HYPOCRITE, NAILED: ‘Saint Bono’ the anti-poverty campaigner facing huge Glastonbury protest – for avoiding tax.

Taxes are for the little people.

DAN MILLER: How Low Can Higher Ed Go? “Higher education should build upon solid learning foundations built from elementary to high school. Alas, the issue before us is one of damage control and course correction. Where to begin? Perhaps with teachers themselves.”

Somewhat related item here.

AT AMAZON, downloadable tunes for 69 cents.

SYRIA UPDATE: Syrian opposition: Anti-Israel rioters paid $1,000. I guess Assad is really desperate for a distraction.

EURO UPDATE: Portugal election: Socialists admit defeat.

CHUCK SIMMINS: E. Coli Infection No Stranger To New York.

THE DAILY: Weiner’s Tale Unraveling.

UPDATE: Moe Lane: What Is The Weinergate Endgame?

ANN ALTHOUSE: What is Glenn Reynolds saying about the Wisconsin protesters? By the time I read this, her commenters had already pretty well thrashed it out.

WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY, CONT’D: “Michael Segal said he was filming the protesters for a website, manchfree.com, when a police officer took his cellphone and arrested him when he inquired about how he would get it back. Segal, 25, of Coral Springs, Fla., was charged with disorderly conduct.”

And, see, when they’ve got your cellphone they’ve got your contacts and other information, too. That’s an advantage for the cheap dedicated videocams, unless you’re using the cellphone to stream the video elsewhere for safekeeping.

NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY: What Is A College Education Really Worth?

Executives at U.S. companies routinely complain about the lack of reading, writing and math skills in the recent graduates they hire. Maybe they too will get tired of using higher education as a credentialing system. Maybe it will be easier to recruit if they don’t have to be concerned about the overwhelming student debt of their new employees.

Employers may decide that there are better ways to get high school students ready for careers. What if they returned to the idea of apprenticeship, not just for shoemakers and plumbers but for white-collar jobs? College as a sorting process for talent or a way to babysit 18-year-olds is not very efficient for anyone involved. Would students rather show their SAT scores to companies and then apply for training positions where they can learn the skills they need to be successful? Maybe the companies could throw in some liberal arts courses along the way. At least they would pick the most important ones and require that students put in some serious effort. Even a 40-hour workweek would be a step up from what many students are asked to do now.

If tuition continues to rise faster than inflation, and colleges cannot provide a compelling mission for undergraduate education, we may move further away from Obama’s vision of education and closer to Peter Thiel’s.

It’s like there’s been some sort of bubble going on or something. (Via NewsAlert).

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama Tunes Out, And Business Goes On A Hiring Strike. “The signal was clear. Obama had already ignored his own deficit reduction commission in preparing his annual budget, which was later rejected 97-0 in the Senate. Now he was signaling that the time for governing was over and that he was entering campaign mode 19 months before the November 2012 election. People took notice, especially those people who decide whether to hire or not. Goldman Sachs’s Current Activity Indicator stood at 4.2 percent in March. In April — in the middle of which came Obama’s GW speech — it was 1.6 percent. For May it is 1 percent. . . . The message to job creators was clear. Hire at your own risk. Higher taxes, more burdensome regulation and crony capitalism may be here for some time to come.”

SO I WENT SHOOTING WITH SAYUNCLE and local lawyer extraordinaire John Lucas. It was a competition run by the Glock Sport Shooting Foundation, and it prized both accuracy and speed. I’m better at the former than the latter since I don’t shoot competitively, but “not bad, for a law professor” is good enough for me, especially when shooting with a special forces veteran and America’s top gunblogger. The Glock folks did a great job running it, keeping things going smoothly even though there were twice as many people this year as last year. If you like to shoot, and you’ve never tried anything like this, I recommend it.

NEWLY UNCOVERED PHOTOS of postwar Oak Ridge.

AT AMAZON, 60% off men’s pants.

WEINERGATE: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Meet Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Arab newspaper: Why, Arab dictators are worse than the Zionists!

Hey, maybe there’s hope for Andrew Klavan’s one-state solution after all.

DAFYDD AB HUGH: I like Paul Ryan, but . . .

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: Chicago Must Pay for Denying Second Amendment Rights.

WHAT A NOVEL IDEA: ‘Breastaurants’ Ring Up Big Profits. “Restaurants that woo men with attractive waitresses, big beer selections & giant TVs are winning loyal customers–and raking in revenues.” I’m shocked that this is making money. Who’d have thought it?

ROBOTIC CLEANING: Reader Ray Heasman writes:

Hi Glenn,

I saw your comment about cleaning robots not being as advanced as you hoped. Well, I have owned a Neato XV-11 for a week now, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. It is a breakthrough in that Neato figured out how to build a cheap but effective rotating laser rangefinder (the DIY robotics folks out there are pretty excited about it), which allows them to build an affordable robot that can properly navigate complex floorplans.

The Neato does a great job of mapping your house and recognising where it is. I have owned a Roomba, and I was very disappointed with it; it’s basically a glorified clockwork toy that wanders around randomly. The Neato actually knows where it is, and first vacuums around the edge of the room, then fills in the rest by vacuuming in straight lines. It divides the house into 15 foot square sections and vacuums each one, moving from room to room. If it runs out of power, it goes back to its base station and completes the job after recharging. It can be given a weekly schedule to clean on, too.

It is possible for the Neato to get stuck, but it is a very deterministic device, and tends to get caught in the same places and in the same ways. I watched it vacuum my entire house twice (which was very entertaining), and tweaked things a little so there were no worries about it getting stuck. Since then, I have just let it go.

In terms of getting stuck, the biggest problem is loose hanging cables. They seem to be invisible to the range finder, and if a cable gets hooked on the front of the device, it triggers the bumper no matter what the vacuum does to escape. Other than that, I’ve had no problems with it navigating furniture leg forests, errant shoes, or under the bed.

I would say the Neato is a much better design all around, compared to other robots in its price range. It vacuums everything at least once, does a good job, and gets pretty close to the walls (you will need to sweep/dust the last half inch yourself, or use another vacuum for that), and behaves in a fairly predicable way, making it easy to “robot safe” your home.

In my opinion, it’s the true robot vacuum cleaner that is also affordable.

Hmm. Well, I was disappointed with the Roomba — I bought one, but returned it — so this is an alternative. Still waiting for Rosie, though. But the price isn’t bad.

AT POWER LINE, more on the importance of mockery.

ESCALATION: Russia: NATO ‘one step’ from land war in Libya.

IN THE MAIL: From Glenn Beck, The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century.

X-MEN: MATT WELCH AND NICK GILLESPIE on why we are all mutants now. “In short, it’s not only easier now for all of us to let our freak flags fly, it’s easier to find somebody who will help us design and produce them in the first place.”