NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Solar cells thinner than wavelengths of light hold huge power potential, Stanford researchers say. “A film that’s nanoscale-thin and has been roughed up a bit can absorb more than 10 times the energy predicted by conventional theory.”

HAPPINESS IS GOOD FOR YOU. Just don’t overdo it.

OH, THANK GOD: For a second there, I thought they said 3.7 million! There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: Apple TVs Are On The Way.

NANNY-STATISM FAIL: Texting-While-Driving Bans Don’t Work. Plus this: “I don’t see how checking email while driving is much worse than fiddling with the radio or the air conditioner or talking to the person in the passenger seat or reading the roadside billboards. But the whole situation is a great example of how incentives work in journalism. The New York Times won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for its series Driven to Distraction about the supposed dangers of texting while driving. The guy at USA Today, Larry Copeland, who wrote the article about how the laws the Times got passed don’t actually work is just going to get some praise from me, which is worth $10,000 less than a Pulitzer Prize. And the chances of the Pulitzer Board taking the Pulitzer back from the Times reporter for having whipped everyone up into a frenzy for which the cure is worse than the supposed problem are about 0%.”

DRINKING MILK increases weight loss? “Could it be that corn fed to a cow to make milk is healthier for us than corn oil consumed directly? Yes, I know, it is heretical to think the last few decades of mainstream dietary advice is mostly wrong.”

ON THE INEFFECTIVENESS of “law porn.”

MYSTERIES THAT HOWL AND HUNT: The Spread of Urban Coyotes. “In recent years, urbanites have been simultaneously charmed and disturbed by coyotes strolling in Central Park, trotting into a Quiznos restaurant in downtown Chicago and taking a dash around a federal courthouse in Detroit.”

As with bedbugs, the notion that there’s nothing we can do to get rid of them now that they’re back raises the question: How did we manage to get rid of them before?

CANNIBALISM AND GENOCIDE among the peaceful Pueblo people.

CHANGE: Consumer Confidence Falls to Lowest Level Since February. “Overall, consumers’ confidence in the state of the economy remains quite grim.”

WORLD FATTENS, WOMEN AND MINORITIES HARDEST HIT: New York Times: Obesity More Expensive for Women.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Dial A Rotary Phone. Show it to your kids, so they’ll know what to do if they encounter one!

MATT WELCH: Jann Wenner to Obama: Tell Me, Mon Comandante, How Awesome Are You?

So Obama decides he’d better shore up the college vote and Rolling Stone cooperates with a softball puff-piece interview. Only problem is, how many college students read Rolling Stone any more?

Related: Obama: Democratic Voter Apathy “Inexcusable.” Somehow I think it’ll take more than an “obsequious” Rolling Stone interview to bring back the magic.

IN THE MAIL: Stop Calling Him Honey and Start Having Sex: How Changing Your Everyday Habits Will Make You Hot for Each Other All Over Again.

BOB BECKEL DOESN’T KNOW WHO HE’S DEALING WITH, if he’s threatening Pam Geller. Really, Bob, stick to reading the White House talking points. You don’t want to open up the can of whupass you’ll open up here . . . .

UPDATE: Charlie Martin emails: “I expect Pamela will deliver Beckel to his next of kin in three shopping bags.” Yes, but they’ll be from Bergdorf Goodman.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In the comments, the meanest thing you can say about Bob Beckel: “Beckel was campaign manager for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign.”

HMM: Report: FBI Investigating SEIU’s Andy Stern.

RACISM, COVERUPS, AND SCANDAL: “Like any administration snared in a Beltway scandal, the Obama team has two problems in the New Black Panther Party scandal: the wrongdoing and the cover-up. . . . I get the feeling that if it had been the Bush administration telling whistleblowers not to testify and withholding, absent any legal basis, key documents that could implicate high-ranking officials, the media would have already been all over this.”

DANIEL HANNAN: India’s relationship with the Anglosphere will define the twenty-first century.

Indeed. Fortunately, there’s an Indian edition of An Army of Davids. So we’ve got that going for us, anyway. . . .

ANDY KESSLER: What’s The Matter With Wall Street? “There are too many traders, bankers and salesmen to support the new level of business. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, the shrinking of finance will continue.”

I READ LINCOLN CAPLAN’S PIECE ON JUSTICE BREYER AND FOUND IT QUITE UNPERSUASIVE, but didn’t think it was worth taking the time to post about. Orin Kerr took the time. “Sure, if you want to cherry-pick some stats to make Justice Breyer seem like a paragon of judicial restraint, you ignore the state cases and just recite the figure for challenges to federal laws. But you could cherry-pick the other way to reach the opposite conclusion: If you want Breyer to come off as a judicial activist, you note that he is among the Justices most likely to strike down state legislation. The reality is more complicated: Breyer is roughly average among the Justices in terms of how often he votes to strike down legislation, with his tendencies, like those of the other liberal Justices, being more likely than average to strike down state laws and less likely than average to strike down federal laws.”

CHANGE: Harvard Pilgrim Cancels Medicare Advantage Plan. “The decision by Wellesley-based Harvard Pilgrim, the state’s second-largest health insurer, was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim — a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan — form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current rules, patients can seek care from any doctor.”

MISBEHAVING PROSECUTORS: A USA Today investigation finds egregious misconduct at the Department of Justice, with few consequences. . . . USA Today’s finding of little to no sanction for misbehaving prosecutors is consistent with other studies. Consequences, like taxes, are for the little people. “The number of federal laws reaches well into the thousands, and it’s growing. Many are so broadly written they allow prosecutors to ring just about anyone they please up on federal charges. This creates a system driven by politics, not justice. It makes criminals out of all of us, making actual enforcement of the law arbitrary and corruptible. Worse, every incentive for a federal prosecutor pushes in the direction of winning convictions, with little if any sanction for crossing ethical and legal boundaries in the process. It’s a system that’s not only ripe for abuse, but that actually rewards it.”

Maybe we should go for a “loser pays” system in criminal law. Couple that with fully-informed juries and you could get somewhere . . . .

Plus this: “Public choice theory teaches us that public servants act in their own interest in the same way private sector workers do. There’s nothing transformative about working in a DA’s office as opposed to, say, a white shoe law firm. You don’t shed self-interest to become purely noble and altruistic once you’re sworn into office. If anything, prosecutors should be given more scrutiny and oversight than other members of the legal profession. Private lawyers at best can influence courts and government officials to move money around. Prosecutors put people in prison and, in some cases, send defendants to their deaths. When they cheat, there ought to be consequences.”

UPDATE: Reader Michael Altman writes:

Dear Mr. Reynolds, as a former Assistant District Attorney in New York county, my experience is very different from your perception. When we first joined the Office Mr. Morgenthau made clear to us that our obligation was to “do justice,” not get convictions. He told us that he was most proud of the cases he ultimately declined to prosecute. While many prosecutors’ offices are not run as they should be, that doesn’t change the essential differences between prosecutors and attorneys in the private sector (including white shoe firms). A prosecutor’s obligation is to see justice done, the obligation of an attorney in the private sector is to zealously represent his or her clients within the applicable ethical guidelines.

The incentives don’t point this way nowadays.

THE TRUE MEASURE OF just how far the “Coffee Party” has fallen.

A VICTORY IN THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY: Charges dismissed against Md. man who taped traffic stop.

A Harford County Circuit Court judge Monday dismissed wiretapping charges against Anthony Graber, a motorcyclist who was jailed briefly after he taped a Maryland state trooper who stopped him for speeding on I-95. Graber used a camera mounted on his helmet, then posted the video on YouTube. . . . Judge Emory A. Pitt Jr. had to decide whether police performing their duties have an expectation of privacy in public space. Pitt ruled that police can have no such expectation in their public, on-the-job communications.

Pitt wrote: “Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state are ultimately accountable to the public. When we exercise that power in public fora, we should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation. ‘Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes’ (“Who watches the watchmen?”).”

Indeed. This is obviously correct, and it is an utter disgrace that Harford County state’s attorney Joseph I. Cassilly brought charges anyway.

UPDATE: Or maybe not. Reader Carl Dahlman writes:

In a TV interview last summer, Cassilly said that he believes that the police have no right to privacy when stopping people on the highway. He stated that he brought the suit in order to get legal clarification of the basic issue. If he lost, he’d be happy; if he won, the State legislature would have to act.

Seems to me Cassilly got the matter settled without needing statutory remedy. Bully for him. Maybe you should not be so hard on him.

Also, kudos to the State AG who issued an opinion last summer that troopers have no right to privacy on the highway. I’m sure that influenced the judge.

Hmm.

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, reader Steven Wells writes:

I read with some interest the comments of your reader Carl Dahlman regarding the dismissal of charges against the Maryland man who taped a traffic stop. Mr. Dahlman suggests that it is a good thing the prosecutor brought charges because this clarified matters without getting a statutory remedy. I disagree.

As a criminal defense lawyer, I think this type of prosecution is a disgrace, as you wrote in your initial post. Criminal charges endanger our most fundamental rights and liberties. For a prosecutor to file charges simply to clarify a vague statute is greatly troublesome. If a statute is vague, then prosecutors should not be filing charges at all. The defendant in this case had to hire an attorney (although I understand from some accounts he may have had pro bono counsel, this is still a real issue), have his name broadcast throughout national media, go through the process of obtaining bail (which is a restriction on liberty), and face the very real possibility of being a convicted felon. All of this when the prosecution admits that there was a distinct possibility that there was no basis for a charge?

There is no need for a statutory remedy in this circumstance. Prosecutors have a great deal of discretion in how they do their jobs and that discretion is all the ‘remedy’ this situation needs. I do not know Maryland’s ethical code, but under Rule 3.8 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, prosecutors should not prosecute a case if they know the charges are not supported by probable cause. It seems to me that if the prosecutor admits that the statute is vague, there is a very real argument that the prosector should know these charges are not supported by probable cause.

Just some food for thought.

Indeed.

CELEBRITIES GETTING GUN CARRY PERMITS. Not a threat to public safety like ordinary Americans getting gun permits . . . because if there’s one thing that celebrities are, it’s responsible.