DIY: A Tesla Coil Gun That Produces Foot-Long Sparks.

The debugging took a while: “I’d switch it on, and nothing would happen, so I’d switch it off. Then I’d switch it on again and set something on fire.”

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Blowing it with Syria and Turkey.

STAIRWAY TO HELL: The Jacobs Ladder, also known as my least favorite fitness machine.

THE ARRIVAL OF BIODEGRADABLE CLOTHING.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: If I Fly a UAV Over My Neighbor’s House, Is It Trespassing?

ANOTHER GOOD QUESTION: Should the Pentagon respect North Korea’s intellectual property?

WELL, THEY’RE SETTING THEMSELVES UP FOR A RUN OF “BAD LUCK,” ANYWAY: Is Cayman Committing Economic Suicide? “Cayman rose from a poor Caribbean backwater to an entity having a per capita income roughly on par with the US over the last four decades. There is little real poverty, relatively good infrastructure, low crime, and a well developed tourist industry, making Cayman a very attractive place to live and work. Cayman’s Achilles heel is that it is a functioning democracy where the civil servants have a disproportionate influence – like in Greece, and in many towns and cities in the US. Because of the large number of expats living in Cayman, only about half of the resident adult population has the right to vote. . . . The consequence is a bloated civil service with salaries and benefits growing far faster than the economy. Obviously this is not sustainable and has probably already passed the tipping point.”

GOOD QUESTION: Where’s our ‘Iron Curtain’ speech?

UM.  IN 08, IN DENVER, THIS WAS A FALSE FLAG OPERATION: Shot fired at Denver Obama campaign office. I’ll wait investigation of this one.

OF COURSE IT IS: US ambassador: Internet fee proposal gaining momentum. Socialist kleptocracies abroad are looking for more sources of Other People’s Money.

RELATED TO OUR EXPORTING CRUDE: Big Shocker: More Fraud Exposed in Green Carbon Trading Scheme.

OFFSHORING AMERICAN JOBS: US Prepares to Export Crude Oil

RAND SIMBERG NOT IMPRESSED with that Washington Examiner piece on SpaceX.

PUSHBACK: Ex-CIA chief: White House, not intel community, to blame for Benghazi.

So between blaming the CIA, and Hillary, for the Libya debacle, the White House has made some enemies. . . .

UPDATE: Tom Maguire asks: “Will this Obama/Biden message of ‘We killed Osama but they forgot to remind us about the blowback’ really carry them past the election? The buck stops where?” The buck stops under the bus.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Obama-Clinton Prisoner’s Dilemma. “Here, we have two public figures who both look negligent over a tragedy. And they hold grudges against each other going back. They can both get hammered together, or can try to minimize their damage by pinning blame on the other.”

MORE: “They October-surprised themselves.”

#GREENFAIL: IRS Says ‘Tax Avoidance’ at Heart of Solyndra Bankruptcy Plan. Seems kind of “unpatriotic,” doesn’t it? Maybe someone should ask Obama about this at the town-hall debate. . . .

BRAZIL: Massive Corruption Scandal Is Victory For Brazilian Courts. “In Brazil, a major corruption scandal is coming to a close as 20 of 38 defendants, mostly government officials, have been convicted for their involvement in in a vote-buying scheme. The convictions go as high up as former presidential chief of staff José Dirceu de Oliveira e Silva, who was convicted Tuesday of organizing the entire scheme. The case is drawing major attention not only because corruption usually goes unpunished in Brazil, but also because many of the officials worked under the widely popular former president Lula, who is denying the entire thing. While this may make things uncomfortable for current President Roussef, who was Lula’s protégé, it is surely an accomplishment for Brazil, which has often struggled with corruption and a court system easily influenced by corrupt politicans.”

HMM: “Once in a Civilization” Comet to Zip past Earth Next Year.

As long as they don’t mean that literally.

MAYBE THERE’S A REASON FOR CONCERN? Voter Registration Rolls in 2 States Are Called Vulnerable to Hackers

IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT engaging in a Meteor Grab?

IS RUSSIA getting ready to invade Georgia? Don’t worry. We’ll deploy “smart diplomacy!”

AT AMAZON, today’s Blu-Ray Deals.

JAMES TARANTO: Dr. Strangelaugh — Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iranian Bomb.

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength,” the longshoreman cum philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed. Hoffer died in 1983, so he probably wasn’t referring specifically to Joe Biden’s performance in last night’s debate. Still, the observation is fitting.

In addition to the vice president’s boorishness, a lot of observers noted that he frequently smiled and chuckled at inappropriate times–even during a discussion of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Republican National Committee quickly put out an ad consisting of nearly a minute of such clips followed by the caption: “Vice President Biden is laughing . . . Are you?” If Biden finds himself out of work in January, he may have a career ahead of him as a Fixodent pitchman.

So what’s with Dr. Strangelaugh? Let’s ask an evolutionary biologist. . . . A smile is an instinctive gesture of submission. Often the submission is mutual, as when two friends exchange smiles or when Maestripieri’s strangers break into small talk on the elevator. But when a man uncontrollably smiles at a potential or actual adversary, it is a show of weakness. That isn’t necessarily to say that Paul Ryan dominated Biden, although there is no question Ryan demonstrated self-control where Biden utterly lacked it. As some commentator or other (probably several of them) observed before the debate, Biden’s assigned task was to “right the ship” after the Barack Obama disaster. Since the ship has a titanic design flaw–a gaping O-shaped hole right in the hull–that was an impossible task. Biden had ample reason to find the situation intimidating.

And so he overcompensated for his weakness by acting the bully in an attempt to dominate Ryan. His behavior was not only consistent with Hoffer’s aphorism but in sharp contrast with that of Mitt Romney, who actually did dominate Obama in a coolly masterful way. If Biden’s rudeness was an imitation of strength, Romney’s poise was a display of the real thing.

Read the whole thing.

WELCOME TO THE REDISTRIBUTION RECESSION?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Hard Landing For University Endowments. “College and university endowment returns for the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30, are starting to roll in. And in many cases, they warrant a grade of “C” at best, and in some cases, an “F.” Harvard reported a 0.05 percent loss and a drop in its endowment of over $1 billion in the same period, even as a simple Standard & Poor’s 500 index fund gained about 5.5 percent. Harvard’s endowment decline is more than the entire endowments of roughly 90 percent of all colleges and universities.”

Who could have seen this coming?