Is it me, or does this guy look kind of like the geeky brother from Numb3rs?

To the right: What an interplanetary Pangaea might look like.

James Fallows chats with a space entrepreneur about colonizing Mars. James McGirk says we should look at floating cities above Venus.

If we do decide to colonize Mars, we may have figured out how to do space farms. {More}

Mental Floss asks “When did Americans lose their British accents?” Relatedly, I don’t like superfluous ‘u’s, but it sure would be simpler if we’d never deviated from British spelling.

A police officer in Houston was pulled over and noticed something funny about the ticket he was given. A scam and a scandal was unraveled.

The Internet filter of a school district in Connecticut decided to start blocking conservative websites. Obviously, this is an issue of funding and if we gave the Internet filterers more of it, they would not have to gang up only on conservative websites…

I’m pretty bummed about what it’s looking like the government is about to do to Voice of America.

China is conglomerating a city that will have a population of 130,000,000 people.

Embarrassing (and funny) of comments the Chinese have made unaware that the person they are talking to speaks Chinese.

Antarctica inhabits an odd place in the nation-state dynamic, perhaps making us rethink sovereignty. More on Antarctica.

Fanisha Fazal and Ryan Griffiths ask why secession is becoming so popular. Open Democracy attributes it to increasing internationalism.

Another ineffective weight-loss strategy: “Eat more fruits and vegetables.”

Nick Hanauer argued that wealth inequality was going to lead to pitchforks on the richers front lawns. John Aziz says that our institutions aren’t sufficiently corrupt.

When I did my Links Across America thing on July Fourth, I really should have had an entry for Denmark. Also, a 1988 TNR piece on the international reaction to the American Revolution.

Perhaps touching the Ark of the Covenant got Uzzah electrocuted.

Finally! The map I have long wanted to see: Which states send kids to private schools in large numbers.

It’s one of those obvious statistics that should have been easily accessible, but I’ve never had luck in finding it. I found the results corresponded with my biases pretty, though with some exceptions:

• I’m not surprised that it’s most prevalent in the northeast (broadly defined), though I would have expected it to go further east into Massachusetts and Connecticut and wouldn’t have figured that it would count Ohio. I suppose with Massachusetts having one of the best school systems in the country, it’s not particularly necessary. Perhaps also, Massachusetts sending many of its best and brightest to public schools may help keep it on the top of public schooling lists. Then again, Maryland has good schools and still a lot of people going to private schools.
• Less common in the South, excepting Louisiana. The Pelican State has a robust Catholic schools. I didn’t particularly expect Mississippi and Alabama to be outliers, and if guessing would have guessed that they’d have lower numbers than Dixie’s eastern seaboard.
• I would have been surprised by Wisconsin, though that came up during the recall elections and whatnot, that private schools were more common there. I’m not sure why.
• By far, the most surprising state was Nebraska. Really, I would have figured that the central column of states would be relatively similar. Instead Texas and the Dakotas are low, but the others are high. While Nebraska is the biggest surprise, I wouldn’t have expected Kansas or Missouri, either.
• It’s interesting, if not surprising, that both Utah and Idaho have such low rates. One can imagine an alternate history where the LDS has its own school system the way that Catholics have theirs. Instead, with the degree of social domination they have over Utah and eastern idaho, I suppose they had their Mormon schools in the public school system and having private Mormon schools would have been a duplication of effort.
• Hawaii. Huh. I’m not surprised, because I wouldn’t have hazarded a guess. But it does kind of stand out.
• There is less variation between the states than I would have guessed. You have some below the 8% cutoff so they could have next to none. There aren’t many at the higher end, though, and that surprised me a little bit. Off the deep end, though, it’s just Louisiana, Delaware, and Hawaii.
  

• Since Catholicism likely affects the rates, I am including a map with that data point to compare and contrast. Obviously, this is likely to be more pertinent in some places than others. For example, the higher rates in California are due no doubt to the higher Hispanic population, which may not track with private school attendance the same way that it would in Louisiana. It does a good job of explaining Louisiana, for example, and Rhode Island. Less so for the Hispanic states, and you would think that it would lead to higher rates than Massachusetts.

As Hit Coffee readers know, I am famously against nail polish. And yet, I have recently run across a type of nail polish that I approve of:

It’s a nail polish that doubles as a way to thwart sexual assault – and it’s being developed at N.C. State University: Undercover Colors.

The chemistry startup, developed by undergrads, is creating a nail polish that, when exposed to date rape drugs, changes color.

The nail polish is a scientific attempt to thwart a nationwide problem. A recent Washington Post analysis showed more than 3,900 allegations of forcible sex offenses on college campuses nationwide in 2012, a statistic that rose 50 percent in three years. Fourteen such offenses were reported at N.C. State between 2010 and 2012. During that same time period, 30 were alleged at Duke University and 52 at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Maybe, better yet, they can have one that’s clear that only colorizes when exposed to the chemicals! But even subtracting that, it’s a pretty great idea. Even if Mark Cuban also thinks so.

Charles Hill points out that it doesn’t work with other drugs, like strawberry daiquiries.

T-Mobile has historically been one of the few “good guys” in the cell carrier world, but they’re losing that reputation.

Employee loyalty isn’t just unrewarded, it’s actively penalized.

In a world where computers are better drivers and legal scholars than people, at what point do people become economically useless?

Tom Chiarella decided that he wanted to to, at age forty-six, take up smoking. Not liking it, he nonetheless persisted.

First they came for the Redskins. Then, the Cougars! Back when I was in middle school, another middle school opened up and the kids overwhelmingly wanted “Cobras” to be their mascot. It was shot down because admin assumed that it must be a gang thing.

Titan has a mysterious object on it, and an atmosphere older than Saturn’s.

Roy Peter Clark takes an aggressive stand for the passive voice. Like the double-negative, this is one of those things I was taught was wrong that was only wrong in certain (though common) circumstances.

Japan is building roads in poor countries, hoping to bolster their own economy by helping get economies around them moving.

How Japan is rebuilding old Tokyo, away from crowded density and towards higher density.

In Iceland, you can’t name your daughter Harriet (or any other name that’s not on a list). Though I am against such things, for reasons freedom-loving and logistical, when I was substitute teaching there were times when I wished parents had less freedom and a list from which to choose.

America’s fastest growing metro has no crime, kids, or cars.

Over twenty years later, Batman The Animated Series remains an animation marvel and will doubtlessly be remembered long after its successors The Batman and Beware the Batman.

Alexis Madrigal takes aim at sitcoms’ doofus dads. This is one of the areas that both sides feel put upon. Men because they believe it makes them look bad, women because they believe it increases their sphere of responsibility.

Jim Russell declares The Death of Urbanization in the United States. He over-states his case as domestic migration is only part of the picture. Even so, it quite pointedly challenges “The Great Inversion” narrative and perhaps suggests a different fate for rural America than we might assume.

Mauricio Estrella used computer passwords to change his life.

In 1995, Eugene Volokh (of Conspiracy fame) made a number of predictions about the media and technology, much of which turned out to be on the money. More good predictions.

The original TMNT movie does not hold up particularly well. While some of these criticisms are off-base (it was not uncommon for small – portable – TVs to have batteries, back in the day), there are some really goofy things going on.

Incidentally, I was watching Drew Carey Show the other day. There was a scene where you could pretty clearly see a dude standing in Drew’s bedroom in a scene where there very much would not be some dude in Drew Carey’s bedroom. Oops.

I’m not a big fan of the cameos in Atlas Shrugged. I guess commercially it’s good for publicity, but like having Bill O’Reilly in Iron Man, it’s a bit jarring. It would be kind of cool if they were playing people that weren’t themselves (like Hannity appearing as a defender of the latest government initiative).

Depending on how the courts decide on the subsidies, declining to set up state exchanges may have been the smart move.

If being wrong feels so good, you don’t wanna be right.

The drought situation, in maps and images.

The attempts to shoehorn a local (American) angle here notwithstanding, this story about India’s trash situation is quite interesting.

The effects of gambling (and casinos) on the poor is abysmal. These are the sorts of issues that really test my libertarian self (and kind of kick his ass, actually).

Richard Florida gloats about 19 of 51 cities where the cities are growing faster than their suburbs. That sounds impessive, until you remember the base points. By the same numbers, suburbs are actually gaining more people.

Our next housing crisis may be in the rental market.

Americans not only don’t get government-mandated vacation time. We fail to take advantage of the vacation time we’re offered.

The more maddening I find a paywall, the more likely that the paywall is having some success. I find Financial Times’ paywall to be very maddening.

Utah’s non-Mormon paper looks like it might be eaten up by its Mormon paper.

There is a myth that it’s bad for children under four to spend the night with their (separated) father, and it’s persisting despite a lack of scientific basis.

Let’s take something with all of the downsides of cohabitation, and validate and formalize it! I’d say “If you’re not sure, then cohabitate.” Except that cohabitation’s track record isn’t particular good. Instead, if you’re not sure, focus on “Why am I not?” and go from there.

The chief problem with global warming, unlike many things it is compared to, it’s an international problem with greatly differing costs among the needed participants, however hopeful some may be about India.

The laws surrounding child pornography are problematically broad. “Possessing child porn in digital form is against a law that isn’t realistic in the digital world.”

Fewer young people are using sunscreen! Bad news! Or is it? According to a scientist in Seattle, sunscreen is bad for you.

-{This post involves race and politics, so obviously partisan and racial commentary is okay. Do comment with care, however.}-

The Hollywood Reporter has a lot of interesting background stuff on Saturday Night Live in recent years. The most interesting part to me, naturally, is the show’s political balance. James Downey, a writer on the show, commented with regard to their treatment of Barack Obama:

If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, “Degree of difficulty, 10 point 10.” It’s like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled. There’s not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature. [Al] Gore had these “handles,” so did Bush, and Sarah Palin, and even Hillary had them. But with Obama, it was the phenomenon — less about him and more about the effect he had on other people and the way he changed their behavior. So that’s the way I wrote him.

This strikes me as pretty wrong, on its face. I knew even way back then the tact I would take: aloof, arrogant, and self-interested. Now, I don’t know the extent to which he actually is these things, but he did actually come off that way just a bit from early on. Enough to be able to pounce on. But SNL didn’t and said, even back then, that Obama was just so hard to make fun of.

It’s tempting to chalk this up to politics, but Downey isn’t very liberal, had some serious issues with Obama, and did go after him in another way (specifically, the media’s treatment of him). It’s honestly hard not to attribute this mostly to race. Specifically, the fear of being racist.

It isn’t the worst thing in the world, of course, that it’s harder to make fun of black candidates and presidents without getting a social wrist-slap. I’d argue that it’s actually generally a good thing. I do think that there was the fear of either being considered racist – even if white candidates do get that treatment. I think there was the fear of giving the racists’ cover (and I have no trepidation in saying that a lot of Obama’s critics are racist or use racism as a spiked hammer in their attacks). Which is actually quite understandable, but very much to the detriment of the show itself.

This actually speaks a bit to the odd place that Obama puts us in. Both in the sense that his critics have used his race to attack him, and in the sense that his supporters have attempted to link race with the vast majority of attacks against him. Unless it’s Obama eating a watermelon or something to do with Kenya, there are very few Obama criticisms that are so clearly and incontrovertibly about race that you can attribute it to such. Think back to the criticisms of previous presidents and how they might be perceived if applied to Obama:

He’s is a womanizer… that’s a fear of black male sexuality.
He’s is a smooth talker… ditto.
He’s is stupid… are you saying black people are stupid?
He talks funny… uhhhh?
He is a wimp… said only due to racist stereotypes of black masculinity.

So we’re left to where a race angle can be provided to just about anything. But it’s too easy to say that we shouldn’t consider race unless it’s a cross burning on a front lawn. One of the things Game Change that was pretty clear was that Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s people (over the alleged objections of the candidate) were using race, even when there was plausible deniability. And Obama’s people were using charges of racism even when they didn’t think that racism was actually a factor.

I said when Obama first clinched the Democratic nomination that it would be a race between the two parties. The Republicans would try to make race an issue as much as they could without getting called on it. The Democrats would try to take as many criticisms off the table by calling it racist. I should have figured this would apply to candidates as well.

I recently complained about Google crippling their devices in the name of security. Lenovo, the maker of the ThinkPads I have been reliably buying for over a decade now, has decided to do the same in the name of… I don’t know. Aesthetics, I guess.

I got my hands on a Thinkpad T540p, which is their newest 15″ laptop. I got my hands off of it and I am at a loss. It is terrible. It is atrocious. It takes one of the big reasons that I (and many others) are loyal Thinkpad user and makes it decidedly inferior. Harder to use. And not in a way that I will get used to over time, most likely. Mostly, in a way that makes me question whether I will ever buy a Thinkpad again. I haven’t purchased a laptop that wasn’t a Thinkpad since 1998.

If there is a method to their madness, I don’t know what it is. it does look nicer, I guess. Buttons and their inherent functionality and ease of use have become passe, I guess. Out with the function, in with the form I suppose.

This leaves me in a lurch because, like I said, I don’t buy anything but Thinkpads. For a while I can basically continue to buy the previous models. Until it becomes outdated. If I do that, though, I will run into the same situation I am in now where every laptop in the house is becoming outdated all at once. This is because at some point I determined that the T60/T61 was the perfect model and made sure that just about all of my laptop purchases were that model. But computers become outdated over time, and start falling apart. It says a lot that I am dealing with this for a model made in 2006, but it’s inconvenient when I have spent the last two weeks trying to find use for an army of computers that can’t make the transition to Windows 7. Presumably, sticking with T520’s will be great until they all hit some other roadblock.

Then, I guess, either Lenovo will have its act together, or *gulp* I may be looking at Dells.

Incidentally, Microsoft is pretty evil. They’ve shoved down something called Secure Boot. The result of which is that it took me a half hour just to figure out how to boot a Linux LiveCD. It can be done, but man they make it difficult.

Superdestroyer and I have gone back and forth on the future of lower-level athletics, with him believing that there is none and that before long schools will start dropping football programs and myself believing that (while some may) most will hold on and take the financial loss.

The University of Hawaii is talking about dropping its football program:

Athletic director Ben Jay on Monday asked officials to help lobby the state for $3 million to help keep the the school’s athletic teams competitive or it may have to consider a reduction in sports, according to a report in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and KITV-4 News.

“There is a very real possibility of football going away,” Jay said under questioning by members of the Board of Regents Committee on Intercollegiate Athletics, the Star-Advertiser said.

But, he said, “but even if football goes away, all the revenues that football drives goes away and then it becomes a costlier venture for the university.”

Most likely, he’s bluffing to get the state to cough up more money. The other FBS programs that have talked about dropping their programs (San Jose State, Rice, and Tulane) haven’t. Further, Hawaii is in the Mountain West Conference which is presently in a better financial position than those other schools in terms of revenue.

On the other hand, Hawaii is not a school that necessarily benefits from having a football program. The benefits are mostly comparative, and Hawaii has almost no competition within its state and appeals to a particular kind of student outside of its state. While having a football program or not may be the difference between having heard of Georgia State and not having heard of it, and mentally comparing Georgia State to Georgia Southern, the University of Hawaii has the benefit of being the flagship state university of our nation’s most unique state.

Which is how they have stayed competitive despite numerous disadvantages. I was stunned when I read an account of why June Jones made the lateral move to SMU. He had no recruiting budget and had to actually recruit players that had either never been to the campus or payed their own way to visit it. The facilities are in exceptionally bad shape. They do seem among the more vulnerable to dropping their program.

Other than the realignment ramifications – explored below – Hawaii exiting football would have two effects. Since Hawaii is in a particular position, I wouldn’t expect other schools to start suddenly re-evaluating football. It would, however, put an end to one of the pecularities of FBS football, which is that the NCAA allows teams that make the trip to Hawaii the opportunity to play a 13th regular season game. It is an effort to induce teams to take the long and expensive trip out. The second is the almost certain demise of the Hawaii Bowl, which was pretty much set up solely for the sake of giving Hawaii a place to play during bowl season. Typically, the the participants in the bowl are teams that have trouble filling their own stadium, and aren’t going to bring crowds to the Aloha State. While it’s a reward for players on teams that become bowl eligible, it’s an even greater money-sink than most bowl games and the visiting teams don’t even bring their marching bands due to cost.

Which must have the University of Idaho absolutely salivating. Idaho’s football program is currently languishing in the southern-based Sun Belt Conference while they wait for an invitation to the MWC. Unfortunately for U of I, they will probably be disappointed. Not just because UH isn’t likely to drop its program, but because if they do they are at best third in line. The first position being BYU, who is unlikely to be interested. The second position being UTEP.

UTEP is also probably closely monitoring the situation. They left the WAC for Conference USA in part for schools that have left Conference USA. There were rumors that they had tried to get into the MWC and were rebuffed. If they can afford the Conference USA exit fee, they’d probably gladly accept the invitation. As things stand now, they’re playing second-fiddle to their sister school in San Antonio. Both in the UT system, both with the same colors, except with UTSA having far more potential as a program. Geographically, they are a better fit for the MWC as well. For the MWC, they would be able to claim the El Paso market and have a presence in Texas (albeit barely).

If UTEP did make the move, then Conference USA would probably need to move to replace them. Last time around, Western Kentucky beat out New Mexico State for the slot. There is a strong likelihood that UTEP played a role in keeping New Mexico State out, and with UTEP out of the picture NMSU may be able to step right in. Though Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette have been mentioned as potential candidates, neither seem particularly likely to me. Both other competitiveness, but Arkansas State doesn’t offer much of a region or market and has a lackluster academic profile. Louisiana-Lafayette has the academic profile, but not much of a market. More likely is that they would skip straight to Georgia State, which has made it clear that they are working to invest heavily in getting their fledgling program off the ground (plus: Atlanta!). Since UTEP itself isn’t very good, they can afford for the replacement not to be very good. Another possibility would be Massachusetts, which is looking for a home for its football program. However, that’s unlikely as UMass wants to keep its non-football sports where they are and the last time C*USA had this choice (with Temple) they were uninterested in football-only members.

The Sun Belt, whether losing Idaho or some school to Conference USA, would probably not expand.