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HMM: We’re Closer Than Ever to a Birth Control Pill for Men. Well, I’ve been hearing that for most of my life. But given the dubious safety — and other side effects — of hormonal birth control for women, I’d be slow to adopt this new technology even if I were single.

MARK RIPPETOE: Here’s a Big Secret For Overcoming Fatigue In Your Strength Training. As always, his advice is good. I also find it’s important to make sure I’ve had enough to eat before going to the gym. If I haven’t, I run out of gas — and that’s exactly what it feels like, to me — just as I get to the heaviest weights.

A (NOT SO) HAPPY global divestment day.

THE HACK REPORTER’S NAME IS STEVEN ROSENFELD: The Killer, the Reporter, and the Southern Poverty Law Center: Reporter interviews source about murderer, doesn’t ask about murderer’s apparent fondness for source’s organization. “No, I don’t think the SPLC deserves any blame for the crime. That would be ridiculous. But the SPLC itself has a long history of throwing around blame in precisely that ridiculous way, so it would have been nice to hear how Potok reacts when an event like this lands in his own backyard. Double standards deserve to be challenged, right?”

Not by hacks who write for Alternet, and get reprinted in Salon and The Raw Story. They’re not reporters. They’re Party Indoctrination Officers. And Party Indoctrination Officers look at SPLC/HuffPo supporters and write: “We can safely say that Craig Stephen Hicks fits the profile of the most common type of domestic violent extremist—a white man with grievances and guns.” But it would be nice if some actual reporter put Potok on the spot.

IN COPENHAGEN, Muslim terrorists attack a free speech event, killing one.

UPDATE: Danish authorities call it a “likely terror attack.” Ya think?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: ‘Fifty Shades’ A Cry For Help From Women Betrayed By Feminism.

MORE STATES ARE CONSIDERING CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY. And, in answer to the Monitor’s question, it’s most likely that crime will go down.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 646.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY — NOW, CUT YOUR LOSSES!

If you are 24 years old or have been dating for less than a year, then it’s a little too early to be seriously worried about where this relationship is going. And if you don’t want to get married, then hey, don’t! Breathe a sigh of relief that he didn’t propose, grab a snack and settle down for the latest issue of “The Americans.”

Those aren’t the folks I’m talking to. I’m talking to you, 30-something woman who has been dating the same guy for a couple of years (or more), maybe already moved in together and started picking out that furniture. The one who is ready for those babies, or at least a joint tax return, and would like to get the matter settled as soon as possible. The one who is anxious that her partner doesn’t seem as eager as she is but is afraid to deliver an ultimatum for fear the answer will be “OK, bye.”

Here’s the thing, though: The guy who leaves you because you deliver an ultimatum is probably also the guy who is going to leave you a couple of years later, having wasted more of your prime dating years on his dithering. Pardon the sexism, but most men aren’t operating on the same timetable for having kids, and also, at least in my experience, they don’t tend to stay silent and hopeful for so long. . . .

A sunk cost is, well, like a sunken ship: It’s gone, and you cannot retrieve it, or you can only retrieve it at immense expense. The correct and rational way to deal with a sunk cost is to ignore it — to make decisions without thinking about the money or time you’ve already invested.

It’s very hard to get people to accept that.

TRIAL LAWYERS? Why Teen Girls Aren’t Using IUDs.

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WHY DO DEMOCRATS FEAR SCOTT WALKER? BECAUSE HE HAS THE POWER TO REACH BACKWARD THROUGH TIME! NO, REALLY: New York Times’ Gail Collins Blames Scott Walker For Teacher Layoffs That Occurred The Year Before He Took Office.

UPDATE: Gail Collins causes journalistic collateral damage.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS EDITION:

University of Texas at Austin President Bill Powers overruled his staff to admit well-connected students, according to an independent investigation released Thursday.

Powers’s philosophy could end up providing “affirmative action for the advantaged,” according to the report, which looked into admissions practices at one of the nation’s largest and most prominent public universities. Investigators found UT-Austin, at Powers’s behest, may have given preferential admission to some students with moneyed ties or politically influential backers.

As many as 73 undergraduate students at UT-Austin in the past 6 years, and perhaps a handful more at the university’s top-ranked law school, were admitted despite grades and test scores that were substantially below those of other admitted students. Of these, some had ties to lawmakers or alumni, though others were perhaps admitted to provide diversity on campus.

“I do intervene in that process at the request of our regents and others,” Powers said at a Thursday afternoon press conference in Austin following the report’s release.

The investigation, by risk-management firm Kroll, might seem to put a blemish on public perceptions of Powers’s presidency. It was commissioned to find, once and for all, the truth about allegations that Powers had a backdoor admissions policy. That would be a notable turn for a man who months ago was regarded as a cause célèbre by fellow academics for clashing frequently with UT System regents who are close to former Governor Rick Perry, a Republican graduate of Texas A&M disliked in academic circles and at UT-Austin.

Yet a faculty leader found little to complain about in the report. owers called it “very good.” The university uses justifiable practices to maintain good relationships, the president said.

Hmm. That suggests a whitewash.

SMARTEST PRESIDENT EVER: Obama’s old passwords: ‘Password,’ ‘123457.’

WE SEEM TO LIVE IN A WORLD THAT SAYS OF DRESDEN “NEVER AGAIN,” BUT ISN’T SO SURE ABOUT AUSCHWITZ: The Firebombing Of Dresden, 70 Years Later.

The Nazis opened a can of whoop-ass, and this is one of the things that came out. The world would be a safer place if their modern-day equivalents were more afraid of the same fate.

THE ECONOMIST ON SHOOTING GUNS: It’s Rather Thrilling, Actually.

The thing jumps in your hand and you see the bullet knock a hole in the target and spark off the floor at the back of the range. There is an extraordinary rush and then you do it again. Another spark; perhaps this time the hole in the target is a little closer to the centre. Soon you have fired the whole clip and you’re loading the deadly weapon in your hand again.

That is just to preface a more obvious point. To a liberal European reporter, from afar, American gun culture appears utterly insane. Americans are far more likely to murder someone or to kill themselves than people in almost all Western European countries, largely because guns make it easier. That almost 33,000 people are killed with firearms each year in America (including three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this week) is a colossal and largely unnecessary waste of life. That people celebrate these deadly devices and carry them around while shopping, picking up their children from school or working, seems monstrous.

Yet shooting is fun. And what Europeans—and liberal Americans—often don’t realise is that these deadly weapons are also an accessible, affordable and interesting hobby for millions of people. My experience of firing a pistol took place at a shooting range in the Maryland suburbs, about half an hour’s drive outside of Washington, DC. I had until then never visited a shooting range and I had no idea of what to expect. But the experience was actually oddly familiar. This place was not a temple to violence. Rather, it mostly closely resembled the golf driving range that my father would occasionally take me to as a child. . . .

Some were white, male, middle-aged and somewhat scary-looking. But not all. Across from where I fired my pistol, two black women, one with a small son, were taking turns (the child heavily supervised). Shooting targets was a fine family day out. At a practice target outside of the range, plenty of people were learning how to hold a weapon for the first time, without pointing it at anyone, dropping it or injuring themselves as it recoiled. Again, it resembled a driving range: people hitting targets for fun.

And the truth is that in the range, the violence that guns inflict on America felt extremely remote.

Do tell. On the other hand, if you think that the NRA is a “nasty organization” that’s just a front for gun manufacturers, well, then your firearms education has a long way to go yet.

21ST CENTURY FEMINISM: Fear And Loathing Of the Penis. Also envy. Especially envy.

DUMPSTER-DIVING TELEVISION HISTORY, with Jim Treacher: “Viacom has never rebroadcast Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity, nor is it available via home video. That’s probably because it was just so good, so funny, so era-definingly and conservative-DESTROYingly awesome that mere mortals can’t handle more than one viewing. That’s just my opinion, and you teabaggers are free to be stupid enough to disagree. But if you’re the sort of person who’s willing to scroll through a liveblog of an event from 5 years ago, I think you’ll find plenty of evidence that Jon Stewart is the most important pundit and finest comedic mind of this century. Or any century.”

THE STATEMENT IS TRUE, BUT THE PREMISE IS FALSE: Frank Luntz on Scott Walker: “Our Most Intelligent Presidents Have Often Been Our Worst Presidents.” Graduating from college, or not, says little about your intelligence. College screens out the subnormal IQs — or, at least, it used to — but one needn’t be particularly intelligent to graduate. For that matter, our Columbia- and Harvard-educated President today, though one of our worst presidents, shows no particular evidence of being especially bright.

ED DRISCOLL: Old Media’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week. Plus: “At some point, Democrats became the party of small-town people who think they’re too big for their small towns. It is hard to say how it happened: Perhaps it is that Republicans’ primary appeal is to something small-towners take for granted (tradition), while Democrats’ is to something that small-towners are condemned for lacking (diversity). Both appeals can be effective, but it is only the latter that incites people to repudiate the culture in which they grew up. Perhaps it is that at universities–through which pass all small-town people aiming to climb to a higher social class–Democratic party affiliation is the sine qua non of being taken for a serious, non-hayseed human being. For these people, liberalism is not a belief at all. No, it’s something more important: a badge of certain social aspirations. That is why the laments of the small-town leftists get voiced with such intemperance and desperation. As if those who voice them are fighting off the nagging thought: If the Republicans aren’t particularly evil, then maybe I’m not particularly special.”

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Low Vitamin D in Childhood Linked to Later Heart Risks. “A vitamin D level of between 30 to 50 is generally considered adequate. Children in the lowest one-quarter for vitamin D levels, about 15 nanograms per milliliter, were nearly twice as likely to have thickening of the carotid artery as those in the other three quarters. The association persisted after adjusting for age, sex and other cardiovascular risk factors.” Bad news given how many kids today are deficient.

IT’S JUST A MINIVAN WITH PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY: The 2016 Honda Pilot Gets More Odyssey-Like. Make that semi-plausible deniability. I love the reference to the Pilot’s target market as “minivan deniers.” I explained that phenomenon here.

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