TIM CAVANAUGH: If They Say There’s A Big Crowd At The Skeptics’ Conference, Should You Believe Them?

SHOTGUN NEWS: The Legend Of Bo Whoop.

UPDATE: Well, that link — which goes to Garden & Gun, not to Shotgun News, though it is certainly news about a shotgun — seems to have killed G&G’s servers, or something. Sorry. Try it again tomorrow.

THE PROBLEM WITH CAPITALISM: “It produces too much.” Stupid capitalism!

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Big Green Lie Exposed.

CHANGE: More Americans’ credit scores sink to new lows. Kinda like the government’s.

ROSS DOUTHAT: We need conservative class warfare:

In case after case, Washington’s web of subsidies and tax breaks effectively takes money from the middle class and hands it out to speculators and have-mores. We subsidize drug companies, oil companies, agribusinesses disguised as “family farms” and “clean energy” firms that aren’t energy-efficient at all. We give tax breaks to immensely profitable corporations that don’t need the money and boondoggles that wouldn’t exist without government favoritism. . . . All of this ought to be grist for a kind of “small-government egalitarianism,” in the economist Edward Glaeser’s useful phrase, that seeks to shrink government by attacking Washington’s wasteful spending on the well-connected. And sometimes conservative politicians make moves in this direction. President George W. Bush’s Tax Reform Commission proposed sharply reducing the mortgage-interest deduction. House Minority Leader John Boehner, to his great credit, recently floated the possibility of means-testing Social Security. Many Republican senators have been staunch critics of corporate welfare.

Hey, remember PorkBusters?

LOTS OF COOL FUTURE-BLOGGING over at The Speculist.

FISH OIL cuts breast cancer risk. “If this study’s results turn out to be correct the risk reduction is substantial.”

COMPUTER MOUSE turns invisible.

EXPERTS ON THE GULF: Feds’ Oil Spill Response Is Stuck On Stupid.

THE WORLD’S OLDEST PROFESSION is father.

RUSSELL NIELL: How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others.

I’VE BLOGGED ABOUT THE Kodak Playsport waterproof videocam before. Now reader D.W. Drang writes:

just got back from Kona where I tried out my Kodak Playsport ZX3, and Mrs. Drang tried out the digi-cam equipped dive mask she bought from Hammocker schlepper. (I posted a video she made here.) She ordered the light kit to go with the mask, but it did not get delivered in time–Big Brown sent it to the wrong island–but, even where the water was not pristine, it was not needed. Maybe next time we’ll do one of those night dives with the manta rays…

I found that, although the Playsport is not buoyant itself, it still bobbed a bit. I attached a boaters’ key float to the wrist lanyard, in case I let go. Never did, although when those idjit kayakers almost ran me over…

Nice to hear.

UPDATE: Reader Jason Register emails:

I forgot to thank you for your post on the Kodak Playsport back in May. I bought it for my fishing trip to the Keys and got some great underwater video of dolphin and blackfin tuna as they approached the boat (gaff). I used iMovie and iDVD to put together a video with some Beastie Boys music and all my friends think I’m a genius. Thanks again for highlighting this little beauty. I’m now using it to make wake boarding videos of my friends much to their delight.

Always happy to help a reader look like a genius.

BLACKFIVE: When the media attack a veteran’s wounds. If he were a Democrat, this would be a have-you-no-decency moment. . . . except that if he were a Democrat, the media wouldn’t do it.

EXERCISE, TEA, VITAMIN D tied to lower dementia risk.

MIKE FLYNN: “Recently, Rep. Ciro Rodriquez (D-TX) met with some local constituents about our nation’s current state of affairs. It did not go well.” Video at the link. Plus this: “I want to make two points; Rep. Rodriguez is an elected official with a duty to represent his constituents in Congress, no matter their political persuasion, and, he volunteered and asked for this job. He wasn’t ordered into this position by some judge, as some kind of sentence. He wants this job. It is a bit stunning that, at the first sign of criticism, he loses his temper so quickly. A confident politician would have been able to field this question.”

He’s not confident; he’s scared. He knows he blew it by voting for the bill, he doesn’t understand the bill he voted for, and when the approved talking points don’t work on constituents like they work on the captive press, he doesn’t know what to say. And as we lawyers know, when you’ve got nothing else, you pound on the table, as Rodriguez proceeds to do.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I watched the video 2x and I can tell you that as a woman who used to be married to a physical abuser, I can detect a woman-abuser a mile away. I flinched for the woman that he approached with that paper in his hand – I thought he was going to smack her with the paper. And when he smacked the table, I had no doubt that he truly wanted to hit her.” Well, I don’t possess such intuitive powers, but he certainly looks like a jerk.

And, yes, this is yet another argument for ubiquitous citizen videocameras, something I’ve noted many times.

WHAT HATH ACORN WROUGHT: Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds.

JOUSTING: The next extreme sport!

He and Adams insist that jousting could be as big as Nascar or Ultimate Fighting, an ultra-macho sport with the extra appeal of horses and shining armor.

Makes sense to me.

WATCHED ABSENCE OF MALICE LAST NIGHT. A great movie about the press, the Justice Department, and their victims. The opening scene is unintentional technological hilarity, but the movie itself is timeless. It’s particularly pleasing the way the Paul Newman character uses his adversaries’ selfishness and speed at jumping to conclusions against them, and Sally Field’s key line — it’s not true, but it’s accurate — merely anticipates the “fake but accurate” defense offered in so many fake-news cases today.

DAN MITCHELL: Obama is not a “socialist.”

SHOCKER: 75 Percent of Americans Blame State Budget Problems on Politicians’ Unwillingness to Cut Spending. Meanwhile, “only 13 percent of the adults surveyed blamed the unwillingness of Americans to pay more in taxes as the cause of state budget woes. Another 12 percent were undecided about the issue.”

ANOTHER VICTORY for the Institute for Justice.

FROM DR. WES: Some thoughts on the Berwick appointment.

FROM MY COLLEAGUE BOB LLOYD: The Reasonable Certainty Requirement in Lost Profits Litigation: What it Really Means.

IN THE MAIL: From Catherine Asaro, Diamond Star.