HMM: Did Europe threaten to cut off purchases of Russian gas? I hope this is true.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: The 2 Millon Dollar Man. Actually it’s more like 2.3, but that doesn’t conjure up visions of Steve Austin.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Obama’s Curious Capital Gains Tax Epiphany. “Here’s the question: Why did Barack Obama finally go with a smaller-than-expected suggested increase in the capital gains tax rate? Let me present what is, I think, a plausible answer in 10 easy steps.” Plus, Larry Kudlow comes to Obama’s defense.

THE PLIGHT OF the little emperors. “Coddled from infancy and raised to be academic machines, China’s only children expect the world. Now they’re buckling under the pressure of their parents’ deferred dreams.”

STILL KICKING AROUND JOHN EDWARDS. I think the big “kick me” sign he taped to his butt has something to do with it . . . .

More here. And, of course, Mickey Kaus is still on the story. But the real story, remember, is how the press covered for him. And the real question is, what other stories are they sitting on to protect the Democrats?

A COVER-UP? In Chicago? Inconceivable!

AALS CAVES TO “ACTIVISTS:” AALS to Shift Annual Meeting Events From Hotel That Was Target of Professors’ Boycott. So remember — if you want lawprofs’ business, don’t utter a politically incorrect opinion. But don’t engage in similar boycotts of “progressive” speakers. That would be McCarthyism.

MAKING SENSOR CIRCUITS with integrated nanowire arrays.

EXPERIMENTING WITH BASEMENT FUSION POWER PLANTS: Who knows, maybe the “Mr. Fusion Home Energy Pack” will become a reality. Works for me! (Via Classical Values, which has more).

SHORT-TERM THINKING on oil prices. And not from Detroit, which is criticized by some for perhaps taking the issue more seriously than consumers probably will once oil prices fall.

MIKE HENDRIX is asking for help. I donated.

IN THE MAIL: Mark Rippetoe & Lon Kilgore’s Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training. Glancing through it, I see that it’s clearly illustrated and targeted at people who haven’t done serious weight training in the past. Looks good. Also, the reader reviews — all 101 of them — are extremely favorable.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Parmly emails: “Starting Strength is a great book by a great guy. Mark is very popular on the fitness program I do called CrossFit. If you really want to get bored one day, ask me about it. I can go on and on about why functional fitness is the exercise our nation needs most and hears about least. Rip is a great teacher and coach.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bart Hall writes:

Let me add my encouragement to working with free weights. I’ll be 60 in a few months and am now back *up* to my high school and college football playing weight after functional strength training (Olympic free weights) for the last seven years . I’m stronger now than I was 25 years ago, and was not weak then. Free weights are absolutely the way to go, at any age, because they inadvertently work lots of small muscle groups along with the major ones. Throw in a good range of abs and you’ll most definitely add quality, energy, and useful years to your life.

Yep. I work out with weights, and have for years. Reader Matthew Queen emails:

Love the site. Saw your post on Starting Strength and had to concur with Dave Parmly that it’s a great workout. I devoted myself to the SS routine for 4 weeks and saw enormous gains in agility, strength and endurance. Rippetoe really knows his stuff.

Also, Parmly is a fellow crossfitter. Our gym espouses the virtue of GPP (general physical preparedness). We feel that acronyms give our methodologies more authority. The idea behind crossfit isn’t to work out for aesthetics, but to train your body in a variety of intense ways that mirror real world challenges, such as lifting heavy things up. Thus, SS works well for us because it teaches perfect dead lift, squat and cleaning techniques that are the foundation for any lifting you’ll ever do.

We at Crossfit use SS as a part of our routine and have had great results. Just like Dave, I could go on and on and on about the value of crossfit and SS.

Yeah, that’s the focus of my workouts, too. And Don King sends a link to Crossfit.com.

MORE ON FAY, at Weather Nerd. The new consensus track makes it look as if the remnants willl wind up in my neighborhood, which would be nice — we need the rain.

TALKLEFT: How Can Obama NOT Pick Hillary For VP?

FROM ANN ALTHOUSE, a cone of silence poll. Currently in the lead: “The Obama campaign has started this meme to distract us from Obama’s bad performance.”

UPDATE: Related item here.

WHEN BIG WIND TAKES OVER A TOWN, can goons and corruption be far behind? “Lured by state subsidies and buoyed by high oil prices, the wind industry has arrived in force in upstate New York, promising to bring jobs, tax revenue and cutting-edge energy to the long-struggling region. But in town after town, some residents say, the companies have delivered something else: an epidemic of corruption and intimidation, as they rush to acquire enough land to make the wind farms a reality.”

Plus, Pelosi and Pickens — Investment Partners? I’m disappointed. I really thought that this blend of government subsidies and private money would be different!

HEATH SHULER WANTS TO BRING BACK THE 55 MPH SPEED LIMIT, but Donald Sensing has been agitating for triple-digit instead of double-nickel. How about we compromise on 80?

RAND SIMBERG: U.S.-Russian cooperation in space could become a casualty of war.

THE KIND OF SCIENCE DIPLOMACY WE NEED: “My answer is: There’s almost no food that isn’t genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution. . . . So a lot of modern plant strains were created by applying chemicals or radiation to cause mutations that improved the crop. That’s how plant breeding was done in the 20th century. The paradox is that now that we’ve invented techniques that introduce just one gene without disturbing the rest, some people think that’s terrible.”

IN KNOXVILLE, SOME NEW U.S. CITIZENS who know things others don’t:

One couple came here after escaping from a country thatՉ۪s about a hundred miles away on the map, but light years away politically.

Friday was the day Olga Alveres has been waiting on for decades.

“So happy. So happy.”

The native Cuban is now a naturalized U.S. Citizen. Her husband, Roberto, took the same oath last year. A huge moment for anyone, but for a man who escaped from Cuba after spending six years as a political prisoner, being an American family means everything.

Roberto Alveres says, “In this country if you work, nothing’s impossible.”

Celia Bright with University of Tennessee says, “In the 50’s we were full of optimism in Cuba. We thought that Fidel Castro would bring about democracy for our country.”

The speaker addressing the new citizens has literally been where Roberto and Olga have been. University of Tennessee lecturer Celia Bright left Cuba with her mother when she was eight years old. Her writings as a young child led to government accusations that her family was counter-revolutionary.

Bright says, “It was soon evident, after the revolution of 1959, that the political situation had deteriorated and personal freedoms were curtailed to the point that people feared for their lives and for the futures of their children.”

It has been evident for nearly 50 years, and yet it’s not clear in the media coverage.

IS IT JUST ME, or has Technorati become almost useless lately? Seems like half the time it doesn’t work, and the other half the time it’s days behind. What gives?

IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES: Let go of the past and allow offshore oil drilling. “So there’s a gusher of hypocrisy here: The state that is the biggest consumer of gasoline in the nation — but produces less than 40% of what it uses — is opposed to drilling for more oil off its shores. We’re slackers not pulling our weight.”

IF ONLY CLINTON HAD DONE THIS: Musharraf Resigns to Avoid Impeachment Turmoil.

THOSE SADLY ILL-INFORMED FOREIGNERS: British attitudes towards the United States are governed by ignorance of the facts on key issues such as crime, health care and foreign policy, according to a new survey.

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states. . . .

The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

Asked if it was true that “from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons,” 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam’s arsenal to him, compared to Russia’s 57 per cent, France’s 13 per cent and China’s 12 per cent.

Just remember this when you hear about how little Americans understand about the world.

UPDATE: Reader Hank Bradley emails: “And the British public gets its information from where? The BBC. This poll says more about the BBC than it does about the poor fish who learn about the world from it.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Andy Stevenson emails:

I have a feeling that if the same questions were asked of Americans, we would answer much the same as the Europeans did (except for the question on polygamy). The anti-American crowd tends to have a louder voice, even here in the States. Uninformed people tend to follow the idea that Europe is more advanced than we are.

Maybe Bush should give speeches reprimanding Europe for falling behind on emissions reductions (and use it to emphasize the efficacy of the market). Then he can give a speech criticizing Europe for abandoning fledgling Muslim democracies in the Middle East. Then he can suggest reparations from France, Russia and China for their role in Kurdish ethnic cleansing. To be fair, he can even offer that the U.S. pay our 0.46% of the share.

But then, these are all actions that European nations would undertake, and the U.S. tends to be a bit more of a class act. We’ll endure the misconceptions as we always have. With character.

Screw that. I like the idea of going on the offensive. Why let lies and idiocy prosper?

JOURNALIST, CAMPAIGN OPERATIVE, whatever.