HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A TedX Talk On The Future of Education.

The analysis may sound a bit familiar.

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: The world’s biggest, oldest impact crater hollowed out Greenland three billion years ago. “It’s not confirmed yet, but a potential crater site in Greenland would be the oldest, biggest impact ever observed on Earth. The original asteroid would have been about 18 miles across – that’s about half the length of Rhode Island, which is pretty damn huge by asteroid standards – and the crater it initially created would have been nearly 375 miles wide and over 15 miles deep. While we’ve seen evidence of impacts on that scale elsewhere in the solar system, we’ve never seen anything like this on Earth.”

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee Could Cut Skin Cancer Risk.

MONKEYWRENCHING: Group Turns in Broken Guns to “Gun Buyback” Program, Raises Money for NRA Youth Shooting Camp.

MOST AMAZING science images of the week.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 Places You Should Be Checking Around Your Home (but Aren’t).

FASTER, PLEASE: Making Saltwater Drinkable With Graphene. “Graphene once again proves that it is quite possibly the most miraculous material known to man, this time by making saltwater drinkable. The process was developed by a group of MIT researchers who realized that graphene allowed for the creation of an incredibly precise sieve. Basically, the regular atomic structure of graphene means that you can create holes of any size, for example the size of a single molecule of water. Using this process scientist can desalinate saltwater 1,000 times faster than the Reverse Osmosis technique.”

JUSTICE: “There are 93 US federal attorneys. Since 2006, 100% of their political donations have gone to Democrats.”

WHAT? WHY WASN’T I TOLD? Anderson Cooper announces that he’s gay. I mean, who knew, right?

HENRY MILLER: The Brewing Crisis In Science.

CHURCH ATTACKS IN KENYA: “Masked gunmen sprayed bullets and hurled grenades at two churches in a northern town in Kenya on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and injuring several, police officials said. It was the latest in a series of attacks in this East African nation suspected of being carried out by al-Qaeda-linked militants from neighboring Somalia or their sympathizers.”

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER answers her critics.

VIDEO: The Cure for Poverty: Freedom. Hadley Heath makes a great spokesmodel for freedom.

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Pelosi almost calls health law penalty a tax.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi conceded in an interview aired Sunday that a key penalty in the health care law is assessed under the Tax Code — nearly calling the fee a tax, too, before stopping mid-word. . . .

“It’s a ta—; it’s a penalty for free riders,” Pelosi said, nearly uttering the dreaded T-word before cutting herself off.

Heh.

AT AMAZON, bestselling point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Also, today only: Kidde Battery-Operated Carbon Monoxide and Smoke Alarm, 67% off. You’ll want at least one of these around if you’re planning on using a generator, kerosene heater, etc. in an emergency.

SILICON GRAFFITI: Ed Driscoll talks to me about The Higher Education Bubble, and more.

THE HILL: Boehner pushes repeal, wants health law ‘ripped out by its roots.’

POLITICAL JUSTICE: Digging Into U.S. Attorneys’ Political Donations.

CHANGE: Obama campaign call affirms money anxiety. Remember when he was bragging about how he was going to raise a billion dollars? Just another Obama statement that’s hit its expiration date, I guess.

AN ETHICAL QUESTION: A reader emails:

The power blackout in DC was quick. The storm arrived quickly and took most of us by surprise.

But it was the aftermath that I wanted to ask you about. Wherever there was free “juice” people were plugging in their laptops, cellphones and whatever else needed power.

There was no shyness about using the “juice” at McDonald’s, Safeway or even the mall. It was as if these things are free and use as much as you want.

Do you or your readers have any comments about this issue? Instead of a cup of sugar people now want a kilowatt. This rivals neighbors stealing your Wifi.

Well, personally I think the answer to this is somewhere between “any port in a storm” and de minimis non curat lex. The amount of power consumed by a cellphone or a laptop is quite small, and one presumes that power outlets in public places are there with the idea that they might be used by the public. Just don’t get too greedy — charging a cellphone or a laptop is one thing, plugging in your Leaf overnight is another.

Of course, a modest amount of forethought will make this sort of expedient mostly unnecessary. Here’s a post on generators, and at a much lower level of expense, hand-cranked radios like this one will charge cellphones. I have several big UPS units that will keep a laptop and cellphone going for a long time. An inverter is also a good inexpensive alternate power source. You can also get one of these jumpstarters that doubles as a portable power source.

So while I think it’s okay to charge your laptop at McDonald’s in an emergency, courtesy and good sense dictates that you should do what you can to make such an emergency unnecessary in advance.

UPDATE: Reader James Randolph writes:

The key is to not assume it is free; it is paid for by evil corporate profits. If you don’t like corporations on the good days, don’t rely on them on the bad days. Personally, I love McDonalds and regularly contribute to their profits.

Fair point. And reader Dave Moelling writes:

I read your story about using power at McDonalds ,etc. My first response is that this is OK but a courteous thing would be to buy something (coffee, etc.) when using a commercial venues facilities even if not requested. But it reminded me that the two most prepared companies for disasters are WalMart and Waffle House. (See link). A question to those in the Mid Atlantic, How is waffle house doing?

More on Waffle House here.

Also, here’s another hand-cranked radio that will charge a cell phone.

UPDATE: Advice from reader Johan Bakker:

I’m your reader that installs and services generators, including home-stand-by and portable units.

Further to your advice about generators, UPS’s and inverters, you might want to let your readers know that there are still serious issues with generators and UPS units. Except for the largest and most-sophisticated generators, these two devices do not play well together.

The issue is that the UPS makers have set very-narrow boundaries on the frequency input that their devices will tolerate before calling a fault. They will only tolerate a frequency deviation of perhaps ± 0.5 Hz before they call a defect and disconnect from the input to go on battery power.

In a way, this makes sense, because the utility power frequency is usually incredibly accurate – within 0.1 Hz and usually a lot better than that – and so the UPS makers use the disruption in frequency as a warning that utility power is going out.

But most generators in the size class we are talking about cannot maintain output frequency that accurately. Electronic governors (which control engine speed and so output frequency) are only found on one or two larger, high-end generators at present, most still use mechanical governors, which are less-precise. And even with an electronic governor, most of these generators do not have enough rotor inertia to maintain engine speed (= frequency) during the startup of large load, like a refrigerator or well pump.

Generators based on inverter technology are better because they synthesize their output frequency electronically and so do not depend on engine speed. However, inverter technology is presently restricted to very small generators, not suitable for backup power for a whole house.

Users should be aware that, for most generators that are likely to be found in a domestic application, when the power goes out, any UPS’s will likely switch to battery backup and stay there, even if the generator is energized and providing input power. Since most UPS’s have only limited backup capacity, they will be quickly exhausted and will not be replenished form the generator input.

For those with no generator, or using a portable generator intermittently, for low-level charging needs, like phones and laptops, the best solution is a 12V auto battery and a miniature inverter. The battery can be charged in so many different ways (from a car, from a charger running off a generator, from a lawnmower, from a solar panel, the possible ways are endless) and even a small lead-acid battery (like a lawn-tractor battery) has more-than-enough capacity to charge many cell-phones and laptops before requiring a fresh charge.

Good advice. And another reader points out: “The McDonalds that don’t want people to use their power have already capped the outlets in the public areas. Some newer McDonalds have extra outlets as a convenience for customers.”

Yes, the now-common McCafe setup is intended to be laptop-friendly.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Florida’s Second Subprime Crisis: Student Loans. “Government meddling has again separated profit from risk. Universities get to keep the tuition profits while taxpayers are forced to shoulder the risk of students not paying back their loans. In the end, this bubble will be worse than the last. Unlike homeowners, students facing crippling debt cannot sell back their asset (their education) or declare bankruptcy. The simple fact of the matter should be obvious by now: Government created this mess, in both instances, by forcing the market to provide loans it would not have granted otherwise. This is the breeding ground for bubbles, and this one will burst just as they all do.”

THE FLIP THAT WILL FLOP? Roberts’ switch looking more political than legal. Judges shouldn’t play politics. For one thing, they’re bad at it, as this instance illustrates.

A VICTORY FOR free speech in Canada.

SAUCE FOR THE GANDER: “I think the public policy elitists should be made to use public transportation themselves. Detroit’s bedbug-infested buses would be a great place to start.”

Bah. If the environmental movement were really serious, someone would have burned down Al Gore’s mansion by now. And probably Tom Friedman’s, too.