AUSTIN BAY ON THE MUSLIM WORLD’S CHALLENGES:

Oil and unemployed testosterone don’t mix, they collide — with war the likely result.

“Economics and demographics” lack the sizzle of oil and testosterone, which as eye-grabbers are an Oprah-notch below money and sex. But in the grand sense of geo-strategy and the intricate 21st century problems that produce wars, poverty and other forms of sustained misery, economics and demographics are the fire.

Read the whole thing.

QUESTIONING THE TIMING of the Ted Stevens indictment.

WATER ON MARS? Phoenix pics are in. “In a discovery that could qualify as one of the most important in the history of space exploration, NASA’s Phoenix Mission may have confirmed the presence of water ice on the planet, Popular Mechanics has learned. The scheduling of a press conference for Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern by NASA and the University of Arizona has raised hopes in the space community that scientists will announce the breakthrough. When pressed for details, a spokesperson for the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory refused to elaborate beyond saying that the Phoenix team would unveil new findings from the ongoing robotic mission to Mars. If the rumor holds true, it would be the first direct confirmation of water ice beyond Earth.”

SAW AN EXCELLENT PANEL THIS EVENING ON THE DUKE LACROSSE RAPE HOAX, featuring K.C. Johnson (author of Until Proven Innocent, with Stuart Taylor), James Coleman, Mike Gerhardt, Lyrissa Lidsky, and Angela Davis (no, not that Angela Davis), author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor, which I bought on Kenneth Anderson’s recommendation and which is excellent, especially as a companion to K.C.’s book. The discussion was excellent and very fair. Lots of talk about what Nifong got wrong, plus the important point that the kind of misconduct for which Nifong was disbarred and punished is committed regularly by prosecutors who almost always get off scot-free even when it’s exposed. We really need a better mechanism for policing prosecutorial misconduct, and it’s not clear what that should be — independent audits of cases by a sort of inspector general? I’m not sure.

I disagree, though, with the idea that replacing elected prosecutors with appointed prosecutors would fix the problem. As with elected vs. appointed judges, it doesn’t get rid of the politics, just make it less transparent. And I suspect that situations like that obtaining in Britain, where burglars face little risk of prosecution while homeowners who defend their homes against burglars are targeted by authorities, couldn’t possibly prevail in a system of elected prosecutors.

POLL: Most Americans Want Offshore Drilling.

Gallup: Presidential Race Tightens. Is there a connection?

GM CONSTRUCTS THE WORLD’S LARGEST rooftop solar power array.

NOBODY TELL SCALZI: Chocolate-covered Bacon Cake.

SEQUENCE: Jon Voight criticizes Obama. Andrew Breitbart talks about a new Hollywood blacklist. Jeffrey Wells puts Voight on shit list. “It’s going to be hard henceforth not to think of Voight as some kind of diseased wingnut. . . . it’s only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance. Honestly? If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn’t pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, ‘Voight? Let him eat cake.'” How establishment is Wells? He’s got a permanent Drudge link. (Via Kaus.)

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: In the wake of the L.A. earthquake — minor, but a reminder — here’s a big roundup on disaster preparedness and survival. And here’s a link to the LAFD earthquake-preparedness manual (PDF) which has lots of useful stuff going beyond just earthquake issues. More on disaster-preparedness here.

BARACK OBAMA AS A LAW TEACHER: The New York Times reports, and Ann Althouse, Brian Leiter, and David Bernstein comment. Offering Obama tenure upon hiring? That’s quite unusual. “Clueless White Person” voices, not so much.

UPDATE: More from Randy Barnett.

SOME THOUGHTS ON MARKETING and green conundrums.

Plus, is green mass transit a myth? “A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars, sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist of nothing but full vehicles. . . . Transit vehicles also tend to stop and start a lot, which eats a lot of energy, even with regenerative braking. And most transit vehicles are just plain heavy, and not very aerodynamic. Indeed, you’ll see tables in the DoE reports that show that over the past 30 years, private cars have gotten 30% more efficient, while buses have gotten 60% less efficient and trains about 25% worse. The market and government regulations have driven efforts to make cars more efficient, while transit vehicles have actually worsened.”

BIG BROTHER LURKS IN THE DEN:

I write in cars, on planes, on the bench in the yard, while watching TV and in bed. And I haven’t seen a movie that wasn’t a matinee in two decades.

I’ve worked like this now, with the exception of three years when I had a ’real’ job, since 1981. During that time, I’ve authored or co-authored more than a dozen books, co-produced a TV miniseries (and hosted three other PBS series), and written probably two thousand newspaper and magazine articles, columns and editorials. In other words, by most objective measures, I’ve had a pretty successful and productive freelance career.

And yet, if a new trend identified by the Wall Street Journal takes hold, I will be considered utterly and permanently unemployable. Why? Because employers, despite a half-century of evidence that trusting your employees to make responsible decisions is the key to higher productivity, are becoming increasingly obsessed with the notion (as used to be said about the Puritans) that someone, somewhere, is goofing off on the job.

So, they are now turning to employment companies that market freelancers, such as oDesk.com (which manages 90,000 code writers, network admins, writers and graphic artists –pray for them – for 10,000 clients worldwide), which have developed a whole suite of tools to help them spy on these contractors as they work at home. oDesk, for example, uses freelancer’s own computer camera to track his or her moves, periodically conducts screen grabs to see if work is being done, monitors keystrokes, even eavesdrops for the sound of a dog barking or children talking – and then offers those services to its clients.

All of this is, apparently, an attempt to assuage the ever-present fear by contractors that somehow they are being ripped off by the people they contract. The result, as the Journal portrays it in chilling terms, is that people working at home under this regime are forced to create work environments in their homes that seem far, far worse than any cubicle at corporate headquarters.

As I’ve noted before, this kind of thing is rooted more in managers’ desire for power — and fear of output metrics — than any actual business needs.

DANA MILBANK FINDS OBAMA PRESUMPTUOUS: President Obama Continues Hectic Victory Tour:

Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president’s. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him. His schedule for the day, announced Monday night, would have made Dick Cheney envious. . . . As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama’s biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris. . . . On his presidential-style visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem last week, Obama left a written prayer, intercepted by an Israeli newspaper, asking God to ‘help me guard against pride and despair.’ He seems to have the despair part under control, but the pride could be a problem.

Well, when you’re getting standing ovations from journalists, it’s easy to see how it might go to your head. He’s clearly the landslide favorite of the Media Wing of the Democratic Party, and they have a loud voice. And a consistent one.

Related item here: “In his closed door meeting with House Democrats Tuesday night, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama delivered a real zinger, according to a witness, suggesting that he was beginning to believe his own hype.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON THE DEFICIT: “The majority of the federal budget is spent on a few things: entitlements, defense, and interest on the national debt. Which of these, I asked, as so many have before, is McCain going to cut? Well, erm, none.”

How about a 10% across-the-board cut in entitlement spending?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: A new PorkBusters project, undertaken by Eyeblast TV, with a chance to point out pork in your own area on video:

When the “bridge to nowhere” was everywhere in the news two years ago, Americans for Prosperity hit the road on an “Ending Earmarks Express” tour.

The most powerful report from AFP’s journey came in Ketchikan, Alaska, when the group revealed in a two-minute video just how foolish pork-barrel spending can get. The story showed Americans exactly where the bridge to nowhere, a boondoggle backed by the likes of just-indicted Sen. Ted Stevens, was going to be built — to the tune of $223 million of your money.

Congress reluctantly rescinded funding for the bridge to nowhere, but greased pigs continue to run free, and spend freely, in the corridors on Capitol Hill. In fiscal 2008, Citizens Against Government Waste unearthed nearly 12,000 examples of pork in federal spending bills. The projects cost the taxpayers $17.2 billion — and too many Americans are clueless about where the money went or which lawmakers are to blame for the wasteful spending.

With the help of citizen journalists all across America, Eyeblast.tv and the Porkbusters coalition hope to change that. We’re under no illusion that we can utterly quench lawmakers’ insatiable appetite for pork. But we can expose them for the oinkers they are while they feast at the taxpayers’ trough.

How will we do that? Three words: “Porkbusters On Patrol.” That’s what Eyeblast and Porkbusters are calling the networked journalism project we are announcing today.

“Porkbusters On Patrol” combines the concept of AFP’s earmarks tour with the vision that Instapundit Glenn Reynolds shared in his book “An Army Of Davids.” The goal is to equip an army of citizen reporters with pocket camcorders to produce an ongoing series of on-site video stories about Congress’ pork-barreling ways.

Follow the link for more.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Should Cops or Generals Spearhead the War on Terror?

IN THE MAIL: David Danelo’s The Border: Exploring the U.S.-Mexican Divide.

Yes, blogging has been a bit lighter than usual, and this is why. I’m at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference again this year, and trying to spend as much time on the beach as possible when I’m not conferring. But Kaus is on a hot streak!

MICKEY KAUS: “The Empire of Undernews Expands.”

TWO QUESTIONS: (1) Does Barack Obama think that American history is unusually “tragic” as compared to the history of other great nations? And (2), what does it tell us that journalists were cheering him when he said that? Plus this: “Obama, who acknowledged that he needed a nap, stood up to say farewell to the audience of journalists, many of whom gave him another standing ovation.”

UPDATE: Reader Kirk Petersen emails: “Standing O from MINORITY journalists — I think the qualifier is crucial — your post makes it sound like the MSM is giving him a standing ovation. The MSM skews strongly in Obama’s direction, but at least is concerned about appearances.” Are minority journalists somehow a lesser species, laboring under lower standards and reduced expectations because of their skin color?

JOHN KASS: “Hi, my name is John. I’m a hopium addict.”

WELL, GOOD: Bloggers win 92% of cases. “Insurance Journal is reporting some good news for bloggers facing legal threats – they almost always win in court!” Much more at the link.

PRICING SIGNALS WORK (CONT’D): US Vehicle Miles Traveled Down 3.7% In May 2008. If other countries didn’t subsidize fuel, consumption would be dropping faster worldwide. So why aren’t the greens going after fuel subsidies?

IT’S ABOUT TIME:

From what has been called a perfect storm of disgruntled patients, legislators and medical professionals, the quality movement in health care has been born.

Thanks to its efforts, those hospital walls are slowly becoming transparent. Revealed is a world of tangled routines, many obsolescent, many downright stupid, that no one had carefully examined. The reformers are out to streamline the routines, retrain the workers and keep them permanently on display — an ant farm behind clear glass — to make sure things never get out of control again.

Some related thoughts, here.

GOOD NEWS ON ALZHEIMER’S: “A new drug halts the devastating progress of Alzheimer’s disease, say British scientists. It is said to be more than twice as effective as current treatments.” I hope this pans out.