AT AMAZON it’s the Kindle Daily Deal.

Also, this week’s featured 99-cent songs.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: FingerReader Is A Ring That Reads Out Printed Text To Visually Impaired People.

DRIFTING A BMW on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

WE’RE THE (OUT OF SHAPE) KIDS IN AMERICA: Young Americans Becoming Less Fit. “For the past few decades, accumulating data and anecdotal evidence have shown that children in the United States are becoming more sedentary. Less than a third of young people ages 12 to 18 are said to achieve the recommended levels of physical activity for their age group, which would be about an hour a day of exercise.”

Give ’em a copy of Rippetoe and a gym.

VIDEO: Electric Miata smokes Tesla Model S at the track. A Tesla Roadster would be a fairer comparison.

SCIENCE: How Scotch Distilleries Innovate Without Changing a Thing.

DAVE BRAT SLAMS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ON ISRAEL: An exclusive from PJM’s David Steinberg.

UPDATE: From David Goldman in Tel Aviv: “Sunny with Light Missile Cover.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 427.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Who’s The Real Hobby Lobby Bully?

Here’s the most interesting thing to me about the long, loud debate over the recent Hobby Lobby decision: Both sides believe that they are having someone else’s views forcibly imposed upon them. . . .

Cards on the table: I think that institutions Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor are obviously correct — they are being forced by the government to buy something that they don’t want to buy. We can argue about whether this is a good or a bad idea, but the fact that it is coercive seems indisputable. If it weren’t for state power, the Little Sisters of the Poor would be happily not facilitating the birth-control purchases of its employees; the Barack Obama administration has attempted to force them to do otherwise. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this coercion violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and it must therefore cease.

All this is old ground. The interesting question is why people on the other side view ceasing the coercion as itself coercive while arguing that the original law did not, in fact, force anyone to violate their religious beliefs.

I think a few things are going on here. The first is that while the religious right views religion as a fundamental, and indeed essential, part of the human experience, the secular left views it as something more like a hobby, so for them it’s as if a major administrative rule was struck down because it unduly burdened model-train enthusiasts. That emotional disconnect makes it hard for the two sides to even debate; the emotional tenor quickly spirals into hysteria as one side says “Sacred!” and the other side says, essentially, “Seriously? Model trains?” That shows in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent, where it seems to me that she takes a very narrow view of what role religious groups play in the lives of believers and society as a whole.

Not surprising, given her background.

WELL, IT’S PRETTY MUCH THE BUSINESS MODEL: Liberals go to the barricades to defend crony capitalism.

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Also, up to 25% off on select Food Deals.

NOW ON YOUTUBE: Proving Who’s the Daddy: Men Don’t Get a Fair Shake in Paternity Cases. The Insta-Wife interviews paternity fraud activist Carnell Smith in another video from the Detroit men’s rights conference.

#WARONWOMEN: Virginia Democrat Offers Reward For Nude Photos of Big Game Hunting Texas Tech Cheerleader Kendall Jones. “I’m sure she’s sent a nude selfie to some random guy out there who’s just waiting to expose her.”

ANNALS OF THE .0001 PERCENT: Following Her Parents’ Lead, Chelsea Clinton Takes Stage as a Paid Speaker, at $75,000 A Pop.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Obama’s Chickens, Our Roost: From the Middle East to Russia to our own southern border, Obama’s bills are coming due.

NEW CLASS PRIORITIES, BRITISH EDITION: Council blows £214,000 over five years on fruitless hunt for blogger who insulted councillors as he promised to ‘expose the truth.’

MICHAEL BARONE: Where do our political views come from? Presidential performance or policies with personal impact?

To get a sense of how people born in different years have differed, I looked at the percentages Republican or Democratic for those both in each year in the election of 2012 (the graphs show a percentage only for the majority party, and I calculated percentage Republican, assuming that 1 percent did not vote for either party). Viewed that way, the Republican percentages by birth year varied from a high of 56 percent (birth years 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968) to a low of 45 percent (birth years 1984, 1985).

Party preference doesn’t change much from birth year to birth year, usually remaining the same or changing by just 1 percent. But you do see some flexion points. Republicans predominated in 2012 among those born in birth years 1937-48 and 1955-80, Democrats among those born 1949-54 and 1981-1994. These dates tend to support Gitza-Gelman’s theory that perceived presidential performance shaped attitudes, but not entirely: those born 1937-48 turned 18 not only during the second Eisenhower presidency but in the Kennedy-Johnson years, including time when those Democratic presidents had high job approval; those born 1949-54 turned 18 mostly during Richard Nixon’s years in office, including some when he had high approval as well.

The biggest flexion point—the biggest difference between one birth year and the next—is between those born in 1954 (49 percent Republican) and those born in 1955 (53 percent Republican). That’s double any other difference between adjacent birth years. What accounts for that? I think it’s this. There was a military draft in 1972, the year those born in 1954 turned 18. There was no military draft in 1973, the year those born in 1955 turned 18.

I also note that the 2012 Republican percentage slipped below 50 percent among those born in 1949, who turned 18 in 1967, as we were ramping up to the maximum troop numbers in Vietnam.

Which is funny, as LBJ was President then, and people hadn’t yet started blaming the GOP for the war.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Inside Silicon Valley’s ‘jungle camp’ where hundreds of homeless live in tents, caves and tree huts – just a short walk from rows of digital millionaire’s mansions.

THE HOPE AND CHANGE JUST KEEPS GETTING HOPEY-CHANGIER: America’s Impending Tuberculosis Epidemic.

IRS COMMISSIONER: Hey, there’s absolutely nothing suspicious about Lois Lerner asking if Instant Messaging is searchable.

ROGER SIMON: Gaza War Continues: Hold the Hudna. “Maybe it’s time for a different approach. How about just…winning?” A war is won when the enemy utterly lacks the will and ability to keep fighting. The Israelis might give that a try.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Teens Are Having a Hard Time Getting Summer Jobs.

Hires of 16- to 19-year-olds in May and June dropped 12 percent in comparison to last year. The teen unemployment rate has been in decline in the past year, but this, according to the report, has mainly to do with teens who have dropped out of the job search in favor of less aggravating pursuits, like volunteer work, sports, and, presumably, hanging out.

This may not seem problematic, but recent research indicates that the summer unemployed might be losing ground to their working peers. A study out of the University of British Columbia published in the most recent issue of Research in the Sociology of Work found that teens who work evenings or summers are more likely to find better jobs and earn more money down the line.

The reason summer jobs can predict future success is that they allow teens to get acquainted with the working world and to expand their networks. Interestingly, it barely matters what the job consists of.

As I note in The New School, the other advantage of working is that it puts teenagers in a situation where they’re trying to win the approval of adults, rather than other teens.

DELUSIONAL: The Hill: Obama touts ‘pretty smart policies.’ “President Obama bragged the nation was ‘better off now than we were five years ago’ while touting the economic recovery in a campaign-style speech on Wednesday in Denver, arguing administration officials have made some ‘pretty smart policies.’ . . . The president has seen his popularity fade in his second term, besieged by crises abroad and controversies over mismanagement at federal agencies like the VA and the IRS.”

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: What Lois Lerner Told Her IRS Colleagues Not To Say In Emails. Consciousness of guilt.