SOCIAL MEDIA MAKING SPRING BREAK TAMER?

In this era of “Jersey Shore” antics and “Girls Gone Wild,” where bikini tops vanish like unattended wallets, it would seem natural to assume that this generation of college student has outdone the spring break hordes of decades past on the carousal meter.

But today’s spring breakers — at least some of them — say they have been tamed, in part, not by parents or colleges or the fed-up cities they invade, but by the hand-held gizmos they hold dearest and the fear of being betrayed by an unsavory, unsanctioned photo or video popping up on Facebook or YouTube.

Late one March evening at Rick’s Bar on rum-soaked Duval Street, college students alternated Jell-O shots with iPhone shots.

“We are very, very reserved,” said Mia Klein, 22, a University of Connecticut senior from Amityville, N.Y., who stood around a table at Rick’s with friends and cups of beer. “You don’t want to have to defend yourself later, so you don’t do it.” The “it” being get sloppy, word-slurring drunk in an unvetted crowd.

“People do regret it later,” chimed in her friend and sorority sister Kelsey Tynik, who had just finished checking e-mail amid the screaming house music.

Life in the panopticon.

ARTISTIC INTEGRITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Mike Daisey Lies on This American Life; Theaters Won’t Cancel Performances or Issue Refunds. Hey, it’s not like he called someone a slut. And by “someone” I mean a Democratic party activist.

TESTOSTERONE: Threat, or menace?

WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Man Wins $1.4 Million Settlement From Boston Police In Video Recording Incident.

A man who was tackled by a cop and placed in a chokehold while video recording a traffic investigation won a $1.4 million settlement this week.

Michael O’Brian said the 2009 incident left him brain-damaged and unable to return to work as a corrections officer for the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office.

The Boston police officer who tackled him, David Williams, was fired in January. . . .

In November 2011, Maury Povino filed a lawsuit against the Boston Police Department after they arrested him for video recording them.

Paulino was charged with felony wiretapping along with assault and battery on a police officer, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in the 2009 incident.

The wiretapping charge was quickly dropped and he beat the other charges in court.

At this stage, even filing the wiretapping charges should be grounds for additional discipline. And I guess I should provide one more plug for Morgan Manning’s article on photographers’ rights. Plus, my forthcoming piece in the Washington University law Review on a due-process-based right to record the police.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Real Hourly Earnings Decline in February. “Earnings are up a fraction of a percent in February, but the CPI is up four times as much. The result is ‘real’ earnings are down once again, having peaked in October 2010.”

PEGGY NOONAN: The Left’s War On Women.

It would have been good if President Obama had discussed this in his news conference, instead of dodging a question about misogyny on the left. He called Sandra Fluke, he explained, because he wants public life to be safe for his daughters, if they choose to enter it. He would have made a braver, truer, more meaningful statement if he’d noted that Bill Maher has become so rich on sexism he had a million dollars to give to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. And now, so as to discourage the bad treatment of women, Mr. Obama is handing it back.

That would have made an impression. That could have been a step forward.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda: The story of this Administration.

REX MURPHY: Oil Sands Jobs Are Essential For The Human Environment. “There is another wider, larger, humane dimension to the environment — larger and more vital than any reference to landscape. That is the human and social element, the business of supplying reasonable support for workers and their families, towns and communities, and ultimately wealth for the entire nation. We owe something, it is true to the rocks and trees. We also owe something to human beings as well. . . . It mightn’t have the smug appeal of a panda face, and you will not see it on the vivid posters of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but having a job and earning a living is a great thing. Those who have been out of work know what a cruel ‘environment’ that is — an emotional and psychological assault of frightful power.”

FAST AND FURIOUS: Video: One year later, Zapata family gets no answers on Fast and Furious.

AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS: San Diego student complains of being forced to urinate in bucket. “A tenured teacher at a San Diego high school has been put on paid leave while the district investigates an allegation that she refused to allow a 14-year-old student to leave class to go to the toilet and instead told the girl to urinate in a bucket.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The Go-Nowhere Generation Speaks: ‘I’d Love to Move, but I Can’t.’

IS NEWT DESPERATE?

AT AMAZON, top deals in Electronics.

DESTROY ALL CHURCHES: “If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.”

It’s a temporary condition. Within a few years, the Knights Templar will be back. It’s all in the incentive system.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Angelica Huston: U.S. Returning To the Dark Ages.

A GOOD TACTIC is one your people enjoy.

PUBLIC EDUCATION UPDATE: Two More Teachers Accused Of Sexing Up Students.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

WASTED DAYS ARE THE BEST: My brother and I spent the day touring music shops. (My wife is at the indie film festival, and my daughter is weekending with cousins). We managed to avoid buying anything, which is no small feat, and we had lunch at a Knoxville institution: the 25-year-old “Ali Baba’s Time Out Deli,” a hole-in-the-wall place that’s run by Arabs and serves “kosher-style deli sandwiches.” Although it’s in the middle of the ‘burbs, it has a campus-like ambience. The crowd today included a doctor in scrubs, a rather busty woman in shortshorts and a “Coyote” tank top, some young Arab guys, and a dreadlocked Jamaican. The food was good, as always, and cheap. Then we sat on the patio at Charlie Pepper’s and had a beer. Ah, a good day.

Don’t do that enough any more.

DON SURBER: My prediction: On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama will be out of the White House and Rush Limbaugh will be on the radio. “If I owned a business, I would take out an ad on the Rush Limbaugh show. Conservatives are loyal. They never forget.”

MORE FUN WITH RUTHERFORD B. HAYES:

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I’m enjoying the Rutherford B Hayes riffs. As a Civil War general, Hayes surely knew the value of the telegraph and would have had an even greater appreciation of the telephone. Obama can’t open a door without hitting himself in the face it seems. His memory and legacy will receive far more justifiable mockery over the next century than Hayes’ did during the last one.”

METAPHOR ALERT: Bad Smell Blanketing The DC Metro Area. “Reports of a really bad odor blanketing the metro area have been reported from downtown D.C. to Fairfax County to Oxon Hill!”

Related thoughts from Don Surber.

HMM: White Rice Link Seen With Type 2 Diabetes. “Health researchers said on Thursday they had found a troubling link between higher consumption of rice and Type 2 diabetes, a disease that in some countries is becoming an epidemic.”

And we’re back to Gary Taubes . . . .

THE ROAD WE’VE TRAVELED.

I DON’T BELIEVE THIS STORY. Why would Osama bin Laden have wanted to kill Barack Obama? Obama’s doing more damage to the country than Osama ever managed. . . .

EMILY MILLER ON FACEBOOK: “George Clooney paid $100 to post bail in DC. It cost me $465 to register a gun. It’s cheaper to be a criminal in this city.”

#NYTIMESFAIL: What If They Gave A Scandal And Nobody Came? “But hold the front page! The TR Price managers have put roughly 1% of their assets into Baidu, the Chinese search engine famous for its repression of dissent. Really, Barack? And another 1% is in Peabody Energy, ‘the largest private-sector coal company in the world’. Seriously, Michelle?”