GENERAL PAUL EHRLICH REPORTING? But remember that just because the last several times someone screamed “Wolf!” there was no wolf doesn’t mean that there’s not one this time. On the other hand, that’s probably the way to bet.

JEEZ, NOT AGAIN:

Operators of Web sites with racy content must label their sites and register in a national directory or be fined, according to a new U.S. Senate proposal that represents the latest effort among politicians to crack down on Internet sex.

The requirements appear in legislation announced Thursday by two Senate Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana, that they say will “clean up the Internet for children.”

How about cleaning up the Capitol for voters, first?

THE NEW YORK TIMES ON SOLAR POWER:

With a $2,000 federal tax credit and generous rebates from states like New Jersey and California, it has never cost less to install a solar power system.

And it still makes no economic sense. You might want photovoltaic solar panels to generate your own electricity out of a belief that you will save the planet. But, as is the case with hybrid vehicles, you certainly should not do it to save money.

You may go solar, though, in order to encourage the new technology, or in order to demonstrate your own commitment to clean energy. I’d guess that those are Al Gore’s motivations.

DELARA DERABI IS A TEENAGE ARTIST ON DEATH ROW IN IRAN: Ali Eteraz would like your help as he tries to save her. He’s particularly looking for people with Web expertise.

RON BAILEY: “By the way, a new report, Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954-2003, finds that most Americans have been enjoying premarital sex for a long time.”

Actually, I haven’t enjoyed premarital sex since 1994. But I enjoyed it a lot up to then!

UPDATE: In the comments, this observation: “I found that belonging to Math Club was an effective deterrent to teenage sex.”

IT’S THE GOLDEN AGE OF MEDIA — but not for long?

PHOTOS AND VIDEO, from Knoxville’s Dogwood Arts parade, which was a lot chillier than usual.

SILLY SONGS FOR KIDS.

My daughter’s too old for this — she’s now busy writing alternative lyrics to things like “The Emo Song.”

SHAREHOLDER RIGHTS and The New York Times.

JOHN TIERNEY WRITES on interracial dating. It’s certainly worked out well for my family.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

DO BLOGS INFLUENCE SSRN DOWNLOADS? “In fact, yes they do.”

Indeed. My Libel in the Blogosphere paper has moved up over 160 places — from 1069 to 902 — in the SSRN rankings since the Katherine Coble / JL Kirk / King & Ballow affair broke out.

MORE ON CELLPHONES AND BEES: “Most important, bees navigate primarily via polarized light, which is in a completely different part of the EM spectrum from radio waves. How radio waves could possibly impact their use of light for navigation (any more than it does humans’ use of light for navigation) is at best nonintuitive, so I would never believe it until I saw the published paper showing me the evidence. I am not holding my breath for that paper to appear.”

UPDATE: Ron Bailey looks at claims that biotech crops, not cellphones, are killing bees. Why don’t activist groups ever blame things that they don’t already dislike?

SKYWRITING FOR JESUS at EPCOT. Good thing Disney never made a Christian film — if they had, they’d sue that guy for copyright infringement . . . .

MORE COOL PRODUCE-BLOGGING from Rick Lee. I can sometimes take a nice photo, but Rick’s in a whole different class.

IT’S A DIRTY JOB, BUT SOMEONE’S GOT TO DO IT: Mickey Kaus defends Katie Couric: “It doesn’t bother me that Obama went to a mosque as a kid! I’m with the liberals who see it as a potential asset. It does bother me that Dem press watchdogs seem to be straining to brand anyone who mentions it (i.e. Couric) as a smear artist. . . And, yes, it’s also troubling that CBS panicked and changed Couric’s blog (rendering it near-senseless, as ETP points out). If that’s the post-Imus world–corporate news even blander than before, bland as school textbooks–I’m not enthusiastic. But it will be good for the blogs.”

BARACK OBAMA AND TOM MAGUIRE apologize for the Imus affair. Maguire:

Since we are all responsible, none of us are. If, I say *IF* Sen. Obama wants to lead on this issue, he could start by pointing a finger at some real targets. Some hard targets; waiting five days and then denouncing Imus does not merit a Profile in Courage.

Just to help him get started, I wonder whether his new friend David Geffen has any clout in the record industry; I further wonder whether Sen. Obama wants to exhort him to help clean up Hollywood.

Good question.

UPDATE: The path to Imus’s redemption, plus the source of his problems. Was it “battlespace preparation” for 2008? And this question: “Our political world is full cowards and folks who are full of shit. Is Imus really the one you want gone?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Alternative theory: “Karl Rove has his mojo back.”

MORE: Eric Scheie wonders what’s going on.

LIVING LONGER: TV doctor Sanjay Gupta has a book out called Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today, which looks to offer sensible advice. But it’s a long way from the life-extension technologies that I’d like to see. Still, if you take care of yourself now, you’re more likely to still be around when the good stuff hits the market.

LET IT SNOW! “All these global warming protests have spawned a monster Gor’easter.”

Hey, they said they were taking action against global warming this weekend. . . .

DON HO HAS DIED: I guess the stem cell treatments didn’t fix the problem, though the article seems to suggest that they produced some symptomatic improvement.

IMAGES OF A LOST COMMUNITY: “178 family pictures, which were hidden in the walls of a house in Poland just before the Holocaust, only to be found some 60 years later and be returned to their rightful owners.” Full set of pictures here.

A NOT-SO-GLOWING REVIEW of Little Miss Sunshine. That’s going to leave a mark.

A HEATED EXCHANGE for Hillary:

Clinton said she had been briefed on the report, and the woman screamed back, “Did you read it?!” Notably uncomfortable, the Senator repeated that she had been briefed. This exchange went back and forth about three times.

The woman sat down and Clinton explained, “If I had known then what I know now, I never would have voted to give this President the authority.” Clinton also said she believed she was giving the President the authority to send U.N. inspectors to Iraq.

Next time, read the fine print.

GLOBAL WARMING RALLIES: “Dress warm.”

UPDATE: An interesting observation from TigerHawk:

Why doesn’t climate change animate the electorate in the United States the way it seems to do in Europe? I believe it is because we have not experienced it in the same way, either at the level of scientifically meaningless anecdotes or long-term temperature trends. . . .

This is not purely a reflection of piles of snow in Duluth and barely cool weather in Ireland. If we look at a generation’s worth of actual data, the different impact of changing temperatures around the world probably explains why the issue inspires such passion in Europe and Asia (and among the tiny fraction of Americans who travel to those places regularly), but is a political loser in the United States. . . .

Starting in March, the United States has a very different experience from Europe and northern Asia. In general, the rest of the populated northern hemisphere is much hotter than it used to be. In the United States, the only meaningful changes have been in the southwest, which is thinly populated and only marginally influences American politics. The ugly truth is that we Americans are, in general, enjoying warmer winters without paying the price of hotter summers. In most of (unairconditioned) Europe the winters were much milder to begin with, but the summers are now significantly hotter. Therefore, speaking only for us American humans, climate change seems, so far, like a good deal for us, even if it is a bad deal for them. No wonder the subject generates so much rage in Europe, but not nearly enough concern in the United States to motivate meaningful changes in behavior or move a decisive number of votes.

Interesting. Of course, the other reason it inspires passion in Europe is that it’s spun as an anti-American issue. That may also explain why so many Americans are cool to the idea.

MORE: Reader Richard Horn thinks my constant noting of cold weather at global-warming events means I dispute the existence of global warming. Jeez, how many times do I have to point out that that isn’t the case?

Indeed, from my perspective we should be doing the same things — working hard to reduce the use of fossil fuels — regardless of what you think about global warming. But the self-righteousness and exaggeration of the global-warming advocates does set my teeth on edge, and encourage mockery. As I wrote here: “I don’t know a lot about climatology. But I know a lot about media bulldozing operations, and I see one of those in action at the moment on this subject. . . . However, my own position is that it doesn’t matter much in terms of policy. We should be trying to mimimize the burning of fossil fuels regardless of whether it’s a cause of global warming or not. The rather patent hucksterism — and outright bullying — of some global warming advocates, though, will probably hurt that cause more than help it over the longer term.”

And it is positively uncanny how cold weather tends to set in whenever there’s a big global-warming event scheduled. They’re talking about snow here in Knoxville tonight, on April 15th! You know that if this weekend had been unseasonably warm, all the press accounts would be stressing how this was proof of Al Gore’s thesis, instead of meaningless noise, which is what any short-term weather fluctuation is.

STILL MORE: Thanks, Bethshan!

GLOOM IN FRANCE:

France is hardly alone in struggling to redefine itself in the globalized, post-Cold War world. Britain, too, has had to digest the end of an empire. But French nostalgia for bygone glory and growth seems to hamstring its ability to face the future with confidence.

“In France, there is a particular strain of melancholy,” political philosopher Chantal Delsol said in an interview. “The British tell themselves, ‘We are no longer a great power, so we will live as a middling one.’ But the French don’t say that. They say, ‘We are intrinsically a great power, so why isn’t it working in reality?’ For a while we try to shut our eyes, but that doesn’t work for long. When reality truly dawns, then the first phase is extreme sadness, and that is the phase we are in now.”

That means voters are in a rebellious mood. That’s nothing new — Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the architect of modern France after World War II, once quipped, “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?” But the desire to protest through the ballot box is strong, and could create shocks come election day.

Stay tuned.

OF BLIND MEN AND PHOTOGRAPHY: Heh. (Via Colby Cosh).