CHILDREARING ADVICE: “Your home cannot be a democracy; children are naturally tyrants.”

AT AMAZON, coupons galore on Household Supplies.

AT OUTSIDE THE WIRE, J.D. Johannes interviews the Insta-Wife’s Men On Strike. Excerpt:

Smith’s Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream—and Why it Matters (Encounter Books, 186 pages) is not a book for the timid. It is a quick paced, sharp, full-voiced counter to the books and magazine articles that “treat men and their behavior as the problem” by asking a tougher question: “What is it about our society that has made growing up seem so unattractive to these men?” . . .

Smith and Hymowitz are writing about the same demographic event, agree it will have wide ranging implications, but approach it from different perspectives. Smith takes the seemingly unprecedented step of looking at it from a man’s point of view rather than the legions of “frustrated young women.” It is a frame that will surely win Smith many critics.

Using long quotes of men from a broad cross section of the country, Smith taps into the fears and frustrations of ordinary men with voices that are rarely heard in the major press. Some men are actively ‘Going Galt’ and intentionally dropping out of the economy and marriage market, others are engaged in a “reluctant retreat.” To many these voices will be shocking only because it is the first time they are hearing a lightly filtered sample of what men think and feel.

By using the words and perspective of men, Smith’s Men on Strike is making a major contribution to advancing the understanding of an on-going social realignment and explains where some of the good men have gone.

Read the whole thing. And, of course, buy the book! It’s also available on Kindle.

CALVIN JOHNSON: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Vat.

JOURNALISM: Obama: IRS Behavior ‘Inexcusable.’ Obamaite Journalists: It’s a ‘so-called scandal.’

Sure, the president of the United States called the Internal Revenue Service targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups “intolerable and inexcusable,” but that hasn’t stopped an army of commentators from claiming loudly and proudly that there’s no there there.

Hey, if they were willing to cover for John Edwards . . . . And I vote for Josh Marshall for #1 Flack. But the competition is intense.

RAND SIMBERG: The Bioethics of Mars One: It would be irresponsible to even attempt conception on Mars.

BUT NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU GRILL HIM, THE FLAVOR NEVER IMPROVES: Reporters Grill Jay Carney About Holder’s Inconsistent Testimony on DOJ Scandal: ‘We Know He Was Involved.’

SELF-INCRIMINATION: Child-Porn Suspect Ordered to Decrypt His Own Data.

THE FINE PRINT: The Details Behind Georgia Tech’s Deal With Udacity.

CHANGE: Diseases can rapidly evolve to become more—or less—virulent, according to songbird study. “There’s an expectation that a very virulent disease like this one will become milder over time, to improve its ability to spread. Otherwise, it just kills the host and that’s the end of it for the organism. House Finch eye disease gave us an opportunity to test this—and we were surprised to see it actually become worse rather than milder.”

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in TV & Video.

SO THE “ATTRACTIVE AND FAT” SCHTICK has a seriously overweight woman posing in Abercrombie & Fitch-type pictures . . . with a chiseled male model.

Sister, if you believed your own schtick, you’d be posing with this guy.

PEER-REVIEWED SCIENCE: Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again.

As test materials we selected 12 already published research articles by investigators from prestigious and highly productive American psychology departments, one article from each of 12 highly regarded and widely read American psychology journals with high rejection rates (80%) and nonblind refereeing practices.

With fictitious names and institutions substituted for the original ones (e.g., Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential), the altered manuscripts were formally resubmitted to the journals that had originally refereed and published them 18 to 32 months earlier. Of the sample of 38 editors and reviewers, only three (8%) detected the resubmissions. This result allowed nine of the 12 articles to continue through the review process to receive an actual evaluation: eight of the nine were rejected. Sixteen of the 18 referees (89%) recommended against publication and the editors concurred. The grounds for rejection were in many cases described as “serious methodological flaws.”

Ouch.

A MODEL FOR OTHER PLANETS? Scientists Discover Massive Methane-Based Ecosystem.

Cold seeps are regions in the sea floor where fluid rich in compounds like methane flows out at the same temperature as the surrounding ocean water (in contrast to the hot water that seeps from hydrothermal vents).

Methane seeps allow life to flourish in otherwise fairly barren deep sea environments. This is the third seep documented on the Atlantic Coast, and is much bigger than previously discovered sites, with areas up to a kilometer long and hundreds of meters wide. Mussels can survive in seeps through chemosynthesis, a process that utilizes bacteria in their gills to turn methane into energy. The seep’s surrounding ecosystem also contained sea cucumbers, shrimp and fish, some of which exhibited what the researchers call “unusual behaviors,” though they did not elaborate.

Studying these undersea ecosystems can help us understand how life exists in harsh environments, including potentially other planets.

Interesting.

JUST HOW FRAGILE ARE AMERICA’S BRIDGES?

Well, if Obama had been man enough to stick with the original bridge-building stimulus plan, some would be less so by now. But he wilted under feminists’ fierce glare.

IN RESPONSE TO MY MENTION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR YESTERDAY, reader Martin Roth writes that his novel, Brother Half Angel, about a fictionalized return of the Knights Templar, is currently free for Kindle on Amazon.

RED LIGHT CAMERAS: The Price We Pay For Riskier Intersections.

But for cities, they can be quite lucrative. “The nine New York Avenue cameras, spread over about three miles between the Washington Times building and Third Street NW, generated 93,313 tickets and almost $11.8 million last year.” Plus an added advantage: “The volume of license plates from Maryland, Virginia and other states on the avenue points to an obvious fact: Many who pony up the money don’t live in the District.”

HARD TO BELIEVE IT’S BEEN 14 YEARS: ‘Spellbound’ star reflects on a Spelling Bee life. “When I was a speller, that was one thing you totally hid. I remember like not even wanting to tell people what I was doing over the weekend when I was competing in the regional spelling bee. It was that big of a liability. And now I see that, yeah, people want to be nerds. I think that’s great.”

SHIKHA DALMIA: Obama’s Orwellian Doublespeak On Drones. “The question is whether liberals will protect their principles or their man.”

Oh, I don’t think there’s much of a question.

BOB OWENS IS hanging out his shingle as an IT recruiting consultant. Well, he’s been doing it for years, but now it’s official.

REMEMBER, EDUCATORS CLAIM THAT THEIR WORK IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE THEY TEACH CRITICAL THINKING: Class “Traumatized” By Tiny Toy Gun. “It’s from a G.I. Joe action figure. It’s less than 2 inches long, and the boy is 6.”

CODEPENDENCY: A Bad Relationship: How the Press Came To Love Obama More Than Itself. “It’s disheartening to see the Obama administration attack the press in unprecedented ways and the reaction from the press is to accept that blame and then go forth to explain to the world that the president isn’t really like this. Most of the time he is a good guy. He loves us, honestly. He just has these moods.”

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Carlson emails: “The MSM seems to frequently slip in the shower and run into door frames around Obama.”

I think it’s closer to “Suzy, if you tell what Joe did to you after the dance, we’ll lose the big game!”

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Apple Show Trial. “The IRS is embroiled in scandal but Congress is more concerned with the entirely legal tax transactions of a profitable American company.”

TRIFECTA: London Jihad Horror Shocks World. So Why Won’t the Mainstream Media Report the Truth About it?