PENN STATE: REFLECTIONS ON A RIOT. My take: Really? With all the stuff going on in the world right now, you decided to riot over football?

NASA’S NEXT MARS ROVER to launch in two weeks. “The rover, nicknamed Curiosity, weighs in at nearly 1 ton and is a little bigger than a Mini Cooper. The probe is expected to survey the Martian landscape with HD cameras, examine the chemical surface composition within 20 feet of the rover, monitor the planet’s weather, and search for signs of habitability and life, past or present. Curiosity also has a six-foot arm that can reach down to place sensors on Martian rocks to investigate their chemical makeup. It will be able to drill inside rocks and deliver samples back to a suite of laboratory instruments carried inside the rover, something never done before in Mars.”

IS THERE ANYTHING THEY CAN’T DO? My Fake Boobs Saved My Life.

PRE-BLACK-FRIDAY MARKDOWNS in Tools & Home Improvement.

NPR slandering the Red States.

WELL, THERE’S MORE STUFF TO KNOW AND ASSIMILATE: For scientists today, stroke of genius strikes later. “Einstein once said, ‘A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.’ The genius himself discovered that matter was transmutable to energy with his famous equation E = mc2 and helped lay the foundations of quantum theory by that age as evidence for his claim. That peak age has shifted considerably, the researchers found, with 48 being prime time for physicists.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Man found dead in Pioneer Park, Occupy SLC ordered to leave both camps. “Following the discovery of a dead man Friday morning in Pioneer Park, Salt Lake police have ordered all Occupy Salt Lake City protestors to leave the park.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Oakland murder victim was in fact an OWS protester and camper.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Denver received with chants: “This is what losing looks like!” Yeah, pretty much.

UPDATE: Video. Steven Crowder and Steve Kruiser were there. . . .

FREE SPEECH IN THE AGE OF OBAMA: Publicly Criticize Discrimination Lawsuit Against You — Risk a Retaliation Lawsuit Based on Your Speech. “This strikes me as quite wrong. People and organizations have a First Amendment right to speak out to publicly defend themselves against charges of wrongdoing, even when that could foreseeably lead to social ostracism of the accusers.”

JOHN SCALZI on Penn State.

#OCCUPYFAIL: NYT: Occupy Wall Street Site A Cesspit Of Disease.

Even some camping in the park have grown concerned in recent weeks with the living quarters. Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at public restrooms. Food, from orange peels to scrambled eggs, is often discarded outside tents.

“I’m amazed that in a park full of revolutionaries, there are large contingents that can’t throw away their own trash,” said Jordan McCarthy, 22, a member of the protesters’ sanitation team.

That’s because you’re 22, kid. If you’d been around these kinds of people for longer, you wouldn’t be amazed at all . . . .

SO AFTER MY LEAF TEST DRIVE, here’s a test drive of the Mitsubishi Mi-EV. Another review here.

TEN ESSENTIALS for the perfect road trip.

#OCCUPYHOLLYWOOD HOPE AND CHANGE: Remember the “borderless” Internet? It’s officially dead.

EUROPE’S BIOFUELS MANDATE BOOSTS CO₂ EMISSIONS. “Biomass energy: the government energy policy disaster that keeps on giving. . . . The palm oil plantations let more light hit the ground, heating up the soil, drying it out, and causing the peatlands to break down. There is more carbon stored in tropical peatlands than in tropical forests.”

SELF-PROMOTION: Reader Rick Acker emails: “Hi, Glenn. Amazon picked one of my legal thrillers as the Kindle Daily Deal (only $1.99!), and I was wondering if you would post the link.” Why not?

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Are Pennsylvania hunters upset about the boom in natural gas drilling in the state? Katharine Seelye deploys some purple prose to help NYT readers think that they are.”

BLOGCON-FRONTATION: #OccupyDenver Threatens to Crash BlogCon11. Jim Hoft says, “We’re ready, hobos.” There are some sections of the blogosphere I would not advise you to occupy. . . .

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: A one-molecule electric car.

HISTORICAL INEVITABILITY: “In retrospect, it seems obvious that the Earl of Sandwich should be a hoagie magnate. But it took nearly 250 years to get there.”

UH OH: Chevy Volt fire explodes into federal investigation of electric car safety. “The wrecked Volt apparently caught fire in the parking lot of NHTSA’s crash test facility in Wisconsin a full three weeks after the initial crash test. According to the exclusive Bloomberg story, the fire was large enough to burn vehicles parked in the vicinity of the car.”

WHEN YOU WIN, IT’S TEMPORARY — WHEN I WIN, IT’S PERMANENT! The E.U.’s “Non-Regression” Gambit. Meh. Given the way the E.U. is looking, this may not be a problem for long . . . .

ADVICE TO SINGLES: Dating isn’t personal. “99.9 percent of the time, these reasons have nothing whatsoever to do with you. Dating is not personal, although it often feels that way. Maybe because love is so personal. But dating is not love. We forget that.”

HAPPY VETERANS’ DAY: Law Professor Objects to Solicitations to Help Our Troops in Afghanistan. “Let me say that again: the professor was pissed off that students were asked if they could send care packages to soldiers serving abroad. . . . This guy’s a law professor? That last bit sounded more like the kind of lecture you’d get from a homeless wino hanging around a T-station than a law professor.” Stuff like this isn’t going to get the higher education sector any extra sympathy as the bubble bursts.