CARIBBEAN WORRIES: Threatwatch: Chikungunya may explode with rainy season. “Chikungunya virus, which causes fever and debilitating pain, has spread around the Caribbean, made landfall in South America, and could travel still further with the tourists who flock to the region for carnival season and winter breaks. With rains – and mosquitoes – due to surge in the Caribbean in coming months, the virus poses the greatest threat to the tropical Americas, possibly including places still blissfully unaware they harbour it.”

Bring back DDT.

WHAT IT’S LIKE to drive a Ferrari 288 GTO.

SAVE BIG AT THE Amazon Spring Outlet Event. An “event” is like a sale, only more, er, eventful.

Plus, deals on Bestselling Products, updated every hour. Get ’em before they’re gone.

ADVICE TO PARENTS on college tours. “Keep your designs sub rosa, because the minute you say, ‘I’d love to see you at UMass Amherst,’ she’ll set her heart on Sarah Lawrence. That one little sentence can cost you $40,000.” My advice is to communicate a realistically limited budget up front.

FASTER, PLEASE: Nanomolecular origami boxes hold big promise for energy storage.

THE NUMBERS BEHIND Japan’s Renewed Embrace of Nuclear Power. “The Fukushima disaster led Japan to shut down nuclear power plants, but three years of rising costs and carbon dioxide emissions are forcing it to reverse course.” Fukushima was obsolete anyway. New nuclear plants are better, and some truly excellent technology is beginning to appear.

MICHAEL TOTTEN HAS A NEW NOVEL OUT, Resurrection. There are zombles. It’s just $5.99 on Kindle.

HOW A GAS LEAK can destroy a building.

TENNESSEE MAKES THE “UNDERRATED” LIST, with a reputation well in excess of its U.S. News ranking. Over- and under-rated law schools.

FUKUSHIMA: Three Years Later.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 309.

THE POLITICS OF LOUSY RETAIL JOBS:

Those of us of a certain age probably remember our own crap retail jobs with a certain amount of fondness — more fondness than we probably viewed them with at the time. We were young, our backs and feet didn’t hurt after a long shift, and the worst that happened when our shifts ran long is that we had less time to spend on the phone with our friends.

Those jobs were not particularly convenient or pleasant, and they sure didn’t pay well. But they were the best we could do, and they gave us spending money while someone else paid the mortgage.

These days, it seems that a lot more people are finding that these jobs in fast food or retail are “the best we can do”; it’s no longer housewives and teenagers looking for some extra income. Meanwhile, in many ways the work has gotten worse. Employers, themselves facing brutal competition, are using software packages to help them schedule workers in ways that maximize their profitability while maximizing inconvenience to employees. Hours are kept low to ensure that workers don’t qualify for overtime, much less benefits — and because the software requires employees to make available many more hours than they actually get, they often can’t even string together two part-time jobs to make a full-time income.

Meanwhile, the folks scheduling them are often people who would like to get a better job with more opportunity but can’t find one. They too feel trapped in jobs that don’t pay much but require too many hours for them to pick up a second shift somewhere else.

These workers may not be numerous enough to succeed in unionizing Wal-Mart. But they are numerous enough to make up a powerful political force. It’s no wonder the Obama administration is focusing on issues such as the minimum wage and overtime that appeal to them. What will be surprising is if this doesn’t show up in the 2016 campaign.

Actually, my feet did hurt after a 12-hour shift at Miller’s Department Store. But the basic political point is right. Obama’s minimum-wage gambit is destructive, but appealing to some. The GOP’s challenge is to come up with something that’s constructive, and also appealing. Maybe they should go back to lowering middle- and lower-class people’s taxes.

DO TELL: Why It’s So Hard for Obama to Be Tough on Russia: The president needs Putin as his ally to accomplish his most ambitious second-term goals. Prediction: Putin will take him to the cleaners.

RETREATING ON ALL FRONTS: U.S. To Relinquish Control Over The Internet.

AT AMAZON, spring markdowns in Home & Kitchen.

Plus, deals for National Crafting Month. Including this gadget, which I would never use but which looks quite cool. This is the 21st Century, you know.

Also, today only: Harman Kardon CL Precision On-Ear Headphones with Extended Bass, $64.99 (75% off).

A SMALL VICTORY IN THE WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY: Landmark Settlement Reached In Preakness Arrest Case.

A Baltimore City lawsuit settlement sparks major police policy and training reforms that affect everyone with a cell phone camera.

Derek Valcourt has details on the change and what it means to you.

The police department is putting it into writing so their officers fully understand. You can record them and they can’t do anything about it. First Amendment advocates call it a major victory.

When police made an arrest at Pimlico four years ago, Christopher Sharp was one of several recording. Officers didn’t like it.

“Do me a favor and turn that off. It’s illegal to record anybody’s voice or anything else,” an officer told Sharp.

But that’s not true.

Sharp says the officers took his phone and deleted videos, including family videos.

“I still am disturbed about what happened,” Sharp said.

Now, four years and an ACLU-backed lawsuit later, city police agreed to a sweeping settlement: money to Sharp and his attorneys, a formal written apology from the police commissioner and, most importantly, a new department policy spelling out expectations of city officers being recorded.

“I think it’s pretty clear people have the right to film what we do. You guys are doing it right now so it should be a norm for this organization,” Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said.

As part of the new policy, all officers going through training will be taught that they can never tell you to stop recording as long as you’re somewhere where you have a right to be and no officer can confiscate your phone just because you have video that they don’t want you to see.

It’s a start.

JAMES TARANTO: The Big Shes: The paradox of the “Ban Bossy” campaign.

Perhaps an aversion to “bossy” people–and a sensitivity to being perceived as “bossy”–is simply a corollary of that attraction to those who are “helpful.” As Benenson observes: “Girls’ and women’s friendships are intense and exclusive and strictly egalitarian, so no one gets ahead.”

But if boys have a natural affinity for hierarchy, that doesn’t mean they’re born leaders. Functioning in a hierarchical group requires the ability to follow as well as to lead–and such a group typically includes a lot more followers than leaders. Perhaps girls’ distaste for “bossiness” arises in part because they, more than boys, dislike being told what to do.

In which case, paradoxically enough, they may be put off by the imperative mood of the “Ban Bossy” campaign.

Well, since the whole thing is just astroturf battlespace preparation for Hillary, who cares? Though it did give us this bumpersticker.

SO, KIND OF ORANGE-ISH, THEN? Molly Ball On Charlie Crist: Is This What Post-Partisanship Looks Like? Best line:

“It’s quite unbelievable that Charlie Crist is getting away with this reinvention of himself—this rewriting of history for blatantly political purposes,” Navarro says, stabbing at her salad. “Other than his gender, the guy has flip-flopped on everything, and I don’t put that past him either.”

Heh.

SURE, WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Army To Cut Combat Brigades. “Campbell did not say exactly how few active-duty brigades the Army could afford to have with the smaller Army, which is being cut from 510,000 soldiers currently. But he said the number of brigades would have to be reduced to below 32, the number tied to a troop strength of 490,000. The Army had 45 brigades last year.”

REMAIN CALM, ALL IS WELL: Pelosi: ObamaCare Won’t Hurt Democrats.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Minnesota Daily Photos of Student Alcohol & Drug Use Raise Eyebrows, Concerns.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: College group’s diversity event canceled after excluding white people.

An event meant to celebrate diversity and combat racism at a Washington state community college has been cancelled after a flier emailed to guests said white people weren’t invited.

A group of employees, under the name “Staff, Faculty and Administrators of Color,” at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia sent an invitation to all 300 staffers to attend a diversity “happy hour,” a local news station reported.

School officials were asked to reply to the invitation to find out the confidential date and time of when the event would be held. According to the station, the invite made it clear white people were not invited.

“If you want to create space for white folks to meet and work on racism, white supremacy, and white privilege to better our campus community and yourselves, please feel free to do just that,” the email read.

Diversity and Equity Center staffer Karama Blackhorn helped write the invitation and said she stands by her opinion that staff members of color would have a more honest discussion about race without white people there.

We understand. “Diversity” means never being made uncomfortable by people who don’t look the right way.

THE ECONOMIST: Rand Paul’s Foreign Policy: Free The Gas Companies, Free The World.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “The professor is a feminist studies professor and her specialty is pornography, and she did commit an act of violence against another woman. So, the irony there to us is rather great.”