Through her blog, Virginia Postrel points to a couple of her recent articles (subscription required to access the WSJ piece) on the economic implications of Christmas lighting.

This isn't the first time she has touched on the topic of Christmas lights (visit here and here and scroll down or search for "lights").

Her Reason piece highlights elegantly how global capitalism leads not only to more affordable lights for the retail customer, but also to a specialized service industry that installs professional lighting displays for people who are not necessarily the most affluent customers. The article concludes with a nod to the real benefits of free trade and the value of aesthetics:

"We mourn the loss of manufacturing jobs - 'real jobs' - and ignore growing aesthetic professions, from installing holiday lights and landscaping lawns to giving manicures and facials, from designing brochures to crafting granite countertops. "Yet in an advanced economy, in which competition is pushing the prices of goods ever lower and their quality ever higher, enhancing the look and feel of people, places, and things will become more and more important over time. Just as surely as the horsepower of a car engine or the warmth of
a blanket, the pleasure of twinkling Christmas lights offers real value."

I don't think I could wrap this up any better than that.

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[Warning! Spoilers Ahead!]

I ventured out to see the 10:00 PM showing of The Return of The King last night, continuing my tradition of viewing the Lord of the Rings movies on opening night. While I'm reserving final judgment until I have seen it again in the theater and, more importantly, until I have seen the extended version on DVD, I can say that, purely as a movie, this is the best of the three.

But as an interpretation of Tolkien in letter and spirit, it ranks second behind The Fellowship of the Ring, which I think was most faithful to the source material, and well ahead of The Two Towers, which is in a distant third. I can look over the minor quibbles I have with some of Jackson's choices (like giving new footage to Pippin while deleting key aspects of Faramir's and Denethor's characters), because when Jackson gets it right, he gets it perfectly right -- The Ride of the Rohirrim, The Death of the Witch King and of King Theoden, and the entire Cracks of Doom sequence. And I can't complain about his omission of the Scouring of the Shire, which, like the Tom Bombadil chapter in the first book, would have been nice to see, but not essential to the story.

Update: What he said.

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Now this makes me soooo proud to be a Texan.

Good coverage of this particular case on Instapundit, Volokh, and Freespace. And be sure to check out the comments at Hit and Run, where I first learned of this particular bust.

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Lenny Kravitz fans and old movie aficionados shouldn't have any problem recognizing the potential in this concept (WARNING -- not a family-friendly link).

Glenn Reynolds, from whom I first learned the term "robosexual," reveals another new coinage -- "prosthetute" in this TCS article about robots and unemployment. He also links to this excellent, if not a little creepy, Salon article that made him aware of Real Dolls.

Gene Expression picked up this theme today (linked article has a moderately racy picture!) reviewing the Salon article and then running with the concept (linking to sites covering all the tech needed to create a Stepford Wife). It's neat that the good SF seems to come true around us all the time, but if we get the personal communicators, world-wide-web, and nanobots, then we should also expect to get some of the tech envisioned in the B-movies.

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Back on October 28, I linked to a site devoted to awful plastic surgery.

Of course, the self-styled king of pop makes quite an awful appearance on the site (and see this, which is linked from there).

All this is a setup for this image of what Michael Jackson would possibly look like today, had he foregone all the surgeries (using forensic age projection from a picture of a younger, unmodified Michael).

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Growing up in Texas, I remember real blue laws, which forbade sales of anything other than basic foodstuffs on Sundays. Thank the maker those were repealed several years ago so that I can now buy batteries or paper or hardware on Sundays. But our alcohol laws continue to reflect early-twentieth-century sensibilities, and efforts to change them usually arouse quite a bit of controversy.

The city I live in, Plano, allows sales of beer and wine in grocery and convenience stores 7 days a week (you have to wait until after noon on Sundays). Still, to buy anything else (port, sake, tequila), I need to drive 20 minutes or so to a "wet" area of Dallas. Many towns around here (including many areas of Dallas proper) are completely dry. This article and this one nicely summarize the situation in Plano (free registration required to read the Dallas Morning News article).

So I could really appreciate Mike Alissi's report at Reason's Hit and Run blog about some surprising bedfellows in Connecticut who would like to keep Sundays dry there.

Here's the money 'graph:

"Bottoms up to the bizarro world of booze politics where liquor store owners team up with MADD to keep Sundays dry, and proponents of allowing retailers to serve customers whenever they want are considered enemies of free enterprise."

Read the whole thing.

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Are molecular assemblers feasible? As I pointed out here, an Israeli team has reportedly used a DNA molecule to assemble a transistor.

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds posted a wealth of links on the debate over the feasibility of nanotech molecular assemblers. I like how he works Clarke's first law
into his commentary, too: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Lots of good stuff there, so read the whole thing, along with the linked articles.

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