Chinese digital camouflage variants, part of a great collection of global camo uniforms at Strike - Hold!

I have so often seen how people come by the name of genius; in the same way, that is, as certain insects come by the name of millipede — not because they have that number of feet, but because most people won’t count up to fourteen.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

– I’ve railed a number of times against the seemingly-necessary dumbing down of politics and mass communication. But it turns out that it might be stupidity on a subconscious level rather than a conscious one. Easy = true?

– However, Jacob Weisberg at Slate agrees with my original hypothesis: people are stupid.

– Food for thought: our entire universe might be a giant hologram.

– Lt. Col. Paul Yingling makes a compelling (and common sense) argument for returning to the original constitutional prescriptions for declaring war:

Many of the difficulties in civil-military relations today are attributable to our departure from the elegant system of checks and balances established in the Constitution. Congress has all but abdicated many of its war powers, including raising forces, confirming the appointment of officers, providing oversight to operations and declaring war. This has made the U.S. weaker by allowing hasty, ill-considered and poorly supported executive actions to imperil national security. The remedy for these failures requires not innovation, but rather a return to the time-tested principles of America’s founding.

Oh, and a draft might be the most constitutional option of all.

– With polls tightening in the UK election, the Queen’s advisors are preparing for a potentially hung parliament. However, her role remains nebulous at best. Here’s a hint: write down a constitution.

– FiveThirtyEight also analyzes the potential impact of Britain adopting the “alternative vote” system. Or as the rest of the world knows it, ‘instant runoff’.

– If you haven’t already seen it, Jon Stewart on the O’Reilly Factor is a hilarious watch, even if O’Reilly has absolutely no sense of humor. While Fox made some very selective edits in the original airing, to their credit, they’ve posted the entire interview on their website unedited.

– War is Boring has the thrilling list of imaginary US aircraft under development.