under repressive regimes will soon be able to access the web using the internet connection of friends in censorship-free countries.

LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY: Male guppies with the rarest colour patterns preferred by females.

AT AMAZON, hot new releases in Computers & Accessories.

Also, deals on Home Generators.

Plus, coupons galore on Vitamins & Dietary Supplements.

REASON TV: Remy’s Healthcare Mash. I think this is the funniest yet: “I’ve seen a eunuch with a more functional front end.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 Reasons Why Coffee Is Good For You.

THIS DOESN’T SOUND GOOD: Study: Bat-to-Human Leap Likely for SARS-Like Virus. “A decade after SARS swept through the world and killed more than 750 people, scientists have made a troubling discovery: A very close cousin of the SARS virus lives in bats and it can likely jump directly to people.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Georgia Tech’s new online Master’s program draws wave of applications. “The Georgia Tech program is the first master’s degree from a top-ranked university based on the technology that drives MOOCs. The only difference is it is not ‘open,’ or free, as a MOOC is traditionally defined. Students have applied from 50 states and 80 foreign countries, according to the school. To graduate, they will never have to step foot on campus and will pay about $6,600, compared with about $44,000 for residential students.”

RATIONAL NONEXUBERANCE? Test Driving The 2014 Infiniti Q50S. “Despite the S model’s aggressive bodywork, 19-inch wheels with Dunlop summer tires, larger brakes, and a firmer suspension tune, our test car was stingy on driving rewards.”

TEST-DRIVING THE 2014 Nissan Pathfinder Hybrid.

READER BOOK PLUG UPDATE: A while back I linked to reader Jack Bee’s The Amazing Adventures Of Pickle Boy.

Now a reader points out this review. Key bit: “It was just a joy to watch our son, finally, get so totally wrapped up in a book. Now THIS is the Joy of reading – when it wins out over TV, movies, video & computer games, youtube and everything else.” Yep.

CHANGE: With Firefox OS, an $80 Smartphone Tries to Prove Its Worth.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hillary Clinton’s Lucrative Goldman Sachs Speaking Gigs. I think, at some point, you’ve made enough money. For the Clintons that point came a long time ago.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Everything You Need To Know About Car Sharing Services.

ADOBE SECURITY BREACH much worse than first thought. Plus, how to protect yourself.

WORLEY V. FLORIDA SECRETARY OF STATE: Will The U.S. Supreme Court Defend Free Speech For The Little Guy?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry. “Many distinguished humanities professors feel their status deflating.”

There’s nothing wrong with the humanities, when pursued with rigor; the world needs more people who can read, write, and think critically. But the currency has been diluted for years, and consumers are finally catching on. And if you think that the problem is that “inequality and climate change” aren’t being addressed in the English departments, then you’re part of the problem.

Plus this: “Students who are anxious about finishing their degree, and avoiding debt, sometimes see the breadth requirements as getting in their way.” Yes, well, that’s what happens when you jack up tuition without mercy for decades on end.

SO MAYBE IT’S JUST ME, but this British “phone-hacking” scandal seems like weak tea now that we know that the British government, in cooperation with the NSA, was hoovering up billions of private communications without a warrant. Against that, journalists guessing voicemail passwords doesn’t sound like much. And yet, guess who’s on trial?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 175.

FOR THE RECORD: Obama Has Presided Over 5 of 6 Largest Deficits in U.S. History. “Even when adjusted for inflation, the $680.276 billion fiscal 2013 deficit is only exceeded by one pre-Obama deficit–the one the U.S. government ran in 1943, during the height of World War II.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Proposed Bills Fail To Fix Fannie and Freddie. Of course, the best fix would be to get rid of them.

MEGAN MCARDLE: What Everyone Knew About ObamaCare And Wouldn’t Say.

It’s absolutely true that every policy wonk who was writing or speaking about the law in 2009 and 2010 understood that it would mean premiums going up for at least some people, many of whom would lose insurance that they would have preferred to keep. Who it would be depended a bit on how the law unfolded, of course, but at a minimum, young, healthy people who made more than $46,000 a year could expect to pay higher premiums for the same level of coverage. They had to; mathematically, it was not possible for coverage to expand and everyone’s premiums to go down — not unless you spent more in premium subsidies than the government could afford.

But I think it’s also clearly true that the majority of the public did not understand this. In 2008, the Barack Obama campaign told them that their premiums would go down under the new health-care law. And the law’s supporters believed it. . . .

The administration reiterated that, in Obama’s words, “We will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” They also promised that the average family would save $2,500 a year on premiums. There was no fine print about how some folks would lose their insurance, be forced into narrower doctor networks, and see premiums rise, even though they seem to have known what was going to happen.

And the wonk community did not exactly hasten to disabuse them. The risks of higher premiums for some were acknowledged in an aside, but they were not headlined. Unless you were reading volumes of writing about health care very carefully indeed, it wasn’t hard to miss that little detail — at least one former Democratic staffer whose boss voted for the law seems to have been unaware that this was a possibility until her rates increased.

For that matter, I still see regular commenters on the liberal wonk blogs that I read repeating the canards about cost savings from uncompensated care, preventive medicine and so forth.

It was a necessary lie, and the useful idiots are still parroting it.