HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: I’m interviewed in the Texas State Comptroller’s newsletter.

WELL, HIGHER EDUCATION IS MORE FEMALE-FRIENDLY: Women Give Higher Ed Better Grades Than Do Men. “Half of all women who have graduated from a four-year college give the higher education system excellent or good marks for the value provided by the money spent by students and their families. But only 37 percent of male graduates agree.” If the genders were reversed, this would indicate a serious problem that must be addressed immediately. But as things are, it’s no doubt indicative of some deficiency among male students.

HMM: Chrysler signs cellulosic ethanol agreement with ZeaChem.

MICHAEL YON: Battlefield Forensics.

BRUCE THORNTON: The United States Of Entitlements. “The 2012 presidential election will be a referendum on democracy.”

IN THE MAIL: From Rosalind Creasy, Edible Landscaping.

MICKEY KAUS: Paul Krugman Is No Hippie: “Paul Krugman decries ‘hippie punching.’ This is now an accepted way to mock almost any contemporary criticism of unabashed liberals. I was a hippie–-hippie adjacent anyway. I knew hippies. Hippies were friends of mine. They hated liberals. That goes double for the ’60s New Left. Liberals were the enemy, and many of the New Left’s critiques (e.g. of Big Labor/Big Government corporatism, interest-group politics and anti-participatory bureaucracies) were very similar to today’s Tea Party critiques. …”

Indeed.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Does Anyone Care About Actual Political Violence?

DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKER: Fracking Causes Venereal Disease Among Women. Perhaps he’s using the word in its Firefly sense.

UPDATE: About a bazillion BSG fans inform me that he must have meant the Battlestar Galactica sense, but I thought the word appeared on Firefly first. Apparently, I crossed neurons on that one.

SO I’VE ASSIGNED THIS EXCELLENT PIECE ON A.I. as the initial reading for my Law, Science & Technology class, and I thought I’d share it with any InstaPundit readers who might be interested.

RETURN TO THE EAST: Walter Russell Mead: Erdogan’s Big, Fat Turkish Idea. “Turkey is likely to have a rocky road as it turns back on the road Atatürk abandoned, and Turkish-US relations are likely to cause intermittent heartburn and table thumping in both countries. Nevertheless, it looks as if their shared interests lead the US and Turkey to update and renegotiate their sixty year old partnership in a changing region.”

This is a good time for me to once again recommend Austin Bay’s new book on Kemal Ataturk’s legacy.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: ObamaCare: Where’s the Investigation of Epic Systems?

RON RADOSH: Can Van Jones Create a “left-wing Tea Party?” Don’t Bet on It. They keep trying.

ED DRISCOLL: The Community Reinvestment Act Comes Full Circle. As the Justice Department readies vengeance against S&P for the downgrade, Ed notes: “Lots of material in this 2008 video to work with, if anybody in the GOP has the brains (yes, that’s a risky proposition right there) not to let this crisis go to waste.”

THE PAINT YOUR WAGON ELECTION. Huh. Clint just keeps coming up . . . .

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Whose Idea Was Martha’s Vineyard?

Whoever in the White House decided on another first family vacation at Martha’s Vineyard must be unhinged, coming as it does (a) after previous jaunts to places like Vail and Costa del Sol, and serial golf outings; (b) in the midst of tough economic times and bipartisan acknowledgment that national cutbacks for the vast majority of Americans are in order; (c) on the heels of three years of class warfare and anti-wealth demagoguery of the “fat-cat,” “unneeded income,” “spread the wealth” sort; and (d) during a presidential approval slide that seems to be based, at least in part, on the fact that the president’s usual rhetoric has nothing to do with reality, that he suggests one thing while doing quite another.

If the president thought that a campaign bus tour would rescue his numbers, he was mistaken — it seems to have had the opposite effect, perhaps because it seemed staged, almost like what a wealthy person would do if he wanted to act “real” for a bit.

But if President Obama has already purchased the new bus, why not use it Winnebago-style to see America with his family for a week, visiting a national park, a closed-down plant — or a real vineyard?

That seems too Sarah-Palinish. Not his, er, . . . [Idiom, sir? — ed Yes that’s it!] idiom.

PHOTO PRINTER BLEG: Reader George Kopecky writes: “These posts on printers have been tilted towards printing documents. As a part time starving actor, I need an inexpensive printer that can do high quality 8”x10” color headshot photograph printing, and would of course also need a scanner for my ebay stamp sales. Can you please append your posts for recommendations on these as well?”

Any recommendations? Here’s the list of bestselling all-in-one printers.

HOPE AND CHANGE: More Jobless Stagflation: CPI +0.5% On Expectations Of 0.2%, Jobless Claims Back Comfortably In +400K Territory. Inflation, unemployment both unexpectedly high!

This iconic photo from the early days of hope-and-change now seems prophetic.

END GAME APPROACHING IN EUROPE: No Way Out But Debt Restructuring.

THE NEW YORK POST ON RICK PERRY AND BERNANKE’S MONEY-PRINTING:

Stipulated: Perry’s words fall heavily upon the ears.

On substance, however, Gov. Perry was quite right. For whatever purpose — policy or politics — simply printing money in large amounts is a recipe for catastrophe. (The stock market barely tread water yesterday on reports of a major inflation uptick.)

Indeed, the substance of Perry’s message was so unremarkable as to go largely uncriticized.

As to the efficacy of his words — well, he’s been in public life for some time now, and the governor of the nation’s second-most-populous state for over a decade.

So he’s entitled to his views, and to the rhetoric of his choice.

We suspect ordinary Americans — worried sick about inflation and the economy — will be far more forgiving of Perry than the pundits.

I think that Perry was probably