HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Sorry, Millennials, We’re Out of the Jobs You Want.

Millennials don’t want to work in sales, reports the Wall Street Journal. They think it’s exploitative. They also hate the idea of variable compensation; they want a nice, steady job where the company takes the risk, not the worker.

The feeling that sales is exploitative is not new; people have always been uncomfortable with the idea of selling something or being sold. And, of course, many people have always been uncomfortable with the idea of variable compensation. But if companies are having a harder time finding people to take sales jobs and reworking compensation packages to decrease the commission component, that is worth noting. . . .

Unfortunately, as Farhad Manjoo noted last week, they may be coming of age at a moment when the economy is moving toward more variable work, not less. Uber and similar services are making it relatively easy to employ people in a high-tech version of piecework: discrete tasks that are parceled out moment by moment, entirely contingent on demand. Robert Reich thinks this is terrible. If the Journal’s article is any guide, it’s not what the new generation of entering workers wants. But it may be what’s available.

In some sense, the 9-to-5 salaried position is an artifact of the industrial era. Such jobs existed before then, of course, in government offices and large institutions. But most jobs were much less defined. Armies of people worked for themselves, as farmers or traders or craftsmen, working only when there was demand and making only whatever profit they could eke out from their sales. Others were domestic servants, who had a steady salary but no steady hours.

Economies of scale created a lot of work doing routinized tasks that needed to be planned well in advance. The easiest way to coordinate this was to have set shifts of workers who showed up at the same time every day, prepared to do the same thing. The conversion of a huge fraction of the workforce to this sort of employment was a major revolution in human affairs. After two centuries, however, it seems natural.

Technology is making it much easier to do things on a smaller scale.

Huh. That sounds kinda familiar.

RADLEY BALKO: In Praise Of The Firing Squad. “If you support the death penalty, the most obvious benefit of the firing squad is that unlike lethal injection drugs, correctional institutions are never going to run out of bullets. And if they do, more bullets won’t be very difficult to find. Ammunition companies aren’t susceptible to pressure from anti-death penalty activists, at least not to the degree a pharmaceutical company might be. This would actually remove a barrier to more efficient executions. As someone who would like to see executions eliminated entirely, I don’t personally see this as a benefit. But death penalty supporters might. And there are other benefits to the firing squad, benefits that I think people on both sides of the issue can appreciate.”

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ASHE SCHOW ON THE DEMOCRATS’ LATEST TROPE: If you oppose Loretta Lynch for AG, you’re racist.

That’s right, Paul isn’t really upset that Lynch supports a practice that allows law enforcement to seize people’s cars, money and other property without their having been tried or convicted — a highly dubious practice that has unjustly expropriated many black Americans, by the way. He just doesn’t like that she’s black.

Paul told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Wednesday his reason for opposing Lynch.

“Civil forfeiture turns justice on its head,” Paul said. “Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, you are guilty until proven innocent. The government takes your cash — $1,000, $100, $500, whatever it is. This program predominantly has targeted black individuals, poor individuals, Hispanic individuals. And when Sen. [Mike] Lee asked her about it in the committee, she said, ‘Oh, no, as long as there is a valid court order.’”

Lynch said during her confirmation hearing the previous week that she believes “civil and criminal forfeiture are important tools to the Department of Justice, as well as our state and local counterparts through state laws, in essentially managing or taking care of the first order of business, which is to take the profit out of criminal activity.”

Remember — police can seize that property without charges even being filed. They often do so when there is no evidence of a crime. They have been known to take the homes of parents whose children were alleged to have sold drugs without their knowledge. Current AG Eric Holder even took steps earlier this year to limit the use of the practice by requiring evidence of a crime before assets could be seized.

Lynch has used the practice in her office to rake in more than $113 million in civil actions between 2011 and 2013.

But there’s no way that could be the reason Paul opposes her nomination. No, it must be the racism.

You know, I don’t think this country was ready for black officeholders at the highest level. Too much racism.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Not only is Rand Paul racist for opposing her nomination, he probably murdered innocent Muslims when he fought in the Crusades.”

IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING “CLIMATE CHANGE” AND YOU DON’T SUPPORT NUCLEAR ENERGY, THEN YOU’RE NOT REALLY WORRIED: Roll Call: Lawmakers, Industry Look to Expand Nuclear Energy Options.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said Thursday he will be leading a review of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget to see what changes could be made to allow construction of new reactors.

“We should be re-examining regulation of the nuclear reactor licensing process to make sure it’s not an undue burden,” Alexander said in an address to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade association. “We don’t want to make it so hard and expensive to build and operate reactors that you can’t do it.”

Daniel Lipman, the institute’s director of policy development, told a House panel in December that in the next five years, federal and state governments should work to fix the financing and regulatory challenges facing advanced reactor designs.

“The time, the uncertainty and the cost required to design, license and build new reactors is daunting,” said Lipman, who spent three decades at Westinghouse and oversaw the commercialization of the AP1000 reactor, a newer type of light water reactor being built in Georgia.

All of the operating commercial reactors in the United States are light water reactors, based on decades of operational experience. Developing advanced nuclear technology with different fuel and cooling features has been an elusive panacea with the promises of intrinsic safety design and reduced nuclear waste.

Alternative designs based on research reactors that have been tested in the United States and elsewhere are touted for their potential to run on waste material piling up across the United States or, in some cases, produce hydrogen as a byproduct to fuel a new era of automobiles.

Faster, please.

THEY’LL KEEP THIS UP UNTIL THEY MAKE SOMETHING STICK, OR UNTIL THE ELECTION IS PAST: Christie facing new criminal probe. I mean, just because the bridge-closing thing turned out to be a bunch of crap doesn’t mean they can’t try again and again.

And yes, I’m that cynical about this Department Of Justice, and entirely with reason.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): CVU educator arrested in sex-related case with student.

OOPS: NYTimes Edit Board ruthlessly attacks some guy named “Mr. Scott” who they claim is the governor of Wisconsin. No, but he’s a damn fine starship engineer, I don’t care what the Timesmen say.

THOSE AWFUL FAR-RIGHT GROUPS: Police in swoop on 45 more men over child sex grooming: ‘Milestone’ operation sees dozens of Asian suspects charged with rape, sexual assault and trafficking. “Almost all of the men in both cases are from Asian backgrounds, prompting police leading one of the cases to warn that far-Right groups may use the issue to stir up racial tension.” By “Asian,” of course, they mean Muslim, probably mostly from Pakistan.

UH OH: CNN: Did Brian Williams Manipulate Audio in His Original 2003 Chopper Whopper? “Williams is now a known liar in a position of serious authority.”

Also: “Apparently Brian Williams & legacy media in general ignore that a lot of bloggers are former military.”

THIS IS NOT ENTIRELY A SHOCK: Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes. “Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.”

Plus: “City and transit officials did not sound grateful for the examination.”

BECAUSE THEIR LEADERS BELIEVE IN ISLAM, AND OUR LEADERS DON’T BELIEVE IN THE WEST: Why the West is Losing to Islamic Supremacists.

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WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Lab on a chip turns smart phones into mobile disease clinics. “Researchers have designed a cheap, easy-to-use smart phone attachment (shown above) that can test patients for multiple deadly infectious diseases in 15 minutes. All it takes is a drop of blood from a finger prick. Pressing the device’s big black button creates a vacuum that sucks the blood into a maze of tiny channels within its disposable credit card–sized cartridge. There, several detection zones snag any antibodies in the blood that reveal the presence of a particular disease. It only takes a tiny bit of power from the smart phone to detect and display the results: A fourth-generation iPod Touch could screen 41 patients on a single charge, the team says. The researchers conducted a field test of the device at three Rwandan community clinics, where health care workers rapidly screened 96 patients for HIV and active and latent forms of syphilis. Compared with gold standard laboratory tests, the dongle was 96% as accurate in detecting infections.”

MICHAEL WALSH: A Police Shooting in Denver: How the Media Frames the ‘Narrative.’

JORDAN WEISSMAN SAYS I’M WRONG about colleges not giving middle class students much financial aid. But his commenters seem to disagree, and his own chart shows that most middle class students don’t get aid.

WHY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT is terrified of hobbyist drones.

UPDATE: From the comments:

The White House geofence is only the second one that isn’t centered on an airport, according to Perry—the first was Tiananmen Square.

Anyone else think there’s something telling and chilling about that sentence?

Know your place peasants. The government is allowed to fly drones over you, but you’re not allowed to fly drones over them.

Know your place, indeed.

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JUSTICE: Judge Resigns From Forensic Science Committee, Calls Out DOJ’s ‘Trial By Ambush’ Tactics. “Because I believe that this unilateral decision is a major mistake that is likely to significantly erode the effectiveness of the Commission — and because I believe it reflects a determination by the Department of Justice to place strategic advantage over a search for the truth — I have decided to resign from the Commission, effective immediately. I have never before felt the need to resign from any of the many committees on which I have served over the years; but given what I believe is the unsupportable position now taken by the Department of Justice, I feel I have no choice.”

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: “Clearpath is the first and, so far as we can tell, only robotics company to pledge not to build killer robots.”

REVIEW: Intel’s Broadwell mini PC is a next-generation Ultrabook in a box.

I GUESS I COULD DOCK IT HERE ON FT. LOUDON LAKE: A US Navy Warship, Yours For $180,000. “For a craft that cost $15 million in the late 90s, it’s a steal. When Lockheed Martin (of SR-71 Blackbird fame) finished designing and building, the US Navy launched the Sea Slice in 1996, built to dart around lakes and near-shore water bodies.”

BETTER CALL SAUL: “Despite my distaste for all depictions of law, lawyers, and the legal system in pop culture, I am in the anticipatory tank for Better Call Saul. Reviews are sounding pretty good. And the character is just so much fun that I probably can overlook even large mistakes.” Trailers at the link.

BAH. THE KULAKS MUST BE ELIMINATED. Nick Gillespie: To the Barricades, Brooklyn Yuppies! “I may not speak for many other upper-middle-class types, but I’ll tell you what: I’m happy to have the government spend less on me if I know it’s spending less altogether and is directing what money it does spend to people who need it more than I do. But if you’re simply talking about raising taxes in order to maintain the bloated status quo plus a bunch of new programs, count me out. That’s not because I’m selfish. It’s because I’m not stupid.”

SPACE: SpaceX will attempt a potentially historic rocket launch and landing this weekend.