TITLES OF NOBILITY: My USA Today column for tomorrow: Stop privileges for government officials.

MOJO DISAPPEARING? “Designed By Doofuses In California.” “The slogan ‘Designed by Apple in California’ is designed to keep us from thinking about how these things are not manufactured in California or anywhere else in America. You’re not supposed to think of any possible suffering that has taken place making this things. You’re supposed to imagine — ♫ imagine there’s no factories, I wonder if you can — that these nifty items sprang fully formed from the minds of Californians.”

SO “SEXUAL HARASSMENT” IS JUST “ATTENTION FROM A GUY YOU AREN’T ATTRACTED TO?” Bob Filner’s Sexual Harassment Victims Would Have Been Down If It Came From Ryan Gosling Instead.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law School Applicants Decline, Especially Among Graduates of Elite Colleges. “Across the board, the number of people applying to matriculate in fall 2012 was 67,700, down about 17 percent from the number who applied to matriculate in fall 2008 (82,000). The average decline in applicants who graduated from the ‘elite’ schools was 28 percent.”

SCOTT RASMUSSEN: The Digital Threat To The Political Class.

IS ROBOSEXUALITY A CHOICE, OR IS IT INBORN? Will we ever want to have sex with robots? Don’t ask Matt Yglesias about this, as he’s a notorious robophobe.

SPACE: Andrew Moseman: The Dream Chaser Is Getting Dangerously Close to Actually Flying. “During a two-hour test performed yesterday at Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., a helicopter carried the Dream Chaser up to a maximum altitude of 12,400 feet, according to Sierra Nevada. Although the craft was not providing its own thrust, engineers turned on the space plane’s flight computer, guidance control, and other electronic systems. They deployed the landing gear and nose skid, too. All performed according to plan, paving the way for Dream Chaser to make real test flights in the autumn.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Your Unhealthy Love For Public Health In 14 Images.

DOES THIS REFLECT WORSE ON THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, OR ON TULANE? Former US attorney throws book at James O’Keefe, calls him ‘snail,’ hobbit, ‘spud,’ ‘asshole.’ “Former U.S. attorney and assistant Tulane University Dean Jim Letten unleashed a barrage of verbal abuse at conservative ‘guerrilla journalist’ James O’ Keefe and his film crew in an altercation on Tulane’s campus early last month. . . . In the video, O’Keefe also points out that Letten’s tirade seems to stand in contrast with the school’s speech code which calls on members of the community to ‘speak and act with scrupulous respect for the human dignity of others.'” Well, you know, not Republicans.

And isn’t hurling an object at someone an assault?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 11 Signs You May Be Dating A Sociopath. Luckily, our political system screens out these people so that they can’t hold important offices. . . .

TRIAGE: Amtrak Chose Not To Deluge Penn Station During Hurricane Sandy. “While Hurricane Sandy raged over the New York metropolitan area, the underground infrastructure of the city began to flood. Now Amtrak is revealing that they could have let Penn Station flood instead of the East River tunnels, using a long-forgotten barrier designed to protect the city during World War II. . . . A former employee told WNYC that the barrier was created to protect the transportation system from attack and other explosions during the Second World War, but it was apparently never used. The barrier worked by cutting off the mouth of the tunnel, but a lake would have been created right at the entrance to Penn Station and could have filled the entire thing. . . . To try to rehabilitate all that would have been an enormous task, even bigger than the cleanup we currently face. As it stands, the Montague Tunnel, which carries the subway system’s R train under the East River, was completely flooded, and now faces a 14-month long shutdown and repair. Cutting one subway line in half is one thing. Cutting Amtrak in half, at least in the Northeast, is another.”

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Are “courtesy flushes” useful — or healthy? “It may shock you, but get this: There has never been a widespread study conducted on the sanitation or the necessity of the courtesy flush. Before we nod knowingly about how it’s just like Big Toilet to cover up the facts, you should know that we do have some ancillary information that might just give us a glimpse into the science of the courtesy flush.”

PREDICTION: “Sex tourism” will lose its stigma as more women take it up.

LIKE MOST SUCH CRUSADES, IT’S TURNED INTO A RACKET: Ban E-Cigarettes? The Anti-Smoking Lobby’s Clueless Crusade. I mean, there always has to be a new target, or people are out of a job.

DON’T BE EVIL: Google breaks ChromeCast’s ability to play local content. “Bad news for all ChromeCast users who were thinking of being able to stream local content to their HD TVs. Google has pushed an update for ChromeCast which has broken support for 3rd party apps like AirCast (AllCast) which allow users to ‘stream’ local files from their devices to ChromeCast connected TV sets.”

THEY HAD A BETTER CLASS OF CRIMINALS BACK THEN, TOO: 1920s Mugshots Are Way More Glamorous Than Today’s Mugshots.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Isn’t Lobster Cheap?

KYLE SMITH: Baffled By Teen Boys, Schools Keep Trying To Turn Them Into Girls. Surprise: It’s Not Working.

It’s a diversity problem.

FROM BRADLEY AREHEART, ET AL., Accommodating Every Body. “This Article contends that workplace accommodations should be predicated on need or effectiveness instead of group identity status.” I dunno, “group identity status” seems to be the in thing, lately.

FRANK MINITER TRIES OUT 3-Gun Shooting.

#WARONPHOTOGRAPHY: No Charges for Detroit Cop who Snatched Phone from Reporter, Stole SIM Card, so it Could “Not be Used as a Weapon.” Tar. Feathers.

WELL, YES. AND THEY’RE INTENDED TO: Obama’s race remarks exacerbate tensions. “We do know this much for certain: Had the races been reversed, the usual suspects would have had much to say. White teens beat up an elderly black veteran and leave him for dead? White teens shoot a talented black athlete visiting from another country? Riots. I make these observations not to exacerbate a problem but in the hope that we can stop this craziness before things escalate.”

Still, that columnists for the Washington Post are now pointing out things that bloggers noticed a year ago bodes poorly for the White House.

NAZI HUNTING: Not a growth industry, but not dead yet: “I’m aware, of course, that Nazi hunts continue. But surely, they cannot go on much longer, since not only the men, but also the witnesses are rapidly dying off. Assigning a plausible age to the younger criminals — say, someone who was 20 in 1942 — puts even the very youngest in their early 90s. Only 11 percent of the men born in the U.S. in 1922 are still alive, and the longevity for a European who lived through World War II is much lower. Those who are alive today can expect to live less than four years more. There are of course outliers. But the fact remains, we’re looking at the joint probability of two events that are themselves becoming more unlikely: uncovering a Nazi decades after he discarded his identity, and that Nazi being alive. The odds that the ones you uncover will be the ones who are still alive is necessarily much smaller than the already unlikely individual events.”

POLL: Young, Old, Democrat and Republican Agree: The Federal Government Sucks.