REMINDER: In Houston after Hurricane Harvey, price-gougers have the moral high-ground.

NO. The Ugliest Era of Menswear Is Back: Why You’ll Want to Relive It.

An otherwise pleasant stroll up Madison Avenue one recent Sunday turned into a 1970s flashback for Ralph Auriemma, the creative director of classic-suit purveyor Paul Stuart. Gazing into the windows at Prada’s New York store, Mr. Auriemma saw male mannequins clad in bell-bottom corduroys, fur belts and fuzzy angora sweaters, all hallmarks of that stylistically divisive decade. “The ’70s were probably the most horrific, ugliest era of menswear ever assembled,” said Mr. Auriemma, who was a teenager when Journey ruled the airwaves. “I remember polyester flared pants, platform cork shoes and bold, obnoxious patterns on shirts. And,” he added, proudly, “I didn’t wear any of it.” Nor is he about to start. Yet, at a time when much of men’s fashion is embracing, shall we say, challenging aesthetics (see “Off-Putting Is In” below), many of his peers disagree.

A quick scroll through the accompanying photos proves that Auriemma is on the right side of history.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: You Probably Don’t Need to Eat As Many Fruits and Vegetables As You Think.

AT AMAZON, Deal of the Day, MalloMe LED Camping Lantern Flashlights 4 Pack – SUPER BRIGHT – 350 Lumen Portable Outdoor Lights.

AT AMAZON, End of Summer Savings on Luggage and Bags.

Plus, save big in Health and Personal Care.

MY LATEST NEW YORK OBSERVER ESSAY: On the Korean peninsula all options are on the table.

HMM: Justice Department Forces Christian Pastor to Testify on Islam Views.

MANY INVASIVE SPECIES ARE DELICIOUS: Rounding Up Canada Geese To Feed The Homeless.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR: High Times, Low Prices.

After decades of dodging law enforcement and fighting for legalization, U.S. marijuana growers face a new challenge: depressed prices. From Washington state to Colorado, wholesale cannabis prices have tumbled as dozens of states legalized the drug for recreational and medicinal uses, seeding a boom in marijuana production. The market is still tiny compared with the U.S. tobacco industry’s $119 billion in annual retail sales, but the nascent cannabis business has grown to more than $6 billion a year at retail. For marijuana smokers, the price drop is sweet news. But for growers —- ranging from high-tech warehouse operations to backcountry pot farmers gone legit -— the price drop has been painful.

Were there any black market producers who thought they’d be able to charge more after legalization?

IF ONLY THERE WERE AN INEXPENSIVE WAY TO KILL MOSQUITOES IN LARGE NUMBERS: Will Flooding in Texas Lead to More Mosquito-Borne Illness?

SERVICE WITH A SMILE (AND A SIDE OF JET SKIS): Elderly Houston Couple Rescued After Ordering Lunch And A BOAT From Chick-Fil-A.

I had been assured that Chick-Fil-A seasoned their food with hate.

CATHY O’NEIL: Look Who’s Fighting Our Algorithmic Overlords.

Consider Themis, a new, open-source bias detection tool developed by computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It tests “black box” algorithms by feeding them inputs with slight differences and seeing what comes out — much as sociologists have tested companies’ hiring practices by sending them resumes with white-sounding and black-sounding names. This can be valuable in understanding whether an algorithm is fundamentally flawed.

The software, however, has a key limitation: It changes just one attribute at a time. To quantify the difference between white and black candidates, it must assume that they are identical in every other way. But in real life, whites and blacks, or men and women, tend to differ systematically in many ways — data points that algorithms can lock onto even with no information on race or gender. How many white engineers matriculated from Howard University? What are the chances that a woman attended high-school math camp?

Untangling cultural bias from actual differences in qualifications isn’t easy.

Not only am I certain that culture is an actual difference, I’d argue that it is the defining difference between individuals — and that the brains behind Themis are trying to pry open the black boxes in a spectacularly unhelpful way.

ANOTHER SHOW OF FORCE IN KOREA:

U.S., Japanese and South Korean warplanes carried out a show of force against North Korea, as Russia warned the United States that new sanctions against the reclusive nation would be “dangerous.”

Two U.S. B-1B supersonic bombers from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and four U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jets from the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan, joined four South Korean jets and two Japanese warplanes for the exercises Wednesday.

Well, all options are on the table.

RELATED: USAF B-1B exercising with South Korean F-15 Eagles.

ARE THINK TANKS DOOMED?: Thoughtful essay by Daniel Drezner.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: 465k patients told to visit doctor to patch critical pacemaker vulnerability. “If there were a successful attack, an unauthorized individual (i.e., a nearby attacker) could gain access and issue commands to the implanted medical device through radio frequency (RF) transmission capability, and those unauthorized commands could modify device settings (e.g., stop pacing) or impact device functionality.”

I SKIP PAST ALL THE ADS: Why I Hate Pharmaceutical Industry Commercials and You Should Too.

TOLERANCE: Sen. Feinstein Booed for Saying Trump ‘Can Be a Good President.’

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: From my colleague Bradley Areheart: The Top 100 Law Reviews: A Reference Guide Based on Historical USNWR Data.

THEY ALMOST LOST ME AT “SIMULATED”: U.S. Bombers, Fighters Fly Simulated Strikes Against North Korea.

“THE NEW YORK TIMES STILL OWES SARAH PALIN AN APOLOGY.” It’s heartening to know that there are some journalists out there who still see the journalist’s duty as one to truth and common decency, not political partisanship and chest-thumping. Media reporter Erik Wemple notes in today’s Washington Post that he may have been initially wrong in seeing the case as stronger than it was:

Never again will we sell short jurisprudence that protects journalists when writing about public figures. These protections are so powerful that an editor, without doing any research to speak of, can insert language in an editorial accusing a politician of inciting murder — and secure a quick and unequivocal bouncing of the case.

But  at the same time Wemple makes the more important point that:

Dismissal, however, is less than a full-throated victory for the New York Times […] The lingering lesson of the case is that The New York Times could well have saved itself the hassle of even a short-lived court proceeding, though doing so would have required it to shed its institutional arrogance for a day or two. Consider that the paper’s response to learning of the falsehood was sufficient to satisfy a judge ruling on a lawsuit, but not sufficient to satisfy any standard of decency and respect. The immediate correction, after all, didn’t even mention Palin’s name: “An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that a link existed between political incitement and and the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords. In fact, no such link was established.” Nor did a second correction.

(Emphasis added).

GARY TAUBES, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Huge new study casts doubt on conventional wisdom about fat and carbs.

The latest evidence comes from data released Tuesday by the international Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study. Its research team recorded the eating habits of 135,000 adults in 18 countries — including high-income, medium-income, and low-income nations — and followed the participants’ health for more than seven years on average.

Among the PURE participants, those with the highest intake of dietary fat (35 percent of daily calories) were 23 percent less likely to have died during the study period than those with the lowest fat intake (10 percent of calories). The rates of various cardiovascular diseases were essentially the same across fat intake, while strokes were less common among those with a high fat intake.

Upending conventional wisdom, the findings for carbohydrate intake went in the opposite direction. PURE participants with the highest carbohydrate intake (77 percent of daily calories) were 28 percent more likely to have died than those with the lowest carbohydrate intake (46 percent of calories).

Not such a surprise for InstaPundit readers.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Identity Politics Are Tearing America Apart.

The divisions in society are real. So are national legacies of injustice. All can and must be addressed. Those who preach hatred should be called out for their odious beliefs. But even as extremism is condemned, Americans of good will need to keep up lines of civil, constructive conversation.

The country faces a stark choice. Its citizens can continue screaming at each other, sometimes over largely symbolic issues. Or they can again do what the citizens of this country have done best in the past—work together on the real problems that confront everyone.

Both of us have been at the center of heated disputes in this country and around the world. And there’s one thing we’ve learned over the decades: You achieve peace by talking, not yelling. The best way to resolve an argument is to find common ground.

Which is all well and good and true. But it also presumes goodwill on the part those whose evidential desire is permanent division.

FASTER, PLEASE: FDA Approves First Gene Therapy For Leukemia.

A SPENGLER TWOFER: The Sacrifice of Black Americans for Raison d’Etat.

And: Are some cultures superior?