LARRY TRIBE’S Lochner?

FLYING A LA CARTE: A look at SkyBus.

A NEW BOOK ON NANOTECHNOLOGY ETHICS gets a favorable review: “Nanotechnology ethics book is surprisingly fun.”

REVIVING INTEREST IN the gold standard? Color me unpersuaded. Though I agree with this: “I think you shouldn’t expect too much of a gold standard.”

MIXED REVIEWS FOR nonprofit payday loans. Turns out that even the nonprofits charge very high rates. “Of the $9.90 that GoodMoney charges per $100 borrowed, nearly half goes to writing off bad loans, Mr. Eiden said, and the rest to database service and administrative costs.” (Via Christine Hurt, who has some thoughts of her own: “To charge a lower rate, GoodMoney would either have to lose money or fundraise to cover shortfalls or in the alternative, offer their services only to those with better credit, which might not serve their mission. I think critics of payday loans have all along suspected that the 500-plus% APR was compensating for more than the inherent risk of the loans, but I’m not sure that I realized that 250% was necessary.”).

PAYING TO HAVE AN UNDERCLASS: “Has anybody noticed that the more we spend on the underclass, the bigger it gets and the worse it behaves? Has anyone noticed, either, that what we used to call the working class has shrunk?” In the United States, of course, paying less for the underclass — via welfare reform — has had the opposite effect.

ROLLING OUT THE BIG GUNS TO CRITICIZE PETRAEUS: Apparently, his dissertation was boring.

VARIFRANK DEFENDS LARRY CRAIG.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie is running a poll.

APPLE IS NOW SELLING ONE LAPTOP IN SIX: “The market share increase pushed Apple past Gateway Inc. into third place on NPD’s list of laptop sales leaders, behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Toshiba Corp. Research firm IDC also has Apple in the third spot; data it released last month put Apple’s share of U.S. sales at 5.6%, far behind leaders HP (28.4%) and Dell (23.6%) but tied with Gateway.”

ELECTRONICS IN THE BEDROOM PRODUCE “Junk sleep” in teenagers:

And although many adults claim that they fall asleep more easily with the TV on, it doesn’t always work the same way for kids. One in five of all the teenage boys surveyed admitted that leaving the TV or computer on was affecting the quality of their sleep.

The teens aren’t exactly bouncing back from the poor quality sleep, either. 40 percent of the group reported feeling tired in general each day, with 15- and 16-year-old girls doing even worse. But despite this realization, only 11 percent of teenagers surveyed felt that quality of sleep was important. “I’m staggered that so few teenagers make the link between getting enough good quality sleep and how they feel during the day,” Edinburgh Sleep Centre’s Dr. Chris Idzikowski said in a statement. “Teenagers need to wake up to the fact that to feel well, perform well and look well, they need to do something about their sleep.”

They do wake up to that, when they’re older. I hear adults say “I can’t go without sleep like I could when I was a teenager,” but actually I think they can — at least, I can — it’s just that we’re now smart enough to realize just how bad we’ll feel the next day.

ATTORNEY GENERAL JOE LIEBERMAN? Well, I’m okay with that.

UPDATE: Brendan Loy says not to trust “the DC/netroots rumor mill.” But I like the Lieberman-as-veep rumor even better!

And Loy notes one argument in favor of the Lieberman idea: “Still, if Lieberman were appointed, that would bring about something truly remarkable: President Bush would have managed to find an attorney general who is, at least arguably, hated even more viscerally by the Left than John Ashcroft ever was.” Go for the gold!

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE YOUNGER GENERATION? Turning down beer in the city of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton?

NORM GERAS: “It’s getting to be a bit of a pattern. Someone generically of the left – or so they regard themselves – writes about regrettable features of leftist advocacy and alignment in recent times and is met by a chorus of voices saying, approximately, ‘Who, me? Who, us? What, the left? No, never. Unheard of.’ . . . It’s quite a mystery, this. The volume of foul apologetics that streamed across the pages of the left and liberal press in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is a matter of public record.”

ON BLOGGINGHEADS.TV, Will Wilkinson and Brian Doherty talk about libertarianism and Doherty’s new book.

THE COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS criticizes law school affirmative action. The Reynolds in the story, by the way, is no relation.

Professor Bainbridge has more.

TOM JOAD SHRUGGED: Poverty’s not what it used to be.

WILL THE FIRST SELF-REPLICATING MACHINE be made of Legos?

ANOTHER ROUND OF NAME THAT PARTY!

SLATE EDITORS SQUABBLE over the Larry Craig story. I like this behind-the-scenes peek. Best line, from John Dickerson: “There’s more inappropriate airport behavior in the security pat down line.”

UPDATE: Radley Balko has thoughts.

STUART TAYLOR AND K.C. JOHNSON’S BOOK ON THE DUKE NON-RAPE CASE is now up to 567 529 436 370 280 265 on Amazon. Not bad for a book that doesn’t come out until next week. (Bumped).

THANKS TO LARRY CRAIG, for providing an opportunity for easy sex jokes.

UPDATES: Speaking of jokes — and redundancy — I see that Glenn Greenwald has a “remarkably boring and windy post” accusing me of hypocrisy over the Larry Craig affair. No. Craig got himself in trouble here; what I was objecting to in the past were organized Democratic efforts to out gay Republicans for political gain. That’s hardly the same thing. If Glenn Greenwald were to find himself in similar trouble I would shed no more tears than I have for Craig; if I felt that GOP operatives had arranged the story to discredit Greenwald, I’d regard it as a dirty political trick.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Background from Michael Demmons.

MORE: A useful post from Dale Carpenter: “It’s hard to work up much sympathy for Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho). He had a perfect legislative score from traditional-values groups, a zero rating from gay civil-rights groups, supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, and refused even to commit to non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring for his own Senate staff. But what exactly was criminal about his conduct in that Minneapolis airport bathroom? . . . At most, Craig was inviting another adult to engage in some kind of sexual behavior in a public place. I’m not a Minnesota criminal lawyer, but I don’t think asking a stranger for sex in a public place, while vulgar and rude under many circumstances, would by itself be a crime under state law. At any rate, Craig wasn’t charged with that.” And more from Josh Marshall.

Ed Morrissey wonders where the crime is, too. “How does foot-tapping and hand-swiping amount to disorderly conduct? . . . Let’s put it another way. Take Craig out of the equation and replace him with Generic Suspect. What crime got committed?” Of course, that’s a question that Craig could have raised, had he not chosen to plead guilty.

Plus, a problem with Craig’s story.

And some thoughts about sex offsets, mentioned here in an earlier post.

STILL MORE: More on Greenwald here. And some rather sharp thoughts about political hypocrisy here.

BLACK PEOPLE ARE FLEEING SAN FRANCISCO. But why? Jeff Goldstein proposes a “Lincolnesque” solution.

WIRED REALLY LIKES this “absurdly powerful” blender. It seems a bit pricey to me, though, and it won’t accommodate your larger blending projects, which could be a deal-killer for some.

UPDATE: Reader John Galvin writes: “That’s not a blender. This is a blender.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Steve Ducharme prefers this gasoline-powered model. “It’s not the quietest blender, in fact it’s as loud as a chainsaw.” Vroom!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Making an iPhone smoothie. Thanks to reader Marc Johnson for the link. Plus, blending Bic lighters? Kids, don’t try this at home!

MORE: More blender video. And reader William Harrington notes this monster — another gas-powered job. Plus, in the “don’t try this at home” vein, reader Randy Baird sends a video of lighting a barbecue grill with liquid oxygen.

A BRIBERY CONVICTION IN TENNESSEE:

Former state Sen. John Ford was sentenced today to 5 1/2 years in prison and two years of supervised release for his bribery conviction. . . . The Memphis Democrat, took the most bribe money by far of the Tennessee Waltz lawmakers and is the best known statewide. He is a member of one of Memphis’ most active political families and is the uncle of former congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., who is currently chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Harold Ford’s family was a drag on his campaign. I don’t know if this helps — by taking John Ford off the table — or not.

JOHN HAWKINS LISTS THE top 10 South Park episodes of all time. Let the fanboy arguments begin . . . .