FUNNY HOW SOCIALISTS ALWAYS KEEP DEMANDING MORE. Sanders Camp: If Clinton Wants Another Debate, She Should Agree to Three More.

THIS IS COOL: Near real-time (updated every 3 hours) maps of winds worldwide.

DRUDGE: TRUMP MANIA ENGULFS MEDIA; DEBATE ATTENDANCE STILL POSSIBLE?

Trump may or may not show up tonight, but Steve Green and his titanium liver will be on duty at PJM to drunkblog the debate at 9:00 PM eastern tonight.

POPULAR MECHANICS: The Challenger Disaster, 30 Years Later.

BUT SEX DIFFERENCES ARE CULTURALLY CONSTRUCTED: How women can tell when other females are ovulating using clues in their face – and how they may then try to hide their partners from the ‘threat’ of these fertile ladies.

WELL, THERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THEIR RESEARCH:

“We don’t believe that little girls naturally play a certain way or speak a certain way,” says Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College. “They’re not born liking a pink dress. At some point we teach them. So a big question is where girls get their ideas about being girls.”

Having two X chromosomes plays a major role. I’m guessing that Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer don’t have kids.

A TRUMP-LED TRIUMVIRATE?: Well, not exactly, but it’s not far off the mark. Huckabee and Santorum to join Trump at his fundraising event for veterans following their GOP undercard debate.

Huckabee tweeted that he will participate in an earlier debate of lower polling candidates and then head off to nearby Drake University, where Trump is holding his event after bolting from the debate after a war of words with Fox News and Megyn Kelly, who is set to co-moderate the event.

Huckabee’s announcement is part of a last ditch effort for the 2008 Iowa victor to boost his standing with caucus-goers before Monday and stick it to Sen. Ted Cruz, who he has been harshly attacking on the campaign trail. By early Thursday afternoon, Santorum representatives confirmed to the Washington Examiner, as well as multiple media outlets, that he, too, would attend the event. Santorum won the caucus in 2012. . . .

More than anything, Huckabee and Santorum’s appearance at the event helps provide cover from criticism being launched at Trump by Cruz for ducking the debate and plays into Trump’s image as a candidate who doesn’t play by the normal rules of politics.

Santorum and Huckabee are angling to steer attention and votes away from other candidates–particularly Cruz– so their appearance at the Trump-led event isn’t any sort of endorsement. But still, their attendance illustrates how Trump is undeniably a flame to the media moths.

RELATED:  Ted Cruz Mega-Donors Holding Veterans’ Charities Hostage for Donald Trump Debate.

In response to Senator Ted Cruz’s challenge of a one-on-one debate, the principal donors of the Keep the Promise I and II super PACs are offering presidential candidate Donald Trump a truly fantastic deal, pledging to donate $1.5 million to charities committed to helping veterans if Mr. Trump agrees to debate Senator Cruz in Iowa.

That’s right, a group of Ted Cruz mega-donors have offered the princely sum of $1.5 million, but only if Trump agrees to debate Cruz. Otherwise, tough luck, heroes! This is sick, even by the stunt-charity standard being set by Trump, who, along with his own sketchy history of exploiting veterans, is apparently only raising money for them tonight because Fox News pissed him off. But at least he’s raising the funds, not withholding them as a political ransom.

Apparently, Carly Fiorina has offered her own $1.5 million contribution to veterans’ groups if she can join any Cruz-Trump debate.

Meanwhile, one veterans’ group has said it would decline any such donations, from Trump or any other GOP candidate participating in the event, calling it a “political stunt.”  Of course it’s a political stunt–it’s being organized by politicians, for goodness sake. But it seems odd–and itself perhaps political– that the head of a veterans’ organization would turn down a charitable gift for this reason.

RAND SIMBERG: Challenger lessons still unlearned after 30 years.

FASTER, PLEASE: There will now be a third hyperloop test track. Okay, it’s actually pretty fast already.

AT AMAZON, Valentine’s Gifts for Her, and Valentine’s Gifts for Him.

Plus, today only at Amazon: SINGER 5400 Sew Mate Sewing Machine, $90.00 (64% off).

And, also today only: Cricut Explore One Cutting Machine, $136.99 (45% off).

WASN’T HOWARD WOLOWITZ WORKING ON THIS PROJECT? Squishy Robot Fingers Gently Tickle Deep Sea Critters.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Female Sperm: A Trans Woman’s Perspective On Reproduction.

ASK, AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE, with Amazon Echo.

UPDATE: For those who don’t like always-on voice control, the Alexa on the Fire TV Stick only works when you press the button.

21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: How much do you need to read about Zika virus before you scream “no” to the question “Would it be wrong to eradicate mosquitoes?”

SPACE: Europe Looks Toward NASA’s Cargo Plane To Clean Up Space Junk.

DAVID STEINBERG: Glenn Greenwald and Pierre Omidyar: Retract and Apologize For Smearing PJ Media, Misleading The Intercept’s Readers. It’s easier to demonize people you disagree with if you lie about them.

BUT HE’LL PROBABLY BE LECTURING ME ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT SOON: Microsoft cofounder’s yacht allegedly destroyed a coral reef. These are sites I’ve dived many times. Sorry to see them wrecked.

I SAW A FILM ABOUT THIS AS A KID AND IT INFLUENCED ME FOR LIFE: Door Plucked From Grapevine Fire Shows How Closed Doors Can Save Lives. “Flames badly damaged one side of the interior door that was directly exposed to the flames. But the other side barely shows hardly any damage at all. Firefighters in Grapevine saved the door and plan to use it as a teaching tool to remind people why they should sleep with their bedroom door closed.”

ED MORRISSEY: Here’s Why the Republican Populist Revolt Will Backfire.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Pew: 10.2 million ‘detached’ young adults in U.S., ‘source of social unrest.’

I STILL BELIEVE IN AMERICA: Bacon shot glasses dipped in chocolate and filled with whisky.

OUCH: WaPo: Bernie Sanders Fiction-Filled Campaign. “Mr. Sanders is not a brave truth-teller. He is a politician selling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it. . . . He would be a braver truth-teller if he explained how he would go about rationing health care like European countries do. His program would be more grounded in reality if he addressed the fact of chronic slow growth in Europe and explained how he would update the 20th-century model of social democracy to accomplish its goals more efficiently. Instead, he promises large benefits and few drawbacks.”

To be fair, socialists always lie, because if they told the truth nobody would vote for them.

DEPARTMENT OF THINGS YOU NEVER THOUGHT YOU’D SAY: I agree fully with the action taken today by French President Francois Hollande.

A lunch between the French and Iranian presidents in Paris was scrapped today because France refused to remove wine from the menu.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has been on a tour of Europe, signing billions of pounds worth of business deals with different nations, after economic sanctions against the country were lifted.

He was due to dine with President Francois Hollande at an upmarket restaurant in the French capital.

More like this, please.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama administration needs to abandon its Petraeus obsession:

In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae.

The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or “Trotskyized,” all the images of any past kingpin who became politically incorrect.

The Obama administration seems obsessed with doing the same to retired Gen. David Petraeus.

Read the whole thing.

As Bill McGurn noted in the Wall Street Journal on the day of Obama’s inauguration in 2009, “Bush’s Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq.” Petraeus was the man who made that possible until Obama unilaterally chose to throw that all away as part of his reelection bid, as Dexter Filkins of the leftist New Yorker noted in 2014, thus giving rise to ISIS. No wonder Obama wants him punished in his last year in office.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Man arrested with handguns, Koran at Disneyland Paris.