COMPLYING WITH THE LAW IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Breaking: Major Solyndra Figure in DoE Defies House Subpoena, Refuses to Testify.

PITAYA: The Selling Of A Superfruit.

IN THE FUTURE, WILL HUMANS OR COMPUTERS FLY AIRLINERS? Er, computers.

One day “intelligent” passenger aircraft will cruise across oceans in low-drag, energy-saving formations, like flocks of geese. So said European plane-maker Airbus at its annual technology look-ahead conference last night. It’s a striking idea that media outlets lapped up.

Warming to its theme, Airbus added that emissions could be cut by using a superfast ground vehicle to catapult future aircraft into the air, so that it reaches cruising speed and altitude faster. And it could land with the engines switched off, in a long, controlled “free glide” to the runway.

But how will this stuff actually work? With computers, of course. “Highly intelligent aircraft would be able to self organise and select the most efficient and environmentally friendly routes,” says Airbus.

This cosy picture of aviation circa 2050 glosses over the degree to which computers will have to assume control of the finer manoeuvres of such planes, rather than pilots.

I don’t think it glosses over it, I think it relies on it. But self-driving cars will be old hat by then so nobody will mind.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Fall Outlet Event.

BRINGING BACK BUTTERMILK: A New York Times story with a nice mention — and photo — of Cruze Farms, the local Knoxville dairy that I’ve blogged about in the past.

TWITCHY: Ace of Spades, NRO destroy ‘real journalists’ covering for Obama at Romney foreign policy presser. Hacks on parade.

UPDATE: JournoList redux: Media caught on open mic coordinating Romney questions. “Wow. We knew that members of the press are frantically trying to spin for The One and insanely point fingers at Mitt Romney over a statement. But do we now have proof that it is a coordinated effort?”

This needs to stop. They need to be called out individually, by name, repeatedly, every time. Don’t let them escape responsibility, and don’t let them pretend that what they’re doing is journalism. And complain to their bosses.

MORE ON ALLEGATIONS THAT FAA Administrators violated the Hatch Act by telling employees to vote for Obama.

Related: HHS Secretary Sebelius Found In Violation Of Hatch Act. “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated the Hatch Act in February when she called for re-electing President Obama during an official department appearance, the Office of Special Counsel said Wednesday. The finding could possibly cost Sebelius her job.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The End Of The Road For Eds And Meds.

AN AMERICAN HERO: Remembering Norman Borlaug. Quoth Borlaug, who saved over a billion lives: “(Most Western environmentalists) have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things.”

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Foreign Policy Hawks Taking On Obama, Defending Romney.

TWITCHY: Keith Olbermann’s Selective Memory. Who’s Keith Olbermann?

LIKE HOW “WHITE MALE” USED TO BE ADMIRABLE, BUT NOW IT MEANS “HORRIBLE BLOATED OPPRESSOR,” I GUESS: Stereotypes ‘evolve like language’, say researchers.

IN PHILADELPHIA, the world’s first Pizza Museum.

12 OF THE WORLD’S most annoying technologies.

FREE SPEECH? WHAT FREE SPEECH? UPenn professor Anthea Butler calls for imprisonment of filmmaker Sam Bacile; Update: Butler locks her Twitter account.

UPDATE: Roger Kimball: “Question: why do civilized nations put up with this barbaric and homicidal nonsense?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon emails: “Watched Bacile’s Mohammed movie trailer. Horrendous filmmaking. More reason it’s a trivial excuse for murder and violence.” I think “excuse” is the key word.

THEY DON’T CALL IT THE STATE-CONTROLLED MEDIA FOR NOTHING: Katrina Trinko: The Insane MSM Questions Romney Faced at Presser.

These days, they’re all sucking up in the hopes of being hired by Democratic pols. Meanwhile, what would they be saying if President Bush had gone to Vegas for a fundraiser on a day like this? Heck, what would they be saying if Romney were doing so?

UPDATE: Reader Leslie Eastman writes: “The fact the elite media was more upset about Romney’s critique of the White House than our dead ambassador says all there needs to be said about our press.”

Now is a good time to go all Breitbart on them.

These people — always so quick to play the “have you no decency?” card — have no decency of their own. None.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Appropriately enough, it’s H.L. Mencken’s birthday. “Last night, I told someone that I really don’t blame Obama for being Obama, nor for his administration for being what it is: a political entity unable to quickly produce coherent statements on breaking stories. If there are no core beliefs to draw on quickly, you need time to politically calculate and strategize. But I do blame the press for letting him be Obama, and his administration to be calculating, without anything like accountability, investigation or discomfiture. Our idolizing press has stopped serving the country in order to serve the state. But only while there is a D in the Whitehouse. It will take putting an R back in there to get them to do their damn jobs.”

DANIEL FOSTER: Romney’s Statement Didn’t Jump The Gun, The Cairo Embassy Did.

INTERVIEW: The World According To Tyler Cowen.

JOHN LEO: Those Mealy-Mouthed Statements From Our Cairo Embassy. “These same attitudes infected the mainstream media as well. The New York Times buried the mob violence and killings at the bottom of Page 4, not mentioning that an ambassador was killed and assuring any readers who got that far that anti-American feelings are confined to ‘pockets’ in the Middle east. On the First Page, however, was a big story that Mitt Romney was not opposed to the Vietnam war as a college student in 1966. Likewise, on Morning Joe the all-lefties panels focused exclusively onMitt Romney’s statement, the point of which I couldn’t quite figure out from the indignant discussion.”

Related: Video from the Cairo attacks.

UPDATE: Matt Welch: What’s So Hard About Saying, “In the United States, we are not in the business of approving these messages”?

Also: James Joyner: “In point of fact, making a movie commenting on the sexual proclivities of someone who died some fourteen hundred years ago in no way constitutes ‘incitement’ under any meaningful use of the term.”

Plus: Ann Althouse: “The media strains ‘to shift the focus from the Obama administration’s failure to protect our embassies and for its apologies (both before and after the attack on the Cairo Embassy) to whether Mitt Romney was wrong to criticize Obama last night.'”

MORE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “Matt Welch’s post points to just how deep the rot runs. His point should not need to be made.”

MILITARY IGNORANCE AT THE DNC: Russian Warships Displayed During DNC Veterans’ Tribute. The country’s in the very best of hands.

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Breaking The Monopoly on K-12.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Obama Job Growth Problem Is Weak Hiring Not Layoffs. “How bad is America’s jobs market? Layoffs and firings are at the lowest levels on record — yet the country still isn’t adding enough jobs to keep up with population growth.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Day The Roof Fell In. “Sometimes trouble blows up out of a clear blue sky. That’s what happened to the White House yesterday.” Read the whole thing, and as you do, remember that Mead voted for Obama. And yeah, that’s two Mead posts in a row, but he’s on a roll.

UPDATE: Obama’s Going To Vegas! “On the day after the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi, the White House on Wednesday morning released a schedule showing that President Obama would continue with his planned campaign trip to Las Vegas.”

Related: Dueling pressers: Romney takes questions, Obama doesn’t on Egypt & Libya attacks. On Facebook, Jon Ham comments: “Want to see the Obama media in action? Just watch the video from Romney’s press conference this morning. As I often say, the media is the defense attorney for the left and the prosecutor for those on the right.”

And Ed Morrissey comments at the link: “Had Romney not taken questions, especially after his criticisms of last night, I think the media would have ripped him for not being forthcoming. But I think the better question is why the current President didn’t take at least a couple of questions. An active American ambassador was murdered, an act that hasn’t happened since 1979, and some questions at least could have been answered. Thanks to his unilateral action against Libya last year — when Obama never bothered to get Congressional approval for military action against Moammar Qaddafi’s regime — the outcome in that nation belongs entirely to Obama, for better and worse. I doubt the media would have forgiven George Bush for not taking questions had an American ambassador been killed in Baghdad or Kabul during his tenure, with or without the withering criticism Bush had already received for his management of both wars.”

Also: Dead Ambassador dragged through streets, MSM furious at Romney criticism of Obama. The media regards Obama with the devotion that Islamists grant to the Koran. Any criticism and they’re out for blood. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Robert Belle writes: “Vegas? It could be worse, he could be going to Disney World.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: ROTC Comes Back To The Ivy League. “After an absence that dates back to the Vietnam War era, and 11 years to the day after 9/11, ROTC is finally returning to Harvard, Columbia, and Yale. At a time when everybody is talking about how polarized America has become, it’s worth noting this sign of reconciliation between elite academic institutions and the U.S. military. . . . Much of the credit must go to the military leadership. Military thinkers have been deeply worried about the gulf between civilian and military elites that opened up in the Vietnam period. They have taken great pains to build links between the military and civilian professionals and leaders. Organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations have also played a part by creating fellowships that allow military officers to spend time with civilian counterparts. Bard College, where I teach, and West Point work together to build close contacts between their students.”