Well, allegedly. You think sophisticated man-made computers and the amounts of data they store are a lot, just wait until you find out what’s inside you.

Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. (Yes, that’s a number with 20 zeroes in it.)

Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world. That’s 315 times the number of grains of sand in the world. But it’s still less than one percent of the information that is stored in all the DNA molecules of a human being.

If you found a disc drive in the middle of the jungle, you’d just know that it was man-made. But we have something far more capable (and small) inside of us, but that just worked itself out on its own. Riiight.

Think of how big the US economy is; the sum total of all the goods and services produced in an entire year. That’s how deep our debt is.

President Obama‘s budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government’s overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.

Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.

And the budget projects the government will run a deficit of $1.645 trillion this year, topping 2009’s previous record by more than $230 billion. By contrast, 2007’s deficit was just $160 billion altogether.

We do not need more tax increases. That has not solved the debt issue. Spending must be cut, substantially. That is one thing that has simply not been tried. The Tea Party exists because of this; the huge debt we are going to pass on to our great-grandchildren if we don’t do something about it now.

It’s not often (well, ever) that a Friday Link Wrap-up would have breaking news, but as I type this, Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as President and put the military in charge, not his recently-named VP. This is a historic day for Egypt, as it now has its first living ex-President. Barry Rubin runs down the "now what?" scenarios.

Some town in the US, including one suburb of Atlanta, have a law requiring each household to own a gun. These towns have much lower crime rates than their neighbors. But with the cases going through the courts on the constitutionality of the ObamaCare individual mandate to buy health insurance, and with South Dakota considering a bill requiring gun ownership, Glenn Reynolds goes over the major differences between the two.

Reaganomics vs Obamanomics and getting us out of a recession.

In his first speech as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron argued that a shared national identity prevents extremism more so than multiculturalism, and indeed, the latter may encourage it. If you have no connection to your country, you have no problem burning it.

James Taranto gives us a good history of the term "judicial activism" and its varied uses over the decades, especially with regards to the latest charges of "judicial activism" against judges who consider ObamaCare unconstitutional. Worth a read.

Patterico highlights one woman’s success story for her child because of school vouchers. However, he notes that, far from being just one bit of anecdotal evidence, this is a trend. He points to a CATO article that highlights a new federal study.

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

If President Obama believes his own rhetoric on the need for greater efficiency in government education spending and for improved educational opportunities, he should work with the members of his own party to continue and grow this program.

But frankly, it’s all about the unions, not about education, for Democratic politicians.

In more Civil Discourse Watch, here’s folks on the Left calling for riots, or at least pointing to rioting as a good example.

The failure of the repeal of ObamaCare can be laid at Democrats feet. We’ll see how well that works for them in 2012. (Didn’t work so well in 2010.)

In which country in the Middle East do Arabs have the greatest civil liberties? Click here to find out.

We keep hearing this refrain.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama traveled to Cairo to declare a new day in U.S. relations with the Muslim world – saying there was "no straight line" to building democratic societies in the Middle East.

The June 2009 address was in part intended to show a clean break from a George W. Bush-era "freedom agenda" of promoting electoral democracies across the region. Yet Obama now finds himself forced to move much closer to that world view as he escalates pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to make immediate changes.

Regarding national defense and now foreign policy, Dubya had it right. Slowly, but too slowly, Obama is realizing this.

Law enforcement could have stopped the Fort Hood shooting by Major Hasan if political correctness hadn’t prevented them.

And finally, some bad investments. Click for a larger version.

The eeevil rich, aren’t just rich; they’re Nazis.

Showing no concern for the new civility push that followed the Arizona massacre, a group of leftist activists from groups including Code Pink, Common Cause and jewel of liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress, turned into a loud mob complete with Nazi imagery outside a conservative gathering in Rancho Mirage, California.

But the media only ever really complain about it from the Right.

Another Middle East dictator long-time ruler is stepping down.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh says he will not seek another term after three decades in power. This comes as violence and protests continue in Egypt, even after the country’s President Mubarak announced that he himself will step down before September’s elections.

Depending on who fills all these power vacuums, this could be really good or really bad. For those of us who believe end-times prophesies about Israel, we’re watching closely.

Skin cells turned directly into heart cells.

Scientists have successfully converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells.

The powerful general technology platform could lead to novel treatments for diseases and injuries involving cell loss or damage such as heart disease, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at the Scripps Research Institute.

In 2006, Japanese scientists reported that they could reprogram mouse skin cells to become pluripotent simply by inserting a set of four genes into the cells dubbed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. But creating iPS cells itself is a time taking procedure.

Hence, lead author Sheng Ding and colleagues tweaked the process by completely bypassing the iPS stage and going directly from one type of mature cell (a skin cell) to another (a heart cell).

Amazing. This is almost the biological equivalent of alchemy.

When George W. Bush went into Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left predicted that the "Arab street" would erupt in protest against America. Other than the timing, under which US President, and the reason they would protest, they got it absolutely correct. >grin<

In Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, the "Arab street" is indeed flooding the streets in protest, but years after the Left predicted it, and against their own governments. The Jordanian government has been dissolved, and it’s not at all sure that Egypt’s Mubarek will survive this uprising.

And what needs to change? King Abdullah II of Jordan put it this way.

The king also stressed that economic reform was a "necessity to provide a better life for our people, but we won’t be able to attain that without real political reforms, which must increase popular participation in the decision-making."

More democracy. Turns out, the Arab street wants to be more like America. Or even (heh) Israel. The human rights records of all these countries are pretty bad as well.

Part of this depends on who fills the leadership void, especially in Egypt. If it is radical Muslims, this could turn into another Iran. But that is not a foregone conclusion, so let’s pray for the best for the Arab people.

It’s just the latest ruling, and other courts have agreed and disagreed, but the lawsuit of 26 states against it has had a major ruling in its favor.

The ruling favors of the 26 state attorney generals challenging the law. The judge ruled the individual mandate that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance invalid and, according to the decision, "because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void."

In case you missed the media coverage of it (and it would be hard to catch it, frankly) here’s a time lapse video of it. Ninety minutes collapsed down to 60 seconds.

The new international leader of The Salvation Army (aka "The General") is Commissioner Linda Bond of Canada. She’s actually the General-elect, as she’ll take the post after the current General retires in April. Commissioner Bond is the third woman to hold this position after Evangeline Booth (1934-1939) and Eva Burrows (1986-1993).

If you didn’t hear anything, or very little, about thousands who attended the March for Life last weekend in DC, that’s understandable. The media routinely ignores it.

And speaking of a liberal media, Jay Carney, who used to write for Time magazine, is now Obama’s new press secretary. His new job description — putting Obama in the most positive light possible — is very much like his old job description.

And still speaking of a liberal media, they’re getting rather disappointed that Obama is not doing what he said he would. Well, they’ve just joined those of us who have been paying attention for 2 years.

Headline from USA Today: “When unwed births hit 41%, it’s just not right”. But it’s OK at 40%? Seriously though, look at the graph showing how fast the out-of-wedlock births have jumped since the notorious “Sexual Revolution” of the 1960s.

Civil Discourse Watch:

“They’re going to hang themselves,” said Belknap [New Hampshire] Democratic Chair Ed Allard of Republicans. “And we’re going to help them.”

Allard’s threat came during a meeting of despondent Democrats in Belknap County on Thursday evening. The meeting was hosted by President Obama’s Organizing for America.

The IPCC said that the glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range would be gone by 2035 due to climate change. The latest word? “Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.” Um, who’s popular belief are they talking about?

And finally, a shorter version of the State of the Union speech, from Rick McKee:

That was then.

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

That was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in 2008.  This is now.

New York City and Newark, N.J., picked up a whopping 19 inches snow. For the month, both cities now have piled on 36-38 inches, making January 2011 the snowiest January on record! Bridgeport, Conn., Islip, N.Y. and New York-La Guardia airport have also now seen their snowiest Januaries.

Congratulations to both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Ski Areas Association for making a difference. In 2003 the environmental outfit and the trade group teamed up on a campaign called Keep Winter Cool, aimed at "highlighting the impact of global warming on winter recreation and the opportunities both resort operators and their guests have to start solving the problem." They liked the snow and wanted to keep it, but global warming was threatening to turn off the spigots and dry up the slopes. “We can fix the problem”, they said, “as long as we start soon.“

Well, they fixed it. Eight winters later, as Time magazine and the New York Times have reported, global warming is making the weather colder and snowier than ever. Good job, fellas! The Keep Winter Cool campaign seems to have decided to rest on its laurels and call its effort a success; its last press release is dated April 2007. But we thought we should highlight the good work of the NRDC and the NSAA, who were combating global warming before global warming was literally cool.

(Hat tip: James Taranto)