A CLOSE CALL for J.D. JOHANNES: but, happily, without effect.

ANOTHER SECURITY BREAKDOWN AT THE FBI: “The FBI’s famed National Academy recently expelled a student from a troubled African nation after learning he was not a cop, as he had claimed, The Post has learned. The incident raises serious questions about the FBI’s screening process for prospective National Academy students. . . . The ‘quiet’ Sinie lived, studied at and strolled around the Quantico facility with a still and video camera for 91/2 weeks before he was found not to be a cop, expelled and sent home to Chad, sources said.” Well, that’s comforting.

YESTERDAY’S POST on giving kids hands-on skills raised the question of what to do about adults, many of whom never acquired the skills that people used to take for granted. That’s actually something that the Popular Mechanics folks are trying to address via their Skill Sets feature, complete with how-to instructions everything from how to hammer a nail properly to how to solder a circuit board. Many items include video.

Seems to me that we ought to bring back shop class as a requirement, too, for both sexes — along with Home Ec for both sexes.

LAPTOPS CAUSING BACK PROBLEMS:

Booming sales of laptops have led to a surge in the number of computer users with back and muscle problems, experts have warned.

Girls as young as 12 are being diagnosed with nerve damage caused by slouching over screens, a group of leading chiropractors said.

Millions of others are at risk of “irretrievable damage” to their spines, necks and shoulders because of poor posture when using laptops, it was claimed.

Back specialists say as many as four in five patients have chronic nerve damage caused by working on portable PCs.

As an early (1986) laptop adopter, I can attest to this. Though in some ways using a laptop is better — your posture may be bad, but if you use it in lots of different places it’s at least variably bad. But this stuff is nothing to sneeze at. You’ve been warned before.

Maybe what you need is Yoga for Geeks!

JACOB SULLUM IS UNHAPPY with public-health paternalism.

IT’S OFFICIAL: Fred Thompson say he plans to run.

UPDATE: David Boaz warns libertarians against Giuliani.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Hillary’s Iraq problem, and why it’s not going away. Actually, Hillary’s stance on the war is her strongest point in my book.

C’MON, KOSSACKS, YOU’RE STILL LAGGING:

I guess my earlier trash-talk wasn’t enough of a motivator. What, have you all bought so many carbon offsets from Al Gore that you feel free to stay all-incandescent?

Okay, actually the Kossacks aren’t doing so badly — they’ll soon be in the #2 position, and that’s without the benefit of the kind of front-page touting that the campaign has had on InstaPundit. So Markos — how about front-paging the post? We’re talking about saving the planet here, after all!

A SECRET PENSION BOARD at the Washington Metro? I wonder who’s collecting pensions.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: CNN rounds up some delightful Congressional action. Well, okay, “delightful” isn’t the right word. They make a big point of noting how Democratic promises on pork have been broken repeatedly, with particular emphasis on David Obey’s stealth earmark move.

Meet the new boss, yada yada. (Via Tom Elia).

NOW HE TELLS US: Patrick Fitzgerald says Plame was covert.

Tom Maguire is unconvinced: “Folks who think the prosecutor gets the first and final word will be satisfied with the current state of play. For myself, I would at least like to see the defense response (Newsweek says we will get one this week) and I continue to hold out hope that the CIA Counsel will respond to Congress, which will then generate a leak to Novak, if he likes the answer, or to Newsweek otherwise.” I’d just like to see this kind of outrage generated on behalf of leaks that actually hurt the war effort.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Unless her cover identity was ‘Valerie Plame’, MSNBC is drinking some pretty weak beer.”

Regardless, given the many obviously more damaging leaks that no one seems to care about, I’m finding it hard to get excited about this one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Just talked to a reporter from Salon who wanted to know if I was going to “retract” an earlier blog post in which I said it looked as if Plame wasn’t covert. I noted that one normally issues a retraction for original reporting, not commenting upon other people’s news stories. (I think he meant this post — I guess I shouldn’t have paid attention to Joe Wilson. Or maybe this one.) But I also suggested that he ask Richard Armitage for a comment on Plame’s covert status and what it means . . . .

MORE: A reader emails: “It seems pretty lame for Fitzgerald to say so now. Since his tenure is over, he doesn’t have to explain why he never indicted anybody for the crime which he was investigating in the first place.”

Par for the course with Fitzgerald’s lame investigation, I’m afraid.

OVER AT THROWING THINGS they’re liveblogging the National Spelling Bee. As an alumnus — yes, my geekdom knows few limits — I think that’s cool.

IN THE MAIL: Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder’s The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity. Looks very timely.

CAN SCIENCE OUTWIT STORMS LIKE KATRINA? Sure. But it can’t do much about human corruption and stupidity, which alas were the real problems. Though as Lou Dolinar demonstrated, many aspects of the Katrina response went better than reported. The media response, however, as Dolinar also demonstrated, was not one of those, and in fact probably cost lives.

IT’S NOT JUST AMERICANS: Chinese consumers are worried about the safety of Chinese food products, too.

MORE EXTRASOLAR PLANETS: I think we’ve found enough to suggest that planets are pretty common. This is good news for space colonization, though of course we don’t know how common earthlike planets are.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I think that celebrities did not expect that free speech is a two-way street, and that on the Internet, we can now talk back to them. And so when they preach that we get rid of our SUVs, those middle class out there who go to Costco with their three or four kids … while they’re flying in private jets — I don’t think that celebrities understood … that putting out ideas that marginalize them from their core audience, that shows a sense of elitism, is probably not in their best interest.”

WHY MODERN NOVELS are boring.

A LOOK AT POLITICS AND CIVILITY — we’ve got rather more of the former than the latter.

HOW CUSTOMER SERVICE undercuts advertising in the blog age.

PIMP MY JET:

John Kerry spent $1.4 million more than federal rules allowed during his 2004 presidential bid, primarily on customizing two campaign planes, according to a draft audit by the Federal Election Commission.

If the commissioners approve the staff findings at a meeting Thursday, Kerry’s campaign could have to repay the overspending to the U.S. Treasury, since his unsuccessful general election campaign was funded by tax dollars.

This makes Kerry look silly, but if you read the story it also underscores the silliness of campaign-finance rules.

SOME IMPORTANT ADVICE on breasts. But is an E cup really the new C cup? Seems as if I would have noticed that . . . .

But then, there’s apparently a whole book’s worth of information on this topic, so I guess my education on the subject is incomplete.

UPDATE: Boy, it didn’t take long for readers to write that they prefer “first hand knowledge” to “book learning” on the subject. That was predictable! Meanwhile, I’m reminded of this headline from The Onion.

A MODEST ADVANCE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, in Arizona.

HEAVEN AT THE PLANCK LENGTH: “I think it’s high time somebody founded the Church of Planck. ”

Well, Frank Tipler has given it a start.

MICROSOFT SURFACE: A coffee table that will change the world?

UPDATE: Read this, too.