PROF. STEPHEN CLARK WRITES:

After following up on comments from your site on “Why We Get Fat…” and “Anni Ultimi”, I bought and am now reading both, and finding both to be excellent.

Taubes’ book should be viewed as particularly subversive. If you find his argument convincing, and in particular if in practice you find his recommendations effective, then your eyes should be opened to the ways in which science is a very human enterprise subject to all the failings that humans possess. It should not be a surprise, though it seems always to be, that scientists are not immune to self-deception and the worldly temptations that plague us all. The appropriate response to all scientific claims of truth, in particular as reported, is a healthy skepticism. And my, oh my. How subversive it would be if that attitude were to spread widely and more generally to bare assertions of truth of all kinds. The tale Taubes tells, the history he recounts, is as important as the advice he gives.

Indeed.

HOW SPEEDO CREATED a record-breaking swimsuit.

OF RAPE, AND REDDIT. Just following in Eldridge Cleaver’s footsteps. Just be sure to call it an “insurrectionary act.”

3D PRINTING and the end of gun control.

So, can you print a gun? Yep, you can and that’s exactly what somebody with the alias “HaveBlue” did.

To be accurate, HaveBlue didn’t print an entire gun, he printed a “receiver” for an AR-15 (better known as the military’s M16) at a cost of about $30 worth of materials.

The receiver is, in effect, the framework of a gun and holds the barrel and all of the other parts in place. It’s also the part of the gun that is technically, according to US law, the actual gun and carries the serial number.

When the weapon was assembled with the printed receiver HaveBlue reported he fired 200 rounds and it operated perfectly.

Read the whole thing.

MITT ROMNEY: You bet Jerusalem is the capital!

A PONTIAC GTO STATION WAGON.

JOURNALISM: CNN plays ‘Stupid Girls’ as intro to Sarah Palin at Chick-fil-A story.

PLUG-IN HYBRIDS trouncing electric cars in the marketplace.

ANOTHER WRONG-HOUSE NO-KNOCK RAID: Beauty Queen Dragged Out of Bed Naked by Deputies. “A former beauty queen is suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after she says deputies kicked down the wrong apartment door, pointed guns at her and her fiancee and watched as she got out of bed, naked. . . . Manos and her fiancee, Eric Otto Ryder, say deputies had a search warrant for apartment ‘C’ but entered their unit — clearly marked as apartment ‘A.'”

There should be strict liability for no-knock raids.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THE NEW OIL REVOLUTION: Has Gaia Betrayed The Greens?

Gaia, that treacherous slut, has made so much oil and gas that her faithful acolytes today cannot protect her from the consequences of her own folly. . . .

Again, for people who base their claim to world leadership on their superior understanding of the dynamics of complex systems, greens prove over and over again that they are surprisingly naive and crude in their ability to model and to shape the behavior of the political and economic systems they seek to control. If their understanding of the future of the earth’s climate is anything like as wish-driven, fact-averse and intellectually crude as their approach to international affairs, democratic politics and the energy market, the greens are in trouble indeed. And as I’ve written in the past, the contrast between green claims to understand climate and to be able to manage the largest and most complex set of policy changes ever undertaken, and the evident incompetence of greens at managing small (Solyndra) and large (Kyoto, EU cap and trade, global climate treaty) political projects today has more to do with climate skepticism than greens have yet understood. Many people aren’t rejecting science; they are rejecting green claims of policy competence. In doing so, they are entirely justified by the record.

Nevertheless, the future of the environment is not nearly as dim as greens think. Despairing environmentalists like McKibben and Monbiot are as wrong about what the new era of abundance means as green energy analysts were about how much oil the planet had. . . . The newly bright oil and gas future means that we aren’t entering a new Age of Coal. For this, every green on the planet should give thanks.

Read the whole thing.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE FUN: Salt blasting shotgun eradicates insects with extreme prejudice.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Going Away to College This Fall? You’re Now the Exception. “For American students, heading off to college has traditionally also meant physically going away to college. But now, at a time when college costs are soaring, and when news of young people being saddled with burdensome student loan debt is unavoidable, today’s students are trying to trim college expenses in every way possible. More than half of students, in fact, will be living at home when the fall semester begins—up significantly from the 43% of students who commuted a couple of years ago. . . . The argument that a so-called ‘higher education bubble’ really does exist —- and may be in the process of popping —- gets a boost especially because it looks like students in wealthier American families, who should be able to pay for pricey colleges, are choosing to stay home in increasingly higher numbers.”

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Business & Investing.

Also, today only: The Hangman’s Daughter series, 99 cents on Kindle.

EMPTY SEATS: Olympic Ticketing A “Shambles.”

ECONOMICS AND THE NEW LEGAL PROFESSION: An Infographic.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Record number of coal-fired generators to be shut down in 2012. Maybe nothing, if we build new gas-fired plants to take advantage of all the new supplies fracking is producing. Gas plants are much cleaner.

REPORTING FROM THE CAPITOL HILL ANTI-FRACKING PROTEST. “What do you get when you bring hundreds of fervent environmentalists and NIMBYs together on the west lawn of the Capitol to denounce fracking, every single fuel that originates from the ground, and, for old time’s sake, Dick Cheney? You get enviro banjo tunes, the ‘Ecological Our Father’ at the interfaith prayer service (‘Our Father, who art in the forest…’), and more punny protest signs built off the F-bomb than even Joe Biden could dream up.”

THE GOLDEN AGE OF JERRY BROWN: Will Fresno Be California’s Next Bankrupt City? “As Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach told Bloomberg News, the bankruptcy dominoes are starting to fall. One California city after another—following a decade-long spree of ramping up public-employee pay and pension benefits, as well as redevelopment debt—are becoming insolvent.”

CLAIRE MCCASKILL