A delightful change of pace, this.

After their debate the other night, Gingrich and Huntsman got together for a coin toss to determine which one would pay off O'Donnell to endorse Romney.

I don't know what O'Donnell was thinking, alienating her base like that.  Every witch and warlock I know is backing Ron Paul.

We're here for you, Rob.  We're here.

I share the worry that cabinet-level departments would become like some expensive piece of military hardware with parts manufactured in 273 of 435 Congressional districts.  Even a modest downsizing might involve closing facilities in four of those 273, and one of them would be the chairman of some subcommittee with jurisdiction over something else entirely he or she could hold hostage.

It would be nice if they got out and saw the country more, but I think the risks outweigh the benefits.  It's probably bad enough the employees are scattered across two states instead of one, and therefore have four senators who have a stake in DC-area jobs.  Perhaps, hindsight being 20/20, the capital should have been placed in the middle of one good-sized state, not straddling two.

I wonder how old you were when you married.  Advertisers pay a premium to target teenagers and young adults because their brand loyalties are fluid.  As we age, we buy brands out of habit.  I buy Crest because I've bought Crest for a long time.  I remember trying a few other brands when I was younger, but I came back to Crest because I liked it more, or perhaps had just grown accustomed to it.

My partner of 24 years and I use the same toothpaste brand, but we were fairly young when we got together.  Perhaps if we had been older, we each would have had our own brand preferences, developed independently, and bought separate toothpaste.

Old brand loyalties die hard. I'm still a registered Democrat even though I'm, you know, here, and no further to the left than Rob Long.

To be fair, most Silicon Valley companies tout their green credentials.  Apple doing so is higher profile because everything Apple does is higher profile.

And for conservatives and libertarians who need some ideological peg to justify their appreciation for Mac hardware to their compatriots, keep in mind that Steve Jobs has publicly said he supports school vouchers and has criticized teachers' unions.

I'm generally an opponent of the ever-lengthening duration of copyrights—bringing up the Bono copyright extension bill is a surefire way to send me into a righteous rant—so this may be the first time I've wished an old book was still under copyright, so some heir to Twain's estate could sue to prevent this bowdlerization.

I'm still against copyright extensions, but a boy can dream, right?

Ideally, we would measure impairment rather than the blood level of one particular agent of impairment.  Driving while severely sleep-deprived isn't any safer than driving drunk (and may be far worse, depending on the degree of drunkenness) but it's more of a challenge to measure.  Designing a test that got at impairment of relevant driving skills would be a challenge, but if possible, would be a move toward a more rational law that punished the drivers who are most putting others at risk.

Kids can sniff out certain types of manipulation from miles away.

I understand the political needs met by holding an outright repeal vote right out of the gate, even though a win in the House would be a Pyrrhic victory for all the oft-repeated reasons.  But I wonder if this might not be the overplaying of an otherwise strong hand.

Many Republicans ran on the idea of repeal-and-replace.  Public dissatisfaction with Obamacare should not be read as an endorsement of the idea that everything's just peachy with the current system and nothing need be done.  Many Republicans, like Rep. Paul Ryan, proposed some good alternative reforms which might garner public support if given half a chance.

I think it's wiser to hold off and hold a vote instead on repeal coupled with a package of Ryanesque reforms. Why fight this battle on the White House's preferred turf—doing something vs. doing nothing?  Why not fight it as competing alternatives?  Why confirm Democratic talking points by holding a repeal vote in a vacuum?

I like that definition. Now here's the big question: Is there some way we can use really, really imaginative redistricting maps—Phil Burton on steroids and cubed—to consolidate Unreal America into as few Congressional districts as possible?

I'm open to non-Euclidian geometry, if it comes to that. They say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

I like that definition. Now here's the big question: Is there some way we can use really, really imaginative redistricting maps—Phil Burton on steroids and cubed—to consolidate Unreal America into as few Congressional districts as possible?

I'm open to non-Euclidian geometry, if it comes to that. They say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

After watching a long video of a spacewalking astronaut making repairs to Hubble, I'm pretty confident the answer to your question is yes, quite a long list of things.

Robotics has lots of potential for new applications here on earth. And there are things in space only robots are good (we can, for instance, send them to Saturn without worrying about them getting home safe) but I'm doubtful that we're anywhere close to the point where robots can fully substitute for things humans can do in space.

And there's no substitute for manned spaceflight if we intend to colonize places other than earth, as I argue we should, as an insurance policy for our species.

Here's my argument for space:

One thing we know from space exploration and astronomt is that Bad Things happen to Good Planets all the time. Big things crash into planets. Other kinds of catastrophes, both sudden and gradual, occur. Stuff happens.

I'm fond of humanity. If that makes me a species-ist, so be it. If something devastating happens to the earth, I'd like humanity to survive. I'd like people around who can appreciate human art, music, literature, and thought, who can build on that and see where it all leads.

Having all our eggs in one basket, in a thin membrane of air surrounding one particular rock hurtling through space, strikes me as a bad idea. Unavoidable for most of our history, but bad nonetheless. I back up my computer offsite, and what's my iMac next to Shakespeare's works, and people who can read them? Space colonization is a species insurance policy.

We spend money on short and long term needs. We should spend some money on very long term needs, like laying the groundwork for space colonization in 20, 50, 100, or 500 years. Our descendants may be very glad we did.

The political difficulty is that there's always some popular group of workers, a representative of which can be trotted out in front of the cameras to plead with the voters. Often it's nurses. Who hates nurses? They do a difficult and sometimes thankless job, and often receive a lot less professional respect than they deserve—a theme which resonates with nearly anyone who thinks they receive a lot less professional respect than they deserve.

So the unions shift the question and soon we're debating about whether we should "blame the nurses," an argument reformers are doomed to lose.

I fear this will get a lot worse before it gets better. As a Californian, I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong. If someone has a plausible argument for optimism, I'm all ears.

One slightly encouraging point of date: even here in union-friendly ur-progressive San Francisco, a modest public employee pension reform measure qualified for the ballot. It appears to be a cynical effort by a left-wing pol to position himself centerwards for a run for higher office, but I'll take reform where I can get it.

I'd have an easier time agreeing if the granting of tenure wasn't a process so dominated by politics, and so susceptible to weeding out those who don't subscribe to all the right—er, correct—orthodoxies.