THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LIFE WELL-LIVED: Autopsy of 78-year-old man reveals he had three penises.

JOEL KOTKIN: How Harris Obstructed California Home Construction: She says she wants to clear away ‘red tape,’ but as attorney general, she produced a lot of it.

Kamala Harris has a plan to help America’s struggling home buyers by increasing the supply of houses. Her recently released 82-page policy book, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” calls for clearing away the “regulatory burden” and “red tape” that constrains new-home construction. Tim Walz promoted the “three million new houses proposed” under Ms. Harris’s “bold forward plan” during the vice-presidential debate.

Yet like Mrs. Harris’s scripted reversals on fracking, immigration, and Medicare, her push to create more single-family homes contradicts her past positions.

Of course it does.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: We Were Wrong To Panic About Secondhand Smoke: A recent American Cancer Society study reports a negligible risk from passive smoking, shedding new light on the uproar over a 2003 paper.

In 2003, UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom and I published a study of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)—also called “secondhand smoke” or “passive smoking”—in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Using data from the American Cancer Society’s prospective study of 1 million adults, we concluded that ETS exposure was not associated with increased mortality.

Since that conclusion flew in the face of the conventional wisdom that had long driven state and local bans on smoking in public places, our study understandably sparked a controversy in the public health community. But the intensity of the attack on us in the pages of a medical journal—by critics who were certain that our study had to be wrong but typically failed to provide specific evidence of fatal errors—vividly illustrates what can happen when policy preferences that have taken on the status of doctrine override rational scientific debate.

A recent study by American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers underscores that point by showing that, contrary to what our critics asserted, the cancer risk posed by ETS is likely negligible. The authors present that striking result without remarking on it, which may reflect their reluctance to revisit a debate that anti-smoking activists and public health officials wrongly view as long settled.

Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.

First link from the comments on this by Brian Leiter.

OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves in the comments.

LIFE IS EVERYWHERE: Surprise Discovery Reveals Animal Life Thriving Under The Seafloor.

NOW THEY TELL US: Heart Health Alert: Study Reveals Standing Desks May Do More Harm Than Good.

THEY’RE PROBABLY RIGHT TO BE SUSPICIOUS: Survey: Most older Americans don’t trust AI-generated health info.

PLUG-IN HYBRID NEWS: Here’s How Our Kia Sorento PHEV Handles Tricky Situations.

UNAMERICAN: Michigan And Hawaii Launch Tip Lines To Encourage Anonymous Snitching On Gun Owners.

GUT NEWS: Discovery of a gut-to-brain regulation pathway in flies offers insights into human aging.

CHANGE: The ABA Retreats From Its Diversity Mandate—or Does It? “Holistic” admissions are an obvious backdoor to racial preferences. Yeah, you can’t trust them not to be racist.

EVERYONE’S GOING NUCLEAR ALL OF A SUDDEN: Amazon goes nuclear, to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors.

SCIENCE: Review: No evidence of nut allergens spreading via air ventilation on planes.

SHOCKING: Transgender coach, rehired due to ‘transphobia’ concerns, resigns after porn video surfaces.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘PIECE OF S***’: Gettysburg College admissions counselor unleashes unhinged rant against Trump supporters.

BYRON YORK: What Bill Clinton’s Laken Riley gaffe says about Harris and the border.

COLLUSION: Socialist Operatives Fueled the Rise of Independent Nebraska Senate Candidate Dan Osborn, Financial Disclosures Show.

DON SURBER: Two interviews. Two candidates. One winner.

THE ENEMY WITHIN: The US Sanctioned an Anti-Israel Group for Backing Terrorists. Months Ago, Its Leaders Were Hobnobbing With Columbia University Students.

TRUST THE GOVERNMENT: FBI Juked the Crime Stats, Quietly Revises.

WEIRD HOW THEY ALL USE THE SAME WORD ON A REGULAR BASIS:

“Testy” is this week’s “sharp as a tack” https://t.co/DoQgTOxKRN

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 17, 2024

Related: “Kamala evaded questions by dumping a family-style sized word salad on Baier’s head and running out the clock. The Kamala handlers describe that as testy. . .”

But it’s not actually a favorable description: “But the current meaning is: ‘Prone to be irritated by small checks and annoyances; impatient of being thwarted; resentful of contradiction or opposition; irascible, short-tempered, peevish, tetchy, ‘crusty.'”

PEOPLE WOULD KNOW THIS IF WE HAD AN EDUCATION SYSTEM INSTEAD OF AN INDOCTRINATION SYSTEM:

What would be dumb is the smaller states agreeing to a union where the urban masses would rule over them. So they didn’t. https://t.co/qDp5EODzHV

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) October 15, 2024

CONTRAST WITH KAMALA ON FOX LAST NIGHT: More, Please: ‘Bussin’ With the Boys’ Answers Serious WaPo Inquiry Re Their Trump Interview. “The clips I’ve seen have been absolutely hilarious, especially one with how Trump comes up with his nicknames. The former president was loose as a goose, comfortable as all get out talking sports, smack, and obviously enjoying (as Kcruella and I have always called it) the ‘scummy male bonding.’ You could tell everyone was truly having a great time.”

WaPo: “Why did you laugh?” The WaPo got all the respect it deserved in response.

And I hope to see the scolds of the media treated this way routinely.

EUGENE VOLOKH ON SpaceX’s First Amendment Claim Against California Coastal Commission. “The California Coastal Commission recently decided to block SpaceX’s increase in annual launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base from 36 to 50. SpaceX has just sued, claiming the decision was preempted by federal authority, violated state law, and also violated the First Amendment. I can’t speak to the preemption arguments and the statutory arguments, but I wanted to pass along some thoughts about the First Amendment question. SpaceX is arguing that the Commission’s 6-4 decision was influenced by the Commissioners’ disapproval of Elon Musk’s politics and speech.”

That’s not a hard argument to make, since the Commissioners basically said that.

IT’S GETTING A BIT LATE: Roger Simon: Who Will the Dems Replace Kamala With? She’s done! “Apparently Kamala Harris’ handlers were gesturing wildly to Bret Baier to cut things short during his interview of the vice president Wednesday evening. Good idea—this was a fiasco beyond comprehension. Well, not completely beyond comprehension because we’ve already seen the Biden v. Trump debate.”