A really interesting story about how a renegate geoengineering project sought to mine the ocean for carbon in order to get carbon credits.

Texas has opened the nation’s first 85-mph highway. There are concerns that truckers may shun it due to the toll. There is also concern about hogs. The thought occurs to me that for $12 a trip, you might be better off just speeding and paying out the tickets.

Okay, very, very valuable. Not as surprising as the fact that it has little to do with being actually supervising employees. Precisely, anyway.

The French, apparently, are nuts. Germans, too.

This sort of thing drives me batty on a number of levels. The primary one is logistical: You know what I don’t want? Any more incentives for convenience stores not to stay open late (or make themselves less accessible when they do).

Illinois Illini head football coach Tim Beckman was chewing snuff on the sidelines and got busted. Adam Jacobi thinks this should be allowed. I have mixed feelings, but lean a bit towards the NCAA’s view of this.

So apparently some Italian scientists were convicted of manslaughter for failing to predict an earthquake (or rather, giving “false reassurances” that it wasn’t coming). The National Review makes the case that this is what happens when the scientific community speaks with such certainty and we are expected to rearrange our economy shortly. I have the vague concern that the result of things like this would only increase the incentives to doomsay.

Sarah Butrymonwicz says that Mitt Romney’s scholarship plan in Massachusetts backfired in every imaginable (and to some extent mutually exclusive) way(s). Minorities and poor kids were left out, but those that weren’t left out were really harmed by the program! I almost don’t know where to begin how to make any counterpoints since, whatever it did, it was wrong, and the way to make it right is to disregard merit.

Our current unemployment figures are flawed, but throwing out numbers like this aren’t better if they count retirees. It appears that they did (as well as college students?). At least they aren’t counting kids, apparently. But “adult Americans” needs to be replaced by “working-age Americans.”