WELCOME TO THE CRAZY YEARS.

CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY encouraging followers to engage in censorship.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, others are standing up for free speech.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “This year’s presidential election is shaping up as the starkest choice since 1980.”

RICK HILLS: Why Does The Left Fear Constitutional Federalism So Much?

THE MIDAS TOUCH CONTINUES: Akron restaurant owner dies hours after meeting Obama.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Office Electronics Outlet Sale.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: ‘Her Fiancé, Garry Brown Sr., the Man Who Fathered 10 of Her 15 Children …’

A BURGER REVIEW FROM BRYAN PRESTON. Sorry, I have to say that In-N-Out beats Five Guys. But I suspect that this burger beats both.

And so does the Brasserie Burger from the Northshore Brasserie, if you insist on bought-burgers.

As for the 100% Bacon Burger, all I can say is, be still, my beating heart! Which is probably what would happen if I ate one. . .

UPDATE: Will Collier says the best burger in America is in Atlanta.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Things Star Wars Taught Us About Dating.

POLIWOOD: Hollywood and the Election: Movie Stars Can Raise Money for Obama, But Can They Do Anything Else?

CHANGE: First Instance of iOS App Store Malware Detected, Removed. “Kaspersky antivirus experts discovered a Russian-language app called ‘Find and Call’ that was available in both the Apple App Store and in Google Play. The app is essentially a Trojan that steals and uploads the user’s address book to a remote server. Once uploaded, the server then sends spam to the email addresses and phone numbers belonging to the victim’s contacts telling them about the Find and Call application. The app also grabs the GPS coordinates from the victim’s phone and uploads them to the server.”

BRAINS: An underdeveloped prefrontal cortex makes sharing difficult for young children.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA RULE OF THIRDS: How not to be annoying.

CAN DIET SODA MAKE YOU FAT by messing with your digestive bacteria? “Consuming high amounts of fructose (a type of sugar), artificial sweeteners, and sugar alcohols (another type of low-calorie sweetener) cause your gut bacteria to adapt in a way that interferes with your satiety signals and metabolism, according to a new paper in Obesity Reviews.”

USING SEXY COVERS TO lure Twilight teens to real literature.

ROBOT VISION: Muscle-like action allows camera to mimic human eye movement.

Bah. That’s old news.

HASHTAG DEVELOPMENTS: Weak jobs report spurs #OneTerm and #Obamaisntworking.

WHY DO ECOLOGISTS have a problem with evolution? “I bring this up because despite the similarities between ecology and economics it strikes me that ecologists often have a difficult time admitting that the parameters of the model which they think they have a good grasp of may not always be fixed. Incentives and innovation can shift the dynamics radically.”

OAK RIDGE: ‘Spectacular numbers’ out of ORNL’s hybrid test unit for Titan supercomputer.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanomachines and molecular motors can make use of thermal noise.

READER STEVEN KELLMEYER ASKS ME TO PLUG his book, Are You Smarter Than The President?

In my case, almost certainly. I got into Yale Law, while he had to settle for Harvard.

ROBERT FARAGO: Why Gun Control Will Never Find Favor in the United States.

FREE SPEECH UPDATE: Maryland Court Dissolves Injunction Against Blogger; Massachusetts Judge Orders Blogger to Take Down Blog Posts. “Massachusetts District Court Judge Bethzaida Sanabria-Vega issued a ‘harassment prevention order’ against a blogger, Dan Valenti, whose web site provided critical coverage of the actions of Meredith Nilan, the daughter of a senior court official, who struck a pedestrian with her car (leaving him with a broken neck), and then drove off (she was charged with leaving the scene of a personal injury accident and negligent operation of a motor vehicle, but in a deal with prosecutors, she will avoid any jail time in the case). The judge ordered Valenti to stop blogging about Nilan, demanding that he take down his prior blog posts about her, and remove ‘any and all references’ to Nilan on ‘any and all’ web sites. . . . The judge’s order violates Massachusetts law, not just the First Amendment.”

THE ECONOMIST ON THE LIBOR SCANDAL: The Rotten Heart of Finance. So what other numbers can’t we trust? And what does an economy where people realize you can’t trust the numbers look like?

UPDATE: Reader Eric Schubert writes: “The answer is China.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Out of College, Out of Work: Number of College Grads With Jobs Dropped 406,000 in June.

Related: 780,000 More Women Unemployed Today Than When Obama Took Office.