SARAH PALIN: “So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria? And I’m the idiot?”

IT’S LIKE THE LATTER PART OF BUSH’S SECOND TERM: White House Peeved At Pentagon Leaks.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “American values . . . are also offended by looking for health code violations because you don’t like someone’s political opinions.”

That’s the old America. Those who voted for Obama voted for a different set of values, whether they realized it or not.

LOVING RITA HAYWORTH at Fred Lapides’ Good Stuff Blogging Magazine.

CHANGE: From 3D Printing to 3D Faxing.

KRAUTHAMMER ON SYRIA: “This is a complete humiliation for the Obama administration. Forget about the narrative of what Obama wants to do, which I think is a bad idea, but let’s assume it’s a good idea. This involves the elementary conduct of international diplomacy, trying to get some allies aboard so you don’t act unilaterally. And here is Obama trying to gather an ally or two for a pinprick and he gets nothing.”

UPDATE: Charli Carpenter: Don’t Call This A Humanitarian Intervention.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Flashback: Biden Threatens Bush Impeachment For Military Strike Without Congressional Approval. Video at the link.

DITHERING HAS ITS PRICE: Obama Poll Numbers Drop to Record Lows, Partly Thanks to Syria.

FASTER, PLEASE: Age-Related Memory Lapses May Be Reversible.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Video: Assembly and Manipulation of Molecules at the Atomic Scale.

AT AMAZON, hourly “Lightning Deals” in the Off To College store.

Also, a reminder: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your shopping through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you put a little money in my family’s pocket at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. It’s much appreciated!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: When Is College Worth It?

Even if some students who could benefit from college aren’t going, we can’t conclude that all the students attending now belong there. A few simple statistics undergird most critiques of college-for-all, and they’re worth repeating here.

While 66 percent of high-school grads head to two- or four-year colleges in the fall, almost half fail to graduate in six years — and six years is pretty much the norm for four-year-degree students. Up to 40 percent of undergrads need remedial courses because they are not ready for college-level work. According to one assessment, close to half of students don’t measurably improve their skills in a number of areas over their years in college. Meanwhile, even before the recession, about 25 percent of recent grads were “mal-employed,” meaning they were in a job that didn’t actually require a degree.

Staunch defenders of the “college wage premium” often point out that college is correlated with moderately higher earnings even in these cases — i.e., college dropouts and mal-employed grads make a bit more than people who stopped after high school. But it’s awfully difficult to see how, say, a given waitress or bartender is more valuable with a college degree than without.

More likely, people who managed to get into college and/or graduate have other qualities that employers value, as outlined above in No. 2. At most, their college admission or diploma signaled those qualities during the hiring process, thus increasing income in a way that had nothing to do with anything they learned.

Read the whole thing.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: This Woman Has A Boyfriend But Wants To Have Sex With 100,000 Men. “So far, she’s off to a solid start with 284 men.” I don’t think the math works, but if I were the boyfriend I think I’d be moving on along.

HEALTH BENEFITS OF WORKING AT A STANDING DESK.

Some standing desks are kind of pricey, but this is cheap.

THE WAGES OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Obama No Longer Commands Respect.

Related: 5 Ways Obama’s Unseriousness Has Been Exposed by Syria Strike Chatter.

AT THE VICTORY GIRLS, a love letter.

HORSE, BARN DOOR: Companies rush to lock Web domains after ‘NYT’ hack.

SCIENCE: Weight gain in ex-smokers likely caused by changes in intestinal bacteria, not increased appetite.

HMM: Is Google’s investment in Uber the start of a Nexus car program?

SOUNDS COMPLICATED: A Natural Gas / Diesel Hybrid.

UPDATE: David Kirkham writes: “It really isn’t complicated. It is common to run natural gas with diesel–especially with generators. It is an easy way of taking advantage of a cheap and clean fuel. The diesel fuel is used to ignite the natural gas. What really need is better electrical power storage systems so we can take advantage of electric motors.”

READER BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Reader Dick Stanley recommends Don Hatfield’s A Pocketful Of Cinders.

LOOKING TO GENES for the secrets to happiness.

20TH CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Divorcing At Dude Ranches. “From the early 1900s to about the mid-1970s, Reno, Nevada was the divorce capital of the United States. Most other states had very few grounds for divorce, along with up to three year waiting periods. Nevadans, on the other hand, could get divorced on nine different grounds, including mental cruelty (a close approximation to modern ‘irreconcilable differences’). The catch: if you were from out of state, you had to establish residency in Nevada for six weeks before you could get unhitched.”

KINDA LIKE OUR DIPLOMACY AND DEFENSE POLICY, AND OUR . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Space Experts: NASA Is Dangerously Adrift.

REALLY? REALLY? A journalist’s partner who was detained carrying thousands of British intelligence documents through Heathrow airport was also holding the password to an encrypted file written on a piece of paper, the government has disclosed.

Of course, the real embarrassment for the NSA is that they got rolled by these guys.

PRESIDENT UNILATERAL: U.S. willing to act alone on Syria attack: As British and other allies’ support for military action in Syria crumbles, the White House says ‘core interests’ are at stake.