PARALYZED by love.

WHAT? YOU MEAN IT’S JUST MORE MEDIA HYPE? ‘Cougar’ Trend of Women Chasing Younger Men a Myth. “Women generally seek an older and, therefore hopefully, wealthier man, according to the UWIC study.”

REASON TV: How Obama Revived the Freedom Movement – John J. Pitney, Jr. on the libertarian electorate.

YEAH, WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL? “I always assume raw eggs are tainted with salmonella and handle them accordingly. Cook them. Wash your hands!”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What, Me Study? Why so many colleges are education-free zones. Melanie Kirkpatrick reviews Craig Brandon’s The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It.

A CAMERA BLEG FROM J.D. JOHANNES:

I have an info request for my fellow punditeers, or you may know what I’m after. I’m looking for a DSLR that works like an old fashioned manual SLR. What I really want is a Canon F-1 with a CCD, LCD and memory card slapped on the back. I searched around for camera backs, but they are all for high end cameras. I’ve been told Leica makes something like what I want, but I don’t have a Leica budget.

Any suggestions?

HUMAN BIODIVERSITY: HAROLD LLOYD AND FRIENDS.

KETAMINE TREATS depression and bipolar disorder.

HOW NOT TO DRIVE: This 20-Year-Old Woman Drunkenly Rammed A Cop Car Head-On.

IN THE MAIL: From Esther Gokhale, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back: Natural Posture Solutions for Pain in the Back, Neck, Shoulder, Hip, Knee, and Foot.

VIDEO: Unemployment Spreads.

UPDATE: Mike Couvillion writes: “Notice how the spread of unemployment resembles that of a Zombie Apocalypse outbreak?” I did, actually . . .

TIM CAVANAUGH: Summer of Recovery Dog Days. “I haven’t been checking in with Bill McBride’s Calculated Risk much lately, so it was instructive just now to spend an hour on the blog and realize how uniformly dismal the economic news is.”

Plus this: “Things have gotten so slow that Wall Street traders are giving up coke for pot. Note that, according to the White House itself, we have already enjoyed most of the benefits of the $787 billion ARRA Stimulus. These benefits seem to have consisted of making signs to tell people about the stimulus.”

AN ARTICLE ON TEA PARTY CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS MIKE STOPA IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Hey, he’s a nanotechnologist and a Tea Party candidate. What’s not to like?

THOUGHTS ON Prison Rape, Dehumanization, and Punishment.

SCOTT RASMUSSEN, America’s Insurgent Pollster. John Fund writes: “You can tell it’s a volatile political year when a balding, middle-aged pollster gets a standing ovation from hundreds of state legislators after delivering the news that only 23% of the people in this country believe today’s federal government has the consent of the governed.”

And note this:

“This will be the third straight election in which people vote against the party in power,” he says. “The GOP will benefit from that this year, but 75% of Republicans say their representatives in Congress are out of touch with the party base. Should they win big this November, they will have to move quickly to prove they’ve learned lessons from the Bush years.”

Indeed they will.

REMEMBERING the Cadillac Catera. “How unreliable was it? Let’s put it this way: Cadillac-Catera.com, a website run by and for Catera owners and fans, describes the car on the masthead of its home page as ‘The finest car of the 1990’s! . . . On the occasions when the Catera actually works.'”

THEY’RE NOT ANTIWAR, THEY’RE JUST . . . . Code Pink Tells Gold Star Mom: Your Son Deserved to Die.

A WINDSOR BY ANY OTHER NAME would be as dumb. “Yes, Prince Charles, most famous scion of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, has put his bespoke shoe in it again.”

TODAY’S Macho Hero.

YES, BUT IT SEEMS LESS CHRISTIAN — EVEN TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T THINK OF THEMSELVES AS CHRISTIAN. Business Success Helps Society More Than Philanthropy.

Successful entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists typically say they feel a responsibility to “give back” to society. But “giving back” implies they have taken something. What, exactly, have they taken? Yes, they have amassed great sums of wealth. But that wealth is the reward they have earned for investing their time and talent in creating products and services that others value. They haven’t taken from society, but rather enriched us in ways that were previously unimaginable. …

While businesses may do more for the public good than they’re given credit for, philanthropies may do less. Think about it for a moment: Can you point to a single charitable accomplishment that has been as transformative as, say, the cell phone or the birth-control pill? To the contrary, the literature on philanthropy is riddled with examples of failure, including examples where philanthropic efforts have actually left intended beneficiaries worse off.

I should note that there’s plenty of corruption in the nonprofit world, too, but with far less scrutiny than for-profit businesses receive.

UPDATE: Reader Scot Echols writes:

I really appreciated your post on the WSJ article on capitalism this morning, but it left out what I think is really the central benefit of capitalism. The enemies of capitalism seem to be focused on the evil of “taking” from others through profits. They are completely missing the point. Capitalism is about creating value. Value is created when someone does something for someone else better, faster, or cheaper than they can do it themselves.

I was at the doctor’s office yesterday for a sore throat, and he was on a tirade about how we need communism or a benevolent dictator to solve all of societies problems. So I went there. I explained to him that I could get over my sore throat myself with a couple of weeks of gargling hot salt water and eating garlic and cayenne pepper, OR I could come pay him $80 for an office visit and $5 for some generic antibiotics, and feel a lot better in a couple of days. THAT is capitalism. He did in 20 minutes and for $85 what it would have taken me two weeks and probably a couple of missed days of my own productivity to do. He CREATED value out of nothing by using his knowledge, skills, and ability to provide value to me. That in turn created wealth for him, and is the reason he deserves to drive a nicer car and live in a nicer home than his receptionist.

He had no response to that.

I’d still find another doctor.

A MISSED MOMENT. You know, if Obama had governed as a centrist postracial free-market pragmatist — which is how he positioned himself in the campaign — he’d be looking like one of the most successful presidents in recent history now.

BACK TO THE FUTURE? “In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. This new world is not — and will not be — one global village, so much as a network of different ones.”

DNC PULLS ANTI-BUSH AD. I kinda thought that the whole “won’t be fooled again” theme was probably a mistake.

THE HILL: ShoreBank, praised by Democrats, closed Friday by regulators.

MARKDOWNS ON BLU-RAY with some movies under ten bucks.