IT’S NOT QUITE TOO LATE: At Amazon, Top Valentine’s Day Gifts.

Also, AmazonBasics AA Alkaline Batteries, 20 for 9.99.

And, today only: Cuisinart Classic 17-Piece Hard-Anodized Nonstick Cookware Set, $169.99 (72% off).

I’M STILL HOLDING OUT FOR A JETSONS-STYLE BLEEBLING SOUND: Electric vehicles can be so quiet that they pose a new risk on the road. But what kind of artificial sound should be added?

21st CENTURY AUTOMOTIVE PROBLEMS: How your car can be hacked remotely by a tiny device. “Technology companies including Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have been running bug bounty programs for the last several years, paying researchers who agree to submit security bugs they find before going public, and it’s past time for automakers to consider doing the same.”

SPYING: GCHQ Has Entire Program For ‘Dirty Tricks’ Including Honeypots, Using Journalists, Deleting Online Accounts.

I WAS EXPECTING A MARS-SHATTERING KABOOM: Spectacular new Martian impact crater spotted from orbit.

21ST CENTURY MUSIC: Design Your Own Guitar—This Startup Will Build It.

VIEWED IN THAT LIGHT, SO WAS THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA: Video: NBC Praises Communism as One of History’s ‘Pivotal Experiments.’

TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 275.

RAND PAUL: So with unemployment high and jobs being eliminated, when, exactly, will Obama start caring?

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Republicans Step Up Probe into IRS Targeting Scandal.

House committees continued their probe this week into the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting scandal in which conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were subjected to extra scrutiny.

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who represents the Texas-based group True the Vote, told a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee Thursday that the IRS targeting is very “real” and “not pretend.”

“The IRS, at the direction of some political elites in Washington – not in Cincinnati, but Washington – took what had been for decades a process of reviewing applications for exempt status that for a 501(c)(4) organization could be expected to take three to four weeks,” Mitchell said. “And they converted that process into one that took three to four years and, in some cases, is still not over.”

True the Vote filed its application for tax-exempt status in 2010 and did not receive it until after the group sued the IRS.

Mitchell said the first time she became aware of the targeting was in October 2009 when she filed an application for another group, and did not hear from the IRS until June 2010. She said when the IRS got back to them it was not Cincinnati, but the Washington office.

“That group did one thing. It lobbied against Obamacare in the fall of 2009, in the spring of 2010, something that a 501(c)(4) organization is permitted to spend 100 percent of its program expenditures doing. We did not get the tax-exempt status for that organization until July of 2013,” Mitchell said.

In a Sunday interview with Fox News, President Obama said the IRS targeting controversy was a result of “bone-headed decisions” in the agency’s Cincinnati office and did not involve “a smidgen of corruption.”

Yeah, that’s basically a straight-up lie.

“SMART DIPLOMACY” UPDATE: Video: State Dept. Not Sure If Obama’s Bundler/Ambassador to Argentina Speaks Spanish.

WELCOME TO THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Number of Americans Who Renounced U.S. Citizenship Soars.

BETHANY MANDEL: NYT Bombshell: Women Prefer Manly Men. “Really. It took a feature-length article in the magazine to explain to readers that when men act less like men, heterosexual women want to have sex with them less. Despite women being told that they want men more involved in traditionally female household tasks like cooking, cleaning and childcare, when men actually do so, wives find their husbands considerably less sexy. . . . The word ‘submission’ was used four times in the piece, a radical concept for radical feminists.”

Ever since Jeff Bezos bought the New York Times, it’s gone hard-right. Oh, wait. . . .

“A MASSIVELY DISCREDITED FACTOID:” Christina Hoff Sommers: The Gender Wage Gap Is A Myth.

FEAR AND LOATHING: Russia Bans Bitcoins.

COMPETITIVENESS ABOUT “I know the Internet better than you do,” is really out of date. Nobody “knows the Internet” well enough to count anymore. Maybe a decade ago, but even then there was more than anyone could digest.

GALLERY: Stunning Photos of Mars From NASA’s Curiosity Rover.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: October 2015: The End of the Swipe-and-Sign Credit Card. “It’s a payment ritual as familiar as handing over a $20 bill, and it’s soon to go extinct: prepare to say farewell to the swipe-and-sign of a credit card transaction. Beginning later next year, you will stop signing those credit card receipts. Instead, you will insert your card into a slot and enter a PIN number, just like people do in much of the rest of the world.”

WHEN DIRECT MAIL IS DIRECT FAIL: A San Francisco writer is sent a credit card offer addressed to ‘Lisa Is a Slut McIntire,’ prompting an apology from the bank. Actually, it’s the perils of renting mailing lists from third parties, in this case the Golden Key honor society: “Late in the day, McIntire said, a Golden Key spokeswoman called, apologized, and told her someone had inserted ‘Is a Slut’ into McIntire’s society membership account sometime between 2004 and 2008.”

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Pet Supplies.

Also, up to 50% off on Bakeware.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Neighbors said to fear ‘transient academics.’

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: The Feminist Mystique: It has become simply “I Want!” in the mouths of a minority of women, but the right kind of women.

Feminism is not an idea or a collection of ideas but a collection of appetites wriggling queasily together like a bag of snakes. Feminism has nothing to do with the proposition that women should be considered whole and complete members of the body politic, though it has enjoyed great success marketing itself that way. . . .

A useful definition is this: “Feminism is the words ‘I Want!’ in the mouths of three or more women, provided they’re the right kind of women.” Feminism must therefore accommodate wildly incompatible propositions — e.g., (1) Women unquestionably belong alongside men in Marine units fighting pitched battles in Tora Bora but (2) really should not be expected to be able to perform three chin-ups. Or: (1) Women at Columbia are empowered by pornography but (2) women at Wellesley are victimized by a statue of a man sleepwalking in his Shenanigans. And then there is Fluke’s Law: (1) Women are responsible moral agents with full sexual and economic autonomy who (2) must be given an allowance, like children, when it comes to contraceptives.

Read the whole thing.

STEPHEN GREEN KEEPS UP WITH SCIENCE: STUDY: Men Love Looking at Breasts.

SOPHIA BOETTCHER: PianoArc Paves the Way for Novelty Musical Instruments. “Besides being circular, what’s so special about PianoArc? For one, a 292-key circular piano is certainly an exciting twist in user interface design.”