NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: RNA nanotechnology – fewer structures in living cells than in test tubes.

I’M ON C-SPAN2 NOW, talking about The New School.

TRUST, ONCE LOST, IS HARD TO REGAIN: Why Obama’s NSA Reforms Won’t Solve Silicon Valley’s Trust Problem.

TWEET OF THE DAY: “I understand preaching to the choir. But judged by its ratings, MSNBC preaches to the soloist.”

SCIENCE: New Drugs May Help Heal Old Psychological Traumas.

AT AMAZON, new stuff on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Also, deals on Running Shoes.

THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE: Lena Dunham Responds to Unretouched Images From Her Vogue Shoot.

SHELDON COOPER HAD ONE OF THOSE: A Telepresence Machine to Watch the Kids or Visit Grandma: Startup offers $995 remotely steered video-chat device for people to check up on kids and elderly relatives. Well, sort of.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Video: A Marine With A Prosthetic Hand Controlled By His Own Muscles.

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Bill Moen, The Only Sure Moments. $2.99 on Kindle.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Carpet-Cleaning Secrets From The Pros.

I’ve had good luck with this Bissell carpet spotcleaner. It’s paid for itself several times over.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Why I Let My Daughter Get a ‘Useless’ College Degree: A new study from the Federal Reserve offers more evidence that my humanities-loving child will graduate with lots of debt and not so many job offers. And I’m OK with that.

I will say, though, as I’ve said before, that it’s not a “useless” degree if in fact it teaches students “to think critically and analytically, read widely and write well.” There’s a real need for people who can do that. But, of course, most humanities programs don’t do that any more.

REMAIN CALM. ALL IS WELL. Obamacare Doc Reveals ‘Drop Dead’ Date for Back End Fixes. “Apparently, Obamacare is in a lot bigger trouble than anyone has let on — or anyone has imagined.”

I’LL BE ON BOOK TV ON C-SPAN2 AT 5 PM ET TODAY, talking about, well, you know.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 254.

NOTE THAT HE WASN’T CAUGHT VIA EMAIL-INTERCEPTS: Water Treatment Plant Invader Stuck In Pipe. “Rescuers have freed a man who had been stuck for hours in a pipe at a water treatment plant in New Jersey. Officials told CBS 2 around 11:30 a.m. that 26-year-old Asef Mohamed, of Manalapan, had been freed and airlifted to an area hospital. He was 10 to 12 feet down the pipe, which was not in use, WCBS 880′s Levon Putney reported. United Water spokesman Rich Henning said Mohamed broke into the plant that treats and pumps water for the township of Manalapan. Workers heard cries for help coming from the pipe around 7 a.m. Friday. . . . ‘This was a person that purposely climbed a six-foot fence with three or four layers of barbed wire on top,’ Henning said. United Water officials said they have no idea why Mohamed did it, but are now looking at ways to tighten up security, Putney reported.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: Read This Before You Apply To Grad School.

If you’re thinking about going to graduate school, read this before you apply. It’s an open spreadsheet where graduates have posted about their debt levels, why they acquired so much debt, and how they’re planning to pay it off.

Note that a lot of these people had funding. Before they go to grad school, people are warned that you shouldn’t go unless you’re fully funded (tuition paid, some sort of research or teaching stipend). And that’s absolutely correct. If a Ph.D. program admits you without funding, it’s telling you that it doesn’t care whether you come; the program is willing to take your money, but not willing to invest in you. That means you won’t have access to the opportunities and support required to have a viable career in academia.

But what the spreadsheet shows is that in many cases, that’s not nearly enough. Some of the people with six-figure debt clearly shouldn’t have been in academia — one person writes that she took on debt because her stipend wasn’t enough to support two children, which is undoubtedly true, and a good reason that someone with two kids and no second income should probably look elsewhere for a career. But others got married and had kids while they were finishing, which is probably going to happen if it takes 10 years to get a degree.

Others simply got caught in a common bind: the money didn’t last as long as required to actually complete and defend their dissertation. Or they had to pay for extensive travel (a particular problem among archaeologists, apparently). Their undergraduate loans piled up interest while in deferral. Or their school was in an expensive city, with a stipend that didn’t match the local cost of living.

When you factor all of this in, most graduate degrees simply aren’t worth the money — much less the substantial investment of lifespan. One should, at least, carefully weigh the costs first.

BETTER THAN DONATING YOUR LIVER: Donating Orgasms To Science.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals on Valentine’s Day Gifts.

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JAMES TARANTO: Just the Flacks: Wonkblog sells out.

Ezra Klein is back in line. The Journolist founder, who now runs Wonkblog for the Washington Post, took some flak from other left-liberal journalists last year when he acknowledged that the ObamaCare exchanges had serious technical flaws. But now, as we move into Phase 3 of the ObamaCare failure–the unraveling of its economic assumptions–Klein and his wonkblogger staff are full denial.

One result has been an entertaining and informative set of rebuttals from the heterodox liberal blogger Mickey Kaus. It began with a Dec. 17 post by Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff with the less-reassuring-than-intended title “Why Obamacare Won’t Spiral Into Fiery, Actuarial Doom.” She quoted a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that claimed the age distribution of ObamaCare enrollees is not as important as people have been assuming: “Even if young people sign up at half the rate the administration hopes for, it would nudge premiums up only by a few percentage points, their report says.”

In his somewhat belated response (posted just this past Monday), Kaus cited the same study making a point this column has also been stressing: “that if the mix of young vs. old isn’t important”–a not-undisputed “if,” by the way–“the mix of healthy vs. sick might be.” . . .

And how’s that going? There’s no way to know for sure, because, as Kaus notes, “questions about health aren’t being asked of enrollees anymore.” Under ObamaCare, disease is the silent killer.

“If you’re going to call yourself ‘Wonkblog,’ ” Kaus asks, “shouldn’t you at least mention that the statistics you are so obsessively discussing aren’t the important ones?” In response, Wonkblog was silent. Why should they answer rhetorical questions?

In concept, a “wonk” is someone who cares so much about the details of policy, in an obsessive nerd-like fashion, that his/her obsession transcends partisan considerations. Such people are rare, but they do exist. Ezra Klein is not among them, nor has he ever been.

WALTER MAUNDER, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Has the Sun gone to sleep?

THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW: Cops Arrest Professors Who Called 911 Over Medical Emergency. “He said he needed to teach me the lesson that you are never allowed to touch a police officer.”

KAY HYMOWITZ: A Woman’s (Only) Nation: What’s Missing from the Shriver Report: Maria Shriver’s new report tries to shine a light on the economic plight of women, but it virtually ignores one crucial factor — men.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Woman Gets 5 Years For Making False Rape Report.

A 38-year-old Michigan woman was sentenced Friday to five years in prison after being convicted last month of making up a story that two men had entered her home about 80 miles from Detroit and raped her.

The two men, who attended the same church as Sara Ylen’s ex-husband, likely would have been charged, but for the “air-tight alibis” they offered, said St. Clair County Judge Daniel Kelly. He gave Ylen two years for making a false rape report and a consecutive three-year sentence for tampering with evidence, the Associated Press reports. The evidence-tampering concerned makeup she applied to make it appear that she had been bruised.

Also present at the sentencing hearing was James Grissom, who was sentenced to 15 years in an earlier case in which Ylen said she had been raped. He was released after his conviction was reversed in 2012. At that point, he had served nearly 10 years.

He called Ylen’s sentence a “slap on the wrist,” the AP reports.

And yet much harsher punishment than is usually dealt out.