THOUGHTS FROM A VETERINARIAN on Why you should consider pet insurance. Thanks to the Insta-Wife and Insta-Daughter’s allergies, that’s no longer an issue for us, alas.

RON BAILEY REPORTS from the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference. He’ll continue reporting all weekend.

THROWING THE BUMS OUT in Knox County: “‘If they can’t steal enough in one term, then it’s someone else’s turn,’ Anderson said.”

SORTING CARBON NANOTUBES for different nanotechnology applications.

FROM WORRYING ABOUT MPG to thinking about PMPG.

OBAMA’S BIGGEST FAN: “There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements? . . . His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.” The Gilderoy Lockhart of candidates?

UPDATE: Reader J.P. Hrutka emails: “You may be more correct than you think. Gilderoy used memory erasing spells and liberals use the memory-hole/current-truth incantation. What is the difference, eh?” This would explain the website-airbrushing . . . .

FOR WHEN A HUMMER ISN’T ENOUGH: The Lamborghini LM 002. “I have no idea why the exotic sports car manufacturer was interested in competing in this market in the first place–it’s not as if Ferrari was experimenting with, say, amphibious troop carriers, after all–but at least Lamborghini did it with style. . . . Despite its size and heft, the LM002 was also a screamer. The howling V-12 easily overcame the truck’s sneering disregard for aerodynamics, pushing the LM002 up to 130 mph–or 110 mph in sand.“

THOUGHTS ON IRAQ, from The Mudville Gazette.

COST OVERRUNS AND TECHNICAL PROBLEMS for NASA’s Orion spaceship.

JAMES FREEMAN: Who’s going to fund the next Steve Jobs? Some guy in China, probably, which is also where the next Steve Jobs will probably be, thanks to various regulatory schemes in the United States . . . .

DOCTORS, SCALES, and patients with weight problems.

FIXING THE WORLD, on two dollars a day. “From impoverished Peruvian villages to MIT’s D-Lab, professor Amy Smith and her spirited team of engineers are on a mission: Fight global poverty and improve living standards for developing countries—one low-cost, accessible invention at a time.”

CANADIAN KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: “Human Rights” investigators go after comedian.

“PSEUDO-MARTYRDOM FOR PROFIT.”

A GUILTY VERDICT IN THE FORD CORRUPTION TRIAL: “The U.S. Attorney’s office says a federal jury in the public corruption trial of former state Sen. John Ford has found him guilty on all charges.”

GUANTANAMO VS. NUREMBERG. “In short, the procedural protections afforded the Guantanamo detainees under the statute before the Supreme Court in Boumediene . . . substantially exceed those accorded the Nuremberg defendants. Obama’s unfavorable comparison of the legal treatment of the Guantanamo detainees with that of the Nuremberg defendants suggests either that he does not know what he’s talking about, or that he feels free to take great liberties with the truth.”

DEBATING HELLER AND ITS IMPLICATIONS, at Cato Unbound. And, of course, don’t forget the piece on Heller that Brannon Denning and I wrote.

UPDATE: More on Heller’s gun permit, here.

AN IMPLODING CONSENSUS: “The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming ‘incontrovertible.'”

On the other hand, Michelle Malkin has a “clarification” from the APS that seems to undercut the above.

DECONSTRUCTING HELEN REDDY.

THOSE INTERESTED IN INTERNATIONAL LAW will want to check out the new, improved Opinio Juris, now in partnership with Oxford University Press, and now featuring Prof. Kenneth Anderson. And these days, even if you aren’t interested in international law, international law is interested in you.

THIS SHOULD MAKE YOU FEEL SAFE: “Among their discoveries: Word auto-saves the contents of encrypted files to the unencrypted portions of your disk, and this problem should apply to all non-full disk encryption software.”

IN THE MAIL: Richard Clarke’s Your Government Failed You. He should know.

MUSLIM CHARITY FOUNDER GETS JAIL FOR LYING TO FBI: “The founder of a Muslim charity was sentenced yesterday in U.S. District Court to a year in prison and fined $10,000 for lying to an FBI agent when he denied traveling to Afghanistan in 1994-1995. In sentencing Emadeddin Z. Muntasser, former president of Care International Inc., a defunct Boston charity, Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV doubled the maximum amount of prison time and the fine called for under the federal advisory sentencing guidelines. . . . Islam had been brought into the trial numerous times, Judge Saylor noted, but there are millions of Muslims who do not support violence.”

ILYA SOMIN: “Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr is one of many people who confuse the theory of the ‘unitary executive’ with the claim that the executive has virtually unlimited power. Barr argues that ‘McCain has endorsed, in action if not rhetoric, the theory of the “unitary executive,” which leaves the president unconstrained by Congress or the courts.’ In reality, the unitary executive argument is a theory about the distribution of executive power, not its scope.” What’s sad is that so many longtime members of Congress don’t know the difference.