EMISSIONS STUDY: Train can be worse for climate than plane. Buses do a lot worse than many might expect, too.

SLATE: The California Banana Republic. “It’s not a line of clothes — it’s a failed state!” Strangely, however, the piece fails to mock public-employee unions.

UPDATE: Reader Todd Thacker emails:

As a California resident, it is to laugh that Slate blames the California budget crisis on Arnold and the Republicans. Don’t they realize that this state is almost completely controlled by Democrats, and has been for some time now? California would have money for the slashed social services Slate so bemoans if our spendthrift legislature could control its expenditures or stand up to the public employees’ unions. I’d like to say I find it difficult to believe that journalists could present such a simplistic, biased, and wrongheaded analysis of our state’s financial situation, but, well . . . . .

Ouch.

HOW TO PACK ON THE POUNDS: Get less sleep.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

HYPERMILING IN A NEW CORVETTE: “According to the Corvette’s onboard trip computer, we averaged 30.5 mpg with an average speed of 52.8 mph over the 142.8 miles. But it only took 4.358 gallons to refill the Vette’s tank (using the same pump we filled up on), and works to just a bare fraction shy of 32.8 mpg. That’s 32.8 mpg from a sports car that will top out at over 180 mph. That is a parsimonious performance that likely can’t be duplicated by any other car with anywhere near the performance.” But there’s a catch: “The trip was completely undramatic, uneventful, and totally boring.”

And this lesson: “Driven hard and recklessly, even a Prius will suck down dead dinosaurs at a furious rate. Driven carefully and with precision, you will find that a Hummer H2 can return something approaching reasonable mileage.”

LOVE AND ROCKETS: Hamas now plays matchmaker, too. And the woman in the photo is irresistible!

IN OAK RIDGE: Jaguar may soon be world’s fastest computer.

FROM MEGAN MCARDLE, A public-service announcement for graduating students.

And I’d add this message for next year’s entering classes: Avoid student loans if at all possible, and consider doing so even if it means choosing a “lesser” school. There are a few schools — Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, CalTech — where it might be worth going into serious hock for a degree. But not that many.

IOWAHAWK: Hot New Trend: Carefree Hipsters Go For Funemployment, Starve-cation.

MOE LANE: Let us compare two commercials: GM’s, and its parody. Video at the link.

DRUDGE: “CBS EVENING NEWS FALLS TO ALL-TIME LOW; 5,180,000 VIEWERS FOR COURIC .”

UPDATE: “Sarah Palin’s Revenge.”

JESSE WALKER: The music industry wants to impose an onerous new fee on broadcasters.

GIZMODO: Stop Whining About the iPhone GS Upgrade Price.

SWINE FLU UPDATE: Is This a Pandemic? Define “Pandemic.”

Plus, How a mild virus might turn vicious.

BEAVERS: From vanishing to nuisance.

Around the nation, decades of environmental regulation, conservation efforts and changing land use have brought many species, like beavers, so far back from the brink that they are viewed as nuisances. As Stuart Pimm, a conservation ecologist at Duke University, put it, “We are finding they are inconvenient.”

In Florida, alligators were once nearly wiped out by hunters; today the state maintains a roster of trappers who remove thousands of nuisance gators each year. The pesticide DDT once left the Pelican State, Louisiana, bereft of the birds; today wildlife organizations say fishermen must guard their bait and catches from the birds. In California, warnings about marauding mountain lions are posted on hiking trails.

Was David Baron ahead of the curve, or what?

DELIVERING THE 500TH Tesla Roadster.

IN THE MAIL: From David Williams, The Burning Skies. I liked his The Mirrored Heavens.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Understanding the House Democrats’ Health Care Bill.

POLITICO: States say to feds: Get off our turf.

The wave of government bailouts and the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package are reviving interest in an issue that’s largely been dormant since the mid-1990s: states’ rights.

From Idaho to South Carolina and in dozens of other states, Republicans are sponsoring resolutions designed to call attention to what they view as a worrisome expansion of the federal government at the expense of the states.

“What we have is a federal government that is exceeding its authority and blackmailing the states into submission through printed dollars,” said Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Sam Rohrer. “We are trying to say to the federal government, ‘You have a role, but your role stops not too far outside Washington, D.C.’”

I think they’d be better off pushing Randy Barnett’s Federalism Amendments.

RUSH LIMBAUGH calling for a boycott of GM products. This is actually serious, as I believe his listeners were formerly big GM fans. Then again, judging by the latest Rasmussen Poll, a boycott seems to have self-organized already.

UPDATE: Reader Tim Ameigh writes that this isn’t quite what Limbaugh said: “He said he would not be surprised if people did boycott, which your link to Rasmussen bears out.” Here’s the transcript, and I think that Ameigh is right. Reader Donald Dohrn agrees: “As a avid listener to Rush from way back, who now works during his broadcast time, I get my Rush fix through the podcast. I listen to bits when i can but heard this part while mowing last night. Rush is not calling for a boycott at all. The caller who was quoted in the blog post was who brought up the topic. Rush acknowledged that he had heard a lot about the sentiment and then went on to say the part about it being a vote against Obama and his policies not a reaction to anything GM has done. At no point does he say everyone should boycott GM.”

WELL, CHURCHES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT of civil-rights efforts after all. Pastor Organizes Gun Celebration at Church. “A pastor in Kentucky is redefining the tradition of wearing your Sunday best to services by encouraging his congregation to strap on holsters and bring their weapons to church. Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church in Louisville, Ky., says that he organized an ‘Open Carry Celebration’ to promote responsible gun ownership.”

Gun-control advocates aren’t happy, but you’ve always got your haters with any movement for social progress. . . .

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: China airs fears on US debt, dollar. “China is the largest creditor to the United States with some 700 billion dollars invested in Treasury bonds. Zhou earlier this year floated the idea of replacing the dollar with a basket of currencies as the benchmark global unit. Kirk said that Chinese leaders were sharply critical in private of the US Federal Reserve’s policy of ‘quantitative easing’ — a form of flooding the financial system with cash, which critics deride as printing imaginary money.”

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, the White House would be taken over by “Christianists.” And they were right! “Barack Obama invokes Jesus more than George W. Bush did.”

CHRYSLER BAILOUT SKEPTICISM FROM ANN ALTHOUSE: “So $42 million is chump change. And the rule of law? No time for that! It’s an eeeemmmmerrrrrgenceeeeee.”

We sure have had a lot of those lately.

UPDATE: Kevin Hassett: Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead.

IN LIGHT OF YESTERDAY’S bear-attack story, I should also point out this piece.