NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Floods Work: Harris County Edition.

ABOUT TIME AND IF ONLY THE PRESS REPORTED THIS: Venezuela Is Demanding Freedom against a Tyrannical Regime.

STILL CRYING WOLF ON OVERPOPULATION AND CLIMATE CHANGE? THEY SHOULD GET OUT OF HOLLYWOOD EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE: Alexander Payne’s latest is powered by fears all too common in today’s Hollywood.

IS THE PHONE RINGING:Mysterious signals detected from faraway galaxy.

IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I-NG: Google & the Guardian.

I DON’T THINK THIS STUDY INCLUDES SALES TAXES, FUEL TAXES OR PROPERTY TAXES: Americans pay more in taxes than they spend on food, clothes.

JUST LIKE WE RAN OUT OF WATER IN THE EIGHTIES: The world may run out of food in a decade.

GOOD FOR HURRICANE PREP: WaterBOB Emergency Drinking Water Storage.

UPDATE: In the comments from Beldar: “Five stars for this product. I’m a Houstonian, and the peace of mind these gave me and to family — one’s in my bathtub right now, another at my ex’s, and we’re not going to drain either for another few days in case Irma heads this way — is well worth the price. This is cheap and effective disaster mitigation. . . . I first saw this product on InstaPundit in 2015, and immediately ordered four. Thanks, Prof. Reynolds!”

You’re welcome. And anybody along the huge swathe of coast that’s currently threatened by Irma, etc. may want to take this advice.

HOWIE CARR: When Will All The Lefties Do The Right Thing? “How many flood victims in South Texas have been rescued by the Antifa navy? . . . Seriously, doesn’t it look like almost all of the heavy lifting in the wake of Harvey is being done by people who belong to what the Southern Poverty Law Center would describe as ‘hate groups?’ Speaking of which, when does the SPLC’s food drive begin? . . . Joel Osteen took a lot of grief this week, but his church is open. Which of his three mansions is Bernie Sanders opening for flood victims?”

SORRY, I THINK YOU SPELLED “TOXIC MASCULINITY” WRONG: Hurricane Harvey photo proves chivalry is alive and well in America. But, snark aside, it seems downright transgressive for a major newspaper to publish something like this today:

The reality is that our culture is hungry for chivalry. But chivalry demands as a starting point an understanding that women are deserving of it. And that requires acknowledging that women are different. It requires a celebration of their differences, particularly those that enable them to bring the next generation of life into the world.

The AP photo is important. In it, the man and woman each do something the other cannot. They are co-equal contributors who in their own way have given of themselves so that someone more vulnerable might live. And all of this points towards what’s at the center of the photo, a child. Men and women are different, and we help each other be our best selves by helping direct our focus towards those who are more vulnerable.

It’s just one picture, and yet it’s so much more. It’s the inarguable reminder when things get real, and get real fast, we men and women are very much not the same. And yet we love it. We love it, because when men and women work together, unthreatened by those differences, it is a beautiful sight to behold.

People have been fired from Google for less.

SHOW BUSINESS HAVING SOLVED ALL OF ITS OTHER PROBLEMS, Actors Bow Out of Roles After PC Diversity Pressure: Is This the Start of a Disturbing New Trend?

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: En garde! Texas open carry sword law takes effect Friday.

That’s nice, but Tennessee has had a less restrictive law than this for a while now. I should probably start carrying one of these.

HMM: Calcium in arteries may best predict risk of heart attack, stroke.

THAT’S WEIRD: Richard Posner announces sudden retirement from federal appeals court in Chicago. His last few years, honestly, have been a bit uneven.

He was quite sharp, though, in this podcast interview that Helen and I did back in 2006, talking about his Not A Suicide Pact: The Constitution In A Time Of National Emergency.

THE MEDIA ARE UNHAPPY WITH THIS BECAUSE IT’S TAKING MONEY OUT OF THEIR POCKETS: Trump administration plans on making 90 percent cut to Obamacare ad budget.

AT AMAZON, save big on Wheels and Tires. Winter is coming.

Plus, deals on Vitamins and Dietary Supplements.

THIS EDITION OF DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE IS SPONSORED BY CHIQUITA BANANAS: “This weekend, leaders from Ole Miss Greek life convened upon Camp Hopewell in Lafayette County for a three-day retreat designed to build leaders and bring campus closer together. The retreat was cut short Saturday night, however, after three black students found a banana peel in a tree in front of one of the camp’s cabins. The students shared what they found with National Pan-Hellenic Council leaders, sparking a day’s worth of camp-wide conversation surrounding symbolism, intended or not. In the midst of the open and sometimes heated discussion, senior accounting major Ryan Swanson said he put the banana peel in the tree when he could not find a trashcan nearby.”

It of course gets worse. Read the whole thing.

JEFFREY SINGER: It’s Time to Free Birth Control from the Third-Party Trap.

Currently the average cash price of prescription birth control pills runs from $20 to $50 per month, but may sometimes range as low $9 per month. Planned Parenthood and various community health centers across the United States provide free birth control pills for those unable to afford them. A switch in drug status from prescription to OTC is likely to bring prices down further.

As is the case with doctor, hospital and lab bills, the presence of a third-party payer results in higher prices for prescription drugs than would otherwise be the case if a pharmacy dealt directly with the patient. That’s because the third-party payer system severs the direct link between the consumer and the producer of goods and services that allows market forces to work. Doctors, hospitals, labs and pharmacies negotiate with a deeper-pocketed third party, not the consumer, to arrive at a price. . . . When the FDA reclassifies a prescription drug to over-the-counter, it extracts it from the third-party spending trap. As consumers play their part, market forces often bring prices down and new competitors often enter the market.

But what about the poor fish?

FIRST BIRTH-CONTROL HORMONES, NOW THIS: Human mood drugs end up in Great Lakes fish.

Antidepressant drugs, making their way through an increasing number of people’s bodies, getting excreted in small amounts into their toilets, and moving through the wastewater treatment process to lakes and rivers, are being found in multiple Great Lakes fish species’ brains, new research by the University of Buffalo has found.

Researchers detected high concentrations of both the active ingredients and metabolites — byproducts of the parent drug — of popular antidepressant pharmaceuticals including Zoloft, Prozac, Celexa and Sarafem in the brains of fish caught in the Niagara River connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. . . .

Previous research has shown antidepressants in water create “suicidal shrimp” that swim toward light instead of away from it, making them vulnerable to predator fish and birds, Aga said.

“Other research teams have shown that antidepressants can affect the feeding behavior of fish, or their survival instincts,” Aga said. “Some fish won’t acknowledge the presence of predators as much.”

So we’re producing a generation of sexually confused fish who respond to stimuli in a self-destructive manner. It’s like aquatic college.

NOT BAD, BUT I’D LIKE TO GET IT TO 100X: Civilians Own 70 times More Guns Than U.S. Police and Military Combined.

DIANE FEINSTEIN: Hurricane Recovery ‘Takes the Place of the Wall’ in Government Funding Debate.

ENDGAME? France says powers must impose transition on Syrians, no role for Assad.

Jean-Yves Le Drian’s comments come despite what has appeared to be a softening in Paris’ position since the arrival of President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s election victory gave Paris, which is a key backer of the Syrian opposition and the second-largest contributor to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, a chance to re-examine its policy in the country.

The change proposed by Macron was to drop demands Assad step down as a pre-condition for talks, although French officials still insist he cannot be the long-term future for Syria.

So less of an endgame than a non-starter then.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Government Reports Nearly 10,000 Homicides in 2017.

Opposition lawmaker Simón Calzadilla expressed skepticism, citing figures from the nongovernmental Venezuelan Violence Observatory group that show Venezuela’s homicide rate has been increasing in recent years. It reported 27,875 violent deaths in 2015 and 28,468 in 2016.

“And this year it seems that we are going to break all the records,” Calzadilla said at a Tuesday news conference, predicting the homicide count could top 33,000.

Why the wildly disparate numbers? In part, it’s because Venezuela’s government does not include extrajudicial killings in its homicide totals, though human rights group do, two experts with the Brazilian think tank Igarapé Institute wrote in the Los Angeles Times earlier this year.

You may safely translate “extrajudicial killings” to “political assassinations.”

OK, YES, THAT IS FUNNY: Trevor Noah Finally Says Something Funny, Labels Antifa ‘Vegan ISIS.’