FOOD AID: Helping Whom, Exactly? “It is the sad fate of American overseas food aid to occupy a policy ‘sweet spot’, says Chris Barrett, an expert in the subject at Cornell University. Its budget, the largest of any country’s, is big enough to attract rapacious special interests, but still sufficiently small and complex that its scandalous inefficiencies rarely make headlines.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Is Online Learning For Steerage?

Thus, it seems likely that lower-income and budget-strapped students will make the most use of online learning technologies. This is all well and good to the extent that more students will have access to higher education. Still, online college programs could further stratify our higher education system, dividing those educated at an “authentic” full-fare university and those who received their degrees from online programs.

We can therefore anticipate the formation of three distinct groups of students. Well-off students will attend the few colleges and universities that are wealthy enough to eschew standardization and automation. They alone will have real relationships with great faculty. A second, less wealthy group of students will use online courses for their general education and attend “authentic” institutions for a short while. For poorer students, online learning could well become the main course. They will attend institutions that, strictly speaking, grant post-high school credentials to the coach class.

The thing about traveling steerage is, you still get there. And the current system is really pretty stratified already.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

OFFICER TRAINING NEEDS SOME WORK: $25,000 For Woman Arrrested For Recording Police.

The settlement is a little small, but nevertheless it proves the point that arresting people for filming police in a public place is not a good idea for the police.

I have only one gripe, though: I think any settlement should include mandatory re-training of the officers with required reading of A Due Process Right To Record the Police followed by a test on the subject.

I agree!

4TH CIRCUIT: Open Carry Of A Firearm Isn’t Probable Cause To Detain.

AT AMAZON, 25% off Rosetta Stone language software.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama: The Fall. “From king of the world to dead in the water in six months. Quite a ride.”

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the next President of the United States. An amusing video.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Rick Perry’s totally awesome NRA convention video.

DIETETICALLY INCORRECT AFTER FIVE MONTHS: Scott Johnson reports on following the Gary Taubes approach. “As of today, I am down around 25 pounds. Eliminating desserts from my diet and overcoming the craving for them after meals seem like an accomplishment, but I am also eating substantially less than I did before the diet, without trying.”

GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE: Snow continues delay of spring planting. So are we living in Fallen Angels? Or is this a John Ringo scenario?

Let’s hope it’s neither!

ONE WEEK WITH NO FOOD. “Eliminating the simple act of eating frees up much more time than you’d think.”

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Sources: U.S. believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria.

SCIENCE: Antibiotic Protects Men from Being Too Trusting of Attractive Women.

YEAH, BUT HOW MANY ROUNDS CAN HE HAVE, SINCE HE’S AGAINST FULL-CAPACITY MAGAZINES? Obama vows to keep at gun control: ‘This is just the first round.’

REMEMBERING 1977, the year of the 50lb portable computer. Heck, I had a Kaypro4 in the mid-1980s (not one but two floppy drives, and they were double-sided double-density!) and it wasn’t much lighter than that. “The 5100 wasn’t the first personal computer. The MITS Altair beat it to market by a few months. But it was the first portable computer — arguably. Fifty pounds may seem bulky today — and, no you couldn’t use it unless you plugged it into the wall — but the 5100 arrived at a time when most machines were still the size of your desk. If not larger.”

Video at the link, complete with “late-70s business types.”

SLEEP DEPRIVATION: The next public health target? Could they not put their effort into actual diseases? You know, that antibiotic-resistant TB isn’t going to cure itself. Or the gonorrhea . . . .

UK TO SCOTLAND: You’ll Miss Us If You Go.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Put the “u” in “neighbour.” “The University of Windsor sits just across the Canadian border from Detroit, yet Americans make up just 82 of its nearly 2,000 international students. So the Canadian institution is trying to woo those south of the border, by cutting its tuition in half for Americans.”

UPDATE: Several readers point out that Windsor is actually south of Detroit, but I think the “south of the border” reference is to Canada/America generally.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Jemima Khan investigates why more and more Muslim women in Britain are choosing to become “co-wives.” “Career women don’t want a full-time husband. They don’t have time. . . . Actually, that’s not right. In late twenties a girl is considered past it, so this arrangement is the best she can get.”

AT AMAZON, coupons galore on Groceries.

Also, lawn mowers on sale.

MICKEY KAUS: Rubio: ‘Get Me Rewrite!’

URBAN IMPROVEMENT: Stepping Up to Restore Cincinnati’s Neglected Pedestrian Stairways.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Silicene: Silicon’s Answer To Graphene. “On the list of potential post-silicon materials for electronics and chips is none other than silicon. More specifically, silicene — 2D sheets of hexagonally arranged silicon atoms, structurally analogous to graphene. . . . What fascinates me most is the notion that a material on the nanoscale could replace its own bulk-scale counterpart for advanced, future applications – a great example of the wonder of the nanoscale.”

THAT’S OKAY, IT’S ABOUT CONTROL, NOT HEALTH: Study: Giving People Government Health Insurance May Not Make them Any Healthier. One of the most important health insurance studies ever done shows surprisingly little effect.

PROGRESS: Scientists Advance Asteroid Detection, Deflection, Detonation Research. Faster, please.