JONATHAN RAUCH: A new politics? Or a new pandering?

GAY CRACKPOTS JOIN WAR ON SEX. Well, once you’ve lined up all the non-gay crackpots, you have to expand your recruiting, I guess . . .

And Amy Alkon piles on.

UPDATE: Further thoughts at Gay Patriot.

THOUGHTS ON THOSE CANADIAN TAR SANDS:

At a time when saying anything good about fossil fuels is like declaring war on the environment, it may seem like wishful thinking to press for an expansion of U.S. oil refining capacity.

Yet it is precisely this sort of thinking that is necessary if we are to make use of a vast, secure and reliable supply of fuel from Canada’s oil sands.

The tar sands hold an estimated 174 billion barrels of crude oil, making Canada’s oil-sands deposits second only to Saudi Arabia in global reserves. The U.S. currently obtains 1 million barrels a day from Canada’s tar sands, but with planned investments the daily supply could exceed 3 million barrels by 2015.

Seems like we should be making those. Then there are reports — which I still regard as iffy, though much of the blogosphere seems excited about them — regarding a potentially just-as-big discovery in the Bakken oil formation of North Dakota. I certainly hope they’re true, and we’ll see. There’s also lots of oil shale in Colorado.

IN THE AGE OF THE PHARAOHS, life basically sucked:

Studies on the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptians in a cemetery in Tell el-Amarna showed that many of them suffered from anemia, fractured bones, stunted growth and high juvenile mortality rates, according to professors Barry Kemp and Gerome Rose, who led the research. . . . The study showed that anemia ran at 74 percent among children and teenagers, and at 44 percent among adults, Rose said. The average height of men was 159 cm (5 feet 2 inches) and 153 cm among women.

“Adult heights are used as a proxy for overall standard of living,” he said. “Short statures reflect a diet deficient in protein. … People were not growing to their full potential.”

As Robert Fogel has noted, we take for granted today conditions that are a huge departure from basically all of human history.

WHY BLOG? Reason No. 92: Book Deal! As I can attest, those can be sweet.

MORE THOUGHTS on the problem of PC-induced starvation.

ANOTHER FREE ONLINE PHOTO EDITOR: Earlier, I mentioned Photoshop Express, but a reader recommended Picnik.com and I gave it a try. It’s quick, free online basic photo editing package. Not a lot of fancy features, but not bad at all and easy to use. And free!

ROBOSEXUALITY: Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not everything’s perfect, though: “I’m limited to what games I can play because I have Vista.”

THE WAR MOVIE THAT NOBODY’S MAKING: But actually, I just got the latest installment of J.D. Johannes’ Outside the Wire project, and, well, somebody is making it.

And here are some thoughts from J.D. Johannes on what Hollywood has done wrong. And what you can do to help show them.

YOU GET SOME AMUSING JUXTAPOSITIONS ON TECHNORATI, SOMETIMES.

MAKING PROFESSORS PAY for late grades:

Florida State is what she believes to be the only institution in the country that fines its professors when they turn grades in late at semester’s end. The tab: $10 per grade.

“We charge for every grade for every student that is not turned in by our deadline,” Barber said, adding, slowly for emphasis: “I’ll say that again: Every grade for every student that is not turned in by our deadline.”

Here at UT, fear of the registrar’s wrath provides sufficient discipline.

THE JOY OF DESPAIR: I had a column on this phenomenon a while back.

OKAY, IF IT WEREN’T FOR GLORIA ALLRED, this Hugo Chavez pic would be the picture of the day.

FORCING OBAMA TO take a stand on affirmative action.

MORE ON THE IRAQI ARMY VS. THE MAHDI MILITIA from Bill Roggio. Just got a voice mail from Michael Yon, too — hoping to get a report from him soon.

UPDATE: Further thoughts here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here: “One thing to keep in mind is Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, is pressing for an end to the fighting. If Sadr’s Mahdi Army was doing so well, why would he call for an end to the fighting?”

OUCH: “According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950. ”

UPDATE: Reader Johann Erickson emails: “Last time I put a ‘help wanted’ ad in my local paper, it cost me about $500. I got 6 faxes, 5 were unqualified for the job. I put an ad on Craigslist for free and got about 40 resumes. About 10 qualified for the job. Why would I ever use a newspaper again? Classified ads were the biggest drop, 16.5% or so. Just another dinosaur dying.” As I said, ouch.

MORE: Jeff Jarvis: “The situation is desperate.”

Plus, a recovery plan: “Hire more lefties to report anti-American stories, and whenever possible, betray national security secrets. . . . Avoid at all costs running columns by Mark Steyn and others with dedicated followings.” That’ll work!

KERRY HOWLEY: How Fear of Life-Saving Technology Swept Through Africa.

In May 2002, in the midst of a severe food shortage in sub-Saharan Africa, the government of Zimbabwe turned away 10,000 tons of corn from the World Food Program (WFP). The WFP then diverted the food to other countries, including Zambia, where 2.5 million people were in need. The Zambian government locked away the corn, banned its distribution, and stopped another shipment on its way to the country. “Simply because my people are hungry,” President Levy Mwanawasa later said, “is no justification to give them poison.”

The corn came from farms in the United States, where most corn produced—and consumed—comes from seeds that have been engineered to resist some pests, and thus qualifies as genetically modified.

Death before political incorrectness.

DEADLINE CONFUSION.