May 31, 2008

WORKING AGAIN ON ocean thermal power systems.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION? (CONT'D): "Given that the economy is flagging, this would seem an inauspicious time to be graduating from college and looking for full-time employment. Job prospects this year, however, have been better than career counselors and recent graduates had expected. . . . Preliminary surveys conducted by university and college career counselors indicate that the percentage of students who had found jobs by graduation was about the same as last year." Okay, it's not all rosy, but it's not exactly the economic wasteland we've been hearing about.

DALE AMON sends this picture from my panel. The lighting wasn't as dramatic as last year, but the backdrop was more impressive.

OUCH: "What Obama did today may have been politically necessary. It was certainly politically expedient. And it is yet one more blow to Obama’s image as a different kind of politician. In fact, as we’ve learned over the last few months, Obama appears to be a Chicago politician through and through."

ALCEE HASTINGS will boycott the Democratic Convention over Florida.

POLITICO: Bill Clinton's enemies list.

LISTENING IN on a McCain press conference call. "What was striking about the call was how eager the conventional reporters were to lend the Obama campaign a hand." Somebody should put the audio of these calls online.

AN ARMY OF CHANGS: China's Cyber Militias.

MORE ON OBAMA QUITTING Trinity, here.

UPDATE: Liveblogging the Obama press conference: "I will not denounce the church. It is not a church worthy of denouncing."

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just remembered -- this afternoon I saw some idiot on CNN talking about how Obama had weathered the "dstractions" relating to the Trinity Church with consummate skill. Not so much.

BOY, JUST POST A picture of Matthew Yglesias and the robophobia appears. ("Though perhaps we'll all be thinking whatever our robot overlords tell us by then.") The Yglesias reference is like a dog-whistle for the robophobes, I guess . . . .

OUCH: Europe 'needs 75 years' to catch US.

The Association of European Chambers of Commerce in Brussels warned that the transatlantic gap had widened yet further in the past five years by all key measures, despite the pledge by EU leaders at the 2000 Lisbon summit to transform Europe into the world's "most dynamic knowledge-based economy" by the end of the decade.

The EU-wide umbrella group, known asEurochambres said the EU's overall employment rate was still stuck at levels attained by the United States in 1978, chiefly due to an incentive structure that discourages women from working and prompts early retirement by those in their fifties.

It found that the European Union's research and development levels were achieved by America as long ago as 1979, while the lag time on per capita income is 18 years.

"It will take the EU until 2072 to reach US levels of income per capita, and then only if the EU income growth exceeds that of the US by 0.5pc," the study said.

I don't think that regulating country line dancing is moving them forward any. . . . They're way ahead of us on perks for bureaucrats already, though. And that's saying something!

A LITTLE LATE: CNN is reporting that Obama has resigned his membership in the Trinity Church.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ REVIEWS Austin Bay's Arena Academy.

MCCAIN and the bloggers. Plus, some questions.

A NEW Naomi Novik book -- and Peter Jackson has acquired the film rights to the series, which sounds promising.

A CLINTON HURRICANE strikes the DNC.

Much more here.

UPDATE: Uh oh: "Koryne Horbal says she and other feminists are promising action that could hurt Obama's candidacy if the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations are not fully seated at the Democratic National Convention. If Obama becomes the nominee under those circumstances, Horbal says she and others will write-in Hillary Rodham Clinton's name on the ballot in November instead of voting for Obama."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more here, including video.

MORE: Just noticed that TalkLeft has been all over this. Plus, it's pledge week there.

I'M SITTING IN on the Google Lunar X-Prize session, where several of the contestants are talking about their efforts. Interestingly, everybody so far has said they're planning to establish a long-term lunar business, rather than just undertaking a one-shot effort to win the prize. That's quite cool, since it holds out the prospect of many competitors continuing their efforts even if someone else wins the prize, thus -- as prizes are wont to do -- generating a lot of leverage out of the prize money.

There are now 14 competitors registered, from the United States, Romania, Italy, the Isle of Man, and Malaysia. It sounds like they expect more. Of course, they've lost Cringely.

UPDATE: Best line from one of the contestants: "Space is hard."

JOHN ADAMS must be smiling in heaven.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails a link to this related post, which even has a space angle.

THEY JUST SHOWED A PICTURE from the Mars Phoenix lander, showing ice.

UPDATE: Here's the image, and a release. Call it possible ice.

THE TOP TEN solutions to the world's problems, courtesy of Ron Bailey.

IT'S NOT REALLY A SPACE CONFERENCE, unless they've got Astronaut Ice Cream in the bar.

AT TAXPROF: Biggest Losers Under Obama's Plan to Remove the Current $102k Wage Ceiling for Social Security Taxes. Interestingly, they're mostly Democratic states. States that would do best, on the other hand, are mostly Republican.

DO LIBERTARIANS undermine liberty? Nobody's perfect.

IN THE MAIL: Peter Schweizer's Makers and Takers, which argues for the inherent superiority, and greater happiness and worthiness of, conservatism and conservatives. I predict that conservatives will like it.

Sullivan's Fine Food, Maryville, Tennessee.

THOUGHTS ON FREELOADING AND FAIRNESS, from Eric Scheie.

SO I'M SITTING IN THE PLANETARY PROTECTION / Asteroid impact discussion, and it's quite good. I also recommend this article by Gregg Easterbrook in the latest Atlantic and there's a video too. I do think that Easterbrook is perhaps a bit hard on NASA for not paying enough attention to this issue. There's not a huge political sentiment in favor of it, there's not a lot of money. The panel certainly is making clear that NASA is paying attention to the topic.

One risk that's worth more attention, though, is that a relatively small asteroid impact would look enough like a nuclear explosion that if it happened in the wrong place or time it might trigger a nuclear war. Imagine such an event in India or Pakistan at a time of tension, with no warning. And there might well be no warning.

UPDATE: Comments on Easterbrook, from Rand Simberg.

JAPANESE WOMAN CAUGHT LIVING IN MAN'S CLOSET:

A homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing. . . . The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean."

I'm trying to put a housing crisis spin on this, but . . . .

OUCH: Via Andrew Bolt.

ROBERT X. CRINGELY IS down on the Google Lunar X Prize. "It is hard enough to land on the Moon and drive around without someone setting additional administrative obstacles in the way. The X Prize Foundation should WANT a winner for this prize, but they don't act that way." He's still planning to go to the Moon, though.

MICKEY KAUS on "Obamagoguery." Ouch. The suggestion earlier about Obama's staff needing to factcheck his statements seems to be a good one.

DIGITAL NOMADS: High gas prices promote telecommuting. "One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that's accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it's OK once a week, why isn't it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with 'casual Friday' -- its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, 'extreme telecommuting' -- working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback -- becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you're out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn't really matter where you are, does it?"

All is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen. Related thoughts here.

CAN WE PANDER? Yes we can!

ANN ALTHOUSE: Real men don't use semicolons.

May 30, 2008

WELL, DUH: Consumers pick home over flying: "Consumers chose not to take 41 million trips over the last 12 months because flying is too much of a hassle, according to a new Travel Industry Association study." Make something miserable, and people will be less inclined to do it. Go figure. But they were warned.

I MISSED THE "GALA DINNER" but Hugh Downs -- who was in on the founding of the National Space Institute, one of the National Space Society's predecessor organizations, back in 1973, got a lifetime achievement award.

SEX AND THE CITY: It's not just for women! "If you're a red-blooded American male, what's not to like in a movie about four good looking women running around New York City indulging their libidos?"

A contrary view here.

"TEAM UTOPIA," the winners of NASA's space settlement design competition. They're from a boys' high school in India.

A LOOK AT TODAY'S New York crane collapse.

THE TELEGRAPH ON AMERICAN ACTIONS and European anti-Americanism. Europeans have been anti-American pretty consistently since America began, except for brief intervals where they needed us enough to (mostly) pretend otherwise. While politics and state-controlled media certainly play a role, it's mostly about moral preening and justification for low defense spending. Ultimately, this kind of thinking hurts Europe far more than America -- and will hurt Europe even more if America responds with isolationism.

OKAY, THE RECIPE SOUNDS YUMMY, but how many times do I have to explain that "barbecue" is not a synonym for "cooking out."

HERE'S A REPORT from my space media panel yesterday.

IT'S NOT A SPACE CONFERENCE, unless there's somebody walking around in a spacesuit.

CHINA'S SPACE PROGRAM: I've got a report from the ISDC up over at Popular Mechanics.

JOHNATHAN PEARCE: "Boris Johnson, the new London mayor, has already decided it is time for some R&R and has gone on a yachting holiday in Turkey. Good for him. . . . In an ideal world, politicians would be on holiday 12 months a year."

THIS IS WHAT WE WANTED TO HAPPEN, RIGHT: People moving out of high-risk hurricane areas. It's not much of a change, though.

BAD TIMING? "America's presidential hopefuls are pushing government-heavy approaches to climate change — just as the rest of the world is rebelling against them."

HOW TO MAKE grilled pizza.

THE GENDER RATIO at these things is far more even than it was a decade or two ago.

I'M SITTING AT A PANEL ON SPACE AND THE CANDIDATES, AND MILES O'BRIEN OF CNN is doing an absolutely terrific job of moderating a session with representatives of the Clinton (Lori Garver) McCain (Floyd Deschamps) and Obama (Steve Robinson) campaigns. (L-R). Details later, but O'Brien's been great, really drilling down on the questions.

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ANNOUNCES AN "L PRIZE" for high-efficiency lighting.

MCCLELLAN AND BUSH, SUMMED UP BY MARK TWAIN: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

IN THE NEW YORK POST: John Hinderaker on the war on terror.

PROJECT DRIVEWAY: Daniel Krach on his hydrogen car. I drove one of those a while back and reported on it here.

POLITICO: "Barack Obama’s favorability ratings among white women has declined significantly in recent months, particularly among Democrats and independents, presenting an immediate obstacle for the likely Democratic nominee as he moves to shore up his party’s base."

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION? (CONT'D): Jon Henke looks at economics and politics.

HILLARY, OBAMA AND IDENTITY POLITICS: All discussed in the latest PJM Political, with Ed Driscoll, Tammy Bruce, Ed Morrissey, Bill Bradley and Jennifer Rubin.

ABU MUQAWAMA takes off the mask.

IN THE MAIL: Jeffrey Kluger's Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex, and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple.

The Mellow Mushroom, Knoxville, Tennessee. Keen observers will note that she's appeared on InstaPundit before.

STEYN CANADIAN KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: "The Canadian Association of Journalists has formally applied for standing as an intervenor at the upcoming British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal hearings on a complaint of religious and racial discrimination against Maclean's magazine."

MCCAIN'S WEB GAP IS SHOWING. He's got good web people on the campaign, but he's way behind in grassroots Web efforts. I mean, this kind of thing is funny, but . . . .

GAY MARRIAGE by executive decision in New York.

THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE is up!

More spaceblogging here.

CONTINUING THE SPELLING-BEE BLOGGING, over at Throwing Things.

HILLARY GETS A DIG IN: “I have the highest respect and regard for Sen. McCain, he and I have actually gone to Iraq and Afghanistan together." (Via VIMH).

UPDATE: Bitterly clinging to "an outdated storyline about the war."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, here's a not so outdated storyline on the war. Coming to a newspaper near you, though probably not until after the election. . . .

OUR FRIENDS THE CHINESE: "U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers, officials and industry experts told The Associated Press. Surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop was left unattended during Gutierrez's trip to Beijing for trade talks in December, people familiar with the incident told the AP. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation."

SO FAR I'M ENJOYING the International Space Development Conference. I did a panel on space and media yesterday afternoon, and saw interesting presentations on China in space and private spaceports. Last night I hung out in the bar with a bunch of folks, including Dale Amon (better known to most as a Samizdata blogger, but a space entrepreneur with a startup, too), Keith Henson, who looked quite hale despite his time in durance vile, Lori Garver, Greg Allison, Loretta Whitesides (founder of "Yuri's Night") and a host of others. Rand Simberg, alas, wasn't able to make it this year.

ALTHOUSE ON MCCLELLAN: "'I Knew It Was a Terrible Mistake, but I Didn’t Mention It Until I Got a Book Contract.' . . . It seems to me that Bush didn't do enough to boost support for the war. He let criticism go unanswered and seemed to trust that the American people would understand why he was doing the right things, so I completely don't get the "permanent campaign culture" charge. As for the decision to concentrate on the WMD rationale over the democracy argument: It's been well known for a long time."

SOME POSSIBLE FUTURE PRIUS OPTIONS.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY:

Exxon Mobil's CEO says his energy company's "corporate social responsibility" is to produce more energy. While Congress wants to tax oil profits, he wants to spend them to find more oil. What a concept.

More oil seems good to me. And somebody needs to pin down the critics on just what sources of energy are acceptable, given that they don't like oil, don't want nuclear, oppose gas drilling, are limiting oil shale, and even get in the way of wind power.

HE WEARS THE CHAINS HE FORGED IN LIFE: "The ghost of Jimmy Carter is haunting the 2008 campaign." Plus this: "Of the two likely nominees this year, Obama is closest to Carter in background and policy leanings. The parallels between his campaign so far and the one Carter ran in 1976 are striking."

WHY THE MILITARY needs the gaming industry.

By now, the dual analog thumbsticks on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 controllers have turned the standard logic of the first-person shooter (FPS) into muscle memory for most red-blooded young American men (and I'm sure a few women, but I'm willing to call a gender bias on this one). Die-hard PC gamers will argue that a player with a mouse and keyboard can outgun a console player while eating a ham sandwich, but the portability, durability and easy ergonomics of the gamepad make it ideal for military use. "It's interesting that all of the game paddles have evolved toward a similar thumb-based design," says Bigham. "And when we've talked to our human factors experts, what they've told us is that the thumb is the most precise pointing instrument and requires the least energy." While that low-energy, high-efficiency control may lead to less sunlight and exercise for hardcore gamers, it also allows soldiers to remotely fly UAVs effectively for long periods of time.

Read the whole thing.

May 29, 2008

OBAMA MULLS IRAQ TRIP: But there's also this: "Obama also declined McCain's invitation for a joint trip, saying he didn't want 'to be involved in a political stunt.'" Apparently, McCain's suggestion stung a bit.

ANOTHER ULTRAPORTABLE COMPUTER: Hands-on with the MSI Wind.

GOOD IDEA: "The United States will propose biotechnology as a strategy to boost agricultural production at a UN global food crisis summit in Rome next week, the top US farm official said Thursday. . . . With the United States contributing more than one-half of all the world's food aid, he said, 'the world's other developed nations have an obligation to provide food efficiently without obstructing access to it or limiting safe technologies to produce it.'"

And read this report from Ron Bailey on the Copenhagen Consensus conference and free trade. "Anderson looked at a number of econometric modeling scenarios and calculated the cost and benefits that would obtain from full trade liberalization under realistic assumptions derived from the current World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda negotiations. Anderson estimated that liberalization of global merchandise trade would mean an annual increase of $287 billion per year in global GDP, of which $86 billion would go to developing countries. This compares very nicely with the $104 billion in development assistance that the governments of industrialized countries gave to developing countries in 2006."

MEANWHILE, BACK AT TRINITY UNITED. People in the press have been pretending this story is over. I don't think it is.

NEW DRUG NEWS: "Appeals courts in New Jersey and Texas on Thursday scrapped verdicts against the drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. stemming from some of the earliest trials involving its once popular painkiller Vioxx."

GOOD NEWS: "NASA's Phoenix Mars lander flexed its robotic arm Thursday in a successful test of the key element in the probe's mission to investigate the Red Planet's soil for conditions conducive to life, NASA said."

TEXAS SUPREME COURT: Polygamist sect’s children must go home.

UPDATE: More here.

THOUGHTS ON FREEMAN DYSON AND GLOBAL WARMING, from Derek Lowe. "I know how he feels: I consider myself an advocate of the environment, but I think the best way to preserve it is to do more genetic engineering rather than less. Better crops will mean that we don’t have to plow up more land to feed everyone, and we won’t have to dump as many insecticides and herbicides on that land we’re using. That means that I also think the best way to preserve unspoiled spaces is to do less organic farming, and not more: organic farming, particularly the hard-core varieties, uses too much land to generate too little food, and it does so mainly to give people in wealthy countries a chance to feel good about themselves."

SKIPPING science class.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION (CONT'D): James Pethokoukis -- who actually coined the "Dude, where's my recession?" line -- observes:

What do you call a recession where the economy keeps going up and up, even if a bit sluggishly? Well, my friends, you call that an expansion. And that is what we seem to have right now, despite all the economic doomsaying about a recession or even a Great Depression 2.0. Today, the Commerce Department revised its first-quarter estimate of gross domestic product upward to 0.9 percent from 0.6 percent. That follows 0.6 percent GDP growth in the final quarter of 2007. The revision also makes it more likely that the second quarter will be positive, maybe 1.5 percent, maybe even higher.

Now I went back and checked the numbers for the past 50 years and didn't find a single case of a recession—as calculated by the National Bureau of Economic Research—that started with or contained two straight quarters of positive GDP growth, much less three quarters.

It may not be the best economy in living memory, but it's not all that bad, either.

SOME COOL Knoxville photoblogging.

DOES KEITH OLBERMANN HAVE AN Al Franken problem?

STOP HAROLD ICKES: When life imitates Photoshop.

SOLVING THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS: Does fashionable beat rational?

IMAGINING A WORLD WITHOUT THE FDA: I wonder if you can?

THE ULTIMATE Home Office setup?

SO I'M AT THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE, where I'll be speaking in about an hour. Looks like a good turnout.

PROGRESS ON CONCEALED CARRY IN NATIONAL PARKS:

The change, promoted by the U.S. Department of the Interior and some U.S. senators, would cause national parks and refuges to adopt the same concealed gun laws as those governing similar public lands in the states where they are located. . . . Park service officials are waiting until the close of the public comment period on June 30 before taking a stance on the proposal. However, they can foresee complications in changing the rules, especially in places like the Parkway or the Smokies that encompass multiple states with differing gun laws. . . .

The proposed change in national park gun regulations is open for public comment until June 30. Comments can be made online at www.regulations.gov — type “guns national parks” in comment search field — or by mail at:

Public Comments Processing, Attn: 1024-AD70
Division of Policy and Directives Management
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222
Arlington, VA 22203.

I think that this link is also good. (Via Smokies Light).

JEFFREY TRUCKSESS: Not all biofuels are the same. "Corn-based ethanol has been giving biofuels a bad name. The real solution is biodiesel — a green, efficient energy source that won't starve the planet."

BARRY GOLDWATER, unfiltered.

IF YOU COULD REJUVENATE THREE PARTS OF YOUR BODY, which parts would you pick?

VIDEOGAME GUNS OF TOMORROW, from Erik Sofge.

BEN BARTON: Judges, Lawyers, and a Predictive Theory of Legal Complexity. Legal complexity benefits lawyers and judges, and shockingly they tend to produce more of it!

DUDE, WHERE'S MY RECESSION? (CONT'D): "The new reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, was an improvement from the government's initial growth estimate for the January-to-March quarter as well as the economy's performance in the final quarter of last year. . . . The first-quarter performance matched analysts' forecasts and offered a somewhat encouraging sign because it showed the economy was still growing at that time. The figure didn't meet a definition of recession, which under a rough rule is two straight quarters of shrinking GDP."

REAL-TIME MONITORING OF EPIDEMIC DISEASE, using nanotechnology.

THEY'RE BLOGGING THE SPELLING BEE, at Throwing Things.

IN THE MAIL: John McWhorter's All about the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America. But don't rule out Detroit techno -- give Juan Atkins a shot!

La Costa, Market Square, Knoxville, Tennessee.

ANGLICANS GETTING ANGRY: Bishop says collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society - and Islam is filling the void. Plus, thoughts from the Black Crowes.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: "High vitamin D concentration in the blood is not associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer, researchers report in an article published online May 27 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute."

ANOTHER REASON TO FLOSS: Gum Disease Might Boost Cancer Risk.

IVY LEAGUE: Elitist? Us? "Requiring every student to swim three laps and understand Renaissance art is not elitist. It’s essential for any person."

NEWS ON NUCLEAR FUSION: Hot and cold. Stay tuned and hope for good news.

RALPH PETERS: "To date, not one 'mainstream media' journalist has pressed the leading advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might happen after we 'bring the troops home now.' There's plenty of unchallenged sloganeering, but no serious debate. This selective political softball and pep-rally journalism serves neither our country nor our political process well."

PLEASE SEND Libby Spencer of Newshoggers your best wishes for recovery from her cancer surgery.

WEBB AS VP: Ross Douthat and James Joyner are skeptical. But regardless of whether having Webb on the ticket is good for the Dems, it seems pretty clear that it's not good for Webb.

TRAINING IN VAIN: "A generation of athletes will retire after training a lifetime in vain if women’s ski jumping is kept out of the 2010 Games, say a group of elite female jumpers. . . . The sport has been in the Olympics since 1924, but has never had a women’s component, prompting nine female jumpers to sue the Vancouver Organizing Committee alleging it’s breaking equal rights laws."

VOTED OUT OF KINDERGARTEN: "Five-year-old Alex Barton was voted out of kindergarten class by his fellow students in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Before the vote, his teacher told classmates to say what they didn’t like about Alex."

EVAN COYNE MALONEY: on the media and bloggers. "Unfortunately, as this CJR piece shows, some in the media view bloggers as the enemy, a tormentor that must be defeated. By seeing bloggers as direct competitors, outlets put themselves in a position of competing on their greatest weakness while at the same time undermining their greatest strength." Read the whole thing. Hard-news gathering is the killer app for Big Media. Why do they resist it, then? Because it costs money?

ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES: Authentic Viking DNA! "Stereotypically, these Norsemen are usually pictured wearing a horned helmet but in a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, Jørgen Dissing and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, investigated what went under the helmet; the scientists were able to extract authentic DNA from ancient Viking skeletons, avoiding many of the problems of contamination faced by past researchers."

TOM SMITH ON AFFRONTS TO HUMAN DIGNITY.

May 28, 2008

JERRY POURNELLE ON THE Texas polygamy case: "If we are going to establish that precedent -- that I can call the police and allege that you are abusing me and your children -- and never come forward to confront you, or give any real specifications, but they will come and take your children for their own protection, I have the power to ruin your life." Plus, reflections on education in 1957 versus education in 2007.

ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING stopped by a man with a gun carry permit.

DARTMOUTH AGAINST DEMOCRACY?

HOW TO SNACK LIKE Barack Obama.

RAND SIMBERG ON OBAMA: The uncle seems real.

SARAH PULLMAN has read Nina Planck's Real Food and likes it. Our podcast interview with Planck is here.

NOW THERE'S A WINNER: "Senator Biden Wants to Give Your Ex-Wife a Free Attorney..."

A 220 MPG HYBRID SUPERCAR featuring "wild horsepower?" I'd like to see one. Er, and drive one . . .

EXTREME BALLOON TYING! But it's only "pop art" if you do it wrong . . . .

I HAVEN'T SEEN SCOTT MCCLELLAN'S NEW BOOK, but McClellan himself is not exactly getting raves at The New Republic:

Writing a harsh tell-all memoir of the Bush years is just good business sense at this point. You only need to look back at the anemic sales of Ari Fleischer's rosy, no-tell memoir of his White House years to realize that--and Fleischer's low-seller came out at a time when Bush's approval rating was higher than 28 percent.

So kudos to McClellan. His book displays a calculating mind that was never much in evidence in the White House press room.

Ouch. Anyway, the Wall Street Journal has an excerpt, and some are noting the contrast between the press's reception of McClellan's book and the heavily-documented work of Doug Feith. What could account for the difference?

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer: "Still, I find myself asking this rather serious question: if, as McClellan says, he could see that Bush was intentionally misleading the nation into war back then, why didn't McClellan say anything? Why didn't he quit his job and blow the whistle? . . . It makes me wonder how much of this is that McClellan is trying to sell a book." Yes, it's hard to decide whether he comes off worse if he's lying, or if he's telling the truth.

MORE: Indeed: "It's not the disloyalty that bothers me. It's the press suddenly finding wisdom in a guy they previously disregarded as stupid and unreliable. It's inevitable that critical Bush-era memoirs will come out, but written by smarter people. I'll read those."

POLITICS, COLLECTIVISM, and hypocrisy.

CHOCOLATE: Is there anything it can't do? "All the talk about chocolate being good for your health is starting to get serious. Mars Inc., of chocolate bar fame, has established a scientific division. And a group of researchers, some in Germany, others with the new Mars division known as Symbioscience, has just published a report showing that an enriched hot cocoa beverage can improve blood flow in people with type 2 diabetes."

ADVICE ON AVOIDING TRASH on airplanes.

HANGING OUT AT the Law Review Lounge.

YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO WARN ME TWICE. Or, actually, even once: "Health officials are warning New Yorkers to stay away from an illegal aphrodisiac made from toad venom after the product apparently killed a man."

Others may see things differently, but to me there's a big gap between "toad venom" and "feeling sexy."

MICHAEL SILENCE IS down on NBC's economic coverage: "I've watched NBC Nightly News for quite some time now, but that's going to end. I used to have a lot of respect for Brian Williams but I'm over seeing the network night after night seemingly trying to drive a stake into the nation's economy. I don't want my news sugarcoated but I do want it in context. NBC News is failing to deliver on that simple request." Ouch.

WHEN BEING WILLING TO MEET WITH ANYONE doesn't mean being willing to meet with anyone.

PROS AND CONS OF switching to scooters to save gas.

What if the scooter's electric? You'll still need proper attire, advertisements notwithstanding.

UPDATE: Well, it's not all advertising hype.

DEMOGRAPHIC UPDATE: "Hypermortality" in Russia.

POLITICO: Dems seek to avoid meltdown.

THIS IS COOL: Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter Captures Images of Phoenix Lander's Descent.

SAILING UP THE RHINE TO AUSCHWITZ BUCHENWALD IS SEARED, SEARED IN HIS MEMORY: "You know, if I were an Obama staffer, I'd start fact checking everything he says, to try to stay ahead of the blogosphere."

PROGRESS, OF A SORT: Childhood Obesity May Be Leveling Off. We had a podcast on the subject a while back, with Dr. Michael Zemel.

IN THE MAIL: Tom Kratman's dystopian novel, Caliphate.

It's bound to be at least as realistic as The Handmaid's Tale.

Northshore Brasserie, Knoxville, Tennessee. That's the lamb shank with risotto. It was good.

Yeah, it's a food theme this week. . . .

DEAN NANCY ROGERS is the new Ohio Attorney General, replacing the scandal-plagued Marc Dann.

A LOOK AT Key 2008 House races.

LIBERAL VS. CONSERVATIVE: What's in a name?

MORE TROUBLE IN CHINA: "Bereaved parents whose children were crushed to death in their classrooms during the earthquake in Sichuan Province have turned mourning ceremonies into protests in recent days, forcing officials to address growing political repercussions over shoddy construction of public schools. arents of the estimated 10,000 children who lost their lives in the quake have grown so enraged about collapsed schools that they have overcome their usual caution about confronting Communist Party officials. Many say they are especially upset that some schools for poor students crumbled into rubble even though government offices and more elite schools not far away survived the May 12 quake largely intact."

I suspect that the one-child policy is amplifying the effects here.

VIDEO: John McCain's temper on display.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DEMOCRAT MIKE PADGETT, who's running for Lamar Alexander's Senate seat.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

HEROES AND ZEROS at MSNBC. Seems like they went downhill right about the time I left. I'm sure it's a coincidence.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS' COMPLAINTS about what Indiana Jones has done to the image of their profession seem a bit overwrought -- especially if it's true, as many claim, that the Indiana Jones character was actually based on Hiram Bingham, Yale prof. and discoverer of Machu Picchu. Of course, all those claims probably came from Yalies. But if you check out the cover photo on Bingham's Lost City of the Incas, the resemblance is pretty strong . . . .

MY REVIEW OF THE NEW 9" XP-EQUIPPED ASUS MINI-PC is now up over at Pajamas Media.

INSTAPUNDIT IRAQ CORRESPONDENT Maj. John Tammes sends this report (typed laboriously with his injured hand):

Meet Alaa. He is a regular soldier in the G-1 section of an Iraqi Army unit I work with. His story has given me additional hope that Iraq will be OK in the near future.

Alaa had been working outside of Iraq for some time before 2003. He was an accountant and corporate secretary for more than one construction firm in the Gulf region. After OEF swept away the Ba’ath and Saddam his father asked him to come back to Iraq and help rebuild his country. Being a dutiful son, he did so. He took his experience and knowledge to the new Iraqi Army, where he has done excellent work in a difficult job.

When his original enlistment is finished, he may re-up, or he may turn to help his country as a businessman with experience from abroad. Either way, Iraq is better off for having people like Alaa work for her future.

May there be more.

A BIG BREAK for Internet-based Realtors.

MICKEY KAUS: "What if the Dems aren't serious about health care? The immigration angle! Bubbling around the blogosphere is an inconclusive debate on whether Dem Senators are preparing to go slow on health care, staging endless hearings but passing little actual legislation."

May 27, 2008

REVOLUTIONIZING DIAGNOSTICS, with nanotechnology.

JAMES LILEKS ON THE BOON OF AMERICA -- plus, advice for Chairman Bob.

A PROFILE OF LOWELL CUNNINGHAM, Knoxvillian and Men in Black creator.

A "SUPER-CRAPPY PLAN:"

I do not believe you’re going to teach anyone a “lesson” by sitting this one out or writing in Fred Thompson or Sunny Lucas. I believe that way too many people are ignoring the forest for the trees and that in doing so, they’re going to have a hand in electing Obama. Some say that’s fine because if the country’s going to be “ruined”, better that it’s ruined by a Democrat, and somehow magically we’ll come up with a fantastic, “real” conservative in 4 years even though there is no one like that on the horizon and everyone knows it. Like I said, I think that’s a super-crappy plan.

More on this theme at the link, from Rachel Lucas. (Via the Insta-Wife).

JASON VAN STEENWYK: An open letter to David Carr of the New York Times.

UPDATE: Thoughts on the media's Iraq narrative.

WELL, HE'S RIGHT:

Kids actually understand robotics in an amazing way. If NASA said they were going to land monster robots on Mars and crash them into each other we would have a huge pool of kids who were interested in science and engineering.

That's Obama advisor Steve Robinson, quoted in the (print only) May 19 Space News. The next President should bring in Conn Iggulden, along with Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz as consultants.

ILYA SOMIN explains why Robert Bork is wrong.

UPDATE: But Obama gets it!

FRONTLINE; Mexico: Crimes at the Border.

I'VE MENTIONED Doug Feith's new book on Iraq before. Now he's got a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the selling of the war. I don't think the shift in emphasis was as stunning as he makes it sound, though -- in fact, back before the war people were criticizing Bush for talking about promoting democracy. Nonetheless, he's right that the Bush Administration should have engaged in more pushback on the WMD question. Read this, too.

ANN ALTHOUSE DOESN'T LIKE HER KINDLE.

OBAMA: Not Auschwitz, but Buchenwald. And not his uncle, but his great-uncle.

UPDATE: Apparently, he's been telling variations of this story for years.

A ROUNDUP OF all-time favorite war films.

IT'S NOT A ZBIG DEAL: If you don't believe me, watch the media coverage . . . .

A MCCAIN-LINGLE TICKET? "Feel a tingle, with McCain/Lingle!" Nah, too Chris-Matthewsish.

NOT FOLLOWING THE NARRATIVE (CONT'D): "U.S. and Iraqi military officials said violence in Iraq has decreased significantly in recent weeks to levels not seen in four years."

HOW TO WIN THE GOOGLE LUNAR X PRIZE.

SOCIAL WORKERS behaving badly.

SO I GOT EXCITED FOR A MINUTE BY THIS HEADLINE: Aerojet Tests Prototype of Orion Propulsion System in the latest Space News, (sorry, not online) but it was about this Orion, not this one. Oh, well, there's always China.

SOMEWHERE, LESTER MADDOX IS LAUGHING: Congressional contempt for "race-blind" hiring.

THE DOCTOR WITH THE "funny accent."

THE NEXT RIGHT is a project of Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke, and Soren Dayton. Check it out.

JENNIFER RUBIN on the media wars. Conclusion: "It would also be nice if, as a result of all the scrutiny, the mainstream coverage actually got better–but that may be too much to ask." Yeah, that was my hope years ago, but so far it hasn't panned out.

On the other hand, at least it's harder to keep people in the dark.

EUGENE VOLOKH looks at California's proposed porn tax.

TOM COBURN: Republicans Are In Denial.

He's right. At least, the GOP leadership is. Grassroots Republican seem to be in despair . . . .

And read these diagnostic quotes from Jon Henke. I'll take Reagan over Santorum any day.

RELYING ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS for blood supplies? "The country is increasingly dependent on high school blood donors to maintain the nation’s blood supply. Restrictions limiting donation by people who have recently had tattoos or who have lived in high-risk countries have caused the pool of eligible donors to shrink to less than 40 percent of the United States population."

Well, you can't expect law professors to carry the whole load . . . .

PAGING DAN AYKROYD: Gaffe-o-Matic!

IF YOU READ BLOGS, you knew this a long time ago, but if you read the L.A. Times you know it now: Iraqis losing patience with militiamen.

Of course, not everything on blogs is reliable.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

DO YOU HAVE SYNESTHESIA? I do. I see sounds as visual analogs with shape, color, and texture. Based on my own conversations, this is quite common among people who do sound engineering, and probably helpful.

NOT UNTIL RICH CELEBRITIES AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS FLY COMMERCIAL: Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards', say MPs.