VIDEOGAME GUNS OF TOMORROW, from Erik Sofge.

BEN BARTON: Judges, Lawyers, and a Predictive Theory of Legal Complexity. Legal complexity benefits lawyers and judges, and shockingly they tend to produce more of it!

DUDE, WHERE’S MY RECESSION? (CONT’D): “The new reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, was an improvement from the government’s initial growth estimate for the January-to-March quarter as well as the economy’s performance in the final quarter of last year. . . . The first-quarter performance matched analysts’ forecasts and offered a somewhat encouraging sign because it showed the economy was still growing at that time. The figure didn’t meet a definition of recession, which under a rough rule is two straight quarters of shrinking GDP.”

REAL-TIME MONITORING OF EPIDEMIC DISEASE, using nanotechnology.

THEY’RE BLOGGING THE SPELLING BEE, at Throwing Things.

IN THE MAIL: John McWhorter’s All about the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can’t Save Black America. But don’t rule out Detroit techno — give Juan Atkins a shot!

ANGLICANS GETTING ANGRY: Bishop says collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society – and Islam is filling the void. Plus, thoughts from the Black Crowes.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: “High vitamin D concentration in the blood is not associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer, researchers report in an article published online May 27 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.”

ANOTHER REASON TO FLOSS: Gum Disease Might Boost Cancer Risk.

IVY LEAGUE: Elitist? Us? “Requiring every student to swim three laps and understand Renaissance art is not elitist. It’s essential for any person.”

NEWS ON NUCLEAR FUSION: Hot and cold. Stay tuned and hope for good news.

RALPH PETERS: “To date, not one ‘mainstream media’ journalist has pressed the leading advocates of unconditional surrender to describe in detail what might happen after we ‘bring the troops home now.’ There’s plenty of unchallenged sloganeering, but no serious debate. This selective political softball and pep-rally journalism serves neither our country nor our political process well.”

PLEASE SEND Libby Spencer of Newshoggers your best wishes for recovery from her cancer surgery.

WEBB AS VP: Ross Douthat and James Joyner are skeptical. But regardless of whether having Webb on the ticket is good for the Dems, it seems pretty clear that it’s not good for Webb.

TRAINING IN VAIN: “A generation of athletes will retire after training a lifetime in vain if women’s ski jumping is kept out of the 2010 Games, say a group of elite female jumpers. . . . The sport has been in the Olympics since 1924, but has never had a women’s component, prompting nine female jumpers to sue the Vancouver Organizing Committee alleging it’s breaking equal rights laws.”

VOTED OUT OF KINDERGARTEN: “Five-year-old Alex Barton was voted out of kindergarten class by his fellow students in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Before the vote, his teacher told classmates to say what they didn’t like about Alex.”

EVAN COYNE MALONEY: on the media and bloggers. “Unfortunately, as this CJR piece shows, some in the media view bloggers as the enemy, a tormentor that must be defeated. By seeing bloggers as direct competitors, outlets put themselves in a position of competing on their greatest weakness while at the same time undermining their greatest strength.” Read the whole thing. Hard-news gathering is the killer app for Big Media. Why do they resist it, then? Because it costs money?

ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES: Authentic Viking DNA! “Stereotypically, these Norsemen are usually pictured wearing a horned helmet but in a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE this week, Jørgen Dissing and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, investigated what went under the helmet; the scientists were able to extract authentic DNA from ancient Viking skeletons, avoiding many of the problems of contamination faced by past researchers.”

TOM SMITH ON AFFRONTS TO HUMAN DIGNITY.