I anticipate reading that after throwing out US universal healthcare on some originalist reasoning, the honorable justices of the Supreme Court will announce that they henceforth will accept no healthcare for themselves that was not current in 1784. Hold the anaesthesia, pack on the leeches.

I remember Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. They weren't really robots, but pantographic extensions of the hands of the boys who pretended to fight through them. Knock his block off! went the slogan on the TV ad, and a good punch really could decapitate your antagonist in that Robot world.
If my memory is accurate, the ads for Rock 'Em Sock 'Em alternated on Saturday morning TV with ads for Mystery Date, the girly game. “Is he a dream... or a dud?” If the latter, a girl wasn't supposed to knock his block off.
But we've changed all that today. Americans of 2012, open the door for your Mystery Date!

(If I had thought of it.) The quick disappearance of single-payer from the healthcare legislation seemed to me a bad thing on grounds of general equity and simplicity, as well as for the reason that no other system would do so much to rein in the cost of drugs and procedures. A virtuous monopsony. I should have thought ahead and realized that it wasn't just an act of deference to insurance companies, but an act of monumental political stupidity, to kill single-payer. Our polity is so set up that now every employer and insurer can come up with some religious, moral, or principled-sounding excuse to just about any medical procedure, and make universal coverage a joke.

Gawker nails it. Thanks, peeps.

Hey, Iran. We understand you have a lot of left-over Enlightenment liberals-- people who like to read books, take the occasional drink, question the occasional authority. Well, we have a lot of fundamentalists who are all about stoning adulterers and other contact sports. How about a little population exchange? Win-win, as they say.

So the new insurgent for the Republican nomination is someone who promises to use the military to destroy the independence of the judiciary, and to “kill” those who are named (presumably by presidential decision and without due process, since the judiciary is to be set aside except where it concurs with the executive branch) as “America's enemies.” This is, as the Eurosocialist across the breakfast table reminds me, the recipe for a coup d'état. Is this what people want? In any case, stop calling these people social conservatives. They are theocratic radicals bent on the overthrow of the constitution and the government.

Find a passage in the Constitution that is not meant to prevent someone like Newt Gingrich from seizing power. (Cf. his recent pronouncements on setting aside the judiciary.)

“Some disciplines bring in more money to the university than their base costs. Cutting a discipline that is generating revenue is not sensible in a time of declining resources. Humanities and social sciences are net revenue generators in universities... These disciplines also generate a larger number of credit hours as a result of general education requirements... Nursing, engineering, and the sciences are usually net revenue losers: even when students pay a differential fee, the fee amount is insufficient to make up for the expense... Research and doctoral education [not broken down by discipline here, HS] are also money losers.” Elizabeth D. Capaldi, “Budget Cuts and Educational Quality,” Academe 97:6 (November-December 2011), 11-13. The author is provost at Arizona State, so she's not just making it up. Humanists and social scientists, don't get dragged into a zero-sum game that will pit you against the natural scientists. All of us are doing work that is vital for the continuation of civilization. The fiscal facts in Capaldi's comment should rather prompt us all, hums, soc's and nat-sci's, to call BS on lying administrators.

Let's call it “peace spray.”

Thank you.