https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwYTibTbYHQ

We don’t do formal meditation well — too much, um, formality — but should you need an escape from today’s incessant coverage of the Iowa Straw Poll, Talibunny, and Deranger Rick (we’re working on it), you could do worse than stare at a five-minute video on manufacturing pencils, each and every one of which is more intelligent than any candidate you’ll hear from.

[via Wired]

You may have heard that Sarah Palin is back on the road, and by an amazing coincidence has turned up in Iowa, where, we’re learning, all the citizens are equipped with video cameras and boom mics.

Clever people are using this as evidence that she’s really running for President, and is just being too coy to announce yet, while other clever people are using this as evidence that she’s rushing to sell a few more books before her clock runs out.

We have a third theory: Something like this is a lot more fun than dealing with her daughter-in-law’s miraculous three-month pregnancy.

[via @daveweigel]

One candidate was conspicuously absent from Thursday night’s Republican debate. A candidate beloved by the base, feared by opponents, who could really blow this race wide open.

We’re speaking, of course, about Thaddeus McCotter.

[via Political Correction]

Our guest columnist is National Review’s Frank Miniter, who is totally not gay.

With London succumbing to looters and muggers, it’s time to ask what happened to the once-manly English people. The August 9 issue of the Daily Mail, for example, includes a photo of a young man taking off his pants on the street as an impatient looter waits with the emasculated Briton’s sneakers and shirt already in his hands. Luckily the feeble Englishman chooses boxers over briefs, but I can’t help wondering if men such as T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, or Lord Acton could have stomached the state of manliness in this generation of Englishmen.

England Used to Be a Country of Men [NRO]

“Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.” [Sesame Workshop]

Our guest columnist is naturalized android Mitt Romney.

Do I believe that Social Security should take no part in deficit reduction negotiations? Social Security and Medicare are a large part of federal spending. It is about half. Not just this year, but over the coming decades, if we are able to balance our budget, we have to make sure that the promises we make for Social Security and Medicare are promises we can keep. There are a couple ways to do that: one way is to raise taxes on people. Corporations are people. Of course they are — where do you think it goes? Human beings, my friend.

Romney: ‘Corporations Are People, My Friend’ [TPM]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_iq5yzJ-Dk

Every fall, colleges around the country send a memo to their graying faculties, reminding the fogeys that the Fresh Young Minds about to invade campus are terrifyingly fresh — this year’s 18-year-olds were born in 1993, which means your Cobain favorites are now as culturally irrelevant as our Stairway/Gilligan mashups.

It’s the shallow end of Living Memory, a wonderful concept that defines our cultural moment — a moment you can effectively double, since today’s centenarians were born into a world that included the centenarians of their day. You can even triple it if you care to, allowing for a great-grandmother telling childhood stories about her great-grandmother: It’s not inconceivable that a centenarian today (b.1911) might recall tales from an earlier centenarian (b.1811) passed along by a 1711 baby who lived it.

So while it’s certainly freaky in 2011 to watch a 1956 clip of someone who witnessed an 1865 presidential assassination, it’s not that odd when you work the math. But it still doesn’t mean that kids today give a shit about Smells Like Teen Spirit.

[via Kottke]