JAMES LILEKS: “It’s a good thing to set safety standards, but they also lead to mind-numbing self-righteous PSAs.”

MORE PRAISE for the free (free!) OpenOffice.

MORE ON CELEBRITY CARBON FOOTPRINTS: “How are the chattering classes going to cope with this kind of scrutiny? If you travel frequently by air, even on commecial flights, you can’t escape having a huge carbon footprint. Yet many of the most vocal advocates of cutting emissions — politicians, environmentalists, journalists, scientists — are continually jetting off to campaign events and conferences and workshops. Are they going to change the way they operate? If not, how are they going to persuade anyone else to cut back emissions? (My advice to the peripatetic preachers: Do not try explaining why your work is more important than everyone else’s.)”

A LOOK AT First Lady Michelle Obama.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON The Imperfectibility of Human Institutions – Even America.

JOHN BIRMINGHAM on the dangers of becoming a holodeck junkie. I believe the first story on this — it’s been ages since I read it — was In The Imagicon, by George Henry Smith, and the neat gimmick was that the reader couldn’t tell which world was real and which was fake.

THIS’LL HURT: “Inexperienced, self-entitled and effete.” Will it stick? I don’t know, but this should: “A candidate coddled by a loving press corps.” Break out the kneepads!

CLINTON TO OBAMA: Kentucky counts! I don’t see why it should count less than North Carolina.

HMM: FBI probe nets counterfeit Chinese networking parts. “The criminal probe, code-named Operation Cisco Raider, was prompted by concerns that counterfeit network components could give hackers access to government databases.”

“YOU HAD ME AT ‘tax the wealthy.’” Heh.

WHO NEEDS CDS? Cheap MP3 downloads.

DAVE KOPEL LOOKS AT Hillary Clinton and gun owners.

PHIL BOWERMASTER: The (Solar) Singularity is Near.

DO ANTIDEPRESSANTS ENHANCE IMMUNE FUNCTION? Well, depression tends to impair immunity.

BRINGING BACK “HERITAGE BRANDS” — including Kern’s bread and Kay’s Ice Cream.

HEZBOLLAH AND ITS APOLOGISTS.

IS IT TIME TO INVADE BURMA? Man, those neocons will stop at nothing.

JOHN KASS: Obama unstained by Chicago Way. “Will Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON MIDDLE CLASS DEBT: It’s hard to know what this means for the economy; the graph looks bad, but lots of economic graphs look bad without actually indicating bad news. Personally, however, I’m quite averse to debt — nearly as much so as my wife! — and I suspect that many people would be happier if they incurred less. I’m not saying everyone should go the full Dave Ramsey route, but if you’ve ever listened to financial call-in shows like his or Suze Orman’s you know that there are people out there who have incurred a lot more debt than any reasonable person should. But is it a national problem? Perhaps not.

MORE ON MASSACHUSETTS’ PLAN to tax college endowments over $1 billion.

BECOMING A LAW SCHOOL ICON!

AN OBAMA FLIP-FLOP ON TALKS WITH IRAN. Coupled with a denial of said flipflop, and an embarrassing transcript.

MY GOODNESS, I can’t make correcting Matthew Yglesias a full-time job, because it would be a full-time job. But claiming that the South Vietnamese Army was “a joke” is hardly fair. In fact, in 1972 the South Vietnamese Army, with only air support from American forces, beat back a full-scale North Vietnamese invasion.

As the offensive petered out, the North Vietnam government and military had to take stock of what their effort had won them and what it had cost them. Analysts estimate that between 50,000 and 75,000 NVA died as a result of Operation Nguyen Hue. As many or more were wounded, and massive materiel losses included more than 700 tanks.

American air support was important, but this is not the response of a “joke.” Now when the North Vietnamese tried again in 3 years, against a South Vietnam lacking either air support or materiel support — while the North Vietnamese retained the backing of the Soviet Union — it was a different story.

THE RETURN OF THE OFFICE AFFAIR: I blame George Bush! (Possibly NSFW).

CAR LUST: The Porsche 928: “It is inconceivable to me that the Porsche 928 doesn’t have a more glorious reputation than it does. What was one of the all-time great cars of the 1980s (with some spillover from the 1970s and into the 1990s) is remarkably often regarded as a bloated, fat, ugly failure of a car, somehow barely worthy of the Porsche name. Bah!”