SAN FRANCISCO HATEWATCH UPDATE: Lesbian Couple Asked To Leave SF Museum For Holding Hands.

AT AMAZON, top deals in Electronics. Including lots of markdowns on external hard drives.

EATING INVASIVE SPECIES (CONT’D): Maryland Chefs Want To Put Snakeheads On The Menu.

Chef Chad Wells of Alewife restaurant tossed chunks of raw snakehead fish with cilantro and citrus to make something more ambitious than an $8 ceviche appetizer. It was an invasive-species eradication plan in a martini glass.

Wells wants the Asian interloper, which has settled with alarming ease into Chesapeake-area rivers, streams and perhaps the bay itself, to find a new home on restaurant menus. The chef is confident that once diners get a taste of snakehead, they can be counted on to do what they’ve always done with toothsome fish: wipe them out.

“We’ve proved time and again, the best way to destroy something is get humans involved,” Wells said.

Right now, the people most bent on reeling in snakeheads are chefs, who think serving invasive species could represent an important new twist on the sustainable seafood movement. Some of the biggest names in regional restaurants — “Top Chef” rivals Bryan Voltaggio and Mike Isabella, Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen, Scott Drewno of Washington’s The Source by Wolfgang Puck — are trying to get their hands on the fish so they can slice, dice and pan sear the thing into oblivion.

“We’ve been doing the complete opposite and focusing on conserving species,” said Voltaggio, owner of Volt restaurant in Frederick. “Here’s a fish you can feel good about depleting.”

This approach is the topic of my next Popular Mechanics column.

DAN MITCHELL not so thrilled with the Gang Of Six plan: “The much-heralded spending caps do not apply to entitlement programs. This is like going to the doctor because you have cancer and getting treated for a sprained wrist. . . . The entire package is based on dishonest Washington budget math. Spending increases under the plan, but the politicians claim to be cutting spending because the budget didn’t grow even faster. . . . Over the next few days, we’ll find out what’s really in this package, but my advice is to keep a tight hold on your wallet.”

How about my plan for a 5% across-the-board reduction? Hell, a hard freeze on spending would be an improvement.

AN ARMED SOCIETY IS A gay-friendly society?

HOUSE PASSES “Cut, Cap, And Balance.”

CONTROLLING THE NARRATIVE: BBC Moves To Silence Climate-Change Skeptics. One reason why they’re piling on Rupert Murdoch is that he’s threatened their monopoly.

DUMB IDEA OF THE DAY: Dollar Per Bullet Tax Proposed By Baltimore Mayoral Candidate.

JEFFREY TUCKER TAKES LESSONS ON POVERTY AND CAPITAL, from Anthony Bourdain.

Now to the question of why the absence of capital.

The answer has to do with the regime. It is a well-known fact that any accumulation of wealth in Haiti makes you a target, if not of the population in general (which has grown suspicious of wealth, and probably for good reason), then certainly of the government. The regime, no matter who is in charge, is like a voracious dog on the loose, seeking to devour any private wealth that happens to emerge.

This creates something even worse than the Higgsian problem of “regime uncertainty.” The regime is certain: it is certain to steal anything it can, whenever it can, always and forever. So why don’t people vote out the bad guys and vote in the good guys? Well, those of us in the United States who have a bit of experience with democracy know the answer: there are no good guys. The system itself is owned by the state and rooted in evil. Change is always illusory, a fiction designed for public consumption.

“The state strikes only when there is something to loot.”

This is an interesting case of a peculiar way in which government is keeping prosperity at bay. It is not wrecking the country through an intense enforcement of taxation and regulation or nationalization. One gets the sense that most people never have any face time with a government official and never deal with paperwork or bureaucracy really. The state strikes only when there is something to loot. And loot it does: predictably and consistently. And that alone is enough to guarantee a permanent state of poverty.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Edited to make clear that it’s not Bourdain writing the piece, as a few readers were confused.

ZAP! ‘Quick Charge’ Trucks Will Save Your Stranded EV.

A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF THE TEA PARTY: “It’s becoming evident tea partiers are demonstrating political savvy: rallies fundamentally change nothing, so they’ve begun asking what does cause change, and then going out and doing those things that bring it about.’

LEFTISM DEFINED? “He prefers the inequality that comes from a government hierarchy, over inequality that comes from voluntary trade.” I always figure that people who feel this way do so because they think they’re better at sucking up to authority figures than at creating value on their own. And my guess is, they’re right about that.

FROM ISSA AND GRASSLEY, more ATF gunrunning bombshells.

The most impressive revelations are of data that Acting Director Melson gave them. ATF was ready to cooperate until it was gagged by the Deputy Attorney General. They informed the Deputy AG that they had documents that contradicted the “official story” Justice was giving out. A memo describing an important meeting — held to convince a cooperating gun dealer who was getting worried about allowing all these suspicious gun buys — was actually written over a year later, after the controversy broke. Melson says there is a memo that is a “smoking gun,” which Justice is still refusing to reveal to the Committee.

This is the hottest political story since Watergate … and of course (with a few exceptions) the MSM is ignoring it.

Well, Watergate involved a Republican, you know.

WHAT MAKES THE JAGUAR E-TYPE so pretty?

MARKDOWNS AT the Amazon Television Outlet.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanosensors On Cells Show How They Communicate In Real Time.

ANTIOXIDANT INHIBITOR KILLS CANCER CELLS. “Cancer cells generate a lot more toxic reactive oxygen species (ROS) because cancer cells grow at a fast rate. Cancer cells have faster rates of metabolism. So a drug that inhibits the cell’s defenses against ROS will selectively cause much higher ROS concentration in cancer cells than in normal cells.”

THE IMPACT OF STIFFER BAR PASSAGE REQUIREMENTS on law school diversity. Bar passage, it turns out, correlates pretty closely with LSAT scores — not surprisingly, as they’re both big tests with a lot of multiple-choice questions — and affirmative action students, by definition, tend to have lower LSAT scores. My prediction is that the ultimate result will be intense pressure from law schools for the dumbing-down of bar exams.

Related item here.

JOHN TIERNEY: Can A Playground Be Too Safe?

When seesaws and tall slides and other perils were disappearing from New York’s playgrounds, Henry Stern drew a line in the sandbox. As the city’s parks commissioner in the 1990s, he issued an edict concerning the 10-foot-high jungle gym near his childhood home in northern Manhattan.

“I grew up on the monkey bars in Fort Tryon Park, and I never forgot how good it felt to get to the top of them,” Mr. Stern said. “I didn’t want to see that playground bowdlerized. I said that as long as I was parks commissioner, those monkey bars were going to stay.”

His philosophy seemed reactionary at the time, but today it’s shared by some researchers who question the value of safety-first playgrounds. Even if children do suffer fewer physical injuries — and the evidence for that is debatable — the critics say that these playgrounds may stunt emotional development, leaving children with anxieties and fears that are ultimately worse than a broken bone. . . . By gradually exposing themselves to more and more dangers on the playground, children are using the same habituation techniques developed by therapists to help adults conquer phobias, according to Dr. Sandseter and a fellow psychologist, Leif Kennair, of the Norwegian University for Science and Technology.

When the playground movement started, around a century ago, the slogan was: “Better a broken arm than a broken spirit.”

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: How Not To Be Unemployed.

CHANGE: Report: Automakers airing ads attacking proposed 56 mpg fuel standard. I can’t imagine why.

COMING: A Boba Fett spinoff movie?

CHANGE: IRS Denies § 501(c)(4) Status to Three Political Organizations.

THE REAL HONOR IS JUST BEING NOMINATED, but I won Best Gun Blog In Law. I don’t think I really deserved it, but what the hell. Lots of stuff I think I do deserve, I lose, so I guess it evens out. . . .

And the trophy (from TechnoFrames) looks good in my office, where it’s proudly displayed.

LEFTIES PROTEST for higher food prices. Help the working man!