GUT FEELINGS: Study reveals architecture of the ‘second brain,’ the enteric nervous system.

SHOCKER: “Fit but fat” may be a myth, study says.

CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: We Know Zika Is A Big Problem In Puerto Rico. We Just Don’t Know How Big.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Planning to Age In Place? Find A Good Contractor Now.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Journalists Have Emotional And Alcoholic Issues, Study Says.

A SHOCKING DISCOVER IN BOSTON: “The majority of individuals arrested last year for Class A drug trafficking in the city of Boston were not U.S. citizens and most of those non-citizens were Dominican foreign nationals.”

LEFTY SCOLDS WILL BE LEFTY SCOLDS: Store Selling ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ Shirt Under Attack, Accused of Breeding ‘Rape Culture.’

Doesn’t everything?

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Hoax Science Paper Says Penis Is a Social Construct that Worsens Climate Change.

Exit quote: “We assumed that if we were merely clear in our moral implications that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the paper published in a respectable journal.”

So science is totally schlonged, to coin a presidential phrase.

THIS IS CNN: Anderson Cooper ‘genuinely sorry’ for ‘crude’ remark directed at Jeffrey Lord:

CNN host Anderson Cooper apologized for a “crude” remark directed at President Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord during his show on Friday, calling his comment “unprofessional.”

During a segment on AC360, Cooper verbally sparred with Lord, a CNN political commentator, over revelations that Trump reportedly told Russian officials that former FBI Director James Comey is a “nut job” who was adding pressure to the ongoing investigation of possible interference in the 2016 election. Clearly frustrated with Lord’s response to the matter, Cooper interrupted the conservative pundit and interjected with a not-so-subtle jab.

“If he took a dump on his desk, you would defend it,” Cooper told Lord. “I don’t know what he would do that you would not defend.”

What a black hole of a “news” channel.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Hillary Clinton ‘is a completely hollow woman.’

ROGER SIMON: Mueller Must Investigate Everything or It’s Worthless.

THE LAW AND OUTER SPACE: Who’s in Charge of Outer Space? All extraterrestrial activity today is governed by a 50-year-old, Cold War-era treaty. Will governments agree on an update before the final frontier becomes the Wild West?

In February, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo passed its third glide-flight test, putting it on pace to offer suborbital space tourism by the end of 2018. In March, Goldman Sachs announced to investors that a single asteroid containing $25 billion to $50 billion of platinum could be mined by a spacecraft costing only $2.6 billion—less than a third of what has been invested in Uber.

“While the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high,” the Goldman report concludes, “the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower.” In April, NASA selected Trans Astronautica Corp., an aerospace company based in Lake View Terrace, Calif., for $3.25 million in technology study grants. Among TransAstra’s NASA-approved projects: an asteroid-hunting telescope whose stated mission is “to start a gold rush in space.” . . .

One of the biggest modern-day sticking points stems from Article VI, which states that nongovernmental entities—i.e. private businesses—must receive “authorization and continuing supervision” from their country of origin. Article VI was originally a compromise between the communist Soviets, who wanted to ban off-planet commercial activity, and the Americans, who insisted that space be open for business. “The Soviets said, ‘If you Americans are so crazy that you want those private-sector activities to be permitted, go ahead,’ ” says Frans von der Dunk, a professor of space law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “ ‘But you’re responsible for their doings, and if they cause damage, you have to pay as a government.’ ” . . .

Several countries have expressed concern that asteroid or moon mining will be open to only a few wealthy nations and corporations, leaving many on Earth behind. “The widening gap of poverty is a weapon of mass destruction,” said José Monserrat Filho of the Brazilian Association of Air and Space Law. Filho echoed the language of the Outer Space Treaty when he voiced his concerns at the March meeting of the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. “More than ever our planet needs for outer space activities to be carried out for the benefit of all mankind,” he said. Delegates from Russia and several European countries voiced similar concerns at the meeting and requested an international regulatory regime to govern space resource extraction. Article II expressly forbids any national appropriation or claim of sovereignty. The question the world now faces is whether you can mine an asteroid without owning it.

Yes. Next question? And, honestly, the Wild West worked out pretty well.

THEY’VE HIT THE BACKSIDE OF THE LAFFER CURVE: Connecticut Fiscal Woes Highlight Blue Model Decay. Of course, spending less is out of the question.

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F-35s TRAINING IN EUROPE: Nice photo of six F-35s in formation — snapped from above the clouds.

BOB WOODWARD: Woodward: Reporters ‘binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.’

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward called on the national media Friday to keep focused on reporting straight news, after many reporters have revealed a bias against President Trump.

Friday on MSNBC, Woodward said he knows of too many reporters who have strayed from objectivity and shown an excessive hostility toward the White House.

“Stick to the reporting,” he said. “Stick to the reporting. … One of the realities we have here is we have a good, old newspaper war going, the New York Times and the Washington Post and some very powerful stories. At the same time, I think it’s time to dial back a little bit about because there are people around … who are kind of binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid. And that is not going to work in journalism. Let the politicians have that binge drinking.”

Yeah, actual facts and sourcing are pretty thin on the ground.

THE BATTLE AGAINST ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT INFECTIONS: Some plants and creatures tolerate infections better than others. Some human beings tolerate infections better than others. Biologists David Schneider and Janelle Ayres thought understanding “toleration” could lead to new ways of stopping infections.

…the idea immediately caught the eye of one of the nation’s most renowned and creative immunologists: Ruslan Medzhitov, who has scooped up nearly every recent major prize for biology and who many think was unfairly overlooked for the 2011 Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of Toll-like receptors, pattern recognition molecules key to the immune system.

Medzhitov had been frustrated for years by a finding he could not explain. In experiment after experiment, he noted that infected animals differed wildly in their survival rates — and it didn’t seem to matter how many pathogens or disease-causing microbes they carried. If killing microbes was all that mattered, he said, this differential survival of infected animals made no sense at all.

“All the standard thinking about how the immune system works,” he said, “was clearly inefficient.”

So when he first read papers by Ayres and Schneider — and work by Andrew Read and Lars Raberg at Penn State — he became convinced that tolerance was the key issue immunologists had long overlooked.

“I was immediately hooked on the idea,” he said. “It sounded so logical and biologically satisfying.”

More:

…a 19th-century paper on plants that remained healthy despite being infected with leaf rust that helped inform Ayre’s thinking on tolerance. “It had never been looked at in animals, never described in animals,” she said, speaking with her characteristic rapid-fire enthusiasm. “That’s why you should always read papers outside your bubble.”

(She’s also fascinated with Typhoid Mary, the chef who sickened dozens and killed three in the early 1900s in New York, but somehow tolerated her own infection.)

Someone tell Glenn that perhaps things are moving faster.

PEGGY NOONAN: Democracy Is Not Your Plaything:

Mr. Trump’s longtime foes, especially Democrats and progressives, are in the throes of a kind of obsessive delight. Every new blunder, every suggestion of an illegality, gives them pleasure. “He’ll be gone by autumn.”

But he was duly and legally elected by tens of millions of Americans who had legitimate reasons to support him, who knew they were throwing the long ball, and who, polls suggest, continue to support him. They believe the press is trying to kill him. “He’s new, not a politician, give him a chance.” What would it do to them, what would it say to them, to have him brusquely removed by his enemies after so little time? Would it tell them democracy is a con, the swamp always wins, you nobodies can make your little choices but we’re in control? What will that do to their faith in our institutions, in democracy itself?

Unlike much of our ruling class, Noonan at least grasps that its rule is not pre-ordained. And it’s a good question, unless you want to live in a Kurt Schlichter novel.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Even ‘Baywatch’ star had trouble finding dates on Tinder.

REMINDER: There is actually no such thing as an “independent, non-partisan investigation.”

THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF ANY ACTUAL HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS MIGHT BE A SPEEDBUMP: Michael Gerhardt: Considering impeachment? Slow down. “The more that impeachment proceedings appear to be rushing to judgment or driven by partisanship, the less credibility they ultimately have.”

I DUNNO, MAYBE SOME ACTUAL EVIDENCE OF A HIGH CRIME OR MISDEMEANOR? What Would It Actually Take to Impeach Trump?

Related: When does all the evidence of collusion arrive?

OH, LOOK, A SELF SERVING POLITICIAN:  I just checked, and yep, sky is still blue. President Santos Offers Self-Serving Comments on Border Wall.