This is a ten-minute video about regulation and ecigarettes. The host is a little bit obnoxious, kind of like a ten year old in a 45-year old’s body pretending to be a grown-up newscaster. But if you can get past that, it’s worthwhile mostly in the guest, Canadian anti-tobacco crusader David Sweanor talking about the mentality of the anti-tobacco crusaders who have fixed the turets on ecigarettes.

There is a bit of a mixed feeling about this in some vaping circles. Simon Clark makes some really good points about vaping advocates and their propensity to swarm committers of journalistic sin in a way that is ultimately counterproductive.

He goes on to tut-tut the movement for embracing some academics that may have played fast-and-loose with science in the past to demonize tobacco and/or alcohol unfairly. Most particularly Linda Bauld, who has become an icon in vaping circles for her take-down on an awful study that came out of San Diego and some terrible reporting that occurred afterwards.

There are a number of bad studies on ecigarettes, but just in time for the New Year UCSD ran an unusually bad one, which the media accepted uncritically. San Diego Union-Tribute’s Bradley Filkes asks “What went wrong?” and more generally why the science reporting is so lazy.

Bauld came to the rescue with this piece. She’s not the only anti-tobacco crusader to join us.

Which exemplifies some of the oddities of the politics of vaping, where you have people who are still fighting the last battle (passive smoking and smoking bans) with people who have joined in on the new one. It’s a commonplace feature on his blog that vaping advocate Michael Siegal gets more crap for his anti-tobacco crusading than his strong advocacy for vaping.

Theoretically the science should be the science and those who have been wrong in the past (on passive smoking, or as is often the case smokeless tobacco) should be taken into account. From a tactical standpoint, though, allies are allies. Their history as dragon slayers makes them particularly useful allies, now that they’ve turned their spears in the opposite direction.

These leaked passages of the State of the Union read pretty grim. Maybe it's all in the delivery?

— Alex Muniz (@asmuniz) January 12, 2016

"From the wildlife refuge of Burns, Oregon, to the President’s offices at Dartmouth, a black veil of sedition, treason, and rebellion…"

— Alex Muniz (@asmuniz) January 12, 2016

"The wisdom of Goddess Columbia demands that I not countenance to the demands of those who’d rend these States’ binds! "

— Alex Muniz (@asmuniz) January 12, 2016

"Vice President Biden shall chair an emergency War Powers council of Unionist Democrats and Northern Republicans to arrest the scourge… "

— Alex Muniz (@asmuniz) January 12, 2016

"So help us God Almighty, the Eternal, MMXVI." (And then there's a note for him to pronounce the Roman numeral date as M-M-X-V-I). Crazy.

— Alex Muniz (@asmuniz) January 12, 2016

Academia has had a reputation for being of the left for quite some time, but it’s become noticeably more stark over the last couple of decades. More from Megan McArdle.

Mukul Devichand considers how Je Suis Charlie changed the world.

Mark Tapson argues that Huckleberry Finn should not be altered to meet modern sensibilities. Relatedly, Colleen Gillard argues that Harry Potter trumps Huck Finn, and that the Brits tell better stores.

Coming soon to SVU Texas: “The kids are turning epinephrine into a powder and snorting it up their nose. They call it episniffing.”

The crass amoral partisan and politico in me finds watching the left’s grappling with Cologne to be interesting. The other part of me just finds it all too depressing.

On a more optimistic note, here’s a piece written by a Syrian refugee and the woman offering refuge.

While I favor using pronouns that people identify with, this strikes me as another argument in favor of a safe gender-neutral pronoun. Also, while I understand the dilemma I’m not sure about the “no tie” thing. Maybe “Tie or dress”?

A man is suing his ex-wife for gender-shaming him on the Memo line of his alimony checks.

Can I figure out some way to blame this story on the TSA?

The US lost some cool buildings in 2015. Many of them were brutalist. A moment of silence, please.

Here’s your chance to serve your country and eat free “food.”

Craig Mod is moving away from digital books. I… can’t really imagine ever going back. I’m mostly looking forward to the day when ebooks start taking advantage of their greater potential. Right now they seem stuck in the land of “books, but digital” instead of what they should be “Interactive web-pages tied along a long, single story.”

Philip Cohen writes of pornography and our broken peer review system.

FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs is a real creep, it turns out.

Adoptive father David French explains how adoption is usually preceded by brokenness, explaining some of the daunting statistics on adopted children.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry looks at a study on the damage academia’s liberal bias is doing to the social sciences. It’s a problem without a great solution, except trying to change the discrimination mentality where it exists… but that’s harder to do now that the notion that truth “has a liberal bias” mentality has taken hold.

If not for your own sake, don’t smoke for the sake of your pets. Or something.

Good news! The UN is cool with keeping the Internet free… for another ten years. The globalization of Internet governance is just going to be terrific.

There may be a link between droughts and civil war, but according to the Royal Economic Society the evidence is that it’s a weak link.

Microsoft is getting into the pre-crime prevention business.

Randomized drug tests bad. Fraternities bad. What’s a good ole boy to think?

Getting kids to learn is hard. Making sure they show up, though, is less hard. So let’s measure that. I wrote of gameable metrics in 2011.

Well, that’s one way for private schools to recruit students in a rough market.

Women in Brazil are being warned not to have children, due to an outbreak of the Zika virus.

President Edrogan literally talked a man off the ledge. Well, it was a bridge, but still. That’s cooler than the whole speaking well of Hitler thing.

Joseph Lenoff writes of his experience as an American Jew in the Israeli military.

A wedding amid ruin.

Meet Alabama’s version of Marion Berry, convicted of stealing from the city but re-elected anyway. The local HBCU had a problem with a university president who was basically stealing money, made more complicated by the fact that she was the best university president they’d had in a long time and arguably saved the university from ruin.

The star-crossed love story between an inmate and a guard in Louisiana… kind of made socially safer by the fact that the inmate was male, I guess, and that we can blame for profit prisons or something.

An entire police department in Florida was arrested for money laundering.

There is something especially annoying about timing the release of a shoddy study111 to convince people not to try ecigarettes as their New Years Resolution.

Who needs to make arguments when you can just correlate the opposing position with racism. I mean, you don’t want to side with racists, do you? Do you?! I mean that just settles it.

Cory Doctorow presents a list of works that copyright term extensions prevented from entering the public domain this year, while Eric Compton looks at at the effect of availability on Amazon of works before and after the copyright cutoff.

This… actually seems reasonable from a legal perspective, but also indicative of not being able to have nice things.

Melanie Trottman looks at whether or not boosting the minimum wage decreases reliance on government assistance.

I can always get behind labor victories that involve companies not paying their employees for the time they demand.

Oil export ban lifted! Let the shipping begin!

In looking at the “reality distortion field” in Elizabeth Holmes and her troubled tech startup Thanatos, Uncle Steve looks at prolific board members and what information we can derive from it.

I can sort of understand what this guy is getting at, but I think the point would be better made on a more attractive website, and perhaps he could draw some revenue with some ads. {via Vikram}

Priceonomics asks if checked baggage fees are too low. Gary Leff says no.

British gun museums may have to disable their guns because EU and because terrorism.

This sounds weird and intriguing. A Ukraining pokes in the ashes of Chernobyl to try to confirm an age-old conspiracy theory.

Wasn’t there an Eddie Murphy movie about this?

Erica Grieder explains how Texas Republicans could help deprive Donald Trump (if he wins the nomination) the presidency.

The Obama Administration inadvertently called Puerto Rico a colony, and Puerto Ricans are not pleased. I am, broadly speaking, fine with Puerto Rico’s territory status, and they seem to be, too, but it does represent certain complications.

A cool collection of prints showing how the Japanese saw western inventors, artists, and scholars.

Elizabeth Wright explains how Marcus Garvey should be honored as an enemy of Communism.

Lymon Stone looked at the demographic history of slavery in the United States.

Jose Duarte writes of the importance of debunking.

Well, this is the stuff of childhood nightmares (and eco-friendly children’s movies).

Tiffany Brodesser-Akner looks at Cool Jesus, faith for Millenials and the cool set.

“We’re melting the candy bars they want nothing to do with and selling it back to them.”

For Sale: A Town in South Dakota. It’s a couple hours outside of Rapid City, which makes it less convenient than the town in Wyoming that was sold in 2012, though not as isolated as the one sold in Wyoming last year.

This is pretty awesome. Obviously, all we see is a part of the face and some of the most difficult stuff CG is the hair. But… cool all the same.

iPhones are being dumbed down, and for once, and for once it’s not Apple’s fault. It’s the FDA’s.The death of Americans’ love affair with cars has been greatly exaggerated.

If you’re not careful, your otherwise helpful car may drop the dime on you.

Microcondos are coming to Houston.

Denmark is trying to seize jewelry and cash from refugees.

Turns out, it’s good to marry the daughter of the king.

As economic dreams fade, Chinese workers are fighting back. I wish them luck.

This reminds me that I need to go back and watch Spaceballs again at some point.

Women may have the reputation for being attracted to bad boys, but men like their nonconformists, too.

Tanya Lewis explains why the dating scene is pretty bad for women right now.

Assortive mating is on the rise, returning to Gilded Age levels.

The Bank of Canada would like to ask you to kindly stop spocking currency.

The life-saving potential of urine-powered socks.

Austrians want a border fence. (Which makes a lot more sense than how I originally read it, leaving me wondering what a border fence could provide that the Pacific Ocean couldn’t…)

Micah Singleton says Apple took too long to get into music streaming. They’re not hitting their user targets, but it seems to me that’s always been secondary to Apple compared to making money. Which, since they charge for their service, I assume they are.

Here’s an interesting profile of a serial killer hunter.

Noah Smith says the golden age of college may be coming to a close.

Okay, this picture beats my old picture.

Lisa Ruddick writes about When Nothing Is Cool because everything must be Criticized.

Sigal Alon argues that diversity destroyed affirmative action at The Nation.

Our circadian rhythms may be set by light, but for bachteria it’s metabolism.

Nature.com has a solid list of science myths that won’t die.

The story of a rape accusation recanted… that turned out to be true. Then the story of an expelled alleged rapist who was more likely the victim of rape.

Well, in Texas‘ defense, they probably also have the most roadway on which speed traps can be found. Even so, South plus a lot of municipalities plus counless layers of law enforcement make for a bad combination for motorists.

The insistence on self-driving vehicles following the law are exposing a fault-line between how drivers driver and how they’re theoretically supposed to.

Margaret Atwood is writing a comic book.

CNN has a good profile of Muslims in America. Fun Fact: The first mosque was in Ross, North Dakota. {Related}

When it comes to pushing for looser immigrant worker visas, Corporate America really is its own worst enemy. Fortunately for them, they will win out because we all know who opposes immigration.

Woodrow Wilson wasn’t racist despite being a progressive. The two were related.

As Japan avoids a recession, Scott Sumner is declaring Abenomics a success against his expectations.

“[T]hese reports do help us see the way our journalists can see one glass half full, while the other glass is disastrously half empty. These reports can help us puzzle over the way journalistic frameworks are used.”

Megan McArdle says that Jessica Jones cheated at feminism and wonders whether we can have kick-ass women who aren’t just guys with different parts.

Erik Root gives an account of how West Liberty University is divested itself of conservatives.

Tiny Fey doesn’t seem to understand that the Vox is not finished talking to her about comedy and political correctedness.

As Japan avoids a recession, Scott Sumner is declaring Abenomics a success against his expectations.

Heaven help us: The Snake People are now the largest generational voting bloc. Ah, well, at least they support gun rights.

At the New Reform Club, Seth Barrett Tillman asks an interesting question of justice, crime, and citizenship.

When democracy is a “situation.”

Of course the British are figuring out how to arm a British astronaut with tea.

Howard University may sell its public TV spectrum. Southern Tech’s is basically a husk for PBS. Which is fine for TV, though I’m kind of bummed that there is no campus radio network.

Barton Swaim, of The Speechwriter fame, writes The Perfect Republican Stump Speech.

Hate crime hoaxes are not just an American thing (or a leftist one). A teacher who alleged a Daesch school attack invented it, it turns out.

Walmart is suing Puerto Rico over a tax targeted in their general direction.

Vadim Nikitm wants us to give Daesh diplomatic recognition. I sort of imagine “The new ambassador would like to meet with your diplomatic team about your beheading of the previous ambassador…”

Ted Galen Carpenter says that the Daesch threat is not a 1938 thing, but rather anarchoterrorism from the 19th century. As others have pointed out, given the government’s response at the time, this is a mixed bag for CATO.

A video I must start making use of:

It may seem like I oppose any and all regulation of cigarettes and ecigarettes, but I think this is actually a pretty good use of anti-tobacco energy. Better tax increases, which are probably ineffective, and deceptively named “plain packaging laws” that are repugnant whether effective of not.

While the US continues to go off its rocker on the subject, David Cameron sees ecigarettes as a legitimate path to cessation and an NHS Board has reversed a previous decision to ban ecigarettes on hospital grounds.

In the UK, young people are experimenting with ecigarettes, but non-smokers aren’t regularly using, and according to a survey in the US, American teen users are avoiding nicotine. (Yeah, I’m a bit skeptical on the latter one, but hopeful!)

Coffee reorganizes the brain! Quick! Regulate it! I’ll bet the flavoring they put in it is just to addict children.

This post on the continued strength of piracy makes the faulty assumption that everything pirated should be purchased, but otherwise makes a pretty good point about streaming not being an especially good defense by content-producers against it.

Forensics looks at the link between racial hate crimes and Internet access in the early last decade.

I cannot overstate my complete and total lack of surprise that Japan’s idol industry is sexually coercive. Not entirely unrelated.

Wil Wheaton thinks writers should be paid. I think for Wil Wheaton, that is a good point. Also, Harlan Ellison. The “unique platform” provides more for some than others.

The little cabinet department that could, and did, and almost never found reason to stop doing anything.

I, too, lament the end of the custom of children referring to adults by Mr and Mrs, but that ship has sailed. {A cackling response}

Finland’s schooling sounds almost like unschooling at times, compared to our increasingly rigid regimen.

The TV show Friends is allegedly having a resurgence among New York youngsters.