FRANKFORT – Calling state authority and autonomy critical components of education improvement, Gov. Steve Beshear and Education Commissioner Terry Holliday Monday called on the U.S. Department of Education for flexibility in public school accountability under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Beshear sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asking to replace the public school accountability portions of the federal law with Kentucky’s own model. Kentucky is the first state to request the change.

Bill James has written a true-crime book, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence, and you will probably enjoy it if 1) you've enjoyed James's other work; 2) if you've never heard of James, but like the true-crime genre; or 3) if you've never heard of James and you have historically avoided the true-crime genre because so much of the writing therein is so very terrible.

Most people have at least a notion of the things they want to see, do and experience before they die, aka their "bucket list": Climb a mountain, fall in love, see the Grand Canyon. But how should that list be tailored to Kentuckians? What are the things every Kentuckian should do, see or experience while living in our beautiful, often misunderstood state? What are the cultural touchstones that make Kentucky what it is and that would be a shame not to experience? What things go deep into the Kentucky experience? And how many of them can you accomplish this summer, which officially starts Tuesday?

Candidates in the 2011 Kentucky gubernatorial race all agree religion shouldn’t play a role in the campaign, but that doesn’t mean former Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson’s Jewish heritage won’t be an issue in rural parts of the commonwealth. With Kentucky’s Jewish population less than one percent, anti-Semitic sentiments in the state have been whispered behind the scenes as a potential handicap for the lieutenant governor candidate, who is running with Democratic Governor Steve Beshear in the fall election.

Carmichael’s Bookstore, one of the leading independent booksellers in Louisville, has recently begun selling e-books through their website through a partnership with Google and the American Booksellers Association. More than 250 booksellers nationwide are using the system, which allows independent bookstores to make money from e-books, a market previously reserved for giants like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Starting today in Japan, Burger King will offer a new sandwich with the slogan "What Women Want, Women Get." What Women Want, apparently, is a tiny cheeseburger with Spam instead of burger. Burger King describes the sandwich as, enticingly, "suitable for women." We made our own.

Ian: Our slogan should be "What We Don't Want, We Get Anyway."

Mike: Is this Hello Kitty meat?

Mike: Why is this for women? Because it's pink?

Flexing their fundraising muscles, the campaign to re-elect Democratic Governor Steve Beshear announced it has raised $1.5 million for the general election, giving the incumbent a comfortable war chest in the contest against Republican gubernatorial candidate David Williams and independent Gatewood Galbraith.

The Concord used to take 3.5 hours to travel across the pond from New York to London. A new concept for a plane unveiled by EADS, the parent company of Airbus, at the Paris Air Show yesterday is supposed to make that trip in 90 minutes.

What's more, the Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation, or Zehst, accomplishes the feat by burning seaweed-made biofuel. Here's Crunchgear on how the airplane would work:

It wasn't summer yet, but it sure felt like it. Earlier this month, here in Washington, D.C., the temperatures were scorching, nearly breaking the 102-degree record set in 1874 when Ulysses S. Grant was president. Summer officially arrives here tomorrow — at 1:16 p.m. EDT to be exact.

This is not news they want to hear in baseball-crazy St. Louis:

Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols has a small fracture near his left wrist and will be "out of the lineup for four to six weeks," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

He was hurt Sunday in a collision on the basepath.