“IT’S COMPLICATED AND MY TITLE IS EVOLVING.”

SYRIA UPDATE: “The Syrian people should follow Egypt’s lead and the country’s army should ’empower a revolution’, Robert Gates, US secretary of defence, said as thousands marched in a southern city. Mr Gates made his comments – some of the toughest remarks to date by a US official about the rule of Bashar al-Assad, president – on a day of further upheaval in the Middle East and beyond.”

JERRY POURNELLE: “The American school system is a bad parody of an optimum allocation of resources, and nearly everyone knows it, but we always talk as if it were not so.”

SO I OFTEN HEAR PROSECUTORS SAY THAT THEY’RE NOT JUST OUT FOR CONVICTIONS, but rather that their client is justice. I’m guessing, though, that this doesn’t apply so much to the ones who offer bonuses for hitting conviction-rate targets.

JAIL INMATES are good breeders.

Shades of Idiocracy.

MORE ON eating on a budget, and the importance of menu planning.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Is Sesame Street Paved With Hate?

AMERICA’S WORST homeland security menace?

REALLY? Iowa terror drill portrays immigration foes as killers.

Because that’s where terror comes from in America: “Immigration foes.”

“AFTER WE GOT THE GRANTS, it didn’t happen anymore.”

HEH: Beijing-based foreign correspondent: “I thought that story was bulls*** too.”

HEY, RUBE! Also, here.

ARE YOU SURE? And no, “Dan Rather always sounded like this” isn’t an acceptable answer.

THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE of ICBMs.

MARKDOWNS ON EASTER TOYS AND GAMES.

DEPT. OF INGRATITUDE: Politico: No point giving money to Democrats — they don’t stay bought.

SILICON GRAFFITI: Forward, Into The Past!

Reminds me of this Neal Stephenson quote: “The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.”

UPDATE: Though it doesn’t change the meaning, this quotation is incorrect: Follow the link for the correct version.

RIGHTHAVEN UPDATE: Copyright Troll Opens Doors To Mass Reposting. “Righthaven set out to punish bloggers who reposted articles, but a federal judge just ruled nonprofits have exactly that right. . . . Clearly this was not the intention of Righthaven, but it raises the question: in its over-reaching, has the law firm set a precedent that could damage the ability of content creators and news gatherers to control how their works are used, and to achieve fair compensation for their distribution?” Hey, maybe somebody should sue them!

AT NEWSWEEK, a tsunami of dull.

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: How to Reinvent Your Personal Brand When Your Personal Brand Is Sex.

FASTER, PLEASE: Polymer-dipped carbon nanotube catalysts better than platinum and 650 times cheaper. Glad I don’t have investments in platinum. . . .

LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS GET WORSE: “German shipping companies are avoiding Tokyo port due to radiation fears and Japan potentially faces severe supply chain bottlenecks as vessels get diverted, ship industry officials said on Thursday.” Unless they know something I don’t, these fears seem exaggerated.

Related: Toyota Tells U.S. Plants To Prepare For A Shutdown. “Toyota’s U.S. manufacturing arm is preparing for a possible shutdown because of parts shortages from Japan, a Toyota spokesman said.”

THIS SEEMS FAIR: Woman Who Made Up Rape Claim Sent To Prison.

BLOODWORK: An autonomous lab-on-a-chip.

HEH.