SO WALKING THE SEA OF CLOUDS BY GREY RINEHART:  Got a great review.

“Although as entertaining as some of Heinlein’s early fiction, it is not Heinlein, despite many Heinlein tropes. It seems closer to the type of fiction Jerry Pournelle wrote in the 1960s and 1970s. The style is clearly Rinehart’s own, both readable and involving…. It captures a pioneering era that once was and could be again. Those who seek to explore space will read this and say, this is what pioneering space would and should be like.”

FIRST, DETERMINE IF YOUR CHILD HAS A SCREEN: Here’s how to tell if your child has a screen addiction.

IN THE EMAIL FROM AMIE GIBBONS:  Psychic Wanted (Un)Dead or Alive.

OH, MY:  Scientists find over 300 ‘incredibly well-preserved’ dinosaur eggs.

BAH. UNLESS I’M MUCH MISTAKEN RIGHT NOW WE DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HOW LIKELY PLANETS ARE TO HAVE A MAGNETOSPHERE.  WE MUST RESEARCH THIS, AND WE MUST GO.  ALL THIS DOOM AND GLOOM IS JUST SO MUCH “HERE BE DRAGONS”:  The possibility of life beyond our solar system just got a lot slimmer.

JOBS AMERICANS NO LONGER DO:  AI already reads your resume – now it’s going to interview you, too.

WHEN I WAS TWENTY, MAYBE… RIGHT NOW? NOPE:  This woman won the best job on the planet.

AT AMAZON, shop the Electronics Gift Guide.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Teacher accused of sleeping with suicidal student pleads not guilty. “Jill Lamontagne, 29, of Kennebunk, pleaded not guilty to 14 charges, including six counts of gross sexual assault, two counts of unlawful sexual contact and six counts of sexual abuse of a minor, according to The Portland Press Herald.”

KURT SCHLICHTER: The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Deserve Our Respect or Our Trust. “The mainstream liberal media is primarily composed of stumblebum leftist jerks who want all the glory and respect due a caste of objective, moral truth-seekers, yet who don’t want to do the hard work of actually being objective or moral or seeking the truth. . . . You have Matt Lauer, probably America’s most highly-paid journalist, who “everyone” knew was a skeevy weirdo who’d probably creep out Woody Allen. Well, everyone did know, except us, the media’s audience. Our media overlords didn’t think we needed to know that little bit of information. Some obscure Texas congressmen sends texts of his ancient junk to a girlfriend and, after he dumps her, she gets mad and puts them up on the web? Oh, that’s news – America must know that vital info. But when the flagship anchor of the flagship show on the flagship broadcast network uses his powers to basically build a sex dungeon in 30 Rock – nope, not news.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I can’t stay broken up with my homeless drunk of a boyfriend.

THIS IS WHY IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE BETTER FLU VACCINES: Flu can have dangerous domino effect on older adults. But if you do get it, or older friends or relatives do, remember that Tamiflu or Relenza can make a huge difference, but you have to take them early.

AT AMAZON, Holiday Deals in Grilling and Backyard.

Also, Cooking and Baking.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Charlottesville report tells us what happens when the police fail to do their job.

THE FBI DEBACLE IN A NUTSHELL:

It’s also worth noting that Mueller actively concealed this fact for months.

MICHAEL BARONE: ‘Hurtling’ GOP tax bills are actually serious.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: ‘The Woebot will see you now’ — the rise of chatbot therapy.

My therapist wanted to explain a few things during our first online session:

“I’m going to check in with you at random times. If  you can’t respond straight away, don’t sweat it. Just come back to me when  you’re ready. I’ll check in daily.”

“Daily?” I asked.

“Yup! It shouldn’t take longer than a couple minutes. Can you handle that?

“Yes, I can,” I answered.

There was a little more back-and-forth, all via Messenger, then this statement from my therapist:

“This might surprise you, but . . . I am a robot.”

It wasn’t a surprise, of course. I’d downloaded “Woebot,” a chatbot recently created by researchers, and it was trying to establish our therapeutic relationship.

The article ends with a reference to the mother of them all – Eliza; I’m old enough to have had extended conversations with “her” back in the late 1970s. I don’t think the Woebot is ready to pass the Turing Test yet, but it sounds like psychological chat apps have made a fair amount of progress since.

SCIENCE MARCHES ON: Astronauts show how to make pizza in space.

MICHAEL LEDEEN ON MICHAEL FLYNN: “While working with General Michael Flynn on The Field of Fight, I interviewed many of his former colleagues in order to better understand my co-author. Virtually all of them described a man who cared deeply about the truth and presented it in circumstances that were certainly not favorable to him. These people portrayed General Flynn as a compulsive truth-teller. So why has he now confessed to making false statements to the FBI?”

Read the whole thing.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot: Obama: We need to elect more women because ‘men seem to be having problems.’

—The Hill, yesterday.

● Chaser:

Related: FAIL: Eric Holder gets laughed off the Twitter stage during lecture about ‘integrity and honesty.’

CHANGE: Supreme Court lets full Trump travel ban take effect.

ANTI-TRUMP PUNDIT RICH LOWRY NOTICES SOME UPSIDES:

Also, it’s simply not true that all we have to show from the Trump administration is Gorsuch. The legislative agenda has been limited by the fact that Republicans have only 52 votes in the Senate. This is what pushed the GOP toward doing two big health and tax bills through reconciliation. When the health-care bill failed (Trump contributed to this failure, but there were lots of other factors, too), it seemed they could get nothing this year. Now, it appears very likely that they will get the tax bill, which includes a rifle-shot elimination of the individual mandate. And the administration has been steadily reversing the executive aggrandizements of the Obama administration. Trump has governed so far as more of a Republican and conservative than I expected.

Is this part of Scott Adams’ gradual-transition prediction?

THE NEW EUROPE: French City Cancels Christmas Market, Can’t Afford € 20,000 in Security Costs After ISIS Attacks.

SO THE FBI SUPERVISOR WHO WAS TEXTING ABOUT HOW MUCH HE HATED TRUMP is the one who interviewed Mike Flynn. “A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the bureau’s interviews of embattled former National Security advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one-count of lying to the FBI last week. . . . Strzok was removed from his role in the Special Counsel’s Office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton’s email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia’s election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee’s Chairman Devin Nunes chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the Special Counsel three months ago, according to a statement given by the Chairman.”

This stinks to high heaven. But wait, there’s more involving shady FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe:

According to another source, with direct knowledge of the Jan. 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the “earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their new roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called,” the source said.

McCabe told Flynn “some agents were heading over (to the White House) but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate,” the source said.

“It wasn’t until after they were already in (Flynn’s) office that he realized he was being formally interviewed. He didn’t have an attorney with him,” they added.

Comey was lecturing us about the FBI’s professionalism and integrity just today. Pathetic. This looks like a sleazy, deliberate trap.

Related: Roger Simon: Trump’s Right: The FBI’s In Tatters.

THE GUILD PROTECTS ITS OWN: All Three Networks Ignore ABC’s Brian Ross Suspension Over False Report.

Flashback: Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw Defend Dan Rather, Who Sees Effort to “Smear” Him.

As Kurt Schlichter writes, The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Deserve Our Respect or Our Trust.