June 02, 2007

GOREMANIA! Direct from Nashville!

MICHAEL TOTTEN on Al Qaeda in Lebanon.

LAMAR! MEETS WITH HIS CONSTITUENTS: According to this account, it didn't go very well.

UPDATE: Similar problems for Trent Lott.

DO WE FACE THE CRIMINALIZATION OF NAPPING?

Everybody wants to demonstrate that they care about kids by ratcheting the standards for parenting and childcare ever-higher. But in doing so we raise the costs of having kids -- you can't even go out, because who'll babysit if the liability is so extreme? -- and that probably does more societal damage.

I also note that when I was on the state's Juvenile Justice Reform Commission, I heard a lot of child-welfare authorities who testified make the same kind of excuses for the neglect or abuse of children in their care that they refused to accept from parents, etc. -- we're so busy, there's not enough money, it's not our fault they live in a building that's old and unsafe, etc. As Reverend Lovejoy said, when the state does it, it's not wrong!

I think it's safer to assume that most of the time parents, and those they select to watch out for their kids, know what they're doing, and that they already have adequate incentives to try to keep them safe. That's not perfect, but this inquisitorial approach, plus the ridiculous effort to purge all risks from childrens' lives, aren't perfect either and do significant harm of their own.

UPDATE: Brendan Loy: "Sometimes, a tragedy is just a tragedy, not a crime."

CARBON CREDITS cause global warming? It's just perverse enough to make sense.

SO I SPOKE THIS AFTERNOON at a program put on by the University of Tennessee's Howard Baker Center for Public Policy, about political campaigning and the online world.

The audience was mostly local political types and journalists, and it was interesting to see the dramatic increase in web- and blog-literacy among all the participants. Several of the people there were already blogging, and most everybody seemed generally familiar with the subject and the area blogs.

Still, there were people who were surprised that you could set up a blog for free with Blogger.com -- I guess that just seems like too good a deal to be true.

One interesting thing, though, was a question about voters -- most people who vote in local elections are over 45, and some people wondered if any of them would read blogs. I noted that the characterization of bloggers and blog-readers as "tech-savvy youth" is pretty much bogus, with the bulk of blog readers, or at least political blog readers, being well over 30. That blog stereotype is one of those media tropes that seems immune to the facts. At any rate, if people over 45 are the ones most interested in local politics, then that's who'll be reading local politics blogs.

Surfing the web isn't that hard. People of all ages can do it. And do!

SUING EHARMONY AND TRIVIALIZING ANTIDISCRIMINATION LAW: That trivialization has been going on for years, and has robbed it of most of its moral force. It's a real tragedy of the commons -- sensible self-restraint is important if antidiscrimination law is to retain its moral currency, but no particular plaintiff or lawyer gains anything by not filing a claim.

MICHAEL YON EMAILS TO RECOMMEND this article on Anbar. The most important lesson: Don't let up.

AS PORN GOES, SO GO THE REST OF THE MEDIA, which may be worrisome to some:

The Internet was supposed to be a tremendous boon for the pornography industry, creating a global market of images and videos accessible from the privacy of a home computer. For a time it worked, with wider distribution and social acceptance driving a steady increase in sales.

ut now the established pornography business is in decline — and the Internet is being held responsible.

The online availability of free or low-cost photos and videos has begun to take a fierce toll on sales of X-rated DVDs. Inexpensive digital technology has paved the way for aspiring amateur pornographers, who are flooding the market, while everyone in the industry is giving away more material to lure paying customers.

And unlike consumers looking for music and other media, viewers of pornography do not seem to mind giving up brand-name producers and performers for anonymous ones, or a well-lighted movie set for a ratty couch at an amateur videographer’s house.

Other media folks, beware!

THOUGHTS ON FRED THOMPSON and anti-Southern bigotry.

TRADITIONAL MALE SKILLS: I've mentioned before that we're in something of a cultural moment, and here's more evidence -- an interesting dialogue on Rush Limbaugh (thanks to Ed Driscoll for the link). The topic is a commercial for Lowe's, where the husband keeps saying that he doesn't know how to do anything and the wife keeps encouraging him. A caller said it made men look dumb (which is common for commercials, of course) but Limbaugh disagrees here:

But this could have been appealing from the Lowe's standpoint to men's aspirations. They want to be able to fix things but they aren't sure they know how, and they don't want to be embarrassed in front of the girl. They don't want to be embarrassed in front of the woman. They don't want to look dumb by screwing it up. The commercial, actually from the Lowe's standpoint, Lowe's could say, "Hey, look at the ending of our commercial. This commercial affirms that men can learn to fix things."

Now, that's kind of insulting itself, but given where we are in our culture today, who knows.

He even mentions The Dangerous Book for Boys.

I think he's onto something with this business about the loss of traditional male skills and men feeling unhappy about it. Here's an essay that a bunch of readers have emailed me: I Can't Do One-Quarter of the Things My Father Can.

And guys, visit the Skill Sets page to learn some of this!

HERE'S A Disaster Preparedness List for those who are interested. Just remember: It's important to have supplies, but disaster preparedness is about more than just buying things.

RUSSIA: If we can't own the pipeline, we'll control the faucet.

ROGER SIMON has thoughts on Danny Glover.

The actor, not the blogger.

JFK TERROR PLOT BUSTED. Well, good.

IN THE MAIL: From Smithsonian Books, Larry Berman's Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent. The North Vietnamese fed him "scoops" to raise his stature in the magazine, even as he was spying and manipulating on their behalf. I wonder how many similar "infiltrators" are at work in Western press agencies covering the Middle East today. And whether those agencies even care much.

UPDATE: A reader points to this post, too. Also these comments by Ben Stein.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: Michael Yon sends another email:

Was going on a mission today but it was canceled, so am on base writing. I was just in the dining facility here on Camp Hit. It's a simple affair. This Saturday's lunch was hotdogs and hamburgers. Paper plates. The tables are wooden and rickety. For some, it's very spartan. For others it's cush. One of the Soldiers (Army) came at sat at the same table. The Soldier was not in the best mood, and one of his buddies, a Marine, asked how he was doing. The soldier came back with some grumpy talk, "All I can get's hamburger and hotdogs."

Marine answered, "Sorry I asked." Marine seemed a little put off.
Soldier continued, "When I get home, I ain't taken' nothin' for granted." I chuckled and the Marine smiled slightly while the Soldier continued, "Gonna get home an' get me a bacon lettuce and cheese, hamburger. A cheeseburger." (The cheese had run out, and so had the mustard.)
Marine answered, "Burger King?"
Soldier said, "Yep, when I get home, ain't taken nothin' for granted."
"Amen, I smiled, and the Soldier smiled a little bit and the grumpiness retreated a bit.
The Soldier continued, "When I get home, taken' nothin' for granted, and I'm gonna get on that field and get on my knees and kiss the ground where that 3rd ID patch is."

There's no place like home.

Much progress out here in Anbar, and I haven't seen any combat since I got here some weeks back. Will be back in the thick of things soon, though. Back in the shooting war.

Michael's latest full post can be found here.

FRED KAGAN on Iraq as it is..

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE:

Most people along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts haven't made hurricane survival plans, despite pleas from emergency officials for residents to prepare before the season starts, according to a poll released Thursday. . . .

One forecaster said odds were high that a major hurricane would hit the U.S. this year.

Nevertheless, 53% of people surveyed in 18 Atlantic and Gulf Coast states say they don't feel that they are vulnerable to a hurricane, or to related tornadoes and flooding, according to the Mason-Dixon poll. Eighty-eight percent said they had not taken any steps to fortify their homes.

Officials encourage a 3-day stock of food and water. That's not really enough,"But 61% of poll respondents had no hurricane survival kit. Of those who did, 82% packed a fire hazard — candles or kerosene lamps. Missing from most of those kits were axes, which emergency officials recommended after many residents were trapped in their attics as they tried to escape the flooding following Hurricane Katrina."

You should have at least a week's worth of nonperishable food and medicine, and you should have a bag packed with essentials in case you have to evacuate. And that's regardless of whether you live in a hurricane zone. More here. Also here.

And are candles bad? Judging by the picture, you need them for a proper hurricane meal presentation. Standards must be upheld!

EUROPE'S SHAME: This is pathetic.

RAND SIMBERG ON information war, and complicity in silence.

ANOTHER POSITIVE REVIEW for Evan Coyne Maloney's documentary Indoctrinate U., from Linda Seebach in the Rocky Mountain News. Excerpt:

There's a lovely Roger and Me scene in the film where Maloney is trying to interview a college president about incidents on his campus. (Maloney says Michael Moore inspired and encouraged him to start making documentaries.) He's talking with a nervous administrator who can't come up with any explanation about why the president's office won't return Maloney's phone calls asking for an appointment, and keeps sidling away. Meanwhile an equally nervous secretary has called the cops.

While still looking for a distributor, the filmmakers are running a little viral marketing campaign. Visit the Web site, tell them where you're from, and say you'd like to see the film. They promise to arrange local screenings whenever at least 500 people in an area have signed up. Why not Denver?

Read the whole thing. And if you like, visit the webpage and sign up.

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH!

L.A. ANTIGUN ACTIVIST caught with illegal machine gun: "Note to LA government: be cautious about trusting a million bucks to a guy who goes by 'Big Weasel.'"

THE STRAIGHT DOPE on disappearing bees.

STREET FIGHTING MEN in Iran.

June 01, 2007

BORDER SECURITY: "A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the United States by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. . . . The unidentified inspector explained that he was not a doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely 'discretionary,' officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press." Feel safe now?

JEEZ, THAT WOULD MAKE ME WHAT, 29? Is 70 the new 50?

YET ANOTHER RECORD HIGH FOR STOCKS: I credit the Democratic Congress! Well, that and good economic news:

Investors found reason for optimism in a stronger-than-expected jobs report for May. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 157,000 last month, a larger increase than in April and more than analysts anticipated. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.5 percent, as forecast, according to the Labor Department report.

The economic picture appeared brighter still following a lower reading on inflation from the Commerce Department and data from the Institute for Supply Management's May survey, which indicated that the manufacturing sector was strengthening.

Well, that all sounds good.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

It is not only the U.S. where stocks are hitting records highs but also most markets in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America too. Lost amongst the cacophony of the MSM is the fact that economically the world has never had it this good and as a result millons of people are being lifted out of abject poverty every year.

I am employed as an emerging markets fund manager and witness this first hand. Two weeks ago I was in Shanghai and had dinner at a restaurant called M on the Bund. The Bund is where the banks and trading houses built their headquarters during the last great boom in Shanghai in the 1920's & 30's. M has a roof terrace overlooking the Hangpu River which is the main waterway for the city. The whole evening I witnessed a procession of barges and other ships laden with coal, cement, oil etc. heading upstream full and downstream empty. Looking out I could see the lights of welders flicker from various construction sites (sites are active 24/7) throughout the city. Scenes like these are occuring throughout the developing world though most without the vigor of the Chinese. As a result the various local economies are booming as are their stock markets. It is interesting to note that the two areas where the markets aren't hitting new highs are Russia and the Gulf. I wonder if that tells us something about the future direction of oil prices?

That's interesting. It probably tells us more about the corrosive effect of bad governance.

BYPASSING HUGO CHAVEZ'S CENSORS, with YouTube:

An opposition Venezuelan television station whose broadcast license has not been renewed by the government is now turning to YouTube to get its message out after its transmitter was taken over by a state-run channel. Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" has no time for media groups that criticize his government; Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) is now off the air, and another channel, Globovision, could be next, according to CNN.

RCTV journalists and producers have not been arrested or stopped from working, but their main link to the public has been removed. Rather than giving up, the station has turned to YouTube, where it now has its own channel for the show El Observador. A Colombian channel is also broadcasting RCTV content into Venezuela.

El Observador clips have been seen 175,000 times since May 28, and the channel is currently the most-subscribed channel of the week.

Heh.

TEN TIPS ON saving water. Useful if, like me, you're laboring under a drought.

KERRY HOWLEY says that if you support free markets, you should support open borders.

ANOTHER CAMPAIGN BLOGGER GETS SOME SCRUTINY.

This will get less attention than Amanda Marcotte, though, since most people, upon hearing about Chris Dodd's campaign blogger, will respond by saying "Chris Dodd is running for President?"

THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN, inspired by the movie Knocked Up.

CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS: John Wixted writes: "I'm looking forward to the day that I can bring you good news about civilian causalities in Iraq. Today is not that day."

Plus this, on American troop casualties: "At this rate, 2007 will be more deadly for US troops than any previous year of the war. Casualties are still extremely low by historical standards, but not according to the new American standard according to which wars are fought in which no one gets hurt. The only good news continues to be that things are turning against al Qaeda in Iraq. Iraq might be a mess for a long time to come, but the chaos that al Qaeda deliberately created is, for the moment, not working out as they planned." Read the whole thing.

FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING BY flying to the Virgin Islands at taxpayer expense!

I volunteer. We all have to do our share to save the planet!

A LOOK AT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS'S editorial priorities.

And read this post, too.

SO I SAW THIS LIST OF Father's Day gift suggestions and while there's nothing wrong with it, I wonder if anyone would post a list of Mother's Day gift suggestions that consisted of things like vacuum cleaners, stoves, and mops. But tools and grills for dads are different, somehow. Why?

UPDATE: CaltechGirl says I've got the question backward: Why aren't people giving moms cool power tools? Good question!

Of course, I'd have liked a new stove -- instead I bought one for myself. And vacuum cleaners can be cool, especially the hovercraft kind. Heck, even some mops.

PESHMERGA WOMEN STEAL THE SHOW at Iraq security handover ceremony.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY emails that there's been a phenomenal response to his new film Indoctrinate U. He's been asking people to enter their zipcodes after watching the trailer, as a way of showing distributors that there's a market:

The overall conversion rate is something like 25%, which is absolutely unheard of in any other media. Direct mailers would sell their firstborn for that kind of conversion. Sometime in the next week, we will break 20,000 signups. And that's without spending a single dime promoting the site! If we get five times that--certainly feasible--I think distributors will have a hard time ignoring us.

I would think so. Anyway, if you haven't done so, consider watching the trailer and entering your zip code. It's a film that deserves a wider audience.

DELL NON-HELL: Reader Hazen Dempster emails:

I want to thank you for your various posts about Dell customer support and their in-home repair service. My wife's Dell laptop died over the Memorial Day weekend -- It's several years old so I figured there was no way is still had any warranty left. I had it in the car to take it to a Geek Squad location when I remembered your posts and decided that I ought to at least check with Dell before paying someone to work on it. Well, I called Dell on Memorial Day night - they diagnosed the problem as a failed motherboard and told me that I was still eligible for in-home repair. The technician called me the next day (Tuesday) to let me know that he had the service order and would have the part on Wednesday. On Wednesday he called to say he had the part and to schedule a time to come out. He was willing to come out that afternoon, but that didn't work for my wife so he came out Thursday morning, spent about 30 minutes working on it and it's like new again. Total bill -- $0. Will I buy another Dell? Uh, yeah!

As with the bad stories, your experience may differ. But my own experiences with Dell have been good.

UNREST IN MEXICO CITY.

THOUGHTS ON summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. From the Knoxville News-Sentinel's new military blogger, Fred Brown.

AMY ALKON LOOKS AT who's exploiting the poor.

I'VE SAID THAT HOT AIR DESERVES A NETWORK DEAL, and now it's got one!

A GERMAN BRAIN DRAIN: " For a nation that invented the term 'guest worker' for its immigrant labourers, Germany is facing the sobering fact that record numbers of its own often highly-qualified citizens are fleeing the country to work abroad in the biggest mass exodus for 60 years. Figures released by Germany's Federal Statistics Office showed that the number of Germans emigrating rose to 155,290 last year - the highest number since the country's reunification in 1990 - which equalled levels last experienced in the 1940s during the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War. . . . Fed up with comparatively poor job prospects at home - where unemployment is as high as 17 per cent in some regions - as well as high taxes and bureaucracy, thousands of Germans have upped sticks for Austria and Switzerland, or emigrated to the United States." Seems like the more socialist the country, the more its talented citizens tend to go elsewhere.

THE FABLE OF THE BEES: Joel Garreau looks at the disappearing honeybee story and notes various efforts by various people to put their favored spin on it. I'm particularly amused at how disappointed some people are that the cellphone explanation turned out to be bogus.

I'm inclined to agree with Bill Joy: Complex systems behave unpredictably. But I think his suggestion that this sort of thing is new is iffy -- it's just that in the old days it either wouldn't have been noticed, or would have been attributed to supernatural causes. And I think that environmentalists should actually be happy!

"From an ecological standpoint, it is opening up the possibility for local pollinators like the mason bee to come back." Honeybees, after all, are an introduced species. They were brought here by European explorers and settlers. The Indians called them "white men's flies."

Forward, into the past!

WELL, THIS IS A SWITCH: "Ahmadinejad's spiritual advisor, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, was shouted down by angry Iranian and Afghan protesters a minute into his talk at a liberal college in Canada this week."

I guess they figure silence is complicity.

IN THE MAIL: Daniel Gross's Pop!: Why Bubbles Are Great For The Economy. Irrational exuberance is good for you!

BILL QUICK: "In the vein of LBJ and Walter Cronkite, I think it is fair to say that if George W. Bush has lost Peggy Noonan, then he has lost the Republican Party."

Hey, Rush Limbaugh savaged me when I said it last fall before the election, but it's like there's some bizarre Republican death wish. (But Limbaugh seems to have caught on to my point more recently.) I'd disagree with Noonan, though, in that I think the GOP Congress was just as bad as the White House is now. In both cases, it's an attitude of entitlement that seems to be endemic among our political class, and certainly one that the Democratic Congress is already displaying in full measure.

And, despite Bush's many flaws, not everything is Bush's fault -- though it would surely be convenient for lots of people if it were.

UPDATE: And read this report and this one about Republican problems with grassroots support. All I can say is, "I told you so." Repeatedly. In fact, all you have to do is listen to this podcast interview with Ken Mehlman, then RNC chair, to realize that these problems were obvious over a year ago, but that the GOP establishment was either oblivious, or unwilling to address them. Can't anyone here play this game?

ANOTHER JOHN EDWARDS CAMPAIGN MISSTEP:

John Edwards told a Google "town hall" yesterday that he had read the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the summary of the evidence that led to war in Iraq. . . . His assertion that he read the NIE seems to contradict what his campaign told me last week, when Edwards spokesman Mark Kornblau said his boss hadn't read the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. That put him in the same position as all the other senators from the time running for president, save Joe Biden.

However, Kornblau said today that Edwards had "misunderstood" the question yesterday, and that he was referring to having read the declassified version of the NIE, and other intelligence documents.

For some reason, the Edwards campaign seems to have had a series of these unforced errors.

EVERY TIME I POST ABOUT THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, I get loads more email, which makes me think that there's a genuine cultural moment going on here. That makes me wonder if one of the various political candidates won't try to capitalize on it somehow, but it's not clear to me just what they could do. Any thoughts?

UPDATE: Reader Don Spoon emails:

While growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I ran across a used book from one of my uncles called "The Boy's Book", which became my bible until I joined the Boy Scouts. I am EXTREMELY glad to see a replacement for it! My grandson will benefit from it just like I did. I am saddened that my sons didn't have a reference like this!

You see similar sentiments in the reader reviews, too. Check out the one that quotes G.K. Chesterton.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In a related vein, reader Charles Vinod emails regarding my earlier post about hands-on toys:

I bought the Radio Shack Electronics kit 101 for my six year old son this week on the occasion of his kindergarten “graduation”. Needless to say, he loved it and has not asked to watch TV or play video games since receiving the kit. Most interesting of all, even at this age, he just doesn’t want to build the circuits; he wants to know the reason “why” each one works differently. This point especially makes his scientist dad proud.

And rightly so! So why don't schools use things like this?

SPEAKING OF TIPJARS: James Lileks makes a discovery:

Augh. Brilliant! I put up a tip jar, and it doesn’t work. Turns out that a picture of an Amazon tip jar does not actually link to an Amazon tip jar. Tomorrow, your host learns that clicking on a picture of a telephone does not generate a dial tone.

Live and learn! Plus, thoughts on sex and free will.

STUMBLING INTO SUCCESS: J.D. Johannes posts another report from Iraq. Read it and then ask: Why are we only getting this kind of reporting from people like him and Michael Yon?

And remember, like Michael Yon he's supported by his readers. So if you like what you're reading, hit the tipjar.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: "Just how vulnerable is the U.S. economy to troubles in China?"

AMITY SHLAES HAS A NEW BOOK OUT, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Arnold Kling has read it, and has some observations, including this one:

The struggle over economic policy in the 1930's was really an episode in the long, historical conflict between business participants in the market and anti-business academics. Roosevelt gave free rein to the professors, until the start of the Second World War led him to realize that he would need the tycoons to help mobilize to defeat Hitler. I suspect that one reason that Roosevelt and the New Deal come off so well in the conventional wisdom is that history books are written by professors, not by entrepreneurs.

Read the whole thing, which is quite interesting.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Sen. Jon Kyl is behind the latest effort to block transparency:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-AZ, has conceded that he is the senator behind the secret hold on the proposed Open Government Reform Act of 2007, which would provide much-needed improvements in the federal Freedom of Information Act.

AP reports that Kyl explains his decision to place the secret hold on the bill as a result of "uncharacteristically strong" objections from the Justice Department. Kyl will maintain his hold until supporters of the FOIA reform bill, which includes its primary architect, Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX, and opponents can work out their differences.

Memo to Sen. Kyl: Some differences are irreconciliable, such as the difference between those like Cornyn who believe transparency in government is the first essential for democratic accountability, and those in government like the career attorneys at the Justice Department who ALWAYS find a reason to oppose increased transparency. . . .

What is really aggravating here, Sen. Kyl, is that you profess to be a conservative, a believer in limited government and individual liberty, but here you are taking up the cause of Big Government's first line of defense.

Of all people in Congress who ought to be first to proclaim that the public has an inherent right to see how the public's business is being conducted, one would think it would be a conservative from a western state where people remember Barry Goldwater.

Read the whole thing.

IT'S BETTER THAN TIM RUSSERT ON A GOOD DAY! The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

I'M ON THE COVER OF THIS MONTH'S BLOGGER & PODCASTER MAGAZINE: Together with Seth Godin and Michael Geoghegan. We did a panel interview on . . . blogging and podcasting!

May 31, 2007

A RATHER EMBARRASSING EXERCISE by The Economist Intelligence Unit. I've always looked at the ads for their expensive services and wondered what I was missing. Not much, if this is any guide.

A "REACTIONARY TURN IN THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD," in the reception of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Full story (registration required) here. And here's an excerpt:

About Hirsi Ali we do not have to wonder: where does she stand on the question of stoning women to death? Or on the obligation for husbands to beat their wives? Read one page by her and you will know the answer; and if you read two pages, you might begin to suspect that, on the television screens of France, the man who defended the oppressed of the oppressed in the poorest neighborhoods of Europe was Nicolas Sarkozy. But that has got to be the problem from a perspective like Buruma's. This talk of women's rights--doesn't it point ultimately in directions that ought to be regarded as (here is the mystery of our present moment) conservative? Better the seventh century than Nicolas Sarkozy. . . .

But this means only that Hirsi Ali's critics have lost the ability to distinguish between a fanatical murderer and a rational debater. Here is "the racism of the anti-racists," in Bruckner's phrase. It is the racism that, while pretending to stand up for the oppressed, would deny to someone from Africa the right to make use of the same Enlightenment tools of analysis that Europeans are welcome to use. Bruckner took note of the nasty personal tone with which Hirsi Ali had been discussed--the masculine condescension, to mention one aspect, which scarcely anybody could have missed in Garton Ash's New York Review essay, where he suggested that Hirsi Ali's literary success must be owed significantly to her looks. . . .Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia--its Muslim wing especially--who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last sixty years. And yet if someone like Pascal Bruckner mumbles a few words about the need for courage under these circumstances, the sneers begin.

The progressives aren't looking particularly progressive these days.

A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS:

Right now there’s a dispute at Romanesko over whether Google is to blame for newspapers’ problems – why, they link to things they don’t pay for. One writer confronted the future square on, and came up with two forward-thinking responses: a class-action suit, and union pressure.

That’ll do it. I can see the headline: Newspapers win $1.6 billion verdict against Google, use the money to start a youth-oriented tabloid giveaway paper that competes with YouTube. If you flip the corners of the pages really fast, the pictures appear to move!

It's a winner.

QUESTIONS ABOUT eavesdropping on phone calls and the Clinton campaign.

IN UNDERSTANDING SUPREME COURT JUSTICES, it pays to read their opinions rather than simply relying on political stereotyping.

IF YOU CAN'T WIN THE GAME, change the rules!

Dartmouth blog Dartlog reports: "Petition candidate Stephen Smith ’88’s recent accession to Dartmouth’s Board of Trustees has inspired the unhappy Alumni Council and the Board of Trustees to change the rules by which trustees are elected. As outlined in two speeches given during the Alumni Council’s annual Green Key meeting in Hanover this year, the Board may take drastic measures during their June 10th meeting to revamp the current election system for alumni trustees." Insiders seldom yield power to outsiders without a fight.

UPDATE: Here's more from Joe Malchow.

DON SURBER ON TORTURE, SILENCE, AND COMPLICITY.

IMPORTANT THOUGHTS ON HOLODECK SEX from Professor Bainbridge. And Naomi Wolf should be pleased that her old article is still spurring discussion in the blogosphere.

(Link was bad earlier. Fixed now. Sorry!)

HELEN AND I JUST WATCHED EVAN COYNE MALONEY'S FILM, Indoctrinate U. It's a gripping hour-and-a-half, and the college administrators -- and there are a lot of them -- who call the cops on Evan rather than answer simple questions about matters of public record certainly give higher education a jackbooted-thug ambience. Even your dumber corporate PR people would know better, but they are used to a lot more public scrutiny than the folks who run colleges and universities.

I hope that the film gets a lot of attention. It certainly deserves it, and I think it's going to leave a lot of people angry.

A NEW BUSH CLIMATE POLICY: Jonathan Adler has a roundup.

HOW TO HAVE SUCCESSFUL KIDS: Stay married.

Well, my parents didn't, and I'm . . . well, never mind.

More on this topic here.

MICHAEL MALONE looks at strange doings in the tech world and offers some explanation.

CAPITALISM AGAINST climate change.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More on Murtha's secret Johnstown earmark, from CNN:

(Via Tom Elia). I like the term "Soprano-type politics."

HANDS-ON TOYS FOR BOYS (AND GIRLS!): My earlier post on hands-on toys seem to have generated some interest, and there are still lots of cool things that will get kids away from the PlayStation and encourage them to do a few things with their hands. Something that was big in my childhood: The Estes model rockets, which are still around, and still fun, safe, and cheap. (Infinitely safer than building your own rockets from scratch, too: I did that and escaped unscathed, but I know a guy whose matchhead-and-scuba-tank rocket leveled his house and cost him some fingers. In fact, I think the impetus for the Estes-style model rockets was to provide a safe alternative to homemade pyrotechnics.)

In response to my earlier post on hands-on skills, Martin Greenberger emails:

Boy can I second the lack of basic skills in adults. I volunteer a lot with Habitat for Humanity here in Los Angeles. The volunteers that come out occasionally to help frequently can't do something as basic as reading a tape measure (beyond the numbers which are printed on it of course). Many of my Saturdays are effectively a clinic on how to pound a nail.

If shop classes were oriented to teach good work habits along with basic instead mechanical skills, instead of worrying that the students weren't learning on state of the art equipment, everyone
would be better off.

I got a lot of emails along these lines. My high school (and junior high) required this -- and actually required a kind of home-ec-in-disguise course for seniors of both sexes on how to shop, budget, cook, and generally run a household that was really quite good. Of course, nowadays it's all about teaching to the standardized tests, and they don't test people's ability to hammer a nail. If they did, every class would be hammering for an hour a day.

PARANOIA STRIKES DEEP. Or, in this case, maybe it's shallow . . . .

RISING UP against Al Qaeda in Baghdad.

UPDATE: Omar at Iraq the Model says that this was actually a fight between Al Qaeda and another insurgent group. Between AP and Omar, I think I'd be inclined to trust Omar. But if one group of terrorists is killing another, well, I can live with that, I guess.

TORTURE: The sounds of silence. Silence is complicity, you know.

APPLE HIDES USER INFO in DRM-free iTunes tracks. "The big question, of course, is what might Apple do with this information?"

INDEED: "It's the arrogance and condescension that finally makes your blood boil."

BLUESTATERS BUY MORE compact fluorescent lights: Unless, apparently, they're the blue-staters who hang out at Daily Kos!

Maybe they're holding out for those promised high-efficiency incandescents.

AN ARREST IN ANBAR: Michael Yon has posted a report on the arrest of the Iraqi general that he emailed about the other day. He adds, via emails: "Note: An official press release stated that Iraqi Police conducted the arrest. That statement is untrue. Instapundit Readers found out first!"

Indeed they did. Thanks, Michael! And don't miss the post, which offers insight into what's going on, and how, that you won't find many other places.

PRAISE FOR BUSH from an unlikely source:

STOP THE PRESSES!!! Barbara Lee has just issued her second press release in two days commending President Bush.

The liberal California Democrat, who is among the most vocal critics of the war, issued a statement Tuesday applauding the president for ratcheting up pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the killing in that country's Darfur region. Now, she's acknowledging Bush for asking Congress for another $30 billion to fund his AIDS relief program in Africa.

He's been pretty good on that, but not many people have noticed.

NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS: And about not getting it.

FEW WILL MOURN:

A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.

Upon conviction, he should be forced to consume off-brand Viagra substitutes and herbal penis-enlargement supplements while refinancing people's houses.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Passionate? or Political?

IN THE MAIL: Jim LIndberg's Punk Rock Dad: No Rules, Just Real Life. The Amazon reviews are mixed -- I'm not a particular fan of Pennywise, but this comment is kind of harsh: "This clown seems to think he's somehow different than other suburban dads, just because he's in a marginally successful 'punk' band. Sorry schmuck, you're just another whitebread neocon who wears Vans." Those punkers are a tough crowd!

IT'S EVERYWHERE: The Dangerous Book for Boys inspires this column by Christina Hoff Summers in the New York Post. Excerpt:

In a radical departure from modern schoolroom readings, the book has almost nothing to say about feelings, relationships or how boys can learn to cry. It valorizes risk, adventure and manliness.

Today's boys inhabit a danger-averse world where even old favorites like tag and dodge ball are under a cloud - Too competitive! Someone might get hurt! The National Parent Teacher Association recommends a cooperative alternative to the fiercely competitive "tug of war" called "tug of peace."

By contrast, "The Dangerous Book for Boys" has detailed instructions on how to hunt, kill, skin and cook a rabbit. . . .

The sad lesson of this book's success is how far our current education culture has drifted from the world of boys. The special art of teaching boys - once so well understood by educators everywhere - is at risk of being lost forever.

One literacy expert reviewed several junior-high social studies texts and concluded: "Many students may well end up thinking that the West was settled chiefly by females, most often accompanied by their parents."

Read the whole thing. As Dangerous Book author Conn Iggulden noted in our podcast interview, things seem to be changing. It's about time.

THE EXAMINER WONDERS WHY BUSH IS insulting his most loyal supporters? As I've noted before, there seems to be some sort of bizarre Republican death wish at work. There's a difference between disagreeing with your base and disrespecting it. And they've been very disrespectful to everyone who disagrees with them on this. Heck, I'm basically pro-immigration and I find the Administration's arguments for the bill sufficiently unpersuasive and insulting that I'm leaning against it on that basis alone.

UPDATE: Uh oh.

OUTSIDE THE BOX:

Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described "deviant" thinkers: science-fiction writers.

"We spend our entire careers living in the future," says author Arlan Andrews, one of a handful of writers the government brought to Washington this month to attend a Homeland Security conference on science and technology.

Those responsible for keeping the nation safe from devastating attacks realize that in addition to border agents, police and airport screeners, they "need people to think of crazy ideas," Andrews says.

The writers make up a group called Sigma, which Andrews put together 15 years ago to advise government officials. The last time the group gathered was in the late 1990s, when members met with government scientists to discuss what a post-nuclear age might look like, says group member Greg Bear. He has written 30 sci-fi books, including the best seller Darwin's Radio.

Now, the Homeland Security Department is calling on the group to help with the government's latest top mission of combating terrorism. . . . Why offer their ideas to the government instead of private companies that pay big bucks?

"To save civilization," Ringworld author Larry Niven says. "We do it in fiction. Why wouldn't we want to do it in fact?"

Not a bad idea.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear emails that it's about time!

I FOUND THE NOKIA N800 a bit underpowered. But I have to say this new quasi-mini-laptop from Palm, the Foleo, looks pretty cool. All it needs is EVDO to be a terrific blogging tool.

LOVE THE SINNER, hate the sinner's sex toy business.

A PORNOGRAPHY-BASED STRATEGY for the War on Terror: "Whatever military action we take is just a holding action while our culture does a number on them."

THE NRO EDITORS CHALLENGE THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORS to a debate on immigration.

A BLOG DUSTUP IN NASHVILLE: Bob Krumm has more background.

Here's the post that started it all. I don't agree with it, but it seems relatively tame to me. It's no "screw 'em," that's for sure.

UPDATE: Michael Silence: "The bottom line: The intent to drive traffic is working."

We've been had. D'oh!

HUMAN SHIELDS in Iraq.

DRINKING FROM A FIREHOSE:

One of America’s busiest guys these days is Mark Corallo of Corallo Comstock Inc. in Alexandria. He’s the media strategist and former Justice Department public affairs director who is the public voice of Fred Thompson’s prospective presidential campaign. A few hours after The Politico reported on Wednesday morning that the actor and former senator was moving swiftly toward declaring his candidacy, Corallo e-mailed: “The response is unreal. Total explosion. Can’t keep up with the incoming. Received over 300 e-mails from people who want to contribute and/or volunteer. Drinking from the fire hose.”

Hey, if Al Gore gets in the race, we might wind up with two Tennesseans facing off in the general election.

GOOGLE MAPS IS SPYING ON MY CAT!

HARIRI UPDATE:

The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday to unilaterally establish an international tribunal to prosecute suspects in the killing of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri whose supporters celebrated by dancing in the streets of Beirut.

The vote at U.N. headquarters in New York was 10-0 with five abstentions _ Russia, China, South Africa, Indonesia and Qatar. Nine votes were needed for passage.

South Africa hasn't really lived up to its human-rights reputation. Still, that's a bit of a surprise. The others, not so much.

Michael Totten observes: "What Assad fears most has come to pass."

UPDATE: Reader Mike Hertz makes a good point:

I'm not quite sure what the Post means when it says that the Security Council "unilaterally" established a tribunal. I thought a decision taken by the Council was, by definition, collective. Does "unilateral" simply mean that the Post disapproves? Or that the U.S. was part of the group that took action (much like the Iraq coalition was referrred to as unilateral)?

Any group involving the U.S. is "unilateral," I guess.

MASS DELETIONS PRODUCE A LIVEJOURNAL REVOLT.

JOURNALISTIC ETHICS: Paying for perverts?

VIRGINIA POSTREL: "Kidney patients need ACT-UP. Instead, they've got the way-too-complacent National Kidney Foundation, an organization more for doctors than patients. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Lisa Cunningham has died. She's the woman Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center told it would refuse to transplant if she found a kidney donor through local press coverage."

AN ARGUMENT FOR TERM LIMITS? "The authors study the make-up of Congress since 1789 with a view to tracking 'the self-perpetuation of political elites'. They find that, the longer the tenure of a legislator, the more likely his relatives are to enter Congress later."

May 30, 2007

A BLOGGER'S DREAMS, crushed by Michelle Malkin.

MORE SKEPTICISM about the FBI.

OKAY THIS IS STUPID:

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.

The dangers of false positives from mass testing are not trivial, as evidenced in discussions of mass-testing for HIV. Nonetheless, this is hardly the same thing. As I've noted before, food testing is something we're not doing well, and we ought to do better. The meat industry people are just afraid of competition from "real food" producers and the like, and don't want to give them an opening.

I mean, do we want China to be our model?

GREENHOUSE UPDATE:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that she followed all Senate rules when she accepted rides on a private jet from a longtime benefactor.

"Whatever I've done, I complied with Senate rules at the time. That's the way every senator operates," the Democratic presidential contender said in an interview with The Associated Press during a campaign stop in Las Vegas. . . .

Sen. Clinton, who complained about corporate America's largesse and skyrocketing executive pay during campaign events Wednesday, said she did not believe her message was undermined by her acceptance of the private flights. In line with Senate rules then in effect, Clinton's campaign has said she reimbursed Gupta at the cost of a first-class flight, typically a significant discount off the expense of a private jet.

"Those were the rules. You'll have to ask somebody else whether that's good policy," she said.

Senate rules or not, it's bad for the planet. Doesn't anyone care?

ED MORRISSEY INTERVIEWS John McCain and Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: Social conservatives backing Rudy? Interesting discussion in the Powerline forum.

MISS UNIVERSE BOOS AND U.S. / MEXICAN RELATIONS: "For what it's worth, I think this kind of episode has more impact on Americans' attitudes toward other countries than is generally recognized. The fact that millions of Americans witnessed the rudeness in Mexico City will not make matters easier for those who are pushing immigration legislation in Congress."

It's not a big deal, but that's right. "We hate you -- let us in!" is a poor approach.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE EXPLAINS WHY HE LIKES FRED THOMPSON: "He bugs James Dobson, who bugs me." I like that, too.

DANIEL DREZNER AND MEGAN MCARDLE on BloggingHeads TV.

HERE'S THE MNF PRESS RELEASE on the arrest that Michael Yon emailed about yesterday. (Via North Shore Journal.)

THE STOCK MARKET CONTINUES TO BURN HOT:

Wall Street shot higher Wednesday, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 index to its first record close in more than seven years, as investors grew more confident that the Federal Reserve might cut interest rates in the second half of 2007. The Dow Jones industrials also reached a new high close.

I credit the new Democratic Congress! What does this mean? Beats me. I tend to be bearish on the markets -- every new high looks to me like the top before the plunge. But I'm usually wrong: Like Paul Krugman, I've predicted nine of the past two recessions.

TERROR IN THE SKIES: An update on Flight 327, from Orin Kerr.

UPDATE: Much, much more here.

MORE BLOGGING ABOUT breasts and porn. Plus, when Hillary books collide.

DECLARING VICTORY IN THE WAR against global warming! Yeah, it's just weather, not climate -- but they won't be saying that in July.

Er, unless there's snow.

IT'S A FESTIVAL OF FRED (THOMPSON) at ElephantBiz.

A RESPONSE TO LAURIE DAVID ON GLOBAL WARMING at The Huffington Post: "If we really want to StopGlobalWarming, we've got to curb our enthusiasm for whatever is new and easy."

Well, in Laurie David's case it's new, easy, and hypocritical. It's fine to take environmentalism beyond its hairshirt phase, but her stuff seems more. . . opportunistic.

A CLOSE CALL for J.D. JOHANNES: but, happily, without effect.

ANOTHER SECURITY BREAKDOWN AT THE FBI: "The FBI's famed National Academy recently expelled a student from a troubled African nation after learning he was not a cop, as he had claimed, The Post has learned. The incident raises serious questions about the FBI's screening process for prospective National Academy students. . . . The 'quiet' Sinie lived, studied at and strolled around the Quantico facility with a still and video camera for 91/2 weeks before he was found not to be a cop, expelled and sent home to Chad, sources said." Well, that's comforting.

YESTERDAY'S POST on giving kids hands-on skills raised the question of what to do about adults, many of whom never acquired the skills that people used to take for granted. That's actually something that the Popular Mechanics folks are trying to address via their Skill Sets feature, complete with how-to instructions everything from how to hammer a nail properly to how to solder a circuit board. Many items include video.

Seems to me that we ought to bring back shop class as a requirement, too, for both sexes -- along with Home Ec for both sexes.

LAPTOPS CAUSING BACK PROBLEMS:

Booming sales of laptops have led to a surge in the number of computer users with back and muscle problems, experts have warned.

Girls as young as 12 are being diagnosed with nerve damage caused by slouching over screens, a group of leading chiropractors said.

Millions of others are at risk of "irretrievable damage" to their spines, necks and shoulders because of poor posture when using laptops, it was claimed.

Back specialists say as many as four in five patients have chronic nerve damage caused by working on portable PCs.

As an early (1986) laptop adopter, I can attest to this. Though in some ways using a laptop is better -- your posture may be bad, but if you use it in lots of different places it's at least variably bad. But this stuff is nothing to sneeze at. You've been warned before.

Maybe what you need is Yoga for Geeks!

JACOB SULLUM IS UNHAPPY with public-health paternalism.

IT'S OFFICIAL: Fred Thompson say he plans to run.

UPDATE: David Boaz warns libertarians against Giuliani.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Hillary's Iraq problem, and why it's not going away. Actually, Hillary's stance on the war is her strongest point in my book.

C'MON, KOSSACKS, YOU'RE STILL LAGGING:

I guess my earlier trash-talk wasn't enough of a motivator. What, have you all bought so many carbon offsets from Al Gore that you feel free to stay all-incandescent?

Okay, actually the Kossacks aren't doing so badly -- they'll soon be in the #2 position, and that's without the benefit of the kind of front-page touting that the campaign has had on InstaPundit. So Markos -- how about front-paging the post? We're talking about saving the planet here, after all!

A SECRET PENSION BOARD at the Washington Metro? I wonder who's collecting pensions.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: CNN rounds up some delightful Congressional action. Well, okay, "delightful" isn't the right word. They make a big point of noting how Democratic promises on pork have been broken repeatedly, with particular emphasis on David Obey's stealth earmark move.

Meet the new boss, yada yada. (Via Tom Elia).

NOW HE TELLS US: Patrick Fitzgerald says Plame was covert.

Tom Maguire is unconvinced: "Folks who think the prosecutor gets the first and final word will be satisfied with the current state of play. For myself, I would at least like to see the defense response (Newsweek says we will get one this week) and I continue to hold out hope that the CIA Counsel will respond to Congress, which will then generate a leak to Novak, if he likes the answer, or to Newsweek otherwise." I'd just like to see this kind of outrage generated on behalf of leaks that actually hurt the war effort.

UPDATE: A reader emails: "Unless her cover identity was 'Valerie Plame', MSNBC is drinking some pretty weak beer."

Regardless, given the many obviously more damaging leaks that no one seems to care about, I'm finding it hard to get excited about this one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Just talked to a reporter from Salon who wanted to know if I was going to "retract" an earlier blog post in which I said it looked as if Plame wasn't covert. I noted that one normally issues a retraction for original reporting, not commenting upon other people's news stories. (I think he meant this post -- I guess I shouldn't have paid attention to Joe Wilson. Or maybe this one.) But I also suggested that he ask Richard Armitage for a comment on Plame's covert status and what it means . . . .

MORE: A reader emails: "It seems pretty lame for Fitzgerald to say so now. Since his tenure is over, he doesn't have to explain why he never indicted anybody for the crime which he was investigating in the first place."

Par for the course with Fitzgerald's lame investigation, I'm afraid.

OVER AT THROWING THINGS they're liveblogging the National Spelling Bee. As an alumnus -- yes, my geekdom knows few limits -- I think that's cool.

IN THE MAIL: Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder's The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity. Looks very timely.

CAN SCIENCE OUTWIT STORMS LIKE KATRINA? Sure. But it can't do much about human corruption and stupidity, which alas were the real problems. Though as Lou Dolinar demonstrated, many aspects of the Katrina response went better than reported. The media response, however, as Dolinar also demonstrated, was not one of those, and in fact probably cost lives.

IT'S NOT JUST AMERICANS: Chinese consumers are worried about the safety of Chinese food products, too.

MORE EXTRASOLAR PLANETS: I think we've found enough to suggest that planets are pretty common. This is good news for space colonization, though of course we don't know how common earthlike planets are.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I think that celebrities did not expect that free speech is a two-way street, and that on the Internet, we can now talk back to them. And so when they preach that we get rid of our SUVs, those middle class out there who go to Costco with their three or four kids … while they’re flying in private jets — I don’t think that celebrities understood … that putting out ideas that marginalize them from their core audience, that shows a sense of elitism, is probably not in their best interest.”

WHY MODERN NOVELS are boring.

A LOOK AT POLITICS AND CIVILITY -- we've got rather more of the former than the latter.

HOW CUSTOMER SERVICE undercuts advertising in the blog age.

PIMP MY JET:

John Kerry spent $1.4 million more than federal rules allowed duri