Category: The Dish

Why are Romney and Giuliani promising massive new government spending on alternative energy sources? Don’t conservatives understand that the best solution is for government to provide market incentives for new technologies, rather than trying to come up with the solution itself? Sure, some basic research support – but then leave it to the private sector to generate new ideas, and the market to see which ones will fly. James Pethokoukis draws the obvious parallel:

Think about stem cells. The apparent breakthrough in stem cell technology—it appears skin cells can be reprogrammed into stem cells—is not-so-good news for some half-dozen states that have invested in embryonic stem cell research, including California, which has committed to spending $3 billion over 10 years. Essentially, what those states decided to do was engage in a bit of industrial policy. They decided to let government rather than private enterprise and the market decide what the most promising stem cell technologies were. And now they appear to have bet on the wrong technological horse.

One good yardstick. Find out which politician is promising a Manhattan Project for some technological innovation. If you want real progress, vote for his or her opponent.

He eats his own ear-wax. Remember? The Economist’s take is here. China is now clearly America’s rival in winning the alliance of the Aussies.

Another theory – and this time, nothing to do with sex.

Ouch:

One could almost believe that it was Clinton, not Merkel, who spent her formative years in East Germany.

She remains the hardest to sell and the hardest to beat. With the human sparkle of a female East German shot-putter.

That’s what happens when you poll over the holiday season. Of course, that should make it all the more exciting. Marc adds his two cents here.

Who dare blame Manbearpig?

Noah Pollak has a conniption at one phrase in president Bush’s opening statement in Annapolis.

Here’s the alleged quote:

I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

It would be a Hewitt-level feat of double-standards if Romney were to use someone’s religious faith as a criterion for inclusion in his administration, don’t you think? Powerline harrumphs. Geraghty hedges.

The strange world of online video brawling:

Some of the fights are fake, many are real, some fall in between. There’s a lot of hair-pulling incompetence, but there are also moments of genuine inspiration in which regular folks under pressure discover their inner Conan….The various subgenres and minutely discrete iterations flow together into a cut-rate, bottom-feeding, mass-authored poem of force. Ancient Greece had its epic tradition, and classical Chinese literature had the jiang hu, the martial world; we’ve got YouTube.

I watched a handful of them and this one was the worst thumping I saw. Best not to talk smack to passing motorists whom you do not know.

Well, we all knew this anyway, didn’t we:

Fear of looking unattractive can be a stronger motivation for keeping people going to the gym than the hope of looking good, a study says.