ADVICE ON PICKING the right size HDTV for your room.

ERIC SCHEIE: “I don’t like the way Sundays have become the official day for media to play preacher and promote morality — especially the newly manufactured morality which appeals to the non-churchgoers with unacknowledged spiritual needs.”

PERSONALLY, I JUST MAIL MINE TO AL GORE: Doesn’t everybody?

NOT ENOUGH BASIC RESEARCH on food and energy.

MICHAEL YON: “Many readers have complained that Michael Moore, in the conduct of his latest crusade against whatever he is against this month, has illegally used one of my photos on the banner of his website. Mr. Moore is not the first to have done so, and my readers can get pretty upset when it happens. My lawyer has demanded that Mr. Moore take it down.”

CLARENCE PAGE: Obama’s Culture War.

IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, A LOOK AT extraterrestrial property rights: “Real estate, it turns out, brings out the adventurer in all of us.”

HILLARY CLINTON: Victim of ugly, sexist vilification?

Quick, send a U.N. investigator!

THEY’RE NOT EVEN FOREIGN COUNTRIES: Or maybe they are: “Can the man who wants to be President please tell us why Arkansas is somehow closer to Kentucky than Illinois?”

Related item here. The cruelest cut: “frankly Bushian.”

SUCCUMBING TO PEER PRESSURE: Ann Althouse’s fisheye photos — and the arrival of a couple of gadget-review checks from Popular Mechanics — finally convinced me to order the Nikon Fisheye lens that she’s been using. (Recycling gadget-review money into gadgets — a virtuous circle, or evidence of a problem? I choose option one!)

It’s a swell lens, and smaller than I expected. I also downloaded the “Hemi” plugin for Photoshop, which lets you remove the fisheye effect and just turn it into a 180-degree wide angle. Sometimes you want the fisheye effect, of course, but sometimes you don’t. For a $29.95 download, it was worth it. Example (from the Northshore Brasserie) below; unaltered original image on left, de-fisheyed version on right:

UPDATE: “Glenn Reynolds joins the cult, only to immediately commit heresy.” Story of my life . . . .

Bigger versions of the pics above, here and here.

SHOOT THE MESSENGER: “In the end, well-placed stooges like Anil Patani are a greater danger to free societies than a cheerfully straightforward hater like Abu Usamah.” Just don’t pretend that they care about “antiiscrimination” or “human rights” or any aspect of actual civilization whatsoever.

PELOSI: POORLY RECEIVED in Iraq. The welcome in Syria was warmer. But hey, she’s catching on.

APPALACHIA: Clinton Country? “Remarkably, even as the mainstream media writes her obituary, in general-election surveys Clinton still out-polls ‘presumptive nominee’ Barack Obama in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. And, based on her strong primary performances, Hillary gives the Democrats tangible hope in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee for the first time since 1996.”

WHAT KIND OF FOOLS DO THEY TAKE US FOR? First class!

ASTROTURF ALERT: Another phony gun-rights group?

AFTERSHOCKS: “Something remarkable is unfolding on the Web and in state-controlled media in China as citizens aggressively challenge officials over the collapse of so many schools in the powerful earthquake that shook the mountains of Sichuan province.”

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF 21ST CENTURY HEADLINES:

Double Amputee Sprinter Cleared For Olympic Competition

Oscar Pistorius, whose prostheses were previously considered an unfair advantage, has been given the thumbs up to compete

Is that cool, or what?

ANOTHER REASON TO DUMP ON FAT PEOPLE: Obesity as a cause of global warming?

If you’re thin, this gives you twice the moral superiority. Woohoo!

STEVE BORISS: Is the Associated Press good for America?

HILLARY’S CHICKENS, comin’ home to roost.

JAMIE RUBIN AS SOUPY SALES. Sales had better writers.

IN THE MAIL: WAR NERD, by Gary Brecher. He’s developed quite a cult following on the Web.

IS NANCY PELOSI starting to resemble Angelina Jolie? “Buried deep in this AP report, between news of a crackdown on al Qaeda in Mosul and a suicide bombing in Baqouba, is Nancy Pelosi’s concession that the surge is succeeding.”

You’d think that news that important wouldn’t be “buried deep,” wouldn’t you?

TOM HARKIN, reporting for duty.