READER ANDREW SCHAFFER WONDERS WHY FOX NEWS IS IGNORING HERMAN CAIN: “This morning, Fox News put up a list, with pictures, of potential GOP contenders for President, including people like Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachmann who have not yet announced. There was no picture or mention of Herman Cain, who, by most accounts, won the GOP debatein South Carolina that was ironically broadcast by Fox News. Herman Cain is announcing he is entering the race this next week, May 21st. How could they leave him off of their list? He would be a great candidate and would totally refute the liberal and MSM label of racist charges against conservatives.” I don’t watch Fox enough to judge — I just watch Redeye on DVR and whatever I see at the gym, mostly — but have they really been ignoring him in general?

Time is ignoring Cain too. Why?

MEANWHILE, IN KASHMIR: Just a reminder of what else could go wrong.

CHANGE: Shadow Stat Misery Index Highest on Record. “John Williams, over at Shadow Stats, compiles economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990. Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate. If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president.” Well, it’s a good thing we changed the way we calculate it, then! Whew, that was close!

UPDATE: Is Shadow Stats wrong?

ALSO, BUG OR FEATURE? Sex Addiction: Real or Imaginary Ailment?

AT AMAZON, it’s the videogame outlet sale.

A WHILE BACK I WROTE ABOUT EATING INVASIVE SPECIES, and while I was on Cayman last week I went along on a number of lionfish hunts at depths of between 30-100 feet with Nat Robb and Art Hintze of InDepth Watersports, and had some delicious lionfish sushi prepared carpaccio-style with lime juice, olive oil, and capers right on the boat. It was delicious.

UPDATE: Yes, that’s a Rearden Steel t-shirt I’m wearing.

STILL NO FLYING CARS, BUT A TRICORDER IS LOOKING MORE LIKELY: “The competition is modeled on earlier incentive programs such as the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private-sector spaceflight, or the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize for super-efficient road vehicles. The basic idea is to encourage the development of mobile devices that can diagnose patients at least as well as a panel of board-certified physicians.”

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT REST: Washington Post: Million Dollar Wasteland: A trail of stalled or abandoned HUD projects. “The federal government’s largest housing construction program for the poor has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned projects and routinely failed to crack down on derelict developers or the local housing agencies that funded them.” It’s like it’s just a bunch of corruption masquerading as an effort to help the poor.

BRITAIN’S MYSTERIOUS PARAKEET BOOM: “Individually, any of the rose-ringed parakeets could be the star of a DreamWorks film, electric green with bright pink beaks and the voluble personalities that have long made the tropical species a popular household pet. But for people who frequent the park or live nearby, the visceral experience is more like ‘The Birds’ — albeit with more color and a much noisier soundtrack than the Hitchcock film. Native to the Indian subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa, the rose-ringed parakeet is enjoying a population explosion in many London suburbs, turning a once-exotic bird into a notorious pest that awakens children, monopolizes garden bird feeders and might even threaten British crops.”

Maybe it was another secret Labour plan to lure migrants.

PEOPLE MARRY for political compatibility? “What would be interesting to know: For people who are not politically or religiously compatible what maintains the relationship? Are they different in that other traits draw them more strongly? Do political views as keys to compatibility only work for some people and not others?”

CRYSTAL MANGUM’S HISTORY SAYS OTHERWISE: Women Don’t Lie.

THERE’S NO GOOGLE ENTRY FOR “CAPTAIN SEXY BANJO.” Well, maybe this will fix that problem.

UPDATE: Ah, I’m not the only one who jumped on this, apparently.

THIS KIND OF THING KEEPS HAPPENING: U.S. imams arrested for alleged Pakistani Taliban links. “Two South Florida imams and a third family member were arrested Saturday on charges of providing support to the Pakistani Taliban, the Justice Department said.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Democrats: Where Is Your Budget?

HUCKABEE WON’T RUN FOR PRESIDENT. Good.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Truth And Pension Ads: “Free speech entitles public employee unions to argue that reforming Illinois’ gravely underfunded pension system is unconstitutional, wrong, unfair — the unions can deploy any or all of a thousand negative adjectives. We do, though, wish their $1 million TV campaign didn’t mislead citizens — public employees included — about proposals legislators may consider in the last days of this session.”

Related: Illinois Democrats Unveil Budget Only Minutes Before Votes.

REMEMBERING Bonny Kate. “It is said that she was not someone that you wanted to mess with. She could shoot a gun as well as a man and could ride a horse as well as a man. For her to take care of all of those children out in the wilderness is just remarkable.”

AND HE WASN’T JUST ASKING FOR A CHAKRA-RELEASE: Socialist Head of IMF Accused of Sexual Attack in NYC. “The Port Authority officers were acting on information from the New York Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating a brutal attack of a woman employee at the hotel Sofitel New York, at 45 West 44th Street, in the heart of the city’s theater district. Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been considered a leading contender to run on the Socialist Party’s ticket against President Nicolas Sarkozy.”

BIGGEST TECHNOLOGY OF THE NEXT 30 YEARS? Medical nanorobots. Faster, please.

POPULAR MECHANICS: How It Works: The Spillways Trying To Control The Rising Mississippi.

NOBODY TELL ALTHOUSE: Markdowns on men’s Dockers shorts.

THE CONVERSION OF David Mamet. “Mamet was delivering a frontal assault on American higher education, the provider of the livelihood of nearly everyone in his audience. Higher ed, he said, was an elaborate scheme to deprive young people of their freedom of thought. . . . It was as nervy a speech as I’ve ever seen, and not quite rude—Mamet was too genial to be rude—but almost. The students in Memorial Hall seemed mostly unperturbed. The ripples of dissatisfaction issued from the older members of the crowd.”

READER DAVID DUFTY WRITES: “Once again, your guest bloggers did a sterling job of blogging in the ‘instapundit’ style. Not only did they do short, snappy posts just as you do, but they even emulated your spread of subject matter, updating us on insta-favorites such as robots, fusion research, the higher education bubble, and even wonkish constitutional issues. They became you. Perhaps ‘instapundit’ will outlast you, in spirit as well as name.”

Hmm. Not anytime soon, I hope! But as I mentioned before, InstaPundit was originally meant to be a group blog. Every once in a while I consider giving that a try again.

IN CANADA, a promising brain-cancer treatment. “Medical Researchers at the University of Alberta reported today evidence that the orphan generic drug Dichloroacetate (DCA) may hold promise as potential therapy for perhaps the deadliest of all human cancers: a form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.” Faster, please.

SOMEBODY GIVE MICKEY KAUS a job with the CIA.