I WONDER HOW IT COMPARES TO THE DYMAXION CAR? Jay Leno drives the oddball three-wheeled Davis Divan.

I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE GOTTEN A RIDE: What Made the SR-71 Blackbird Such a Badass Plane: The story of a supersonic legend.

HE’S REALLY ON A ROLL LATELY: Yet another paper from my colleague Maurice Stucke, this time co-authored with Allen P. Grunes of The Konkurrenz Group: No Mistake About it: The Important Role of Antitrust in the Era of Big Data.

GOOD. HE WAS BASICALLY SERVED UP AS A SCAPEGOAT: Judge won’t dismiss lawsuit from band director fired over sexual assault accusations.

Last year, Waters was fired after an internal investigation (which conveniently coincided with an investigation by the Department of Education for Title IX investigations) revealed a “sexualized” culture within the band that Waters failed to adequately stop. Complaints included hazing of new band members (that only a small percentage of the 225-member band found objectionable), an unofficial songbook containing vulgar lyrics for OSU fight songs and an allegedly mishandled sexual assault accusation.

The hazing and other traditions predated Waters, but in the current environment of Title IX witch hunts, someone had to be held accountable. Waters says that OSU officials told him he would be allowed to keep his job if he adopted a “zero-tolerance” policy. Then, two weeks later, he was fired. Shortly thereafter, the Department of Education ended its investigation into OSU, even citing the firing as one reason.

They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, prudes would be mounting sexual witch-hunts on America’s college campuses. And they were right!

CALORIE LABELS NOT RELIABLE. “An adult aiming to take in 2,000 calories a day on a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may actually be consuming several hundred calories less, he and other experts said. Calorie estimates for junk foods, particularly processed carbohydrates, are more accurate.” Maybe this is one reason high-protein diets promote weight loss — you’re actually eating less than you think!

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 720.

THE BLUE-CITY MODEL:  The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial today, explaining how the Baltimore riots demonstrate the utter failure of progressivism in urban America:

The men and women in charge have been Democrats, and their governing ideas are “progressive.” This model, with its reliance on government and public unions, has dominated urban America as once-vibrant cities such as Baltimore became shells of their former selves. In 1960 Baltimore was America’s sixth largest city with 940,000 people. It has since shed nearly a third of its population and today isn’t in the top 25.

The dysfunctions of the blue-city model are many, but the main failures are three: high crime, low economic growth and failing public schools that serve primarily as jobs programs for teachers and administrators rather than places of learning.

Exactly.  John Nolte over at Breitbart has a similar take:

Baltimore is not America’s problem or shame. That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem. Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor. . . .

Liberalism and all the toxic government dependence and cronyism and union corruption and failed schools that comes along with it, has run amok in Baltimore for a half-century, and that is Baltimore’s problem. . . .

Poverty has nothing to do with it. This madness and chaos and anarchy is a Democrat-driven culture that starts at the top with a racially-divisive White House heartbreakingly effective at ginning up hate and violence.

Nolte’s right:  The rioting in Ferguson and Baltimore isn’t driven by poverty, race, or even police brutality.  It’s driven by progressive culture, which teaches that successful business people “didn’t build that,” accepts abortion/divorce/children out of wedlock as normal behavior, proclaims that poor children (particularly minorities) cannot succeed, that police and authority in general are the “enemy,” and that law is rigged against minorities.  Urban music, “leaders” like Al Sharpton, and a Democrat strategy of balkanizing Americans through identity politics–echoed daily by mainstream media–has created a culture that has no respect for the rule of law.  In the eyes of progressives, the American Dream is dead, and they are literally dancing on its grave.

Until this progressive culture changes (if it ever can) or is marginalized politically, we will have lawless behavior every time these destructive, sociopathic cultural expectations are reinforced by tragedies like the deaths of Michael Brown or Freddie Gray.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Blame the Machines.

In late July 2013, 16-year-old Pablo Garcia, who was in the hospital for a routine colonoscopy to check on his congenital gastrointestinal condition, began complaining of numbness and tingling all over his body. Soon he was having seizures. What caused this strange condition? His medication, it turned out: He’d been given 39 times too much antibiotic. How this occurred is the subject of a fascinating piece on Medium, which I urge you all to read. But if I had to condense its five parts’ worth of fascinating insights into one sentence, here’s how it would read: “Machines make us stupid.”

For example, I spent three months traveling last fall, with only a few weekends in the District of Columbia. By the time I returned, I had forgotten the number of our landline. To be sure, we don’t use it very often. Still. We’ve had that number for five years. I forgot it in less than one football season.

But of course, I no longer need to remember phone numbers. I have a cell phone for that. For any other knowledge I need handy, I have a computer. For anything I need to learn, there’s Google. In some sense, this means that I have a better memory and wider knowledge than I used to. But if I’m cut off from these tools, I am suddenly a moron.

I make a point of not using a calculator, and of remembering phone numbers, as much as I can for that very reason. Use it or lose it.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Martin O’Malley’s Passive-Aggressive Campaign Against Hillary Clinton: The underdog won’t say Clinton’s name, but behind the scenes, he’s going after her.

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MARTIN O’MALLEY VISITS BALTIMORE: “White hipster kids in granny glasses and 1990s tennis warm-up outfits walked with an air of adventure.”

QUINN HILYER ON THE LATEST FROM GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY: My Alma Mater Makes A Fool Of Itself. “Both the campus paper of record, the Hoya, and the Georgetown Center for Student Engagement (yes, I kid you not, that’s the name of an official department of the university), have done even more to embarrass themselves than did the students who posted ‘trigger warnings’ that Ms. Sommers might say things that upset somebody.”

Cost of attending Georgetown: $67,520 per year. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

THEY DO SEEM TO ALWAYS HAPPEN IN DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES: How to Stop the Next Urban Race Riot? Ask a Republican.

BYRON YORK: Time For Ben Carson To Run A Real Race.

Ben Carson will declare his presidential candidacy in Detroit next Monday. Not a minute too soon.

The retired neurosurgeon and conservative star formed a presidential exploratory committee on March 3. Since then, he’s been traveling around the country in what might be called a non-strategic way — making paid speeches that he had longstanding commitments to give, appearing at events for his Carson Scholars Fund (which awards money to promising students around the country) and, in other ways, not directing any particular focus on the key early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. . . .

Carson will announce in Detroit. It’s a natural choice, since it is not just Carson’s hometown, but also a good political choice because some conservatives see the city, mired in bankruptcy and general, long-running decline, as a laboratory for new policies that could reverse its fortunes. Carson could direct special attention to the city’s problems.

Carson can also, with a well-done rollout next Monday, bring new attention to his fledgling campaign that would stop his slide in the polls. “It’s safe to say that all of the declared candidates so far have seen pops around their announcement,” notes Murray. “We see a great opportunity as Ben starts to define his message and positions on issues.”

Whatever Carson does, it will stand out from the rest of the field. Calling his approach to the 2016 race “unorthodox” would be an understatement. Carson speeches, even in a political setting, can seem more like TED talks on the values that brought him success in the decidedly non-political field of brain surgery. At the same time, Carson has deflected policy questions by saying he is not yet a candidate and is still studying the issues.

That ends soon.

I see more Ben Carson stickers around Knoxville than for any other candidate, for whatever that’s worth.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: North Carolina Legislation Would Require All UNC Faculty To Teach Eight Courses Per Year. You’re going to see a lot more of this, but, like Scott Walker, they’re focusing on faculty because faculty are visible, and missing that most of the higher education bloat comes from administration.

I can recommend some reading on this for the North Carolina legislature.

ROLL CALL: Senators Urge Action on FBI’s Use of Faulty Forensic Evidence.

A group of Democratic senators on Tuesday urged action from the Justice Department and the FBI in response to a recent FBI study showing erroneous and invalid testimony in 96 percent of cases analyzed involving microscopic hair analysis.

The study also revealed 32 defendants of the 257 cases found to be prosecuted on faulty forensic evidence had been sentenced to death.

“We are deeply disturbed to learn that hundreds of potentially innocent defendants were imprisoned or even executed based at least in part on flawed evidence,” the senators wrote. “We commend the Department of Justice (“the Department”) and the FBI for voluntarily undertaking this review. We now request that you take steps to correct the incredible injustices the review has revealed and to strengthen the science and standards underpinning forensic science.”

The letter calls for a three-pronged response to the study: that the Justice Department review the use of microscopic hair analysis in prosecutions by the FBI; that the Justice Department give those who have been convicted using erroneous microscopic hair analysis evidence a “full and fair opportunity to challenge their convictions” instead of simply just being informed of the error; and that the Justice Department and FBI work with the National Academy of Sciences and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to review the processes and standards of other disciplines of forensic science to identify opportunities for “stronger standards, better training, and further scientific research.”

“Faulty” is being kind. “Fraudulent” might be more accurate.

THE HILL: GOP leader: Gas tax hike ‘politically impossible.’

A gas-tax hike is dead on arrival in Congress, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday.

Transportation advocates have pushed to increase or index to inflation the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax as lawmakers scramble to come up with a way to pay for an extension of an infrastructure funding measure that is scheduled to expire on May 31.

McCarthy said Tuesday that lawmakers are not willing to ask drivers to pay more at the pump to finance new transportation projects.

People feel like gas is expensive enough.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The George Washington University Tramples Free Speech, Ignores Context in Suspending Student for Indian Swastika Posting. As I mentioned the other day, this is getting a lot of negative treatment in the Indian press, and I would think that GWU wouldn’t want to appear hostile to lucrative foreign students. But I feel like the student-recruiting people don’t have much of a voice where the student-thought-police bureaucrats are concerned.

WE’LL BE DOING SOME SITE MAINTENANCE LATER TONIGHT. The page should stay up, but comments, etc. may be a bit hinky at times.

TROLL LEVEL: Grandmaster.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ORAL ARGUMENTS:  The audio is available here, if you are curious to hear the arguments.  A good, short analysis of various Justices’ questions and comments, can be found here.

ANTI-PATRIOTISM IS THE FIRST REFUGE OF SCOUNDRELS: Whole Foods Blasted Online After Making Sandwiches for Members of the National Guard in Baltimore.

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WELL, OF COURSE THEY DID: Naval Midshipmen, Caught in Baltimore Riots, Direct Families to Safety.