WHY DO THE WORLD’S FATTEST PEOPLE live on islands?

GREYHAWK: Stop The Brainwashing!

POLYPHENOLS PROTECT, but not as antioxidants. Interesting.

YOU CAN SEE WHY TEA PARTY PROTESTERS WORRY THE COPS MIGHT TAKE SIDES: L.A. Police Union Urges Members to ‘Stand in Solidarity’ with SEIU and MoveOn.Org. The folks at BoingBoing seem to like it that the Wisconsin cops are siding with protesters, but where’s the reason for trust from those who feel otherwise? Do we want police to take sides in political disputes?

Apparently some do. This is why (1) you should always bring a camera; and (2) public employee unions should be illegal. If union protesters turn violent — as they increasingly have — can you trust pro-union police to intervene?

UPDATE: Charlie Martin emails: “You might recall that when Alex Jones and his mob was attacking Michelle Malkin — and giving me a blind-side kidney shot as I protected her — the Denver police were not interested in intervening in the slightest. I eventually got an apology from the DPD, but if Jones had the physical strength to match his mouth I’d have been peeing blood.”

Plus, related thoughts from Walter Olson.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the video of Alex Jones attacking Michelle Malkin. Andrew Marcus emails: “The part with Alex Jones starts at 2:39, and it really is something to behold.” Indeed. I remember this, and Jones will forever be defined for me by this incoherent, loudmouthed bullying behavior, threatening a woman less than half his size. What a pathetic loser.

PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY reviews Walter Olson’s Schools For Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America.

Worth reading in conjunction with my colleague Ben Barton’s The Lawyer-Judge Bias In The American Judicial System.

ERIN O’CONNOR & MAURICE BLACK: Save Academic Freedom.

THE “NEW CIVILITY” (CONT’D): Wisconsin Democrat To Republican Colleague: “You Are F***ing Dead.”

ROB NATELSON: Practical Guidance On Amending The Constitution By Convention. That subject — amending the Constitution, and particularly by convention — is the topic of a forthcoming Tennessee Law Review symposium issue featuring a lot of big names.

TALKING CARS with the Car Lust guys.

FASTER, PLEASE: North Dakota Pumps Record 113 Million Barrels Of Oil, Smashing Previous Record By 30 Million.

A LOOK AT Representatives Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Heath Shuler’s (D-N.C.) national right-to-carry reciprocity bill.

CHANGE: NHTSA Postpones Back-Up Camera Requirement Rule.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Great Morning – MoveOn Confirms Paltry Protest Numbers And Village Voice Messes Up.

ROGER SIMON: “They always say the Oscars were worse than ever – but these really were.”

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ONE MORE GODDAMN THING ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT: Obama Flies Personal Trainer from Chicago to White House Every Week. “With a schedule as hectic as President Obama’s it must be hard to stick to a training regimen without help — but why does he insist on having his old trainer fly out from Chicago to D.C. regularly when Obama and his wife exhort the rest of us to drive less? And in a recession?” Those kinds of worries, like taxes, are for the little people.

THE TOYOTA PRIUS: Falling behind?

TIM PAWLENTY takes on “the Triangle Of Greed.”

WHO’S THE HOOLIGAN: Jennifer Rubin corrects Dana Milbank. “This is a particularly bizarre choice of invective given the circumstances. A hooligan is ‘a tough and aggressive or violent youth.’ That is an apt phrase (aside from the age factor) of the labor protesters and their Democratic allies. It was they, not Walker, who used Nazi imagery so offensive that the National Democratic Jewish Council was forced to condemn it. It was they, not Walker, who threatened lawmakers in their homes. . . . And it was the union protesters, not Walker, who came up with phony doctor’s notes to rip off the state by getting sick pay to which they were not entitled.”

IN THE MAIL: Partisan Balance: Why Political Parties Don’t Kill the U.S. Constitutional System.

A CRISIS FORETOLD: Pat Moynihan’s predictions on public unions and the demise of the welfare state.

LOOKING AT synesthesia and the visualization of music. I see music visually, and so does my daughter. I’ve heard that this is unusually common among sound engineers, and that would make sense: When you see music as well as hear it, you’re probably deploying more neural processing power. That may be the advantage of synesthesia more generally.

UPDATE: A reader asks for a description of what I see. That’s hard, because the more you think about it, the less distinct the effect seems to be, at least for me. But I see sound as light, with texture and color relating to tone, and going up and down with pitch. So a smooth guitar solo (think Carlos Santana) looks kind of like an oscilloscope tracing, while, say, Jimmy Page in Heartbreaker is like a bunch of jagged lines. A drum hit is a flash, whose length depends on resonance. This is useful for judging delays because you can “see” them. Like I say, I think the synesthesia recruits more neural processing power. I don’t know if most people who experience this get the same visualizations.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Adam Jones writes: “From what I understand, there are patterns to the way us synesthetes of the tone-color variety see things. I also see jagged wild lines when listening to Jimmy Page solos, and Santana is made of cleaner lines. And heavy delay/echo/reverb effects are mindblowing when you see the sound spread out like a kaleidoscope. It’s wonderful, and it’s a way of appreciating music that most people don’t have access to – we’re very lucky.” Yes — although the downside may be the migraines I experience from time to time.

And reader Cathy French emails: “I’ve got synesthesia too. For folks without this ‘problem’ (Imagine describing a pain as an orange, high pitched taste (like aluminum) and having your 20 year old son giving you ‘the look’. Heh.), the closest I can come to describing how it is listening to music is to liken it to being a passenger in a car as you move through the mountains with your eyes slightly unfocused. Watch the landscape ‘dance’… it rises and falls, colors fade to the background in a blur, some jump out and ‘pop’. In fact, one of my favorite things to do on a long trip is to listen to music while watching the landscape, since it makes the synesthesia in my head match the reality of what I’m seeing. It’s breathtaking and transcendant. Beautiful. Synesthesia is cool… I quite enjoy it… other than the funny looks I get when I describe something weirdly.”

POLL: 67 percent disapprove of Wisconsin’s Fleebagger Democrats. “Two-thirds of a national survey respondents disapprove of the decision by 14 Wisconsin state senate Democrats to flee the state and thereby deny the Republican majority in the body the quorum required to act on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposals.”

POLL: More Americans Would Blame Democrats For Government Shutdown.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama Has Few Options To Aid Strapped States.

WELL, IT’S PRETTY EMBARRASSING WHEN YOU CAN’T EVEN HANDLE PIRATES: Muted outcry in Washington after deadly pirate attack. What is this, the 17th Century? If so, should we be deploying 17th Century solutions? Because the 21st Century approach doesn’t seem to be working very well.