New York police officers could carry mini-cameras on their guns under a proposal to bolster public confidence following a spate of controversial shootings.

The device, whose introduction is gaining support among state politicians, would create a visual and audio recording of police shootings for use in court.

Officers would not be able to tamper with the five-ounce camera which works by shooting out a bright red laser light at whatever is in the gun barrel’s path within two seconds of the weapon being drawn. The camera would continue to operate for up to an hour.

The laser light could only be switched off if might expose the officer to danger in a dark area. The camera footage could also be used to identify suspects.

I am a big supporter of police, and think they do a wonderful job 99% of the time, but I also realize that some jurisdictions have social/political considerations that put police in as much danger as criminals do. These cameras could exonerate police who are harassed by trouble-makers for justified uses of force.

Furthermore, I think the trend towards paramilitary police units is dangerous, and these sorts of cameras could encourage more careful police work.

Each time the space shuttle rises from its launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Fla., an Air Force officer waits anxiously for the first 2 minutes to pass safely. If the spaceship were to veer off course and endanger a populated area, this range safety officer would bear the terrible responsibility of flipping a pair of switches under a stenciled panel reading “Flight Termination.” The first switch arms explosives on the shuttle’s two solid rocket boosters. Flipping the second switch would detonate them, destroying the shuttle and crew.

“If something happens when it’s just off the pad, there’s only a couple of seconds [to react],” says Bryan O’Connor, a former shuttle commander and NASA’s chief of safety and mission assurance.

Well, pack your bags for Houston because NASA wants to pay you $17,000 to stay in bed for 90 straight days.

The bed-rest experiment, to take place in the Human Test Subject Facility of Johnson Space Center, is designed to allow scientists to study some of the effects of microgravity on the human body. We read on the Bed Rest Study website:

Participants will spend 90 days lying in bed, (except for limited times for specific tests) with their body slightly tilted downward (head down, feet up). Every day, they will be awake for 16 hours and lights out (asleep) for 8 hours.

I certainly wouldn't do it... the health consequences could be severe.

(HT: GeekPress, who asks how this technology could possibly go wrong. I, for one, welcome our new unstoppable robot overlords.)

In my former life I was Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s agent and manager. I co-owned a prosperous talent management firm, Relativity Management, lived in a four-story mansion, and somehow success­fully stumbled (often drunk and stoned) through the whorehouse called Hollywood. I was an indoctrinated hardcore liberal. If you think I’m a spoiled dick and you hate me, then we’re on the right track. But having a child 10 years ago changed my thinking. It gave me a certain respect for capitalism and even corporate America.

When I bought a new Hummer H2 back in 2002, I ordered a custom license plate that read U.S. WINS. I got it because I believed in the message. I wanted people to have a reaction to the plate, usually negative, and then examine their thinking. Would it be so bad to win this war? Plus, I knew it would fucking piss everyone in the city off because it was Los Angeles.

I could give two fucks about WMDs. There were much more important reasons to topple Saddam—terrorism being one of them. The root causes of terrorism are the lack of capitalism, the lack of democracy, and the lack of modern education. What has stood in the way of those things has primarily been the regimes of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. We just got one of them out of the way.

It looks like visiting Iraq and watching the War on Terror first-hand can really affect one's perspective.

(HT: My wife.)

What's more, Clinton has been loaning her campaign millions of dollars a month, and there's at least one way she can get it back: agree to drop out of the race if the Obama campaign pays off her campaign debt. Paying off Clinton's campaign debts would be an indirect bribe since most of the debt is to Clinton herself, but at this stage who's counting? Hillary won't have any leverage for this sort of concession if she drags her campaign on much longer.

Update:

But maybe a few million dollars isn't much to risk when you're so close to the Presidency.

With stocks of unwanted new SUVs and pickups piling up at dealerships across the country, automakers are offering unprecedented promotions. Incentives for large SUVs, including cash rebates, topped $4,000 in March, or more than double those offered in March 2002, according to Edmunds.com, which monitors the motor industry.

At the same time, consumers like Chrystall are flooding the market with used SUVs, trying to trade in hulking Hummers for compact Corollas, and getting thousands of dollars less than they would have just a few months ago. In April, the average used SUV took more than 66 days to sell, at a 20 percent discount from vehicle valuation books, such as Kelley Blue Book, compared to 48 days and a 7.8 percent discount a year earlier, reported CNW Marketing Research, an automotive marketing research company.

Some desperate car dealers and consumers, are willing to lose thousands of dollars just to get rid of their SUVs. Last July, 20-year-old Sannan Nizami, of Lowell, bought a 2007 Toyota 4Runner SUV for $32,000 when it cost about $65 to fill the tank. Six months later, as a gallon of gas soared to $3.50 and more, and tank refills climbed over $80, Nizami put the vehicle up for sale. He posted it online for $27,000 but received no responses for months.

If you need or want a truck, now's the time.

More than 200 economists, including four Nobel prize winners, signed a letter rejecting proposals by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain to offer a summertime gas-tax holiday. ...

``Suspending the federal tax on gasoline this summer is a bad idea, and we oppose it,'' the letter says. Economist Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution is among those circulating the letter. Aaron said that while he supports Obama, the list includes Republicans and Clinton supporters. ...

The gas-tax suspension has become a flashpoint in the race for the Democrat presidential nomination between New York Senator Clinton and Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Clinton and Republican McCain tout the proposal as an example of their concern for struggling middle-class families. Obama, who estimated it would save the average driver less than $30, calls the idea a ``gimmick,'' rejecting it on similar grounds as the economists.

It is a gimmick, just like the stupid "stimulus" checks that are being paid out right now. I dream of a day when "average" Americans are wise enough to see through this crap.

Hillary Clinton's response to these denunciations is also noteworthy, because she explicitly states what most leftists must think when they hear economic objections to their idiot policies:

Clinton said yesterday on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos that ``I'm not going to put my lot in with economists'' because ``we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively.''

Stupid economists! They haven't taken into account that the plan will be designed and implemented effectively! Well gosh, if that's suddenly with our politicians' capabilities then why don't they go back, redesign, and reimplement the rest of our bureaucracy so it works effectively too?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women's medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs.

The move marks the third phase of a company program that began in 2006 to provide a 30-day supply of generic prescription drugs for $4. The Bentonville-based company said the program has saved customers more than $1 billion.

With the expansion, the company began filling prescriptions Monday for up to 350 generic medications at $10 for a 90-day supply at Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sam's Club pharmacies in the U.S. Almost all the prescription generics in the company's $4 program were included in the expanded $10 offer, said Wal-Mart senior vice president John Agwunobi.

Competition works in everyone's favor. Any changes the government makes to healthcare regulation should be designed to increase competition in the marketplace, give consumers more options, and loosen restrictions on healthcare providers that drive up cost. Let healthcare providers compete like Wal-Mart does, and we'll all reap the benefits.

Since the potential for additional Republican gains among married white Christians appears to be limited, Republican leaders will need to find ways to reduce the Democratic advantage among voters who are not married white Christians in order to maintain the party's competitive position. However, given the generally liberal views of this group, this will not be easy. In 2006, according to data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 57 percent of these voters supported a woman's right to choose an abortion under any circumstances, 66 percent opposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage, and 71 percent favored a single-payer health care system. Any attempt by Republican leaders to significantly increase their party's support among voters who are not married white Christians would therefore require changes in some of the party's longstanding policy commitments -- changes that would clearly upset a large segment of the current Republican base.

There are several problems I can see with Dr. Abramowitz' analysis.

1. The political preferences he attributes to skin color are more likely to be due to dynamic cultural factors, such as recency of immigration, urban living conditions, and so forth. It's unlikely that skin color alone causes a person to favor gay marriage or broadly legal abortion. Whatever cultural factors underlie the leftist dominance of non-whites could change or be changed as easily as white preferences have changed over the decades.

2. Even though people are getting married later than they have in the past, most people still do marry. As longevity increases, it's not clear that people will spend fewer voting years married than they have in the past. Additionally, there's no reason to believe that marriage is experiencing a permanent decline. Perhaps conservatives need to lead by teaching/convincing others about the merits and benefits of marriage. Strong leadership could, perhaps, work to rebuild the institution of marriage within our society and fight against the forces that are working hard to erode it. Instead of trailing these demographic shifts, political leaders should be working to shape the culture.

3. Christianity seems to be rather cyclical in its popularity. There's no doubt that the church needs to be more active in evangelism, not merely for political or demographic purposes, but because God commands it. The political consequences of this calling are secondary to the spiritual, but will follow nonetheless.

Rather than seeing these shifts as a reason to abandon conservatism as Dr. Abramowitz suggests, I see them as a challenge: if we conservatives really do have a better way of running the world than the leftists do, we need to make our case for it and convince the voters. Demographics are destiny, but they are not beyond our ability to influence.

The fact is that what has been happening to the world's climate in recent years, since global temperatures ceased to rise after 1998, was not predicted by any of those officially-sponsored models. The discrepancy between their predictions and observable data becomes more glaring with every month that passes.

It won't do for believers in warmist orthodoxy to claim that, although temperatures may be falling, this is only because they are "masking an underlying warming trend that is still continuing" - nor to fob us off with assurances that the "German model shows that higher temperatures than 1998, the warmest year on record, are likely to return after 2015".

In view of what is now at stake, such quasi-religious incantations masquerading as science are something we can no longer afford. We should get back to proper science before it is too late.

See also: Watts Up With That and Climate Audit.

Update:

But at least Sting is making a fortune off it. (HT: Jessica.)

Another motion to lower farm subsidies, by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, was pending Thursday afternoon when the House adjourned for its usual long weekend of fundraising, politicking and recreation. Unchanged in Nancy Pelosi's House is bipartisan devotion to the three-day week.

I work hard and I work a lot to support my family, to provide for our future retirement, to give my employer and my country an honest return for my wages, and to honor God with my labor.

Eh, maybe I should be grateful they work so little. Everything our Congress does seems designed to screw me over, so maybe the less they work the better off the rest of us are.

And while [Oprah] Winfrey, who has endorsed Obama and campaigned on his behalf, had long understood the perils of a close association with Wright, friends say she was blindsided by the pastor's personal assault on Obama. "She felt that Wright would never do anything to hurt a man who looked up to him as a father figure," said her [anonymous] close friend. "She also never thought he'd intentionally hurt someone trying to make history and change the lives of so many people.''

Unless I missed something, how has it been determined that Wright is intentionally hurting Obama, rather than only inadvertently hurting Obama while primarily focused on defending and aggrandizing himself? Seems like Newsweek is providing some helpful spin to the Obama campaign.

Someone in Tucson isn't happy about the city's red-light cameras.

A vandal re-aimed most of the traffic cameras at collision-prone intersections over the weekend in an apparent attempt to keep them from snapping photos of speeders and red-light runners, an official said.

This doesn't strike me as "vandalism" since there was no damage or defacement. What this looks like to me is civil disobedience.

It would be more efficient, though, to use some sort of spraying device to shoot paint at the camera lens from the ground or from a car. Not that I'd advocate such a thing.

(HT: Instapundit.)

Fifty-four shootings in two weekends. Shot-up bodies recovered in groups of three and five. Is this Ramadi? Basra? No.

Welcome to Chicago.

After a recent outbreak of gun-related violence, Mayor Richard Daley is now pushed into supporting a plan by new Police Superintendent Jody Weis to arm 13,000 Chicago police officers with assault rifles. Depending on how many weapons are eventually deployed, this may develop into the largest militarization of police patrol officers in United States history. If the department arms 10,000 of their officers with M4s, the police will have 9,900 more assault rifles in Chicago than the U.S. Marines presently have in Fallujah, Iraq.

Advice to Senator Obama as he aspires to run a whole country: Physician, heal thyself.

(HT: Instapundit.)

(HT: Nick and Bernardo.)

Among my saddest moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this: "I wasn't a good student in high school, but I wanted to prove that I can get a college diploma. I'd be the first one in my family to do it. But it's been five years and $80,000, and I still have 45 credits to go."

I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout.

Education is a business. The American higher education system is the best in the world, but it's there first to make money and only secondarily to educate. That's not a flaw in the system, that's just life. Don't let yourself or your kids be duped by the sales-pitches if the product really isn't right for you.

OutofPocket.com, a technology startup dedicated to promoting health care transparency and competition, announced today the launch of its new search engine. The search engine enables consumers to look up prices and comparison shop for health care services by searching for price data across different websites. OutofPocket.com launched an earlier version of their website in July 2007 which provided consumers with a platform to collaborate and expose the true prices of routine health care services. With the addition of the new search engine, the enhanced website collects health care price data from multiple sources including provider price lists, consumer contributed content, claims data from businesses, Government CMS Medicare data, websites that publish health care prices (hospitals, diagnostic testing facilities, clinics, labs, physician practices), and price transparency tools on public websites.

Sounds like it could grow into a valuable resource.

To me, the highlight of the interview was when O'Reilly pointed out that her plan to raise taxes (and potentially eliminate the Social Security cap, though she denied it) would result in a 14% tax increase for him personally. She fielded it by saying that people as wealthy as he and her could afford it, middle-class taxpayers would benefit, etc. O'Reilly should have, but didn't, retort by telling her that he employs middle-class taxpayers, and he'd have to lay people off if her tax wishes are granted. But hey, this wasn't meant to be a debate, it was meant to be an interview.

Overall, the wife and I enjoyed watching quite a bit, and we're looking forward to tonight's installment. The questions were far tougher than any we've seen elsewhere, and we can't wait to see O'Reilly interview Barack Obama and John McCain. (Yeah, right.)

Scientists are claiming an amazing breakthrough - regrowing a man's severed finger with the aid of an experimental powder.

Four weeks after Lee Spievack sliced almost half an inch off the top of one of his fingers, he said it had grown back to its original length.

Four months later it looked like any other finger, complete with "great feeling", a fingernail and fingerprint.

I'm skeptical, but hey, if it's real then it's an amazing breakthrough. I'm sure we'll hear more about this "pixie dust".

Update:

Looks like my skepticism was justified.

But Professor Stephen Kaye, a consultant plastic and hand surgeon at Leeds University, poured cold water on Dr Badylak's claims.

Asked if he was surprised that Mr Spievack's finger "grew back" he said: "Not in the slightest."

Prof Kaye added: "The pictures I've seen on the web show a wound I would have expected to heal and regenerate in any case.

"The end of the finger is extremely good at regeneration. The pictures we've seen on the web show no evidence of loss of bone, nerve or tendon material, but regeneration and repair of skin - which is exactly what the fingertip does."

He added that the photographs appeared to portray a "very commonplace transverse amputation of the very end of the fingertip" and not someone who had lost the last phalanx of his finger, as Dr Badylak claimed.

Well yeah, if there was no loss of bone, nerve, or tendon, then the regrowth is much less interesting.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.

And here's Obama disowning Jeremiah Wright yesterday, April 29th.

"At a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough," Obama said.

"That's a show of disrespect to me. It is also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign.''

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw.''

Perhaps it's fitting to let Jeremiah Wright have the last word:

We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected.”

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors. They have a different person to whom they’re accountable.

Thousands of people in Africa will be paid to avoid unsafe sex, under a groundbreaking World Bank-backed experiment aimed at halting the spread of Aids.

The $1.8m trial – to be launched this year – will counsel 3,000 men and women aged 15-30 in southern rural Tanzania over three years, paying them on condition that periodic laboratory test results prove they have not contracted sexually transmitted infections.

The proposed payments of $45 equate to a quarter of annual income for some participants.

The programme, jointly funded by the World Bank, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Population Reference Bureau and the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, marks an important step in the fight to tackle Aids, which claims 2m lives a year.

In spite of billions of dollars spent annually on treatment and prevention worldwide, there were about 2.5m new HIV infections in 2007, predominantly in Africa.

Carol Medlin from the University of California, San Francisco, one of the researchers, said: “We hope this ‘reverse prostitution’ will make people think hard about the long-term consequences of their short-term behaviour.”

Sounds worth a shot. It would be surprising to me if a few dollars would provide much additional incentive to avoid a fatal disease, but then it's surprising to me that anyone contracts AIDS from sex or drug use anymore. If these payments reduce the infection rate by even 1% then they'll be more effective than all the research into AIDS vaccines thus far.