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.

Knoxville, Tennessee.

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.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Sweetie, how dare you criticize Obama?

WHAT DO THE SAUDIS WANT? Nothing good.

SAY UNCLE: “Ya know, I write a lot of stuff here. I wonder why the LA Times would quote reader Chris? Well, I know the reason. . . . And why can’t reporters figure out hyperlinks?”

“THAT’S RIGHT — FIGHT AMONGST YOURSELVES.” John McCain on Saturday Night Live.

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Low Levels of Vitamin D Spell Trouble for Breast Cancer Patients. But do more aggressive tumors use up Vitamin D, leading to lower levels in the blood?

SO I FINISHED ROLLING THUNDER LAST NIGHT, and it’s highly recommended. Quite enjoyable, and with a number of sly Heinlein references.

A PLEA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Please, think of the polar bears!

MORE ON FAKE WAR HERO TOM HARKIN, and the curious media unwillingness to call him on this stuff. If a Republican of Harkin’s checkered background did something similar, it would be the political story of the weekend.

Plus, trying to sort out the Democrats’ shifting views on the value of military service in a presidential candidate.

HILLARY TURNS FIRE ON MEDIA: “Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is increasingly aiming its punches not at her front-running opponent Barack Obama, but at the media.”

UPDATE: Hey, Obama’s doing it too! Obama blames Fox News, e-mail for likely loss in Kentucky. Blaming the media — it’s not just for Republicans anymore!

REINCARNATING OLD BRANDS: Hey, if they can do it with Kern’s Bread, why not Ipana toothpaste?

MORE HOPE AND CHANGE.

A LITTLE BIT OF authorial resentment toward Obama here, don’t you think?

PHIL BOWERMASTER: “The real problem, it seems to me, is not the belief that human moral progress is possible; the real problem is the idea that it’s inevitable.”

HEH: Tennessee cops caught by speed cameras.

NEWS FROM THE MODERN WORKPLACE: “This stealing of things, along with the pee-on-the-seat phenomenon that unfailingly occurs despite the twice-daily cleaned bathrooms that also offer paper seatcover dispensers, demonstrates that you may be able to give someone a top-tier MBA but, sometimes, it won’t change the fact that they were raised by wolves.”

ETHICALLY SPEAKING: Should you vacation in Burma?

SO I FINISHED ROBERT SAWYER’S ROLLBACK the other day and it was pretty good. Now I’m reading John Varley’s Rolling Thunder, and so far it’s excellent.

ANNOY THE LIBERAL MEDIA: Vote for Hillary!

DAVID POST ON TEACHING LAW THE HARD WAY: In my seminars I often substitute unedited cases for the casebooks, on exactly this basis: Real lawyers don’t read excerpts, they read cases.

DAVID POST ON TEACHING LAW THE HARD WAY: In my seminars I often substitute unedited cases for the casebooks, on exactly this basis: Real lawyers don’t read excerpts, they read cases.

THE POLAR BEAR: A new libertarian mascot. Yep, as with “racial harassment” complaints for saying bad things about Dead White Males at universities, use of environmental laws to stop government programs seems an area ripe for some guerrilla lawyering.

POLITICO: NARAL Reeling from Obama Endorsement.

TOM HARKIN, CONT’D: Phony Hero Blasts Real Hero. It seems like every election cycle, fake war hero Tom Harkin reappears with this stuff.

UPDATE: More on Harkin here.

A PACK, NOT A HERD:

A man with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire at a festival outside a Southern California church Saturday, wounding three people, one of them critically, police said.

Shots rang out shortly before 11 a.m. outside St. John Baptist de la Salle, a Roman Catholic church in Granada Hills, Officer Norma Eisenman said. Bystanders tackled the man and held him until he was taken into police custody, she said.

Better than hiding under the table.

HEH: “‘Slutbucks’? Seriously? That’s not very creative. ‘Seattle’s Breast’ works much better.”

UPDATE: Some more background on the Starbucks logo.

JOE HUFFMAN: “Barb and I have been watching The Nazis: A Warning from History. This presentation casts doubts on my fantasy of going back in time to assassinate Hitler.”

WE’RE ALL FEMINISTS NOW: Blogging as a feminist legal method.

GETTING EMERGENCY POWER from a solar blimp? Not sure this is actually all that practical, but it’s creative.

RETURN OF THE Jensen Interceptor.

IN KNOXVILLE, MIXED ECONOMIC NEWS. First there’s this:

Jewelry Television has eliminated more than 200 jobs as part of a restructuring the company said Friday is needed to improve its competitive position during the current economic downturn.

The Knoxville-based home shopping network also plans to put the Shop At Home facility and equipment it acquired in 2006 for $17 million in Nashville on the market. No sales price has been established yet.

On the other hand, there’s also this:

In the face of rising demand for coal, Knoxville-based National Coal Corp. plans to expand production by re-opening some idle mines in Tennessee and Alabama and by digging one new underground mine in Tennessee.

Up? Down? Sideways?

IN THE MAIL: Chris Hedges’ I Don’t Believe in Atheists.

Another pic from Richy Kreme, Alcoa Tennessee.

NELSON MUNTZ on the newspaper industry.

MICHAEL TOTTEN ON LEBANON’S FUTURE: “Lebanon will not become Gaza.” Not that it’ll become Disneyland, either.

TOM HARKIN: McCain is too “military.”

NEW YORK: The Trooper Plot Thickens.

TOM BEVAN: Hillary’s fatal mistake.

THE AMAZON KINDLE gets a pretty thorough review from Charlie Martin.

GREG BARTO: “Here, in two paragraphs, is why I will be voting for McCain this November.”

MAKING JET FUEL OUT OF ALGAE:

Plane maker Airbus and diversified manufacturer Honeywell International Inc. on Thursday said they are developing a biofuel that by 2030 could satisfy nearly a third of the worldwide demand from commercial aircraft, without affecting food supplies.

Along with JetBlue Airways Corp. and International Aero Engines, they plan to produce fuel from vegetation and algae-based oils that do not compete with existing food production or land and water resources.

Faster, please.

BUSH GETS BUPKIS FROM THE SAUDIS in terms of increased production.

I’m not surprised. I’m actually not sure they can increase their production all that much at the moment, as I suspect they’ve been overstating their capacity all along. Also, alas, they seem to have caught on to the Malcolm S. Forbes plan. Guess I shouldn’t have blogged it . . . .:

One clue comes from the March bulletin of OAPEC, the Arab sub-group of the OPEC producers’ cartel. It notes sourly that President Bush is aiming to reduce US dependency on oil imports “particularly from the Middle East”, by 75pc by the year 2025.

“This has created some ambiguity in the US position on the future of oil consumption,” it said. Touchee.

King Abdullah’s retort to the Bush speech was to announce that Saudi Arabia would stop developing big projects after the Khurais field comes on stream in next year with 1.2m bpd, leaving the country’s oil in the ground for future generations.

Were America the imperial power that its critics claim, of course, we’d have simply seized the oil after 9/11 — it would have been easier than invading Iraq — killed a bunch of Saudis and gone our way. Instead, however, we probably won’t do much. If we were as serious as we say we are about energy, we’d start developing domestic sources. But we can’t even get shale oil past Congress.

UPDATE: Ouch.

TOM MAGUIRE ON worthy disaster-relief efforts.

UNLIKE SOME OTHER SEARCH ENGINES: A nice thank-you to the troops at Dogpile.com.

SHATNER ON SHATNER: On, uhh, Shatner.

UPDATE: Bill Quick: “Since I know Shatner fairly well, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time with him, I can tell you that this is pretty much the way he really is. He’s not putting anything on here.”

ADVICE TO OBAMA FROM ANN ALTHOUSE, who voted for him:

Don’t lie! I mean, I know you’ve been having an unimaginably powerful experience with millions of people buying the things you say, but don’t get cocky. We do still have our lie detectors, and we can reactivate them if we get in the mood to. Don’t push us. Keep the magic alive.

To perform at such a level requires more self-knowledge and self-discipline than most politicians possess.

STICKING WITH THE NARRATIVE at The Washington Post.

SEBASTIAN LIVEBLOGGED MCCAIN’S NRA SPEECH: “The theme seems to be ‘I suck a little, but my opponents suck more.’”

Now there’s a winning formula!

UPDATE: Checking my email, I got a copy of the speech, which is pasted below — hit “read more” to read it. But McCain doesn’t seem to support a ban on private sales, just an extension of instant background checks to gun shows.:

Over the years, I haven’t agreed with the NRA on every issue. I have supported efforts to have NICS background checks apply to gun sales at gun shows. I recognize that gun shows are enjoyed by millions of law-abiding Americans. I do not support efforts by those who seek to regulate them out of existence. But I believe an accurate, fair and instant background check at guns shows is a reasonable requirement. I also oppose efforts to require federal regulation of all private sales such as the transfer between a father and son or husband and wife. I supported campaign finance reform because I strongly believed our system of financing campaigns was influencing elected officials to put the interests of “soft money” donors ahead of the public interest. It is neither my purpose nor the purpose of the legislation to prevent gun owners or any other group of citizens from making their voices heard in the legislative process.

Whole text below.

WELL, OKAY, BUT DID RON PAUL EVER CLAIM to be a “compassionate conservative?” Though admittedly, congratulating the University of Kansas’ football team isn’t within Congress’s enumerated powers either . . . .

GIGAPIXEL PHOTOS: Coming soon to a camera near you. They’ve actually been around for a while, but this makes it easier.

DOG BITES MAN: Charges of double standards at Human Rights Watch.

INTEGRATING NANOTECHNOLOGY with silicon wafer technology.

MAKING YOUR KITCHEN Plastic-free.

IGNORANT, RACIST HEARTLANDERS angry, bitter at media name-calling.

ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN a member of the American Constitution Society?

ADVICE TO MCCAIN: Run against Congress.

AUSTIN BAY: Limited options in Burma. Yeah, as Shannon Love notes about people agitating for a humanitarian invasion: “It’s not a bad idea except it is at least 6 months too late.”

MICHAEL ON MICHAEL: Totten on Yon, that is. It’s a review of Michael Yon’s Moment of Truth in Iraq by Michael Totten.

GENERATING NEITHER LUST NOR RESPECT: The Geo Metro. Chris Hafner says it deserves the latter, anyway. “I like both the Smart and the Prius–there’s something gadgety about them that appeals to me–but if your goal is just to have a useful gas-sipping car, it would be hard to do better than a Geo Metro.”

A PRO-NUKE PROGRESSIVE? Tennessee Democratic Senate Candidate Calls for Removal of Harry Reid over Reid’s opposition to nuclear power.

WELCOME TO the new diplomacy.

SMALL SHELLS, BIG BOOM: A look at the military’s new miniature arsenal.

IN THE MAIL: 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help. I don’t think I agree with all the choices here.

Richy-Kreme Donuts, Alcoa, Tennessee. They start selling donuts in the morning, and they close when they run out. Best donuts I’ve ever had — sweet, fluffy, but not the least bit greasy. Yum.

YEAH, THAT’LL HELP MATTERS: “Revolutionary Defeatism” on the right.

MORE NEWS ON the automotive X-Prize.

P.J. O’ROURKE SUMS UP THE ELECTIONS:

Two substantive political issues are the federal budget deficit and the war in Iraq. Now, if you’re electing Democrats to control government spending, then you’re marrying Angelina Jolie for her brains. This leaves the Democrats with one real issue: Iraq. And so far the best that any Democratic presidential candidate has been able to manage with Iraq is to make what I think of as the high school sex promise: I will pull out in time, honest dear.

Though, actually, I think Angelina Jolie is smarter than Obama when it comes to Iraq.

SO IF THE REPUBLICANS ARE IN TROUBLE, WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE SO HAPPY? I’m at the NRA Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. I haven’t been to a big gun event in probably a decade, and the change in mood is striking: People are, well . . . not ebullient, really, but noticeably cheerful and confident. The defensive crouch of a decade ago is gone. Will that change if the Democrats take the White House?

They don’t seem to think so here. Ten years ago, gun rights were under siege. Now the two Democratic presidential candidates are bending over backward to try to paint themselves as pro-gun. It’s a lie, of course. But it’s a lie that shows where the political balance of power, er, lies on this issue. The Democrats are electing new members of Congress, too — but, again, they’re running as pro-gun. People here, I think, feel like they’ve got the momentum regardless of what happens in November.

That’s bad news for the Republicans, in a way. Scared gun-rights people vote Republican, and work hard to get Republican candidates elected. Confident gun-rights people figure that they can force Democrats to protect their rights, too. Probably the best thing that could happen for John McCain’s candidacy — and for the GOP’s Congressional prospects — would be a Supreme Court decision upholding D.C.’s gun-ban law. Will that happen? Well, possibly. The smart money says “no,” but counting Supreme Court votes is a risky business. We’ll see.

McCain’s speaking here this afternoon — alas, after I have to leave to return home, as I’m just here to give a talk on the Heller case this morning and will then head back — and it’s the only event in which people aren’t allowed to carry guns. That’s the Secret Service’s demand. If I were McCain, I’d note that I’d feel safer in an audience of armed NRA members. It’s likely true, and it would make a point.

LOOK WHO’S DRILLING: Petrobras Hires 80% of Deepwater Rigs, Inflates Rents.

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, leased about 80 percent of the world’s deepest-drilling offshore rigs to explore prospects including the Western Hemisphere’s biggest discovery in decades.

Petrobras, as the Rio de Janeiro-based company is known, is hiring rigs that can drill in at least 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) of water, Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli said in an interview last week. The world has 21 such vessels, according to Rigzone.com, which tracks the offshore drilling industry.

The company’s “insatiable” demand is forcing producers including Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc to pay more as they compete for the remaining units, said Kjell Erik Eilertsen and Truls Olsen, analysts at Fearnley Fonds AS in Oslo. Explorers that don’t have rigs under contract may delay projects or pay rents of more than $600,000 a day.

Sounds like they’re onto something. And maybe we need to be doing more drilling at home? Hell, thanks to Congress we can’t even get shale oil going.

A LOOK AT ANGRY DEMOCRATIC WOMEN. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

HEH: “Selling well is the best revenge.” I’ll note that only one of these books was featured on The Glenn and Helen Show. Guess which one?

HAS THE LA TIMES UNCOVERED Obama’s Bosnian sniper tale? Video at the link.

SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PLANTS?

ROCKET MAN FLIES ON JET-POWERED WINGS:

After one last wave to the crowd the rocket man tipped his wings, flipped onto his back and leveled out again, executing a perfect 360-degree roll that most birds would find impossible.

“That was to impress the girls,” he later admitted.

Isn’t it always? Play your cards right and you might wind up with Jennifer Connelly.

THE BLOGGER MEETUP WAS FUN: Met a bunch of bloggers, some of whom I already knew, including SayUncle, Bitter, Sebastian, Murdoc, etc., and firearms legend Ronnie Barrett dropped by, which was kinda cool. There were probably about 50 people there, which is a pretty good-sized turnout of gunbloggers.

BECAUSE IT’S NOT LIKE WE NEED ANY DOMESTIC OIL OR ANYTHING

The Senate Appropriations Committee today narrowly defeated Sen. Wayne Allard’s attempt to end a moratorium related to oil shale development in Colorado. . . .

The moratorium prevents the Department of Interior from issuing regulations so that oil companies can move forward on oil-shale projects in Colorado and Utah. Allard said the moratorium has left uncertainties at a time when companies need to move forward and in the long term make the United States more energy independent.

“If we are really serious about reducing pain at the pump, this is a vote that would make a difference in people’s lives,” Allard argued.

But in a 14-15 vote, the committee spilt strictly on party lines and rejected the amendment.

Are these guys on the Saudi payroll, or what?

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!