A LOOK AT THE GUNS THAT Barack Obama doesn’t like. Which is pretty much all of them.

WELL, THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS: Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol. “Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.” Bring it on!

(Via Tom Grey). I certainly hope it pans out.

IT’S NOT RACE, IT’S ARUGULA.

KEEP THOSE KIDS BUSY: A big summer toy sale at Amazon.

TIGERHAWK: Iowa’s Katrina? “The flooding in eastern Iowa has reached the point of catastrophe.” But there’s a difference. “In Iowa there is a 500 year flood, but the people are not paralyzed, whining, or looting. There will be no massive relief effort from around the world, and nobody will step up to help Iowans except for other Iowans. Yet years from now, there will be no Iowans still in FEMA camps.”

More on the flooding here.

UPDATE: I’ll certainly be happy not to be reading stories like this from Iowa.

OUCH: The most morally abhorrent film ever made.

This isn’t just radical environmentalist fare; it’s perverse and anti-human. Shyamalan cuts immediately from the natural joy of pregnancy to its consequence: mass, nature-inflicted murder. It’s not carbon output, styrofoam cups or the clearing of the rain forests that so angers Mother Earth and, thus, her self-appointed human spokesman. It’s us.

Environmentalists’ genocidal human-extinction fantasies just keep getting more detailed. Keep ’em away from biotech, please.

And, obviously, someone has kept Shyamalan away from the scientists, anyway . . . .

UPDATE: Brian Noggle acquires a new perspective.

EXCITEMENT: Barack Obama knows and cares what bloggers say about his clothes!

UH OH: Delegate’s reversal stuns party: Wisconsin Democrat now publicly supports McCain.

As an avid supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Debra Bartoshevich is not alone in her frustration over Clinton’s defeat.

She’s not alone in refusing to support Barack Obama.

And she’s not entirely alone in saying she’ll vote this fall for Republican John McCain instead.

But what makes her unusual is that she holds these views as an elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this summer. . . .

Joe Wineke, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, reacted with disbelief when first told Friday afternoon that one of his state party delegates is now a McCain supporter.

“Not a delegate? To the national convention?” said Wineke, who was getting ready for the start of the Wisconsin state party convention Friday in Stevens Point.

“We have a Clinton national (convention) delegate who says she’s voting for John McCain?” Wineke repeated, for clarification. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Look on the bright side. At least she’s not calling Obama a terrorist.

“THE VICTORIANS WERE SUPERMEN.”

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: Iraq Oil production could increase by 400,000 bpd by the end of 2008. Bring it on.

A PHOTO QUESTION: Reader Kelly Azar emails: “Please tell us what lens you’re using for all your great shots. Please!”

Well, it’s more than one. Recently, I fell victim to Ann Althouse’s peer pressure and bought this fisheye lens, which is used in pictures like this, or this.

Other wideangle stuff was shot with the 12-24 wideangle zoom, which is a hell of a lens though it doesn’t give the trademark fisheye effect. (Examples here and here.)

And there’s also the 18-200 VR DX zoom, which I used for pictures like this or this. This is probably the one lens to have, if you can have only one — wide range of focal lengths, vibration stabilization, compact size, and good quality. If I were adding just one more, it would probably be the fisheye — big difference, distortion correctable via software plugin, and not as expensive as the 12-24.

And thanks for the nice comments. I’m no Lisa Scheer or Rick Lee, but I have fun and I hope I can share a little bit of what I like about Knoxville and the surrounding area.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER: “It was a long curious day for the Tennessee Democratic party yesterday.”

A BLOG BOYCOTT OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS? “Well, that’s kind of bullying needs some pushback. Effective immediately, Newshoggers is boycotting AP’s content, including that from other sites that syndicate their stuff. We will find other sources – Reuters usually has the same stories and syndicates our BlogBurst feed on its websites without a problem – or we simply will find a different story to blog about. We urge you to join us in boycotting these bullies.”

Further thoughts from Jeff Jarvis: “I talked to a reporter this week about the embattled Associated Press and said three times that I didn’t want it to die. I might take that back.”

HAPPY FLAG DAY.

And happy birthday to the U.S. Army!

BRING IT ON: “Toyota, rightly or wrongly, is widely considered the greenest automaker, and the company hopes to solidify its hold on the title and move beyond oil through a sweeping plan to produce cleaner, more efficient cars — beginning with a plug-in hybrid it will produce by 2010.”

BARACK OBAMA: looking more kindly on guns!

UPDATE: A reader emails: “And here I thought his side didn’t like guns. I guess they’re OK when they suit their needs, even rhetorically. That is so Rosie O’Donnell of him.” Ouch.

IRISH VOTERS GETTING SUPPORT ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE: “Political leaders across Europe were shaking their heads in frustration this weekend at the Irish voters’ veto of the latest European Union treaty. But many of their citizens weren’t. Ordinary Spaniards, Dutch, French and Britons, who wish they could get the same chance, might also say ‘no’ to the cold, distant heart of Europe.” Which is why they won’t be given the same chance . . . . “Many Europeans say this is exactly the problem with democracy Brussels-style, where European Commission members are not directly elected but wield continental powers. ‘We’re told we can vote no, that the system requires unanimity. But when (a `no’ vote) actually happens, every time, the EU tells us: You really only have a right to vote yes,’ said Dublin travel agent Paul Brady, who voted against the treaty.”

TIGERHAWK: “The question is, why do we keep seeing Obama supporters who revere Che Guevara?”

KNOXVILLE MAYOR BILL HASLAM: Laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial run in 2010?

PROF. MIKE O’SHEA: Ten things to look for when the Heller decision comes down.

SO I’M READING STEVEN PRESSFIELD’S Killing Rommel, which is based on actual efforts along those lines in World War Two. So far it’s quite good, which is no surprise. I’ve been a big Pressfield fan since Gates of Fire.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “If you think those Yale law students ought to be able to sue the on-line idiots for saying what they did about them, don’t you also have to believe Tim Russert had a cause of action against Ezra Klein?”

Or against Matthew Yglesias’s commenters. I wonder if this stuff will make Howard Kurtz’s column?

WE’RE NUMBER TWO!

China has now clearly overtaken the United States as the world’s leading emitter of climate-warming gases, a new study has found. The increasing emissions from China – up 8 percent in the past year – accounted for two-thirds of the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2007, the study found.

And that’s despite IowaHawk’s best efforts . . . .

KENT CONRAD: Angelo who? “I suppose Conrad could say he was just parsing this – he called Mozilo, but never met him – but really, that level of deception is what most reasonable people call a lie.”