New York Times columnist Gail Collins was, as always, highly enjoyable yesterday as she predicted that, come the year 2112, history students would be reading “on their vaporphones” about the precedent set when known philander and serial husband New Gingrich won the Republican primary in super-conservative South Carolina.

But her ideas run counter to the conventional thinking about what the world will be like a hundred years from now. The definitive source of future-casting for the year 2112 is, of course, Neil Peart, the (totally sick!) drummer and (philosophically ambitious!) lyricist for the great Canadian prog-metal band, Rush.

Thirty-five years ago, Peart outlined a very convincing vision of early 22nd century socio-political culture in the lyrics and the attendant liner notes to the twenty-minute-long title suite of his band’s album, 2112. (A historical document which has grown in importance and influence since it was bestowed upon a group of eleven-year-olds in suburban New Jersey by one of those eleven-year-olds’ older brother, Pat, in 1982.)

The vaporphone, for starters. Should such a thing exist in 2112, it would not, presumably, be called a “vaporphone.” As Peart told us, the citizens of all the planets that will have survived the intergalactic war of 2062 will live under the rule of the collectivist Solar Federation, in the cities that sprawl out around the great grey-walled Temples of Syrinx. Life will be pleasant, if a bit dull, under the Federation’s red-star banners. The populace of one city, Megadon, for example, will spend their time “Just plugging into [the] machine for the day, then watching Templevision or reading a Temple Paper in the evening.”

Vaporphone? Excuse me, “Templephone.”

In fact, it seems unlikely that students in 2112 will be allowed to read anything at all about a figure like Newt Gingrich. Federation life will be controlled by the priests of the Temples of Syrinx, who will ensure equality for all by strictly regulating all information available to the populace. “Our books, our music, our work and play [will all be] looked after by the benevolent wisdom of the priests…”

The priests will frown on the discussion of history in general. They will “have no need for ancient ways.” And they would be particularly adverse to someone like Gingrich, clearly a member of the “elder race of man,” who has heroic ideas about individualist entitlement and Randian concepts of sexual conquest.

If we have learned anything from Peart’s work on the subject, a man like Gingrich, a visionary comparable to say, the light-bringing electrician Equality 7–2521 or the rapist architect Howard Roark, would have no place in the “cold and empty life” brought about by the Federation’s social engineering. “Think about the average,” the priests would say. “The brotherhood of man.” Education about someone like Gingrich “doesn’t fit the plan.”

Gingrich, in Collins’ own telling, is a man of passion! Larger than life, unrestrained by rules of fairness or logic or scientific reality. I mean, he would probably want to colonize both moons over Megadon! He is an ubermensch. Does she actually think that Syrinxian Priests will let impressionable young students read about a man like that on their Templephones? Ha! In 2112?! We should be so lucky.

“There was his claim that he hated high school, and there were three files on his computer, written in July and early September, whose contents are unknown but whose file names are Gah.docx, sorry.docx, and Why is everything so painful.docx.”
 — It’s hard to come away from today’s Tyler Clementi story in the New Yorker

and think that his webcam-spying roommate should go to jail for ten or more years. But mostly it will make you want to permanently delete all your IM archives. You really, really do not want the dumb, sarcastic garbage you say to your friends showing up in court.

You know what America is craving right now, post-recession and during a harrowing election? That’s right: a very self-important drama about New York City gays, Fosse impersonators and their ladies who all love Broadway musicals and like to be mildly catty! That’s why NBC is going big guns on its mid-season spectacular, “Smash,” which premieres a week from today. It’s supposed to redeem their fall season. Ahem. Not even kidding, about the plot: “Former ‘American Idol’ contestant Katharine McPhee stars as struggling actress Karen Carpenter, competing for the leading role in a new musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe.”

Talk about doing it wrong. If only they’d named her Marilyn Monroe, and the musical was based on Karen Carpenter.

Good news: while reviews of the show have been embargoed, even though they’ve circulated DVDs to the New York City elite media, which is, not incidentally, made up of gays and single women who like being catty, any recent boarder of an American Airlines flight has gotten to see the first episode! I caught it Friday night, and boy is it… well it’s… “expensive” seems accurate. (If you’re not flying, you can even watch it on Netflix.)

Maybe it’ll be great? Debra Messing (who actually is given a husband and a family in the show — talk about ways to alienate your single lady demo) and her best gay (presumably; gayness telegraphed by his “chatty hands”) are back in the game with a brassy producer (the getting-divorced character played by an extremely taut Anjelica Huston) with a Big Musical! But they must Make Sacrifices to play the Broadway Game as they begin to cast their Marilyn, working with an Evil Scheming Fosse-alike. What Marilyn will win? Will it be the sassy unfamous one with the bosoms? Or will it be the newcomer with the heart of gold, who wears a dress literally adorned with cherries to her call-back?

Tune in for the second episode to find out which over-produced musical song rendition will win! Or don’t bother. Because it’s not actually campy: “The show slogs through one grave, brow-knitting plotline after another,” is how one brave soul put it.

To be fair, I could go for this show, but the way they treat the music is so dreadful. The songs are Broadway-good (not really a compliment in my book but here we are) but they don’t let anyone sing; everything is so relentlessly over-studio’d and done up Real Big, what’s the point? The current TV audience is used to “American Idol”; we’re not afraid to hear people actually sing, but we’re being really quite protected here. The music here is more like being trapped in an elevator with Celine Dion’s backing tracks blaring at you. That takes away half the fun, and then what are you left with?

“’Bob Dylan’ is not his real name. The ‘Ramones’ were not related. ‘Sun Ra’ was from Alabama, not Saturn. The Strokes’ dads are not plumbers. ‘Rick Ross’… look, we don’t have time for this.”

“A dose of ultrasound to the testicles can stop the production of sperm, according to researchers investigating a new form of contraception. A study on rats published in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology showed that sound waves could be used to reduce sperm counts to levels that would cause infertility in humans. Researchers described ultrasound as a ‘promising candidate’ in contraception. However, far more tests are required before it could be used.”

Previously: “’Don’t Worry About It, Baby, I Use A Lot Of Wi-Fi’”

It says a lot about what you expected of the Happy Mondays that you can look at a picture of the reunited band and think, “Wow, they’ve aged pretty well, considering.”

“It is difficult to think of anywhere else in the western world where these debates would have any credibility outside of a fringe party (even if the fringes in Europe are now spreading). Far from indicating America’s exceptionalism, it looks more like an awful parody of the stereotypes most outsiders already believed about American politics at its most bizarre. ‘Those who follow this race daily may have long since lost perspective on how absurd it is,’ said the German magazine Der Spiegel last week.”
 — If you have talked to any foreigners over the last two months*, you may have noticed they are wide-eyed in horror over the people running for president, whereas we natural-born citizens are too busy with capitalism to really think about just how bonkers all this is. (*Except for religious extremists who live under “sharia law”! They are probably totally down with all this stuff.)

“It is a cliché almost as old as the motor car itself, and the subject of many a sexist joke. But the idea that women cannot park is simply untrue, according to research indicating that female drivers are more adept than men at manoeuvring into a space.”

Florida’s Republican primary is tomorrow (AKA two weeks ago, since everyone votes in advance or by absentee ballot or from beyond/near the grave), and so the Mainstream Media is yucking it up in the Republican districts! For instance here is Politico’s Mike Allen in South Beach today with some likely Republican voters (including a fellow named BurgerBillionz) who are having a 6 a.m. nightcap-dinner while “Morning Joe” prepares to live-broadcast. (Which looks less interesting.) Word of advice: don’t actually eat at Jerry’s Deli. (Picture by MSNBC’s Lauren Skowronski.)

“An earlier version of this article incorrectly described imagery from ‘The Shining.’ The gentleman seen with the weird guy in the bear suit is wearing a tuxedo, but not a top hat.”