BEYOND ASTRONAUT ICE CREAM: Arthur C. Clarke and other science fiction writers on growing food to feed space colonists.

PANIC IN PENNSYLVANIA: OMG OMG! It’s a Water Gun! With Water in it! OMG! “What’s next, ear-splitting bouts of Marco Polo in the public pool? Short-sheeting beds at camp? Shaving cream in a sleeping kid’s hand? Oh, the humanity.”

CLAIM: Chevy Volt actually underpriced given current lease payments, residual estimate. That doesn’t suggest long-term viability.

RAND SIMBERG: It’s Time To Get Serious About Space Again: Frontiers have never been opened without risk, and this one will be no different.

HOW TO CUT CARBON EMISSIONS: Fracking Cuts Carbon More Than Cap-And-Trade. “Ignore the greens and innovate, and you will cut carbon. Pay a lot of attention to them, spend a lot of money — and you will keep carbon emissions unchanged. . . . Right now, fracking is doing more to control carbon emissions than all the efforts of all the greens in the world. And by promoting American (and Chinese!) domestic energy production, it is doing more to lay the foundations of world peace than all the peace activists and disarmament campaigners in the world.” Which is why it must be stopped. It’s threatening the whole feedlot!

WASN’T HE BLACK BACK IN 2008? Barone: Obama backers use race as alibi for ebbing support. “The fact that some have, at least for the moment, moved away from supporting Obama to opposing him, or remain unsure, reflects not an increasing racism, but the fact that we simply have more information than we had four years ago.”

As Tony Katz said: “It’s not his race. It’s that he’s awful.”

WHAT’S MAKING CHINA FAT?

China’s urban areas are booming economically, but that trend is paralleled by another one with serious implications for public health: obesity rates have skyrocketed over the last generation. The number of Chinese people who are obese quintupled between 2005 and 2011, to nearly 100 million people. The World Health Organization estimates that 38.5 percent of the population was overweight in 2010, up from 25 percent in 2002. Male children from high-income families have an especially high rate of obesity.

Personally, I blame George W. Bush.

NICK GILLESPIE: Should We Hire Even More Teachers, Cops, and Firemen? Not if we want the economy to recover any time soon.

AT AMAZON, 50-75% off on Clothing & Shoes. For men, women, and children.

Also, today only: ProForm Power 995 Treadmill, $799.99.

SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION FROM ROGER KIMBALL, on behalf of his new book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia.

MICHAEL WALSH: Why “Fast and Furious” Matters: Hundreds of people died because of the operation, but no one takes responsibility.

Obama lied, Mexicans died. (Line courtesy of reader Peter Grout).

NEW CAMPAIGN SLOGAN: “Michelle Obama wants to take away your cheeseburgers, but with Ann Romney, everybody gets a pony!”

CARRY PERMITS for soldiers under 21?

MORE SELF-BECLOWNING FROM THE HARVARD LAW FACULTY: “America Is Racist Because Americans Do NOT Join in Racist Attacks.”

A REGULATORY KILLZONE: “A new look at the Vioxx debacle suggests that HIPAA’s privacy regime may have contributed to 90 thousand unnecessary heart attacks and 25 thousand premature deaths.”

MICKEY KAUS: “That will reassure Second Amendment enthusiasts who suspect the otherwise indefensible Fast & Furious fiasco was really an effort to lay the groundwork for a … ban on the sale of weapons (by confirming the Mexicans’ complaints about the origin of guns involved in Mexican drug violence).”

UPDATE: Reader Fred Boness reminds me of this post about Elijah Cummings from last year.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Mr. Right Won’t Wait For Sex. “It’s a very competitive world out there.”

SUDDENLY, IT’S A BUYER’S MARKET: Prospective Students Tell Law Schools, “Show us the money.” “Law schools experienced a 25% decline in applicants nationwide during the past two years, due in part to the tight job market for new lawyers and a more widespread understanding of the high costs of attending. Many have responded by accepting a larger percentage of applicants and sweetening their scholarship packages, in hopes of locking in prospective students. For their part, many would-be law students sense opportunity and are aggressively negotiating scholarship offers from competing schools. . . . The trickle-down effect of competition for students may be hitting lower-tier schools the hardest.”

Just as I predicted.

THE MANOLO: There are Few Words More Depressing Than “Utilikilt”.

I can only imagine what he’d think about a utilikilt paired with . . . matching Crocs.

POLITICO’S SHRINKING PAINS: Politico’s traffic is down from last year, and it’s an election year. They lost the trust of a number of people on the right last year, so they’re getting fewer looks, and fewer links.

WAPO: How Obama Screwed Up The Afghan Surge.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals on Video Games.

Also, 50-75% off on Men’s Sunglasses.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Survive A Boring Meeting.

STACY MCCAIN keeps digging. Really, was trying to shut him up a smart move? No, no it wasn’t.