THE EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD COULD FLIP FASTER THAN WE THOUGHT. “Regardless of the speed at which it occurs, that next reversal might happen sooner than originally thought. Geophysicists have noticed that the earth’s magnetic field has been weakening faster than expected lately, leading them to conclude that a full flip could happen sooner rather than later. (Don’t panic. ‘Sooner’ in this case, means within the next two millennia.)”

EVEN THE “EBOLA MAGIC DATE” is conveniently post-election.

EBOLA VS. OBESITY: The Politicized NIH.

OBAMA NOT POLLING SO WELL: Poll: Obama Worse Than Bush. Battleground voters say Bush a better manager of government.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Survive Being Run Over By A Train.

THIS IS UNSURPRISING: Women Prefer Male Bosses Even More Than Men Do. “The survey, which collected responses from 1,032 adults living in the U.S., found women were more likely than men to want a male boss. . . . In the 60 years that Gallup has conducted this survey, women have never preferred a female boss.”

ANDREW KLAVAN ON THE PROBLEM WITH ELITISM: “The elite are stupid.”

TINA BROWN: Women Feel “Unsafe” With Obama. “Economically, they’re feeling unsafe. With regard to ISIS, they’re feeling unsafe. They feel unsafe about Ebola. What they’re feeling unsafe about is the government response to different crises. And I think they’re beginning to feel a bit that Obama’s like that guy in the corner office, you know, who’s too cool for school, calls a meeting, says this has to change, doesn’t put anything in place to make sure it does change, then it goes wrong and he’s blaming everybody.”

UPDATE: Contrasting the Tina Brown of 2008.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Welcome to Oculus XXX: In-Your-Face 3D is the Future of Porn.

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 529.

AS THEY SHOULD. THE NEW POLICY IS A POISON PILL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. Harvard Profs Hate New Campus Sex Laws.

WELL, THAT’S MORE THAN THE U.S. CAN SAY: Nigeria declared Ebola-free after containing virus.

WHY NEW YORK HATES AIRBNB:

New York is the obvious business case for a service such as Airbnb: a dense city where a lot of people want to visit, and hotel rooms are limited in number. You’ve got a population of educated professionals who travel a lot, leaving their apartments empty. You’ve got insane housing costs in desirable areas, leaving renters open to making a few extra bucks on their abode. Unsurprisingly, almost 30,000 NYC units are available on the site.

It turns out, however, that New York is also one of the most challenging environments for Airbnb. You’ve got a powerful hotel lobby that likes the shortage of affordable rooms for rent. You’ve got an extremely high percentage of renters rather than owners, most of whom probably have leases that forbid subletting without permission. You’ve got a lot of apartments, whose fellow tenants may object to your giving strangers the keys to the front door. And don’t forget the well-organized affordable housing groups who object to landlords converting rental units to short-term stays. All of which has culminated in a law that effectively outlaws the majority of Airnb rentals in the city by making it illegal to sublet a New York apartment for less than 30 days.

Entrenched interests. Plus:

Whenever a new market opens, there’s a sort of wild west period when gaps in the law allow people to make a bunch of money. Over time, however, legislators and regulators wake up, and start laying down the law. Entrenched competitors are protected, numerous interest groups are given concessions, fees are tacked on. The end result is greater certainty, but lower profits and innovation.

I’m afraid that’s going to be the story of the entire Internet soon. Interesting, isn’t it, that most of our growth comes from the parts of the economy that politicians haven’t gotten their sticky fingers on yet.

WAIT, DOES THIS MEAN RON KLAIN IS RACIST? Ebola czar to the rescue? Why the White House may soon retreat on a travel ban.

REMINDER: In 2009, President Obama “Joked” About Auditing His Enemies.

AT AMAZON, Deals Galore in the Men’s Store.

Plus, deals on Shoes & Boots.

ESPECIALLY SINCE HE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT EBOLA. OR MEDICINE. The uphill battle for Obama’s new “Ebola czar.”

Well, okay, this isn’t helping: “The White House has argued that the chief management credential that qualifies Klain for the job is his experience in helping to implement the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the 2009 stimulus package that poured about $800 billion into the troubled U.S. economy by way of tax breaks, investments and entitlements.”

A near-trillion-dollar crony giveaway that entirely failed to achieve its stated goals. If the White House regards that as a shining credential, exactly what are they expecting him to accomplish here?

ROLL CALL: Before Ending Chairmanship, Issa Sets Ebola Hearing for Oversight Next Week. Lots of questions to ask.

DEATH OF THE LIBERAL ARTS: Less A Murder Than A Suicide?

Agresto said that much humanities instruction has been co-opted by hyperspecialization and especially by critical theory. He said overly-critical approaches at once demean the subject matter and limit students’ free inquiry. For example, he said, when professors portray the founding fathers as mere “white racists,” no student or parent “in their right mind” would pay $50,000 a year to study them.

To save the humanities, professors must value opening up students’ minds over “preaching and converting,” he said. That means returning to an older mode of instruction, and instilling critical thinking skills. It means getting students to ask questions and helping them see the “variety” of answers – not leading them to a specific point of view, he added.

In the past and at their best, the liberal arts were a “gift” given to everyone, Agresto said. “It didn’t matter that Dante and Homer were dead white males,” and keeping Shakespeare alive wasn’t an “ethnocentric act.”

Indeed. In fact, it’s trying to kill off Shakespeare that is an act of temporal chauvinism.

UPDATE: At the link, lefty commenters already launching ad hominem attacks. Because that’s what they do.

21 DAYS OF FEAR AND LOATHING: Life In Quarantine For Ebola Exposure.

HEINLEINIAN “BAD LUCK:” Rich Karlgaard: America’s Missing Wealth.

Suppose the U.S. economy, since 1949, were giving up 2% extra growth per year because of bad economic policy. Or, as Ramsey might say, because Presidents, legislators and unelected regulators were born stupid or try their best to act that way.

Now, 2% a year doesn’t sound like much. Most of us could spend 98% of our budget next year without too much pain. The quip about compound interest is noteworthy only because it would take a genius like Einstein to observe something so profoundly simple yet subtly opaque.

But run the numbers yourself–and prepare for a shock. If the U.S. economy had grown an extra 2% per year since 1949, 2014′s GDP would be about $58 trillion, not $17 trillion. So says a study called “Federal Regulation and Aggregate Economic Growth,” published in 2013 by the Journal of Economic Growth. More than taxes, it’s been runaway federal regulation that’s crimped U.S. growth by the year and utterly smashed it over two generations.

Not all regulation is bad. Mandatory seat belts have helped cut traffic fatalities by 51% on a population-adjusted basis since 1949. Far fewer people are now killed or maimed in industrial accidents. The air in downtown Los Angeles is breathable again. Would this have happened without federal regulation? Yes, but likely not as fast.

So let’s, for the sake of argument, posit that some regulation has been good for us, while many other regs have only hurt economic growth. Let’s also argue that sensible regulation, combined with the retirement of outdated regulation, could have brought about the same improvements to health and safety–but at a cost of 1% potential growth per year, not 2%. Where would the U.S. economy be today?

–The 2014 GDP would be $32 trillion, not $17 trillion.

–Per capita income would be $101,000, not $54,000.

–Per capita wealth would be $480,000, not $260,000. It would probably be higher than that, since savings rates might be higher.

–The U.S. would have no federal, state or municipal debts or deficits.

–Pensions would be solid. So would Social Security.

–The trend of new entrants to The Forbes 400 would not favor entrepreneurs in software, the Internet and financial services but would be more broadly distributed across all industries. Electronic bits–money and software–are less prone to regulation than such physical things as factories, transportation, etc.

–Faster, quieter successors to the supersonic Concorde? Cheap, safe nuclear power? Cancer-curing drugs for small populations? Bullet trains financed by private investors? Yes!

–The U.S. would have the resources to fight the multiplicity of threats from abroad, from ISIS to hackers.

Am I guilty of positing ideal outcomes from all that extra wealth? Perhaps. Still, it would be wonderful to have that extra wealth in people’s pockets and in government treasuries. What a missed opportunity!

But all that regulation — while making the country much poorer — has vastly enriched the parasite class. They have a bigger slice of a smaller pie, and they like it that way because it makes them feel important.

This is a good time to reference Joel Kotkin on the New Class Conflict again. (Thanks to commenter Greg Ale for pointing me to the Karlgaard column, which I had missed.)

JOHN FUND: The Trouble With Early Voting.

SO KAY HAGAN AND AND MICHELLE NUNN ARE RACISTS NOW, I GUESS: Why Democrats are sounding like Republicans on Ebola.

SEND MORE ADVIL: Roll Call: Iowa Senate Race Becomes Headache for House Democrats. “Recent polls show state Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican, with a small lead over Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat. But the Republican’s advantage has percolated to three of Iowa’s four House contests, keeping one competitive district in contention for Republicans, plus putting two Democratic seats in play.”