BOB TUKE gets Joe Trippi.

GINA BARRECA: Fear is a matriarchy; fear is passed down through mothers.

Like they say: Fear can stop you lovin’. But love can stop your fear. . . . But it ain’t always that clear.

ROME WASN’T BUILT IN A DAY: Baghdad’s new normal.

DANIEL DREZNER: Three rules for understanding Canadian-American relations.

YOU CAN’T KEEP A GOOD GIRL DOWN: “In a weekend dash of campaigning in Texas and Ohio before those states vote on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton was in happy-warrior mode — and seemed to have found a stride. Her attack lines were punchier, her audiences were reacting more enthusiastically than usual, and she clearly liked her latest line of attack against Senator Barack Obama, on his lack of experience with a crisis.”

With the polls conflicting, it’s in the hands of the gods now.

BE VERY AFRAID: The return of Dr. Manhattan.

A SINGULARITY SIGHTING in the real world.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Rand Simberg.

IS CAPITALISM IMMORAL?

No. Next question, please.

MCCAIN ON MERCURY: “Nonsense on stilts.” Nah, it’s not even up to stilt levels. Meanwhile, blame Don Imus!

I CERTAINLY HOPE HE’S RIGHT:

He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He predicted the explosive spread of the Internet and wireless access.

Now futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is part of distinguished panel of engineers that says solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth’s people in 20 years.

Nanotechnology will help, if Luddites don’t block it.

TRIGGER HIPPIE: “An approving nod to the Sun-Times for finding it no big deal that Barack Obama is on friendly terms with Bill Ayers, even though, back in the day, Ayers was a Weatherman who ‘bombed the U.S. Capitol, a bathroom in the Pentagon, and even cased out the White House.'”

LARRY KUDLOW: McCain needs to back a strong dollar.

APPLESEED THE THIRD: Video and more at the link.

NAFTAQUIDDICK UPDATE: “In a conference call going on now, the Obama campaign is continuing to flatly deny that adviser Austan Goolsbee told Canadian officials not to worry about Obama’s anti-NAFTA stance. . . . He concedes that Goolsbee did talk to someone in the Canadian government, but insists the two were ‘essentially having some casual conversation, and the reports of the conversation are simply not accurate.’ Plouffe says Goolsbee was not speaking as a representative of the Obama campaign and that allegations that ‘somehow this was an official meeting’ are not true.”

UPDATE: Two Pinocchios: “The bottom line is that it has taken four days to drag something approaching the full story out of the Canadian embassy and the Obama campaign. . . . This is a case where the technical parsing of the truth by the Obama campaign falls well short of the whole truth.” Plus, there’s a memo. (Thanks to reader Paul Collacchi for these links.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Noam Scheiber: “Two things make it problematic for the Obama campaign: 1.) The sudden appearance of this lurid-sounding memo written by a Canadian consular official. . . . 2.) Certain Obama officials denied last week that there was any contact between the Obama campaign and the Canadian government about NAFTA. That’s clearly no longer ‘operative,’ as Howard Wolfson pointed out on the call. ”

MORE: In a P.S., Scheiber plaintively asks: “What is it with these Canadians? Are they running some sort of entrapment operation up there? Why do they keep trying to torpedo Democratic candidates?”

And reader Matt Szekely observes: “If Obama can’t handle a goody two shoes country like Canada how the heck is he going to deal with Iran, Syria, China, Russia, France and other countries that have a somewhat higher level of difficulty? . . . This is like watching someone get bucked off one of the coin op kiddies horses they have at the supermarket.”

And reader Mike Riger comments: “The interesting thing to me about this whole episode seems to be that both the Obama and Clinton comments are, in essence, saying that they absolutely DO intend to be protectionist, anti-trade presidents if elected. And both seem to be more stridently painting themselves into this corner as the charges and counter-charges are thrown around.”

BOB ZUBRIN responds to biofuel critics.

A GOVERNANCE CRISIS in the University of California system.

Plus, loyalty oaths at Cal. State.

UPDATE: Reader Bob Pipkin emails: “Interesting how InsideHigherEd could write such a lengthy story without mentioning that Richard C. Blum is the spouse of the senior senator from California” Apparently he hasn’t been thrust into the public eye to the extent some had thought.

SEVEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE REZKO TRIAL. (Via The New Editor).

UPDATE: An email from the Clinton campaign, with questions they’d like the press to ask Obama. Good luck with that . . . .

FOLLOWING UP ON MY EARLIER post about the Asus Eee PC, here’s an Engadget review of the new, slightly-larger 9″ version.

Meanwhile, reader Ed Adams likes his 7″ Asus:

I bought an Asus after reading your review while in Puerto Vallarta – couldn’t get on the resort’s PCs, and was looking for such an “appliance”. It is a lot more substantial than I was expected, and everything works just fine. Love the size and portability….

Yeah. They cut corners, but they did a very good job of figuring out where to cut corners without it seeming cheap.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Billy Beck emails:

I’ve had mine in hand about a week, now. I went for a 1gb RAM stick before I’d decided to install XP. Might’ve thought that through a bit better (XP will see 2gb on this thing), but I’m still very happy, nonetheless. On a lark, I installed AutoCAD (2002). This machine is throwing around shaded 3D models of arena-scale touring lights rigs (300-500 instruments with all trussing, etc.), with authority. I also installed Sony’s Vegas video editor for processing files straight out of my Sanyo C40 Xacti for upload to YouTube.

To be able to do all this in a sub-2 lb. machine at this price is amazing to me. Yes; we could pick nits about it. However, I think that to do that really misses the whole point.

This is what I’ve been waiting for in order to travel with a laptop again, for about seven years now, since my Vaio 505TS… at over two thousand dollars, over three times the weight (fully complimented), and a fraction of the computing power. I think it’s a really good job.

Yeah, I’m impressed that you can run Vegas on it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

I see you keep mentioning the EEE, but haven’t seen if you’re readers have mentioned how great it is for kids.

We ordered one for our kindergartener after the OLPC we ordered (on Day One by the way) didn’t show up for three months.

We got the Asus EEE PC from Newegg.com in something incredible like nearly 24 hours for $433 including FedEx charges. I couldn’t even begin to heap enough praise on Newegg.

It’s been perfect for the kid. When the OLPC finally showed up we just shelved it without even opening the box.

Hurrah for capitalism. And yeah, the Eee PC is good for kids. Plus, Billy Beck sends this followup:

Between the ASUS and the Sanyo Xacti, think about it: throw in the Vegas installation, and you’ve got a ‘Web 2.0′ multimedia rig easier to travel with than von Mises’ “Human Action” (ask me how I know this), for about six to seven hundred dollars.

On my last trip to Tokyo, all my viddies awaited processing until I got home. Them days is gone. I’ll tell you who else should be worried about this: the bloody New York Times.

Yep. The cost of competing with Big Media just keeps dropping.

FUN WITH CHEMISTRY: Derek Lowe on the joys of chlorine trifluoride. “There’s a report from the early 1950s (in this PDF) of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.”

“MINDCRUSHINGLY STUPID?” OR JUST “an old feminist rhetorical device?” I link, you decide.

WHO ARE THE RUBES this time?

AHMADINEJAD WANTS US OUT OF IRAQ: “Well, of course he does.”

IN THE MAIL: Doreen Orion’s I Know You Really Love Me: A Psychiatrist’s Journal of Erotomania, Stalking, and Obsessive Love. The author sent it to the InstaWife, who found the story a bit too familiar.

THE CLINTON/OBAMA class struggle. “It could just be that women with more education (and more money) relate on a subconscious level to the young and handsome Barack and Michelle Obama, with their white-porticoed mansion in one of the cooler Chicago neighborhoods and her Jimmy Choo shoes.”

A NINE POINT LEAD FOR HILLARY IN OHIO? If this is true, she’s doing a lot better than the press coverage suggests.