AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Men’s Shoes. Don’t tell The Manolo what’s #1. . . .

THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” I’VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT: Dancing With A Dictator In Sudan. “In Darfur, the Khartoum regime has cleared millions from their lands, allowing ethnic groups allied with the government to move into the deserted areas. In the oilfield areas of southern Sudan in the 1990s, the regime strategically killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of indigenous residents to facilitate Chinese oil exploitation. In the Nuba mountains during the late 1980s and 1990s, the vast majority of locals were forcibly displaced by Sudanese government attacks, and hundreds of thousands died. The international community threatened real consequences during and after these incidents and after other targeted crimes against civilian populations. But the consequences never came.”

WELL, WE’VE ALREADY HAD THE SUMMER OF LOVE: Headline: Brace Yourself For The Summer Of “Sluts.”

WELL, GOOD: Shale Boom in Texas Could Increase U.S. Oil Output. Key bit: “What makes the new fields more remarkable is that they were thought to be virtually valueless only five years ago.”

UPDATE: Reader Roger Baumgarten writes: “It’s only a matter of time before the Obama administration targets them for destruction.”

And reader Bobby Clarke writes: “Another point from that story about Texas oil: Lots of jobs, and lots of money. All sorts of jobs – very well paying blue collar, white collar, supply, support (restaurants and real estate and construction). And the money can stick around for a long long time – Texas got a couple of huge cities, lots of hospitals (world class ones in Houston), University systems, roads – all sorts of good stuff. For the life of me, I do not understand why states that are struggling are not begging geologists to come look for oil.” Good point. Or even paying them to.

FASTER, PLEASE: Japanese Plan: All of Earth’s energy ‘to be supplied by lunar ring of solar panels.’ “The ambitious project would result in 13,000 terawatts of continuous solar energy being transmitted back to receiving stations on Earth, either by laser or microwave.”

Related: Water in the Moon.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste writes:

A steerable 13-terawatt beam, whether laser or microwave, is a weapon of conquest. And it would have to be steerable in order to track receiving stations on Earth as the Earth rotated. What happens if someone focuses the beam on NYC instead of a receiving station? It wouldn’t take many minutes to kill everyone.

Well, on the old O’Neill/JPL solar power satellite studies, the beam density was very low — low enough that birds could fly over the receiver without being harmed. But that plan involved satellites in geosynchronous orbit. I don’t know if it applies to lunar power-beaming. And I’m not actually sure that lunar power stations beaming power to earth work out better than orbital power stations built of lunar materials shot out by mass driver.

HOW PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES LOOKED IN HIGH SCHOOL. Nobody looks Presidential in high school. But here’s a high school picture of me, for comparison. Jimmy Williams (on the right) and I were the yearbook photographers; here’s our picture as artistically “improved” by a classmate. Nerdvana!

CHANGE: American Muslim Clerics Stand Up For Evolution. Good for them. On the other hand, the equivalence here is a bit strained: “Recently, for example, an imam in London was hounded out of his mosque and has suffered death threats for openly declaring support for Darwinism. Likewise, in Christian communities, especially in the US, fringe fundamentalists continue to push for teaching of creationism in science classes.” Can you spot the difference?

BLAMING YOUR LOVE LIFE on Sarah Palin.

WHO WERE THE BIGGEST LOSERS IN THE AUTO BAILOUT? “Among the creditors who suffered most, car-accident victims represent a distinct mold. Unlike banks and bondholders, this group didn’t choose to extend credit to the auto makers. As consumers, they became creditors only after suffering injuries in vehicles they purchased.”

Plus this: “Given the celebratory, even triumphalist, rhetoric that’s being applied to the auto bailout after the fact, it’s important to remember that many suffered in order to give GM and Chrysler a second chance. Even those who are proud of the bailout’s accomplishment should acknowledge that the jobs saved carried a price that goes beyond any final accounting of anonymous billions lost from the federal budget.” Fat chance of that.

Related: “Why screw these plaintiffs, and keep the union pension funds whole? Were they really so much less deserving?”

THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION IN POLITICS: “Where Are The Jobs?”

IN THE MAIL: The Practical Pyromaniac: Build Fire Tornadoes, One-Candlepower Engines, Great Balls of Fire, and More Incendiary Devices.

From the Backyard Ballistics guy.

FUNNY TO SEE THIS IN THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS: “Being president of the world has sometimes seemed a job more agreeable to Barack Obama than being president of the United States.” Plus this: “Obama has always preferred the symbolic authority of the grand utterance to the actual authority of a directed policy—a policy fought for in particulars, carefully sustained, and traceable to his own intentions.”

AMERICA’S CHILDREN: Free to choose? “They should have the freedom to become African American, Hispanic, or even Native American. Whose to say they should be oppressed by biology? Did not Michael Jackson become the first trans-ethnic person? Why can’t others aspire to achieve such a state of being? Or in feminist speak, why should my children be oppressed by the tyranny of racial assignment?” Race certainly has less of a biological foundation than sex. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says, “Race is such bullshit.”

TODAY ONLY: A sale on HP Pavilion PCs.

KENNETH ANDERSON on the law of “targeted killing.” “The United States does not believe it is acting extralegally, let alone illegally, in its counterterrorism programs, and it should be willing to say why. The U.S. government believes, as former State Department lawyer Ashley Deeks observed in a recent, influential paper, that states that are unable or unwilling to deal with terrorists in their midst lose claims of sovereignty, thus allowing other states to reach inside to deal with them. The U.S. government believes, moreover, in Koh’s formulation, that even covert operations undertaken outside of an armed conflict must still adhere to international law principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality in their conduct; there are limiting principles of international law that the U.S. recognizes and abides by. The problem is, such public, official articulations are rare.” The “lawfare” crowd, on the other hand, speaks frequently and loudly.

MICHAEL BARONE: Illinois’s Democratic redistricting–and how Republicans may respond. “The bottom line is that Republicans will have to hustle to offset the effect of the Democratic redistricting plan in Illinois, but that they will probably make a net gain nationally in redistricting, but not a large one—less than 10 seats. If that seems like a small gain to make after the big Republican sweep, especially big in state legislative seats, in 2010, it’s largely because Republicans already made big gains in the redistricting cycle following the 2000 Census.”

THE VISION THING: Reindeer see a weird and wonderful world of ultraviolet light. “When we used cameras that could pick up UV, we noticed that there are some very important things that absorb UV light and therefore appear black, contrasting strongly with the snow. This includes urine – a sign of predators or competitors; lichens – a major food source in winter; and fur, making predators such as wolves very easy to see despite being camouflaged to other animals that can’t see UV.”

EDIBLE PLANTS: The Forager’s Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants.

IN THE WASHINGTON POST, JOHN TAYLOR REVIEWS Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. Excerpt:

While many economists — including this reviewer — have argued that government actions caused the crisis, Morgenson and Rosner use their investigative skills to dig down and explain why those actions were taken. To avoid reckless policies in the future, we need to understand their causes, and the authors’ identification of government-industry links deserves careful consideration by anyone interested in improving the economy. . . .

The book then gives examples where Fannie’s executives — Jim Johnson, CEO from 1991 to 1998, is singled out more than anyone else — used the excess profits to support government officials in a variety of ways with plenty left over for large bonuses: They got jobs for friends and relatives of elected officials, including Rep. Barney Frank, who is tagged as “a perpetual protector of Fannie,” and they set up partnership offices around the country which provided more jobs. They financed publications in which writers argued that Fannie’s role in promoting homeownership justified federal support. They commissioned work by famous economists, such as Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, which argued that Fannie was not a serious risk to the taxpayer, countering “critics who argued that both Fannie and Freddie posed significant risks to the taxpayer.” They made campaign contributions and charitable donations to co-opt groups like the community action organization ACORN, which “had been agitating for tighter regulations on Fannie Mae.” They persuaded executive branch officials — such as then Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers — to ask their staffs to rewrite reports critical of Fannie. In the meantime, Countrywide, the mortgage firm led by Angelo Mozilo, partnered with Fannie in originating many of the mortgages Fannie packaged (26 percent in 2004) and gave “sweetheart” loans to politicians with power to affect Fannie, such as Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. The authors write that “Countrywide and Fannie Mae were inextricably bound.”

It’s interesting to me that there has been so little law enforcement — or journalistic — interest in the rampant corruption relating to these institutions’ collapse.

THEY’RE CALLING IT “WEINERGATE:” Congressman Claims “Facebook Hacked” As Lewd Photo Hits Twitter.

JAMES Q. WILSON: Why Crime Keeps Falling, Even In Hard Times. “At the deepest level, many of these shifts, taken together, suggest that crime in the United States is falling—even through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression—because of a big improvement in the culture. The cultural argument may strike some as vague, but writers have relied on it in the past to explain both the Great Depression’s fall in crime and the explosion of crime during the sixties. In the first period, on this view, people took self-control seriously; in the second, self-expression—at society’s cost—became more prevalent. It is a plausible case.” Read the whole thing.

JAMES TARANTO: The R-Word: James Clyburn and the new racial taboo. “Just as racism and the expression of racially prejudiced sentiments have become taboo, the word ‘racism’ and the imputation to others of racially prejudiced sentiments are becoming taboo. As ‘The Daily Show’ reported in August: ‘The race card’s maxed out.’ Electing a black president really has made a difference.”

HISTORY: A Teachable Moment.

14 STATES with the most job growth.

JIM TREACHER: White t-shirts are racist because, um, shut up.

So does that mean that the Blackshirts were actually progressive?