MORE MEMORIES of Wisconsin’s leftist terror-bombing.

AT THE CONGLOMERATE, it’s the Junior Scholars’ Workshop. Lots of praise for Jim Hawkins’ Regulating On The Fringe: Reexamining the Link Between Fringe Banking and Financial Distress.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Dropout Factories:

While public universities are in theory overseen by a combination of state officials and voluntary accrediting bodies, none of them use their power in a manner that’s genuinely ameliorative. Low graduation rates will never cause a loss of accreditation. The fifty dropout factories listed on page 22—some of which have graduation rates in the single digits—are all accredited and advertise that fact prominently on their Web sites. Even when accreditors do pay attention to problems at a school, they tend to be slow and secretive in revealing their findings. Chicago State’s accreditor expressed “serious concern” about the school as far back as 2003, but this was never publicized. Not even the Illinois Board of Higher Education, which monitors Chicago State, knew about it. Only in 2009, when the Chicago Tribune published damning excerpts from a leaked confidential letter from the accreditor to the university, did more than a few parties know that Chicago State might be in trouble.

As for helping your students earn degrees, why bother? State appropriations systems and federal financial aid are based on enrollment: as long as students keep coming, the money keeps flowing.

Read the whole thing.

CONVERGENCE: “Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Pebble Bed Advanced High Temperature Reactor Can Enable Lower Costs and Enable Deep Burn and Advanced Fuel Cycle Reactors.

ANNOUNCING THE World Fantasy Award Finalists.

REASON TV: Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful.

CHANGE: Intel CEO: U.S. faces looming tech decline. “Intel chief executive Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.”

SHOWCASING D.I.Y. INNOVATION. Er, or something. ThereIFixedIt.com.

HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT: Microbes survive a year and a half in space.

MINING MOOD SWINGS on the social Web.

OBVIOUSLY UNDEREMPLOYED: Md., Va. attorneys general demand Craigslist drop adult services section.

E.P.A. CONSIDERING AN environmental ban on traditional ammunition.

More here.

U.S. NEWS: Tea Party Group Hit With Death Threats.

SEXUAL COMPETITION BOOSTED in ovulating women.

FASTER, PLEASE. ER, THANK YOU! Student-Built Electric Car Surpasses 300 MPH.

VIDEO: Carnahan Cuts And Runs.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Is the author of this piece — Leslie Savan —paying enough attention the the way she is expressing contempt for Muslim beliefs? I didn’t know you could do that in The Nation.”

COMING FROM INFINITI: More hybrid models.

UNEXPECTEDLY!: New home sales fall 12% in July, down 32% from last year. And it’s not like last year was so great.

I MENTIONED ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT SYSTEM GPAL A WHILE BACK, and reader Dustin Saldivar writes to report that he’s having serious problems with them and so are some other folks. Just so you know. If I find out more, I’ll post a followup.

UPDATE: More from Robb Allen.

IN THE MAIL: From Cynthia J. Koelker, MD, 101 Ways to Save Money on Health Care: Tips to Help You Spend Smart and Stay Healthy.

JOHN STOSSEL: Where Are The New Jobs? “The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama’s vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden. . . . Nothing more effectively freezes business in place than what economist and historian Robert Higgs calls ‘regime uncertainty.'”

ON THE HORIZON: The Perfect Iranian Storm.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Todd Zywicki on “Administrative Bloat At Universities.” Zywicki observes: “One intriguing element of this issue is that perceptions have yet to notice it. Many observers believe that the problem with higher education is that universities are basically run by its employees–the faculty–and that the faculty’s interests are not aligned with those of the students who they serve. But what Greene’s report hints at is a larger trend at work–more and more universities are run by their bureaucrats, not the faculty, and the incentives of bureaucrats are even more poorly aligned with student interests than the faculty.”