THOUGHTS ON parenting really smart kids.

FORMER D.C. POLICE CHIEF no longer supports handgun ban.

FROM CAR LUST TO CAR DISGUST: Remembering the unforgettable Yugo.

THE QUAGMIRE DEEPENS: NBC refunds advertisers as ratings plunge.

THEY CAN TAPE YOU, but they don’t like for you to tape them:

A Newton activist who concealed a camera to videotape a Boston University police sergeant was convicted of violating state wiretapping laws. An associate is charged with witness intimidation.

Peter Lowney, 36, was sentenced last week to six months probation and fined $500. A Brighton District Court judge ordered him to stay away from the sergeant and remove footage from the Internet.

Lowney shot the film during a 2006 political protest. Ordered to stop recording, officers arrested Lowney for hiding the still-rolling camera in his coat.

The notion that videotaping events at a public protest is “wiretapping” — or that a court could order such footage removed from the Internet — is absurd.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Eugene Volokh. It’s my position, of course, that there’s no such thing as “privacy” for police officers who are in the performance of their duties. This is further evidence, however, of the need for federal civil rights legislation protecting the right of citizens to photograph, videotape, and otherwise record the public behavior of law enforcement officials.

STILL MORE on the Colorado Springs shooting. “”You Christians brought this on yourselves . . . . Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

OUCH: “For educators fretting that the Internet is creating a generation of ‘intellectual sluggards,’ the problem isn’t just that Yahoo!’s site helps ninth-graders cheat on their homework. It’s that a lot of the time, it doesn’t help them cheat all that well.”

TRYING AGAIN WITH THE AIDS VACCINE: ” September brought lousy news from the front lines of the fight against AIDS: In clinical trials, the most promising HIV vaccine in the pipeline failed to prevent infections. But researchers hope that tactical setbacks will deliver crucial insights.” Let’s hope.

DAMIAN PENNY on Canada’s human rights problems.

UPDATE: A Canadian honor killing: “The 16-year-old Mississauga girl who was allegedly strangled by her father in a dispute over her refusal to wear the hijab has died.”

HMM: “Growing numbers of people think the U.S. is making progress in Iraq and will eventually be able to claim some success there, a poll showed Tuesday in a sign the politics of the war could become more complicated for Democrats.”

ARMED STORE OWNER thwarts thugs.

TED STEVENS, ex-Senator? I’ve been telling the Repubs they should get rid of him. They should have listened. As usual.

IF YOU HAVE A BAD COLD, and the symptoms keep getting worse, it could be this nasty new virus. If it seems out of the ordinary for a cold, and you have trouble breathing, get to a doctor fast.

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Hill emails:

I had this virus, succumbing to it two days after returning from a trip to Australia. To give you an idea of just how bad it can be, understand that I’m not your normal, everyday, healthy adult male. I’m a National Champion Elite-level cyclist. I had a 104°F fever within a day, and a cough that would not quit. Now I have trained through just about every kind of illness that is transmittable (and some that aren’t), but it was three weeks before I could even think of riding again, and for a week could only exercise lightly. Six weeks later, I still have an occasional (4-6 times per day) coughing fit.

Wash your hands!

Always good advice. Or use hand sanitizer.

EMILY LITELLA LIVES: 2007 — the year of the “never mind” story?

WITH ALL THE BALI CONFERENCE HYPE, just remember that you can offset your carbon emissions just as effectively as a lot of the big guys do. And for free!

IN THE MAIL: John West’s Darwin Day In America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science. Call me crazy, but I don’t think our problem is too much science.

Also, Barry Bercier’s The Skies of Babylon: Diversity, Nihilism, and the American University. This looks as if it would go well with Tony Kronman’s new book.

ROGER SIMON: Paul Haggis, Sean Penn, and the Kucinich factor: “I came to this movie – the tale of a retired military policeman (Tommy Lee Jones) in search of the murderers of his son, who had gone AWOL on return from Iraq – expecting to be put off by its antiwar message. But I was even more put off by the ineptitude of the film itself, especially the screenplay. Simply as a mystery, it’s worse than a mediocre episode of the Rockford Files. Much of the movie is taken up with a red herring about drug dealing so obvious (and so out of an old TV show) that they might as well have had flashing neon of a red fish on the screen.”

WORKING ON A MALARIA VACCINE:

The sign on the wall reads “Emergency Response Procedures for a Mosquito Release.”

Among them are “Do Not Leave the Room or Open Any Doors!!!” and “Do Not Panic!”

Everything in the room is white, including the lab coats and surgical masks — for sterility, yes, but also the better to see a mosquito. Hanging next to the sign, in vivid Coast Guard orange, is the last line of defense, a brace of fly swatters.

But the work is deadly serious.

A GUN-FREE ZONE LIABILITY ACT: “If you create a gun-free zone, you’re liable for any harm it causes.”

ARNOLD KLING: “What the housing market needs in order to get back to normal is a strong dose of reality.”