You've probably heard a thing or two about China's woman shortage, and the roles that the "Market-Communist" Republic's one-child policy and old timey woman hatred have played in bringing that shortage about. But now, in opinion journalism's answer to "Class of Nuke 'Em High," The New Republic's Mara Hvistendahl puts drooling, sideburned, knuckledragging flesh on the raw statistics. It's not just that there are too many young men; it's that they're dangerous delinquents who play soldier with (illegal, naturally) air rifles!

The macho violence spurting forth through outlets like war games is a growing trend in Chinese society--and China's one-child policy, in effect since 1979, is partly responsible. The country's three decades of iron-fisted population planning coincided with a binge in sex-selective abortions (Chinese traditionally favor sons, who carry on the family line) and a rise, even as the country developed, in female infant mortality. After almost 30 years of the policy, China now has the largest gender imbalance in the world, with 37 million more men than women and almost 20 percent more newborn boys than girls nationwide.

I smell a buried lede. No doubt somebody somewhere has at some point put his or her eye out with a BB gun, but this business about a rise in female infant mortality seems a good deal more alarming than the utterly unremarkable news that boys and men are aggressive morons. (You may counter that female infant mortality in China is not news at all, and that it's been known for centuries that people will abort, murder or abandon girl babies solely on the basis of their gender. But then that just shows that the creepiest customs are the ones that are generally tolerated.)

And how much does a 37-million-person gender gap actually amount to in a population of 1.33 billion? It's enough, as my old friend Jacob Sullum has explained, to create a market distortion in favor of child-hungry couples in the West. But when Hvistendahl heads out to see some of these children in action, the evidence is less astounding than you'd think:

Lianyungang, a booming port city in a Jiangsu province economic belt, is ground zero for some of these changes. According to the China Family Planning Association, it's the city in China with the most extreme gender ratio for children under four--163 boys for every 100 girls. One sunny Saturday morning at verdant Cangwu Park, I count six boys and three girls bouncing on the inflatable castle. Near the ice-cream stand are a dozen sticky-faced kids, seven boys and five girls, feeding pigeons. The children running after kites adorned with Olympics mascots and China's Shenzhou VII spaceship: three and two. The drivers of the cheerful little tanks circling an electric track: three and one.

A three-to-two gender gap among child kite flyers? The obvious eventual solution to that problem will have to be widespread acceptance of polyandry (the true mark of an evolved society). But as it happens, the Worker's Paradise has already ruled against that idea. So again, the only solution is violence:

Two years ago in Nanjing, Jiangsu's capital, businessman Wu Gang opened the Rising Sun Anger Release Bar in a cheap hotel near the bank of the Yangtze River. The bar featured staples of Chinese entertainment like big-screen karaoke and plates of sunflower seeds but also a central catwalk where, for 100 yuan ($15) per minute, customers paid to assault the waiters, single young migrants from poorer cities to the north. If a customer preferred, his victim would dress in drag.

You know, in any other publication, I'd say this whole anecdote sounds fishy. But since it's The New Republic, I'll accept that somewhere in Nanjing there's a three-block-long line of applicants for waiter jobs. (They don't actually want to dress up in women's clothing and be manhandled by beefy young men, but you've gotta earn a living in this tough economy!)

History will judge the People's Republic of China harshly for its grotesque experiment in population control. Someday it may judge all of humanity harshly for our failure to breed out the Y chromosome and end the tyrannny of pampered princelings over better, smarter, higher-performing girls once and for all. In the meantime, it's best to take your sociology — and your "Wild In the Streets"-style cautionary tales about uncontrollable youths — with a grain of salt.

Courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily.

Justices affirm gun rights: In a historic 5-4 ruling, the high court says the 2nd Amendment protects individuals' right to bear arms By David G. Savage

COLUMN ONE: A 'worm' worth its weight in gold: With demand sky high for a fungus prized in traditional medicine, the Tibetan nomads who gather it prosper. But for how long? By Barbara Demick

Dow's drop reflects extent of U.S. economic troubles: It could be a long wait for things to get better, with little help from consumers or the Fed. By Walter Hamilton

Mugabe's enforcers are also victims: Young Zimbabweans say they obey orders to beat others to avoid harm themselves From a Times Staff Writer

Verdict in train wreck: murder By Ann M. Simmons and Jack Leonard

N. Korea, U.S. meet halfway By Peter Spiegel and Barbara Demick

Inside The Times:

Mars soil could sustain plant life: Surprisingly alkaline, it could support green beans and asparagus, scientists say.

Infinite domains: The web suffixes we've used for years — .com, .org, .net — may soon face competition.

Pop music review: Back at the Bowl, Tom Petty proves classics can be fresh.

Now let's see how America voted...

New wet chemistry test results from the Phoenix lander indicate Martian North Pole soil contains magnesium, sodium, potassium, chloride and other common nutrients.

"Martian soil could grow turnips," a New Scientist headline assures us. More of the geocentrism I was ranting about last week? Maybe not. This mix of chemistry is more interesting than the basaltic rock and iron oxide composition that has long been recognized as the soil type that makes the planet red (or is it?). Inevitably, this new finding is being touted as evidence that the Red Planet can "support life," though I'm glad to see the TierneyLab blog in the other Times is following my skepticism about the tendency to go looking for life in uninviting locations.

In the other big Mars news, we may have a pretty good indication of why our lopsided neighbor is devoid of life no matter how rich its soil might be: a 4.4 billion-year-old collision with an object the size of Texas. Or Alaska. Or Pluto. More discussion at Slashdot.

If you've forgotten Warren Swil's Op-Ed on the hidden power of Sleep Mode from back in October, here's a refresher:

In standby, a machine is not really turned off. It goes into a state of reduced activity that requires only minimal power consumption. The downside is that even at vastly reduced power levels, millions of machines running all day, every day adds up to huge amounts of wasted energy. With oil prices at record highs and the climate under threat from excessive consumption of fossil fuels, this is neither smart nor desirable.

It's not the tiny lights themselves that are at fault — they're a marvelous, energy-saving invention. Rather, it's what they indicate: a seemingly unstoppable proliferation of devices that siphon power even while not in use.

Wondering how to quantify "vastly," "huge," "excessive," "seemingly," and so on? Cambridge professor (and CalTech Ph.D) David J.C. MacKay is trying to do just that in his book "Sustainable Energy — Without the hot air," and he talks to the UK Register about the many alt.energy scenarios for which he's run feasibility studies. There's plenty of material here (and very little that will please the pro-wind, anti-nuke Times editorial board), but this bit tries to put the planet-destroying horror of VCRs that blink 12:00 into context:

MacKay tells The Reg that he was first drawn into this field by the constant suggestion — from the Beeb, parts of the government etc — that we can seriously impact our personal energy consumption by doing such things as turning our TVs off standby or unplugging our mobile-phone chargers.

Anyone with even a slight grasp of energy units should know that this is madness. Skipping one bath saves a much energy as leaving your TV off standby for over six months. People who wash regularly, wear clean clothes, consume hot food or drink, use powered transport of any kind and live in warm houses have no need to worry about the energy they use to power their electronics; it’s insignificant compared to the other things.

Whole article here. Courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily.

My alma mater has an excellent Drew Carey video examining the anti-free-trade palaver of the candidates and the MSM, and wondering why that same hatred never gets leveled against the real enemies of the proletariat: machines.

Sorry for the late hit, but what really grabbed me was a montage of foreigner-bashing in the media that included this old cover of Time that does for Indians what Der Stürmer did for the Jews. Maybe you have to put it into historical context: Way back in 2006, overpaid magazine editors just didn't have our modern sense of human rights. At least now we know the only sub-humans are fat kids.

(Also, anybody know what movie that is with the giant scorpion robot and the decapitating robot? That looks like something I'd like to see.)

Update: Producer and L.A. Times contributor Ted Balaker informs me that the robot movie is the Jim Wynorski joint "Shockwave" a.k.a. "A.I. Assault" — which was apparently too far ahead of its time for mainstream audiences to appreciate.

As part of The Times editorial board's series on food diplomacy, The Times has invited experts to comment on humanitarian aid. Below is a missive from Mark J. Manary, a doctor and nutrition specialist who is currently in Malawi.

It is Saturday afternoon in Blantyre, Malawi. I am a pediatrician and I have spent all week in rural Machinga running feeding centers and offering mothers high quality foods for their for their young children in an effort to prevent malnutrition. It is refreshing to see people in Los Angeles, where my son lives, wondering what can be done about malnutrition and the global food crisis. I have committed by life to this work, developing better foods and food crops, 23 years in Africa. Let me share the following thoughts.

1. The problem of malnutrition is real, and more important today than a decade ago.
2. Malnutrition is primarily the result of grinding poverty, rather than civil unrest. When food prices rise, so does malnutrition for those people living on less than $2 a day.
3. The immediate crisis is increased child deaths and disabilities, and the immediate solution is feeding children food with more macro and micronutrients. Whether the foods are available locally or an imported, the effect on the child is the same, a better chance to live!  Beware of salesmen in this arena, all food that is claimed to be better is not.
4. Ready-to-use foods, lipid nutrient supplements are great foods for children. No peasant farmer will pay any heed to improved agriculture unless she also sees efforts to address the present crisis. (When the house is on fire, its no time to talk about flame resistant pajamas).
5. The 10-year solution is improved food crops. Advances in technology, breeding and genetically modified crops are powerful tools that should be brought to bear on this problem.
6. Take a look at our website www.projectpeanutbutter.org

Congratulations to the Phoenix Lander team on its apparent discovery of ice near the north pole of Mars. Dig the color-photo evidence:

It took me a bit of looking to figure out what was going on with this picture of the trench dug by the Phoenix's eight-foot arm.

The idea is that some small chunks disappeared over a four-day period, indicating that they were made of ice that (I think) warmed up and then sublimed, because the Red Planet's extremely thin atmosphere causes water to boil immediately.

If I'm reading the picture correctly, the chunks are located in the bottom-left end of the trench. They were churned up by Phoenix as it dug for a soil sample. It's likely they came from the same layer of white stuff (which sure looks like ice) we see a bit of in the middle of the picture.

And as you can see in this photo, the chunks seem to be gone four days (or sols) later.

That's a pretty good indication of something, and an interesting locked-room mystery. But in a way I'd feel more confident if this discovery were based on evidence I couldn't so easily understand. The Rovers found varied evidence for historical water on Mars — such as erosion patterns in some rocks and the dispersal of the famous hematite "blueberries." But I don't believe water itself, in any form, has yet ended up in the hands of any robot. Phoenix's mission is to dig up some soil, cook it and examine it with the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. It has so far not found any water through that means, so the sublimed-ice eureka, while interesting, doesn't necessarily move us beyond where we were.

So I decided to play Stupid Columbo and wonder aloud just how solid the evidence is for H2O on Mars. In an email, Cornell professor Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the Rover program and author of "Roving Mars" — a book you must read if you have even a passing interest in this stuff — says the evidence is absolute:

And it has been for decades. The Mariner 9 and Viking missions in the '70's produced compelling evidence that water once flowed across the martian surface, and that there is ice at the martian poles today. We often describe what the rovers and Phoenix are doing as "searching for evidence of water" or "searching for ice", but that's a gross oversimplification. That question was settled back when I was in college, and I'm in my 50's now. What we're doing today is adding the next level of detail.

He also notes that one hoped-for result of the Phoenix work would be a better understanding of the composition of the ice. "The ice could, for example, help preserve organic compounds," he writes.

Stupid Columbo again: But should we be hoping to find organic compounds, or for that matter water? I'm partly reacting here to news coverage that frequently characterizes scientists as "disappointed" or "not disappointed" or "pleased." I'm wondering whether the focus on organic materials, water, etc. might be part of a geocentric fallacy; after all, there wouldn't be much excitement about Mars if we discovered it really had nothing in common with us or our planet. Squyres' book treats in great detail the politics of research and discovery, the need for expectations management and the temptation to see what you want to see, so I asked him about that as well. His response:

Well, it's something you have to be very careful about. There's a saying that I've heard scientists use: "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it." That's a trap you don't want to let yourself fall into. If you go to Mars with hopes or expectations for what you'll find, you can easily be led astray by those hopes. Mars is what it is, and it's asking too much for it to conform to our wishes. What you want to do instead is design a good experiment, look at the data you collect objectively, and let the data take you wherever they take you.

I put a variant of this question to JPL director Charles Elachi last year, while interviewing him for a profile. Quotes:

Tim: Is the prospect of life the only, only thing we're always after here?

Charles: That's the main focus. I mean, people are particularly intrigued... I mean you say: Wow people are excited about Mars. Mainly there are two reasons. One, you see it's a planet similar to ours; we can learn a lot about the geology and so on and learn about how our planet works. Really a key objective. But also the question: could life have evolved. That tends to have a broader public attention. At least, their impression. Because people, you know, they don't get excited when say you found a volcano. Yeah there will be lots of people excited, but if today you found a little bit of water on Mars, I think that's going to get a lot of attention. A number of years ago there was a possibility that a meteorite that was discovered in Antarctica might have life on it, and President Clinton wanted to make the announcement. But when we discovered a volcano on Io I don't think — that was a long time ago — I don't think the president made a point of wanting to announce that there was a volcano on Io...

So now you've spent more time with one of my hobgoblins than you probably cared to. And I don't want to be mulish about my skepticism. (These fancy scientists have no horse sense, I tell ya!) So again, I say to the Phoenix team: Congratulations, and keep digging.

Photos courtesy of NASA.

Will the honeymoon never end? Gay marriage keeps people talking.

Responding to David Benkof's* Blowback "Marriage ban is not a 'wedge issue'," one reader wonders who needs protection:

It's hard to know where to start responding to Benkof's hate screed, disguised as it is in the cloak of reasonable argument.  First, he announces that efforts to ban gay marriage are not a "wedge issue," offering as proof nothing more than that some marriage-equality advocates have said they are.  Then he decides that anyone who has ever cheated on a wife or husband is unqualified to say what marriage is.  The fact that someone does not have a perfect, or even a good, marriage does not invalidate his or her opinion on the subject.

Then Benkof starts in on how marriage-equality supporters are trying to "redefine" marriage.  In actuality, proponents of gay marriage are simply pointing out the inherent inequity of denying basic rights because of sexual orientation.  It is unconstitutional to create two separate classes of law-abiding citizens and grant to one class rights that are denied to the other.

Benkof also hits the usual pandering notes of "traditional" marriage and "marriage protection," never explaining why marriage needs protection from people who want to get married, and pleads for rationality and compromise while advocating writing discrimination into state laws.

Susan Hathaway

Our news coverage draws this response from frequent contributor Jasmyne Cannick:

Re: "For one same-sex couple, marriage was always the goal" (June 16, 2008)

I'd like to challenge the L.A. Times to for once, feature a gay or lesbian couple in a story that isn't white or one half white.  You wouldn't know it from the Times' coverage of gay marriage in California, but there are Black, Latino, and Asian gays too.  And no, we're not all rushing down the aisle to get married either.  By the way---the story you ran on the two Black lesbians abusing their five year-old doesn't count. 

Just a thought.

Jasmyne Cannick
West Adams, Los Angeles

And another reader says heterosexuals are peeved about definitions, not threats to marriage:

Every article and op-ed I read about gay marriage has the same talking points.  I don’t know why proponents of gay marriage feel that we married heterosexuals feel threatened.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Traditionally, men and women marry.  Unions of gay persons should be called something else because it is something else.  Liberal politicians just want your vote…gay, illegal alien, convicted felon, stray cats...

Mike Mancuso

* This spelling of the name Benkof was corrected after this post was published. Thanks to David Benkof for pointing out my error.

With the presidential campaign in a lull, Time magazine this week devotes its cover story to that old standby: “Childhood Obesity: Threat or Menace.” Actually, the title on the cover of the June 22 issue is “Our Super-Sized Kids,” only slightly less trite than “Generation XL” or “Fat for Life,” the banner headline on a similar Newsweek story published eight years ago.

How did I remember that old Newsweek story? I didn’t, until I looked it up. What I remembered was the cover photo, which like Time’s showed an unpleasingly plump boy holding an obscenely overlowing ice cream cone. But whereas Newsweek’s chubster was set to gorge himself on a one-scoop cone, Time’s tubby tyke had been served with two scoops. Double the pleasure — and embarrassment. (Actually, Time was  cutting back: Its 2004 article about obesity showed a fat kid with a three-scoop cone.)

As a former fat boy, I cringed when I saw both photos, and only party because  the kids looked like me when I was 10 or 11. Posing a fat kid with a giant ice cream cone is tasteless and cruel (even if the models were paid for flaunting their adiposity). Worse, the iconography of the covers refelected the fallacy that fat people are gluttons. (Interestingly, that was not the burden of Time’s story, which spread the blame for childhood obesity to include high-tech convenmiences and evolutionary biology.)

I have written at length elsewhere about how even balanced journalism about childhood obesity may aggravate the ostracism of fat kids that seems to have survived the recalibration of the bariatric bell curve. Maybe bullies don’t need an excuse to pick on fat kids, but pack journalism about the obesity epidemic gives them one by making the fat kid not only “different” but a national menace.

I’m not one of those devotees of “fat culture” who believe that urging people to lose weight is like pressuring deaf people to read lips — a form of genocide. On the other hand, do we really want a  world without fat people? 

But put that debate aside. Think only of the Time and Newsweek covers. Asking a fat boy to pose with a gargantuan ice cream cone is demeaning to him and to other chubby kids who might see the magazine — or have it brandished at them in the schoolyard. At least they didn’t show him patting his belly or slobbering. But there's always next summer.

Columnist Tim Rutten blames our year-round Caprese cravings for the tomato menace:

A proper insalata Caprese is one of the jewels of Campania's incomparable cuisine.

All that's required are ripe tomatoes just off the vine, fresh mozzarella di bufala, basil coaxed to aromatic fullness by the sun's heat, a sprinkling of coarse salt, a grind of pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. It's a gloriously simple dish that happily reproduces the colors of the Italian flag and virtually stares up from the plate, whispering "high summer."

The fact that you now can order some variation of it in February from half of America's restaurant menus or supermarket takeout counters goes a long way toward explaining what's behind the current national recall of tomatoes across the United States.

Contributing editor Max Boot says its time to re-up our Iraq commitment by protecting troops. Sci Fi Channel advisory board chairman Peter Schwartz says sci-fi should trade in its "Blade Runner" dystopias for some "Flash Gordon" fun to get people optimistic about the future. And Radisson Hotel LAX owner/operator Peter Dumon urges his fellow hoteliers to stop fighting the living wage.

The editorial board discusses the iPhone's limits, declares the start of silly season for oil policy, and wonders at the Bush administration's irrational immigration policy:

As we hustle to show resolve in the immigration "crisis," we're getting used to the idea that all private endeavor is subject to Washington's prior approval. What kind of country do we want? A few years ago, a border wall would have seemed a relic from medieval China or Central Europe in the totalitarian era. Now it is official U.S. policy.

On the letters page, readers respond to a two-page anti-gay-marriage ad that ran in The Times. L.A.'s Ari Solomon says, "I know newspaper subscriptions are down and ads help pay the rent, but this was blood money."

*Cartoon by Lisa Benson, Washington Post Writers Group

For Proposition 13's 30th birthday, The Times editorial board suggests a makeover:

Proposition 13 turns 30 today, which means it's officially no longer young. In wishing it a happy birthday and ushering it into a healthy middle age, we want it to slim down, get a checkup, consider some cosmetic surgery, hang out with a better crowd and start acting more like a mature, responsible citizen than an unruly teenager.

The board urges the U.N. to act against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his enabler, South Africa. The board also asks if Venezuelen leader Hugo Chavez has good reason to be paranoid about the U.S.

Columnist Joel Stein wishes he'd gone to sleepaway camp so he could've networked with future Jewish Hollywood players. UCLA School of Medicine Dean Gerald S. Levey responds to a liver transplant controvery and says doctors at UCLA don't play God. And Advocate associate editor Neal Broverman wonders how the initiative process went so wrong that this November it could encode discrimination into the state Constitution.

Readers discuss the campaign for president. Two readers reference Martin Luther King, one demands Barack Obama pick Hillary Clinton for the No. 2 slot, and Australian Stephen Yolland asks why Americans call Obama black: "It must be the hair."

*Cartoon by Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader

People are talking about the anti-religion comments and sour attitude toward the Chosen People expressed in Albert Einstein's letter to his pal Goodchild, but I think the most interesting phrase is in in a throwaway clause:

And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power.

Einstein produced plenty of random thoughts on the passing scene, most of which strike me more for their banality than anything else. Whether he did or did not believe in Goddess doesn't seem to me probative of much — and like Manley Pointer, I been believing in nothing ever since I was born. In fact, I'm pretty sure appealing to authority to support your disbelief defeats the whole purpose of being a rationalist.

But there's one aspect of Einstein's non-scientific punditry that has always been catnip to me: his abiding, total and frequently repeated hatred of patriotism and the use of force. You can always depend on Albert E. for good anti-bullyism, and his Actonian formulation here is the clearest expression of that philosophy I've seen. What sets it off from sermon-on-the-mount piety is that it doesn't pretend to any great moral position; force and power are bad not because they're wicked but because they're stupid and unhealthy.

Incoming University of California President Mark Yudof hasn't even settled into his office yet, and already the university's 2006 pay scandal is coming back to haunt him. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote yesterday about costly repairs for the university's presidential residence, and Contra Costa Times columnist Daniel Boreinstein pointed out last month that the university lowballed Yudof's compensation (a mere $828,000). The real figure, he said, would catapault Yudof to the top of the best paid university leaders:

The more accurate numbers: During his first year at UC, Yudof will receive $924,642 in salary, contributions to his retirement plans and car allowance, compared with his $832,560 in compensation at Texas.

University officials knew that the price for Yudof would raise concerns, especially considering he will receive about 76 percent more than ... outgoing President Robert Dynes.

UC Board of Regents chair Richard Blum (and the Los Angeles Times editorial board) call it a bargain, however. The departing University of Texas head is open to bonding with Gov. Schwarzenegger over a smoke in the governor's cigar tent, according to an interview with the Austin American-Statesman. He also hits the major talking points in today's clearly charmed San Francisco Chronicle:

He chews on a fat cigar and makes jokes about his sparse hair. He sports the burnt orange ties of his employer, the University of Texas, during trips to UC's Oakland headquarters and sucks down Coca-Cola Zero like he's in the Texas heat.

But behind his down-home manner is a man brought in to change the 10-campus university system to its very core.

Cue dramatic music!

Granted, state officials and the media are probably just happy to kick Dynes out the door, but it'll be interesting to see whether Yudof takes advantage all the good karma they're lavishing on him. Let's hope he means what he says about improving state support for the university -- and doesn't mention tuition deregulation.

Though the old jape "I thought he'd died years ago" exactly described my reaction to the death this week of LSD inventor Albert Hofmann, the news was moving nonetheless. First, because the Swiss chemist's death at the age of 102 provides yet more proof — along with the durability of fellow drug icons Timothy Leary (died at age 75) and William S. Burroughs (83) — that winners do use drugs and lead long productive lives. Second, because, as this Times obituary demonstrates, Hofmann was a far groovier figure than I had always thought based on my vague knowledge of his accidental discovery and the famous "bicycle day."

Read through the description of Hofmann's first full-scale trip, during which he believed at first that he was dying but went on to enjoy a pleasant experience, and you'll get a sense of what I've always thought was a great falsehood about acid: that there is some bright-line difference between a "good" and "bad" trip. I've never understood why you'd even want an acid trip without moments of agonizing panic and bottomless despair; it would be like food without seasonings. I'm not suggesting you eat the brown acid; in fact I'm not suggesting you eat any acid at all. But the need to go into the thing with an open mind and some commitment to remain analytical always seemed to me what made LSD so cool: It cuts through such meaningless distinctions as Hoosier/Hawkeye or Catholic/Protestant to reveal the most important distinction of all: curious/incurious.

Hofmann was also more credulous about the drug's spiritual properties than I had thought, putting him (whether he would have agreed or not) more in line with the Leary school of consciousness-expansion than the Ken Kesey school of fun and games.

The third school of thought, of course, is Joe Friday's, in which all trips are bad, and no discussion of LSD would be complete without a viewing of Dragnet's "Blue Boy" episode, which was to LSD prohibition what Exodus was to support for Israel. I hover among all three points: I never saw the point of taking all the fun out of a recreational drug with gloopy pseudo-religiosity, and there comes a point where the value in both fun and spiritual discovery starts to diminish in relation to the real or imagined dain bramage you're inflicting on yourself. Hofmann, like virtually everybody who takes acid, eventually retired from tripping. But his invention made the world a more interesting place. Good luck and happy trips to Rick Doblin and others who continue the research.

Author Stefan Merrill Block remembers his home-school days:

When I tell people that I was home schooled, I frequently encounter an amalgam of awe, pity and curiosity. I can see the false images materializing behind their eyes -- a childhood spent idling in front of the TV in my pajamas, or spent subject to the fanciful whims of a flighty New Age mom, or spent imprisoned by my parents' ignorance and severity.

These myths have alternately amused and annoyed me, but now it seems they threaten the very survival of home schooling in California.

Hampshire College's Michael T. Klare says China and the U.S. would be wise to cooperate rather than compete for oil as the market heats up. And Bryan A. Liang of the San Diego Center for Patient Safety notes that drugs have to stay safe particularly as they grow more complex.

The Times endorses for district attorney and the Board of Supervisors, and asks the presidential candidates 10 serious questions.

Readers discuss proposals for converting carpool lanes into congestion-priced toll lanes. L.A.'s Samuel Gould says, "Charging anyone using special lanes at rush hour regardless of occupancy will merely give advantages to those who can pay and exclude those who cannot, selling convenience to the affluent."

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says the science of intelligent design is science fiction:

If we were visited by aliens from a distant planet, would we fall on our knees and worship them as gods? The difficulty of getting here from even our nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, constitutes a filter through which only beings with a technology so advanced as to be god-like (from our point of view) could pass. The capabilities and powers of our interstellar visitors would seem more magical to us than all the miracles of all the gods that have ever been imagined by priests or theologians, mullahs or rabbis, shamans or witch doctors....

But now the question arises: In what sense would the god-like aliens not be gods? Answer: In a very important sense.

Columnist Joel Stein compares the cost of home cooking to restaurant dining.

The editorial board argues for food labels to include country of origin, says the Supreme Court's lethal injection ruling raises some questions, and wonders how much we should blame a candidate for his or her friends: 

We can learn about a candidate from the people who have had demonstrable influence on his or her thinking. Such people include personal and political mentors, business partners and major donors, lovers, spouses, close friends and, especially, advisors. It's certainly fair to judge politicians by who they've worked for, hired, appointed or fired.... But it's unfair and unwise to judge a candidate by family members (remember Roger Clinton?), or by constituents they're sure to rub shoulders with, or by casual associates who run in the same crowd.

On the letters page, readers discuss The Times' editorial on California's tax system. Valencia's Patrick Lewandowski says, "Why do The Times and many politicians feel a need to blame Proposition 13 for California's financial woes and to tinker or even eliminate it so that unaffordable, if not unwarranted, pet projects can continue?"

*Photo courtesy Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Richard Rothstein, last seen debating the achievement gap in a Dust-Up with Russlyn Ali, takes to the lackluster Cato Unbound with an interesting take on the 25th anniversary of the report A Nation At Risk, which examined the nation's puported crisis in education. According to Rothstein, the doomsaying of 1983, like most of the doomsaying from that period, turned out to be wrong. But unlike your harmless, garden-variety doomsaying, this one had some negative results:

Because of the report’s doomsday aura, policymakers have mostly failed since 1983 to investigate the causes of these improvements - the obvious, unasked, question is, what were we doing right from 1978 to 1990 (and since), so we can do more of it?

A belief in decline has led to irresponsibility in school reform. Policymakers who believed they could do no harm because American schools were already in a state of collapse have imposed radical reforms without careful consideration of possible unintended adverse consequences. Not thinking that President Reagan’s rule (’if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’) applied to what conservatives and liberals alike assumed was an already broken school system, this irresponsibility reached its zenith in the bipartisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law of 2002.

I do not suggest that American schools are adequate, that American students’ level of achievement in math and reading is where it should be, that American schools have been improving as rapidly as they should, or that the achievement gap is narrowing to the extent needed to give us any satisfaction. I only suggest that we should approach fixing a system differently if we believe its outcomes are slowly improving than if we believe it is collapsing. And we owe the latter, flawed assumption, to A Nation at Risk.

Full article.

Keep it in mind next time you're presented with the secular version of Pascal's Wager. (That is, the "Hey, if it turns out we're wrong about the decline and fall of X, all we did was take enlightened action Y" line of argument, which usually precedes the "It's time to stop talking about X and just do something!" argument, and frequently ends up with "Hey, problem X seems to have solved itself, but now what do we do about all these Zs we've created?")

My former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette colleague Tim McNulty has a witty piece today about the quest for  "the biggest prey this primary season . . . Pennsylvania's voting-age white male."

McNulty writes: "The species is described -- depending on who's talking -- as either traditional or old-fashioned, proud or angry, straight-talking or racist/sexist. It is rough-hewn. It is gritty. It is a walking, talking cliche."

All true, and the fixation of journalists on angry white males predates my native state's sudden (and atypical) relevance in presidential politics. No convention of political reporting is hoarier than the interview with Joe Sixpack in the local workingman's bar, and the decline of the steel industry in Pennslvania won't prevent reporters from sidling up to big-bicepped bruisers in search of a rough-hewn observation about Obama or Hillary.

But it isn't just political journalists who refer to "males" as opposed to the more appropriate noun, "men."   

"Male" and "female" are adjectives, which have been transmogrified into nouns by laboratory technicians, Personals columns and police dispatchers ("Suspect is a white male with tattoos...").

It doesn't bother me when someone refers to a rat as "a male," but a human bring — even a suspected criminal — deserves to be called "a man," just as a woman is a woman, not a "female." As the Elephant Man (not Male!) famously cried" "I am not an animal."

Columnist Jonah Goldberg doesn't like the Darwin fish:

I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there's the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing random motorists that "hate is not a family value." But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

Attorney Kelly Valen remembers her encounter with John McCain's autopen. As the Anthony Pellicano case continues, author Will Vaus remembers his father, the original Hollywood wiretapper.

The editorial board applauds efforts to narrow AIDS vaccine research, explores why Mars rovers have so many fans, and explains that the U.S. approach in Basra requires more subtlety.

Readers react to columnist Rosa Brooks' piece warning moms to resist Disney princesses. Valencia's Natasha Wegter asks Brooks not to "punk the princesses," but Monterey Park's Ralph Mitchell thinks "Brooks doesn't go far enough in her objections."

Contributing editor Ian Buruma says Tibetan culture may not survive China's modernization, except among the diaspora:

The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet, not just in terms of architecture and infrastructure but people, wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai, shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of the people living today in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, are no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the ways of the Apaches did in the United States.

George Washington University's Jonathan Turley wonders why you can be competent to stand trial, but unfit to represent yourself. And Hope College's David G. Myers says primal urges are to blame for March madness.

The editorial board warns taxpayers that they'll face new risks as Fannie and Freddie buy more mortgages thanks to a rule change. The board also wants to know where scientific exhibits got their cadavers, and thinks the Supreme Court erred by not giving Jose Medellin, a Mexican national on death row in Texas, another day in court.

Readers discuss discussing race. Torrance's David Nelson says, "The article begins: 'How do we start a national dialogue on race?' A better question is: Why should we?"

For a moment there, I was feeling sorta sorry for Steve Mendell, the president of the Chino slaughterhouse and meat-processing plant that just gave rise to the biggest beef recall in U.S. history. He acknowledged that cows had been treated inhumanely. He apologized. He sounded believable when he explained not only that none of the downer cows seen on a surreptitious video had gone into the food supply, but that it was impossible because they'd never make it up the chute. And it was nothing any beef processor would do because that would just ruin a business.

Well, at least he was right about the very last phrase. Shown a second videotape, Mendell was forced to acknowledge that at least two of the cows had gone into the food supply. It was clearly something a food processor would do. Had done. This much is true: His business is almost certainly ruined.

The strange thing about this recall is that, in all likelihood, there's nothing dangerous about the 143 million pounds of beef. Nothing was ever found wrong with any of it. No one seems to have gotten sick from the huge amount that was certainly eaten before the recall ever took effect. But the window it's given the consumer into how careless both the industry and the watchdogs can be offers one scary vantage point.

Heather Mac Donald's lightning-rod piece on campus rape takes the top spot this week, with Dallas Weaver's Blowback on copyright a very close second. Readers didn't make this another mostly-Obama week, opting instead for conscience-stricken paparazzi and stubborn sadness. Here they are:

1. What campus rape crisis? by Heather Mac Donald
2. Copyright this, by Dallas Weaver
3. Surge doesn't equal success, by Michael Kinsley
4. The snapper snapped, by Nick Stern
5. Too good to win, by Joel Stein
6. White like us, by Gregory Rodriguez
7. What a little bird told us, by Jonathan Rosen
8. The miracle of melancholia, by Eric G. Wilson
9. Stonehenges all around us, by Craig Childs
10. Food or fuel? by the editorial board

Bored after the War On Christmas ceasefire, I tried in late 2007 to get another civil war going, this one over New Year. To wit: Who are you to wish me well on holidays drawn from your "rational" sun-worshipping eurocentric calendar? My lunar calendar, where holidays show up during high midsummer in some years and the dead of winter in others, where we never know which month is crop-planting month, is no worse than yours, merely different!

I got nowhere with that prank. One bored colleague replied, "Eh, our calendar's no better. They can't even do it without adding an extra day every four years."

Too true! To all people who still wonder why the cycles of the day, the lunar month and the year can't be better matched, and to everybody else, I highly recommend Thomas S. Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. "Being able to understand how it looks from the creator's point of view is just great," writes Amazon reviewer A Customer. "My lesson learned: work your tail off and when you win, it always looks easier than it was..."

But don't take Customer's word for it, take mine. Whether you're a history buff or just curious about why people still comprehend so much of the world through meaningless human-scale patterns, Kuhn's book is full of valuable insights and disambiguations.

Go ahead and write angry letters about how much you can't stand Jonah Goldberg or his book Liberal Fascism. From the New York Times bestseller list to the always hotly contested Opinion L.A. Top 10, America has spoken. Goldberg's tale of his Daily Show appearance is number one with a bullet, and the columnist makes it into the list a second time with his column on new nanny state outrages. Columnist Rosa Brooks places with her Billary takedown, and the editorial board finishes with an ominous view of the Tata Nano. Brian Doherty scores one for libertarianism and Jonah Lehrer apparently draws in both the artistic and the scientific factions of the brain debate. Michael Shermer does an encore after last week's impressive performance. Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman mark an important abortion anniversary, and all the rest is about some election that is rumored to be happening...

1. What The Daily Show cut out, by Jonah Goldberg
2. A Clinton twofer's high price, by Rosa Brooks
3. Super delegates may sink the Democrats, by Joshua Spivak
4. 'The better angels' side with Obama, by Joseph Ellis
5. Why people believe weird things about money, by Michael Shermer
6. Abortion's battle of messages, by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman
7. Tiny Tata Nano, big threat, by the editorial board
8. Taking liberties, by Jonah Goldberg
9. Misreading the mind, Jonah Lehrer   
10. Real libertarianism, by Brian Doherty 

The slow wearing out of Mike Huckabee's welcome among self-described moderates and progressives has left behind a pretty interesting question: How did the stars-and-bars-salutin', Satan's-brother-worshippin', animal-sex-speculatin' former preacher manage, however briefly, to win the hearts of liberals? What drove progressive pundits to gas about his daring stances, teachers and machinists unions to endorse him and editorial boards to praise his "stout heart for working families and the poor"?

It could be his personality; I can attest that Huckabee is every inch the affable, intelligent, engaging fellow he's made out to be. It could be the cockeyed hipsterism of this unlikely guitar hero. But what really turned the heads of the bien-pensant was the low-BMI razorback's staunch anti-capitalism. And nobody's brief encounter was as moving as that of Hendrik Hertzberg, the New Yorker's distressingly productive "Talk of the Town" thinker.

The flirtation had a definite shape and intrigue: an early, in-spite-of-himself recognition that, Hey, you can see why the groupies are all over this guy; a growing passion disguised by only the flimsiest of to-be-sures (which could be stated most succinctly as: "To be sure, the sun will supernova before The New Yorker ever supports a Republican"); and at last disillusionment marked by a funny, catty kiss-off. But while the fling was on, Hertzberg found points of commonality in Huckabee's refusal to issue the "usual denunciations of socialized medicine," his departure from the "economic-royalist wing of the G.O.P." and his apostasy from "the secular church of supply-side fundamentalism."

I love that last bit, as I love all attempts to imply that belief in a free market is some kind of revealed religion, unmoored from any ocular proof. Sure, a member of the irrational capitalist religion might say there's actual evidence for the effectiveness of economics. Maybe by noting that, in the period after lending at interest and common-stock corporations came into regular use, human beings went from not wiping their backsides to landing people on the moon, expanded their population by orders of magnitude, abandoned slavery and serfdom, etc., all in about a third of the time it took the tale of Huckabee's savior to travel the token distance from Jerusalem to Oslo. But hey, that's just theology.

I digress. The bittersweet news is that the left has abandoned Huckabee, and while it's sad to see a romance end, it's probably for the best. Presidents don't make a lot of difference on gay rights or the Confederate flag, but they do have the power to wreck economies. Thankfully, Huckabee's enlightened fans never figured that out.

Going into an extended holiday week, Opinion L.A. draws its best numbers from politicians, labor strife, teen moms and tales of bad meds and economic woe. Sixth place goes to Craig Mazin and Matt Edelman for the previous week's Dust-up on the writers strike, but if we counted all five of the Mazin/Edelman Dust-up entries that would move their debate way up the list, as these continue to draw a lot of interest lower down in our Top 50 lists. So once again, it's clear that everybody's enjoying the WGA strike, even if nobody will admit it. And speaking of bridesmaids, four out of the 11th-15th-place spots were taken by our American Values editorials. Show your American spirit and read the whole series already.

1. Clintonian triangulation comes full circle by Jonah Goldberg
2. Stop scaring us by Henry Miller
3. Generic drugs' hidden downside by Naomi Wax
4. The polarizing express by Ezra Klein
5. So a fruit fly goes into a bar... by Marlene Zuk
6. Who strikes? by Craig Mazin and Matt Edelman
7. Honey, I shrunk the president by Jonathan Haidt
8. More writers' strike drama by the editorial board
9. Dollar signs by Howard M. Wachtel
10. Knocked up but not out by Meghan Daum

A drug that can alter sexual orientation? UC Riverside's Marlene Zuk puzzles it out:

Manipulating glutamate transmission, they discovered, allowed them to alter -- sometimes within hours -- whether the flies courted males or females. The altered males interpreted the odors of other flies (the primary come-hither signal) differently from their wild counterparts.

If what's sauce for the fly is sauce for the human, this could mean that chemicals in our own nervous systems are involved with sexual orientation too. And I'll admit that it's entertaining to imagine popping a pill to swing one way for a party, the other for a get-together at grandma's. But that dystopian possibility probably isn't in the cards. The truth is that chemicals no more control who we are sexually attracted to than they do anything else. Which is to say, they control everything and nothing.

Writer Luis Torres explains how a comal, or tortilla griddle, is central to his family story. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour argues for an end to the death penalty. USC senior fellow Celeste Fremon says asking cops to hand over financial records will just drive officers off the force.

The editorial board asks Californians to give the governor's healthcare plan a chance, and urges Congress to follow through with funding and enforcement a plan to help Iraqi refugees. The board also explains what a World Trade Organization investigation of farm subsidies could mean for the economy.

Readers react to a proposal to do away with carpool lanes. L.A.'s Jim Bean says, "How is making carpool lanes into toll roads going to get more single-passenger cars off the road? If lone drivers can buy their way onto the diamond lane, they will."

PillGirlReport.com editor Naomi Wax explains the downside of generic drugs:

It's a drag when you suffer from depression. And it's really a drag when the medication you've been treating your depression with effectively for years suddenly leaves you feeling anxious, nauseated or even suicidal. Even more of a drag? When you realize those symptoms began when you switched from your brand-name antidepressant to its generic version. But it's downright depressing when your doctor, pharmacist and health insurance provider insist that you're wrong, that there is no difference between brand-name drugs and their generics, and that these side effects you're experiencing must be in your head. You are, after all, "mentally ill."

Columnist Gregory Rodriguez writes from New Hampshire on that state's reinvention, and freelance writer L.J. Williamson isn't enough of a Scrooge to complain about DWP's holiday light show, but he she does complain about the lack of bike access to it.

The editorial board tells L.A. County to prepare for the possible onslaught of freed inmates, asks the ports to pass a clean truck fee, and tells striking writers and producers to stop the drama and get back to dialogue.

Readers react to the Barack Obama-Oprah Winfrey lovefest. Los Angeles' Mitch Paradise notes: "Two of the most prominent, articulate and decidedly un-Southern African Americans -- the Harvard-educated Obama and the queen of all media, Winfrey -- take their road show to South Carolina and pander to the black folks there like Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) to a Minuteman convention."

The the UN's 12-day green-fest in Bali and Al Gore's co-acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize have helped raise the heat on environmental policy. But there's smog hovering over that verdant hope — the political pressure has helped spark renewed interest in nuclear energy. IBM recently created a Nuclear Power Advisory Council, and as the San Diego Union-Tribune reports,

Spurred by concerns about global warming, a state Senate committee launched an inquiry yesterday into the potential of using nuclear power as a clean energy source.

Yesterday's special session in San Diego was the first time in two decades that the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications held hearings on nuclear power, said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, the panel's chairwoman.

The key question facing the committee was whether nuclear power could help the state meet its goal of slashing greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050.

“Before we talk about changing state policies, we want to find out what's going on in the world,” Kehoe said. “We haven't heard any information on nuclear power in 20 years.”

That's not a move The Times' editorial board favors:

The U.S. government allows nuclear plants to operate under a level of secrecy usually reserved for the national security apparatus. Last year, for example, about nine gallons of highly enriched uranium spilled at a processing plant in Tennessee, forming a puddle a few feet from an elevator shaft. Had it dripped into the shaft, it might have formed a critical mass sufficient for a chain reaction, releasing enough radiation to kill or burn workers nearby. [...]

...the U.S. government spends more on nuclear power than it does on renewables and efficiency. Taxpayer subsidies to the nuclear industry amounted to $9 billion 2006, according to Doug Koplow, a researcher based in Cambridge, Mass., whose Earth Track consultancy monitors energy spending. Renewable power sources, including hydropower but not ethanol, got $6 billion, and $2 billion went toward conservation.

That's out of whack.

Well, then ... tell us how you really feel.

The editorial board begins a series on the values that will shape the 2008 elections, beginning with a discussion of what it means to aspire to "a more perfect union":

Every election is an exercise in perfecting our union. We seek leaders with talent, experience and wisdom who will guide the nation through demanding times while upholding its values. As we sift through presidential candidates and platforms in the 2008 campaign, we will examine the basic American principles and challenge ourselves — and the candidates — to articulate how as president they would work to perfect the nation in the service of its inhabitants' unalienable rights. We begin those examinations with this editorial, to be followed in coming days and weeks by elaborations on the issues that define this campaign in the context of the values that shape this nation.

The board also notes the launch of a conference today that aims to bring green — environmentalism and dollars — to Los Angeles, and notes that even if American students aren't as smart as their international counterparts, they think highly of themselves.

Morris D. Davis, a former chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions, explains why he resigned his post. Columnist Gregory Rodriguez wonders if environmentalism is our new religion. Author Paul Roberts explains why markets value oil at a price higher than the rational one. And comedy writer and actress Annie Korzen asks what was so wonderful about life in Bedford Falls.

On the letters page, see why Kevin Powell of Long Beach has this message for Ron Paul supporters: "If the tinfoil hat fits, wear it."

Brain scans, Mormonism, the end times, UFOs and the return of Stonehenge. There's a theme to this week's top 10 stories, though it's not clear what it is...

Candidate mental health was the week's big winner, with distant but strong place and show taken by, respectively, the Joel Kottkin/Fred Siegel team and Bruce Ackerman. Hugo's gone, Stonehenge is back, and the rest is silence:

1. Getting inside their heads ... really inside by Daniel G. Amen

2. The gentry liberals by Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel

3. Bush isn't the only decider by Bruce Ackerman

4. We're on the brink of apocalypse! Again! by Gregory Rodriguez

5. Romney's JFK moment by Jonah Goldberg

6. Kucinich's close encounter by the editorial board

7. Stonehenges all around us by Craig Childs

8. Romney better pray he can be Jimmy Carter by Kenneth S. Baer

9. The 9th Circuit's new No. 1 by Carl Tobias

10. GOP's compassionless conservatism by the editorial board

At least four California universities applying for stem cell research grants from the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee might be knocked out of the running due to conflicts of interest. But instead of being your humdrum tale of conspiracies and backroom deals, the whole thing is starting to reek of multiple administrative brain farts. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Although the grant application called for letters of support from the deans or department chairmen, the conflict-of-interest policy for the stem cell institute also specifies that its board members "shall not make, participate in making, or in any way attempt to use their official position to influence a decision regarding a grant ..." [...]

The apparent contradiction in the rulebook is the kind of problem that critics say was built into the stem cell initiative passed by voters in 2004. [...]

It remains unclear what will happen if the grant applications are rejected. One option, according to sources, is to simply have the four universities reapply at a later date - a delay of at least six months. Another option would be to reject all of the grants and have everyone update their applications because of the confusion regarding the letter-of-recommendation rules.

If the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime, there may be a reason. The ICOC is still recovering from a conflict-of-interest controversy sparked this summer, according to The Scientist blog:

The conflict of interest occurred in August, when John Reed, a member of the CIRM's governing board, wrote a letter to Arlene Chiu, then CIRM's chief scientific officer, opposing the denial of a CIRM grant to a researcher at the San Diego-area Burnham Institute for Medical Research.

Reed, who is president and CEO of the Burnham Institute, wrote the seven page letter lobbying CIRM to reconsider its denial of a $638,000 SEED grant to David Smotrich, a researcher affiliated with the Burnham Institute but also the founder and president of a San Diego-area infertility clinic.... CIRM's conflict of interest rules prohibit board members from participating in any grant award discussions that involve their home institutions.

A state audit soon followed, along with calls for Reed and committee chair Robert Klein (who prompted him to send the letter) to resign. So in all likehood, the committee was a little twitchier than usual.

All the same, the four offending administrators are committee members and must have known about Reed's royal muck-up. At the very least, they should be familiar with the regulations — especially one so basic.

Which raises the question: Do we really want these guys in charge of millions of dollars of research money, anyway?

Kenneth S. Baer, founder and editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, says Mitt Romney should forget his JFK moment and pray to be Jimmy Carter:

Romney doesn't need to do a JFK. He needs to do a Jimmy Carter. After all, Kennedy ran away from his religion. Carter ran on it, using his religious belief -- he was the first "born again" president -- as a selling point. But as Carter's experience demonstrates, trying to be the candidate of faith, without being tied by voters to a particular faith, is a very hard course to navigate and must be done carefully.

The questions Romney is facing about his Mormonism pale in comparison to what Kennedy faced.

Contributing editor Ian Buruma says that even though Spain has passed the Law of Historical Memory, legislation is a blunt way to deal with the past. Neuropsychiatrist Daniel G. Amen suggests brain-scanning presidential candidates to make sure voters select the "brain healthiest" person.

The editorial board names a winner in the Iran intelligence disclosure — the Russians. The board urges the Supreme Court to reaffirm habeas protection for Guantanamo inmates, and tells Los Angeles to look to Orange County for inspiration on what to do with wastewater.