August 11, 2007

TOM SMITH BEATS ME in the tire-pressure geek arms race.

IN THE LONDON TIMES, questions about BBC bias:

The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple – much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group? . . .

We in the BBC were acutely detribalised; we were in a tribal institution, but we were not of it. Nor did we have any geographical tribe; we lived in commuter suburbs, we knew very few of our neighbours and took not the slightest interest in local government. In fact we looked down on it. Councillors were self-important nobodies and mayors were a pompous joke.

We belonged instead to a dispersed “metropolitan media arts graduate” tribe. We met over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner to reinforce our views on the evils of apartheid, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment, the British Empire, big business, advertising, public relations, the royal family, the defence budget – it’s a wonder we ever got home.

The second factor that shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground.

Read the whole thing, which is probably applicable beyond the BBC's confines.

A ROMNEY VICTORY in the Iowa Straw Poll, according to Romney HQ.

UPDATE: Full report from Marc Ambinder. A surprise second-place showing by Huckabee.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots of candidate and pundit reactions at The Corner.

BRENDAN LOY: The 2007 hurricane season is right on schedule.

HEH: "Oh, don't you just know the linked-to article is a lifestyles piece in the NYT? Where do they find these people?"

THE ARMY ISN'T STONEWALLING -- BEAUCHAMP IS: An Army response to TNR.

THANKS, Skippy!

DOES A REPORTER HAVE A DUTY TO APPEAR ON C-SPAN?

Nope. Just as nobody has a duty to talk to reporters.

A LIST OF terror websites based in the West.

OKAY, this is just disturbing:

Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling." . . .

The procedure involved making a small incision into both thumbs and shaving down the bones, followed by careful muscular alteration and modification of the fingernails. While Martel's new thumbs now appear small and effeminate in comparison to his otherwise very large hands, he says he can still lift "pretty much anything I could lift before the surgery - though opening spaghetti sauce jars has been a problem. That was a big surprise."

(Via Physics Geek. And it's inspired a contest.)

UPDATE: Apparently, it's also a hoax, which I actually find a relief.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

KIND OF A COUP: The Amazon page for Bjorn Lomborg's new book on global warming features a review by Michael Crichton.

SHIP OF FOOLS. Reader C.J. Burch emails: "How come the bloggers are the first to notice and the reporters are the last to notice?"

It's all about the narrative.

MICKEY KAUS:

I thought Wall Streeters were paid big money because they took big risks. Capitalism, etc. But when those risks actually materialize, and the Wall Streeters are actually threatened with large losses that might change their lifestyles, Jim Cramer shows up to demand that the government bail out his friends.

Plus: "Should the campaign of John Edwards be accusing other candidates of exploiting tragedy?"

UPDATE: A Cramer defense.

MILITARY VETERANS SPEAK OUT at Yale Law School.

COMPLAINTS ABOUT The New York Times' Lebanon coverage. And an earlier complaint here.

A "DIRTY BOMB" THREAT in New York.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup. Plus, helpful background from Dan Riehl.

TAKING THE WSJ WEBSITE from subscription to free?

News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch has said he might make the Wall Street Journal's Web site free, a shift that could compel Pearson to do the same with the online version of its Financial Times. . . .

"It would be an expensive thing to do in the short term. In the long term, it may be a great thing to do," Murdoch said this week as he sketched his plan for the future of Dow Jones.

Hmm. I think the WSJ is one of the few publications of its type that can make a subscription model work.

U.N. TROOPS "HELPED TO SMUGGLE GOLD:"

The BBC has obtained an internal UN report examining allegations of gold smuggling by Pakistani peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It concluded that Pakistani officers provided armed escorts, hospitality and food to gold smugglers in east Congo.

The confidential report recommended the case be referred to Islamabad for appropriate action against the troops.

I wonder what will happen.

THE CLINTONS AND THE GAY COMMUNITY: "Hillary Clinton has gone about as far as Hillary Clinton will go in disavowing her earlier positions on major gay issues."

NEWTROOTS vs NetRoots.

August 10, 2007

WATCHING BASEBALL SMARTER.

SOME HOUSING HORROR STORIES, from James Lileks.

SO THE DOW FINISHED THE WEEK slightly up, as were the other indexes. Good news? Or just a brief reprieve? Beats me.

THE BLOG WAR BEGINS.

A FLIP-FLOP ON TERRORISM PREDICTIONS, at the New York Times?

MORE ANIMAL-RIGHTS TERRORISM: Violent radicals aim to kill Jules Stein Eye Institute researchers who test on animals. There's already been a car-bomb attempt.

SACRED BANDS AND SPARTA: A HISTORY LESSON FOR MIKE GRAVEL, from Victor Davis Hanson.

A NEW BEAUCHAMP STATEMENT from TNR, though still not terribly informative.

UPDATE: Dave Price is unimpressed. "Well, that's a neat, lawyerly trick: insist that the Army do something they know the Army cannot do, and claim they are helpless to admit the story is fake otherwise. Slick."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jules Crittenden is unpersuaded.

SAVING GAS WITH A digital tire gauge? Not a bad idea, I guess, and keeping your tires inflated properly is a good idea anyway, but don't expect anything really dramatic.

UPDATE: Some readers recommend filling tires with nitrogen. I'm pretty skeptical of this -- air is nearly 80% nitrogen anyway, and upping the percentage to something likely to be still well below 100% (because of residual air in tires, etc.) doesn't seem at all likely to make a difference.

ACE WONDERS WHY NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT the NASA climate data revision.

UPDATE: Well, here's a bit of notice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here: "Will the mainstream media report the corrected story with as much gusto as they initially reported the claim that 1998 was the warmest on record? Doubtful. But they should. Good public policy can not be made on bad data."

MORE: This comment at Ecotality distinguishes hottest years in America from hottest years globally, but I always understood this to be about American, not global, records. And I think I was right. As I noted in my earlier post, it indicates problems with the data sets. More here:

The GISS today makes it clear that these adjustments only affect US data and do not change any of their conclusions about worldwide data. But consider this: For all of its faults, the US has the most robust historical climate network in the world. If we have these problems, what would we find in the data from, say, China? And the US and parts of Europe are the only major parts of the world that actually have 100 years of data at rural locations. No one was measuring temperature reliably in rural China or Paraguay or the Congo in 1900. That means much of the world is relying on urban temperature measurement points that have substantial biases from urban heat.

Much more information at the link.

Plus, reports of Denial-of-Service attacks.

IS IT "PAY FOR PLAY" in Spitzer's New York?

IT'S THE Tennessee Pork Patrol! Rope 'em and brand 'em.

LINDA GREENHOUSE IN A TIFF WITH C-SPAN: Why are journalists so often unhappy about being recorded? "What we're hearing is that Linda Greenhouse wanted to be as free as possible to criticize the Supreme Court's recent turn to the right -- without having to worry about such pesky things as, you know, 'impartiality' (which we bloggers don't have to worry about, thankfully)."

BRYAN PRESTON gives John Murtha a call.

LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE BUSTING ON STEVE LEVITT for trying to think like the enemy. I understand the point, but there's lots of this kind of brainstorming going on at jihadist sites anyway. Plus, presumably the NYT will harvest IP addresses and turn them over to the FBI, thus ensuring America's safety.

UPDATE: Robert Mayer emails:

It is exactly because of the firestorm surrounding Steve Levitt's comments that the blogosphere is becoming increasingly unreadable at the general level. Not only is it simply impossible to find something to become offended by and infuriated at on a daily basis, but it is even harder to do so about such stupid things.

In just about every terrorism class at any university in the country, students must think like terrorists in order to judge what they might do. In my own class, our final project was to plot our own terrorist attack and present it to the class. (We hacked and brought down the electricity grid, followed by an attack in a blacked out city).

Don't intelligence analysts do this every day when they're tracking down foreign jihadis? Don't Homeland Security officials do this every day when thinking about the most vulnerable parts of our country?

I hope they are, because if they aren't, I'm more worried about that than some smart comments that Steve Levitt made.

Yeah, people need to calm down a bit.

DESMOND LACHMAN: The housing bust is a big deal. The markets seem to agree, pretty much.

THOUGHTS ON earmarks, corruption, and rational ignorance.

WHAT NOT TO NAME YOUR BLOG: At least "InstaPundit" doesn't come up . . . .

OUCH: "The top-quality fact-checking that can only be achieved by large media corporations is on fine display today, as Reuters is caught by a 13-year old Finnish schoolboy representing still photos from the movie 'Titanic' as pictures from the Russian North Pole expedition."

A JOHN EDWARDS / ZAC EFRON nexus?

A LOOK AT NANOTECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE, from the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

CARRY PERMIT CORRUPTION in California.

And more on the Boston Globe firearms straw purchase scandal. No explanations from Steve Bailey, just attacks on his critics.

Lots of background on the Bailey case at SayUncle.

BILL ARDOLINO is going back to Iraq.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Now go vote! "With the states on a race to set primaries and caucuses earlier than everywhere else, both major candidates will be probably known by the end of January, nine full months before the election — or as much time as it takes to make a baby. It’s a major change in the way the US has been electing presidents, and something that the Founders probably didn’t have in mind."

SINCE I MENTIONED IT YESTERDAY, people want to know what I think of William Gibson's new novel, Spook Country. Alas, I haven't started it yet. I'm currently reading the new Harry Turtledove book, the conclusion to his alt-history series in which the South won the Civil War, producing a series of follow-on conflicts making America look more like 20th Century Europe. It should be required reading for all those neo-confederate types who wish things had gone the other way in 1865. Meanwhile, if you follow the link there are some very positive reader reviews of Gibson's book, and an interview, too.

TED KENNEDY DOESN'T LIKE WIND TURBINES, but Boston's Electricians' Union thinks they're great. Because they mean jobs for electricians. But what's that compared with a trivial infringement on Ted Kennedy's ocean view? (Thanks to reader Matt Szekely for the tip.)

IF IT'S AUGUST, it must be time for another round of "Gender in the Blogosphere." Ellen Goodman serves, and Ann Althouse volleys. "Goodman doesn't really have too much to say, but I note that she doesn't come up with one idea that's not about how men are a problem. Somehow women never have any shortcomings. It's really a shame, because if you're a woman, then there's nothing you can change about yourself to do better."

TASK FORCE WARHORSE: Reporting from Haifa Street.

PERHAPS MIKE BLOOMBERG SHOULD HAVE WORRIED ABOUT THIS PROBLEM, instead of spending his time on trans-fats:

In a Crisis, Subway Riders Get Little Guidance

Compared with commuters in many of the world’s leading cities, subway riders in New York live in something of an information vacuum once they enter the system’s 468 stations. For decades, riders have regarded their creaking and antiquated subway network as a minor miracle, tolerating frequent delays, cramped stations and malfunctioning public-address systems.

But the storm this week, highlighting yet again deficiencies in how the authority gets information out, seemed to push riders past the limits of their patience.

This is not just a convenience issue, but a safety issue.

ARNOLD KLING looks at the Facebook Generation Gap.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ON the TNR / Beauchamp affair: "We already knew from all of America’s armed conflicts — including Iraq — what war can make men do. The only thing we learn from Scott Thomas Beauchamp is what literary ambition can make men say."

MATTHEW HOY: "It appears as though efforts by some in the military and media to turn a tragedy into a crime are going to fail. Yesterday, Lt. Gen. James Mattis decided not to court-martial Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt and Capt. Randy W. Stone." Something of an embarrassment for John Murtha, if he's capable of embarrassment.

UPDATE: Murtha still running for cover.

ORIN KERR: Questions and answers on the new FISA bill. Plus a report on the FISA conference call for bloggers. Glad he was taking notes, as I was unable to, er, listen in . . . .

IF ONLY: "We’re entering the early mid-late summer blur, I suspect. Something deep, ancient, elemental and ancestral in the back of our minds has noted the angle of the sun at noon, and concluded: in two weeks I shall see school buses making practice runs. Of course, this information was useless to our Neolithic forebears, but it explains their epic poems about giant yellow beasts that prowled the land and devoured the first-born." School started here yesterday. The insta-daughter's opinion? . . . . Mixed.

SEGWAY FAN CLUB disbands.

MICKEY KAUS: "One way to characterize Bush's second term in domestic policy is that he's consistently moved to Plan B too late to salvage anything from the demise of his Plan A. That was certainly the case on Social Security reform, and in all probability will be the final story on immigration. Will he replicate that misjudgment on Iraq?"

DEFENDANT WINS BREATHALYZER SOURCE CODE. Well, without that being public it's just a black box.

August 09, 2007

THEY USED TO BE CALLED "THE POPULAR PRESS," BUT NOT ANY MORE:

More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.

And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news -- roughly one quarter of all Americans -- were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.

More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don't care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.

More than half -- 53 percent -- of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for "failing to stand up for America".

Do you think?

DON SURBER: "Come next January when the top is up on my Mustang and I am shoveling my driveway, I will be warm in the knowledge that at least some of my federal tax dollars will be used to allow members of anti-alcohol groups to sun themselves at the Bahai Resort hotel in Mission Bay, Calif."

LIVEBLOGGING THE Democrats' gay debate. I'm disappointed that no Republicans showed up. Not even Ron Paul.

UPDATE: More from Ryan Sager.

MORE: "The President of Canada?"

DIRTY BLOG TRICKS: A fake Fred Thompson website.

UPDATE: More here.

IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO HAVE THE RIGHT SENTIMENTS -- you must have them at the proper time:

Hillary Clinton, who has criticized rival Barack Obama for saying the use of nuclear weapons in Pakistan and Afghanistan should be "off the table," expressed a nearly identical sentiment about Iran a year ago, the Associated Press is reporting this afternoon.

After Obama made his remarks about nuclear weapons, Clinton said, "I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons." But in an April 2006 interview with Bloomberg Television, the AP reports, Clinton, when asked about reports that the Bush administration was considering a nuclear strike against Iran's nuclear program, said: "I have said publicly no option should be off the table, but I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table. This administration has been very willing to talk about using nuclear weapons in a way we haven't seen since the dawn of a nuclear age. I think that's a terrible mistake."

Clinton's campaign says things are different now. Yep.

"AREN'T YOU A LITTLE SHORT FOR A STORM TROOPER?" Francis Fukuyama denies any connection to "armies of cloned Hitlers."

ARE THE DEMOCRATS peaking too early?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Club for Growth has put up a Congressional Pork Scorecard tracking members' votes on all 50 anti-pork amendments that have been presented.

Highlights:

* Sixteen congressmen scored a perfect 100%, voting for all 50 anti-pork amendments. They are all Republicans.

* The average Republican score was 43%. The average Democratic score was 2%.

* The average score for appropriators was 4%. The average score for non-appropriators was 25%.

* Kudos to Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) who scored an admirable 98%-the only Democrat to score above 20%.

* Rep. David Obey (D-WI) did not vote for his own amendment to strike all earmarks in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill. Rep. Obey scored an embarrassing 0% overall.

* 105 congressmen scored an embarrassing 0%, voting against every single amendment. The Pork Hall of Shame includes 81 Democrats and 24 Republicans.

* The Democratic Freshmen scored an abysmal average score of 2%. Their Republican counterparts scored an average score of 78%.

Follow the link for much more. Bottom line: "Unfortunately, the Club for Growth RePORK Card shows that most congressmen care more about lining their buddies' pockets than they care about protecting American taxpayers."

And, sadly, it's a bipartisan problem. Incumbistan is a one-party state. Upside: My own congressman, Jimmy Duncan, scored 88%, which I actually find somewhat surprising.

KNOXVILLE -- VALLEY OF THE BLOGS: "You can't swing a cat in this town without hitting a blogger."

FROM IPHONE TO ICLONE: "The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers." But read the story to find out what happens, and get a look into the Chinese market for cloned products -- even part-for-part Chevrolet copies.

SUBPRIME MORTGAGES AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:

In short, government has been the principal factor preventing the "affordable housing" that politicians talk about so much.

Politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans.

The Community Reinvestment Act lets politicians pressure lenders to make loans to people they might not lend to otherwise - and the same politicians are quick to cry "exploitation" when the interest charged to high-risk borrowers reflects that risk.

The huge losses of subprime lenders, some of whom have gone bankrupt, demonstrate again the consequences of letting politicians try to micro-manage the economy.

Yet with all the finger-pointing in the media and in government, seldom is a finger pointed at the politicians at local, state and national levels who have played a key role in setting up the conditions that led to financial disasters for individual home buyers and for those who lent to them.

While financial markets are painfully adjusting, and lenders and borrowers are becoming less likely to take on so much risky "creative" financing, politicians show no sign of changing.

Why should they, when they have largely escaped blame for the disasters that their policies fostered?

Perhaps we should have hearings and subpoena some politicians for tough questioning. Oh, wait . . . .

BILL BRADLEY: Wake me up when the debates are over.

MORE DDT NEWS:

Mosquitoes that carry malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever avoid homes that have been sprayed with DDT, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The chemical not only repels the disease-carrying insects physically, but its irritant and toxic properties helps keep them away, the researchers reported in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.

They estimate that DDT spray reduced the risk of disease transmission by nearly three-quarters. . . ."The historical record of malaria control operations show that DDT is the most cost-effective chemical for malaria control. Even now DDT is still considered to be the cheapest and most effective chemical for use in house spray operations," the researchers wrote.

Read the whole thing.

A CHRISTIAN CHINA? Lots of people seem excited by this article, which begins: "Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter's veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history."

It could happen, I suppose, and my colleague Rosalind Hackett, who studies these things, has suggested that militant Christianity, not Islam, is likely to be the religious force of the 21st century. (She also notes that few Americans realize how much missionary activity there is by African Christians in North America.) Still, I'd be surprised if these predictions bore out. Question left as an exercise for the reader: How long, at 10,000 / day, does it take to reach 200 million?

JEROME ARMSTRONG'S S.E.C. TROUBLES, explained.

WHEN HIDDEN EXPERTS are found.

WARMEST YEAR OF THE PAST CENTURY? New analysis suggests it was 1934, not 1998 as previously thought. Not sure what that means, but it's kind of interesting that this sort of thing remains subject to uncertainty.

UPDATE: More here.

OUCH:

An overnight post from ABC's Political Radar: "ABC News' Raelyn Johnson reports...All day the blogosphere has been buzzing with the question, 'Did Elizabeth Edwards really say that?' Finally tonight there is an answer as the Edwards campaign confirms the remarks to ABC News."

Ed Cone reports to ABC News' Raelyn Johnson: Bullshit.

There was a lot of buzz, but little if any of it was about the veracity of the quote. In any case, you could have done what other media outlets, and the Edwards campaign, did: contact me for details of the interview.

Don't mess with Ed.

RUNNING OUT OF RESOURCES?

I'm often asked about our consumption of natural resources, e.g., oil, iron, and copper. Since these resources are finite and population continues to grow, aren't we in danger of running out? My short answer is no, we'll never run out of anything that trades in the marketplace. But, we should be concerned about running out of "resources" that have no price and no owner, e.g., wild things and the ecosystems upon which they depend. Here's why I'm concerned about the one and not the other.

Read the whole thing.

A ROBOT ROUNDUP FROM DARPATECH, by Erik Sofge. And here's more reporting from DARPAtech by Noah Shachtman.

IN THE MAIL: William Gibson's new novel, Spook Country.

INDEED: "TNR's silence is deathly."

ASSOCIATED PRESS: "Polls show shift in attitudes on Iraq following military inroads."

UPDATE: And there's this:

WASHINGTON (AP) - One senator said U.S. troops are routing out al-Qaida in parts of Iraq. Another insisted President Bush's plan to increase troops has caused tactical momentum.

One even went so far on Wednesday as to say the argument could be made that U.S. troops are winning.

These are not Bush-backing GOP die-hards, but Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Bob Casey and Jack Reed. Even Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, said progress was being made by soldiers.

The suggestions by them and other Democrats in recent days that at least a portion of Bush's strategy in Iraq is working is somewhat surprising, considering the bitter exchanges on Capitol Hill between the Democratic majority and Republicans and Bush. Democrats have long said Bush's policies have been nothing more than a complete failure.

Perhaps we'll see less partisanship in the months to come.

JAMES FALLOWS on the dangers of excessive security. On the other hand, his final question demonstrates that hyperbole is present among the critics, too.

GREEN FAKERS: Radar on why eco-hypocrisy matters:

Take Laurie David, soon-to-be-ex-wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry, and producer of An Inconvenient Truth and other save-the-earth extravaganzas. Though she boasts about using recycled toilet paper and compact fluorescent lightbulbs, David has been pilloried for, among other excesses, flying on private jets. Here's what she has said in defense of her travel habits: "I'm not perfect. This is not about perfection. I don't expect anybody else to be perfect either. That's what hurts the environmental movement—holding people to a standard they cannot meet."

Apparently, when you're worth a few hundred million dollars, being asked to refrain from the most carbon-intensive indulgence known to man qualifies as "holding people to a standard they cannot meet." Note, too, her use of emotional jujitsu: the ones who are really hurting the environment are the ones who are so impolite as to point out her bad behavior. . . . It's always galling to be exhorted to curb your consumption by people who are living the poshest lifestyle imaginable. But the problem here goes beyond aesthetics. Eco-hypocrites undercut the very message they're trying to peddle. How desperate could the planet's plight be if the people who present themselves as most concerned about it consider flying first-class commercial an unacceptable sacrifice?

Read the whole thing. As I've said before, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.

SOUTH CAROLINA MOVES ITS PRIMARY: Marc Ambinder looks at the fallout.

ROGER SIMON: The Netroots are Rotting: "Now, as we all know, sleaze and corruption are not unique to either side of the political spectrum. But Armstrong, Kos & their netroot cronies have made a big deal out of clean government (and they should). So this kind of allegation speaks even more deeply to their ethics, as it it would for anyone in that position."

NIGERIA UPDATE:

Police and military forces have been unable to halt the spread of kidnapping activity in the Niger Delta oil region. With security forces and civilian body guards tied up protecting officials and foreigners, the kidnappers have switched to grabbing family members (children, parents, and so on) of prominent Delta politicians. The ransoms aren't as large, but the money is still good by Nigerian standards.

The navy is spread so thin that it cannot protect commercial traffic, particularly ferries and regular passenger runs, from pirate attacks. The criminal gangs have been doing so well that they have taken to fighting each other over territory. In the past week, at least a dozen people were shot dead in Delta cities, as gangs fought each other in the streets. The government is barely in control in the Delta, and a coalition of gangs is offering the government a deal to ease up attacks on oil production, in return for a cut of the oil profits. In theory, these diverted oil profits would go to "the people," but the gangsters would grab most of it, emulating the gangsters that have long been passing themselves off as politicians and elected representatives of "the people."

Downside: Pretty obvious. Upside: Getting Iraq to be a "normal country" like Nigeria is getting easier as the gap narrows . . . .

COL. BUZZ PATTERSON really went after Jon Soltz, the antiwar activist last seen shutting up Sgt. David Aguina at YearlyKos.

THE EXAMINER: The Surge is Working: What Now?

The U.S. military surge, widely denounced as a last-ditch effort by an embattled, lame-duck president fighting an un-winnable civil war, is working. Even as vocal a war critic as Deputy Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has now acknowledged as much, telling CNN that the U.S. military is “making real progress.” . . .

The surge is also having a positive impact on Iraq’s political equation, according to Petraeus: “We’re also heartened by the number of Iraqi tribes and local citizens who have rejected al Qaeda. We cannot attribute that to the surge but the surge certainly enabled that to move much more rapidly, we believe, than it otherwise would have.”

Military and political progress is heartening but with it comes a critical decision for war critics, especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, who declared the war lost months ago, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who last week pledged to continue seeking withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Public support for the war effort has been growing in recent weeks and the expected positive report from Petraeus to Congress in mid-September will likely generate additional support for giving victory a chance. In other words, the political ground on which Reid and Pelosi are standing is shifting beneath them. Do they now really want to bring our boys home just when they are poised to win?

Read the whole thing.

FOUND: A life preserver from the Edmund Fitzgerald?

ANN ALTHOUSE: "My iPhone self-destructed in less than a week." But there's a silver lining.

GOOD NEWS: Search engines starting to compete on privacy.

THE NEW REPUBLIC LOOKS AWFULLY BAD in this AP story about the Beauchamp affair.

August 08, 2007

CALLING JAMES WEBB A COWARD: Seems politically unwise.

UPDATE: A related post from Ed Driscoll. And Iowa Voice is just amused.

THE DAILY SHOW SKEWERS Cape Wind opponents. (Bumped, because I like it.)

IT WON'T BE HOSTING INSTAPUNDIT: "The University of Tennessee will receive one of the world’s most powerful computers as part of a five-year, $65 million project to be funded by the National Science Foundation. . . . UT teamed with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the NSF proposal, and the supercomputer — capable of nearly 1,000 trillion calculations per second — would be housed in the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences, a state-funded facility at ORNL."

More at Slashdot.

TAKING ON THE "CHICKENHAWK" CANARD at The New Republic:

It should be an obvious point that in democracies, elected governments decide on policy and armed forces implement it. If you believe that armed forces should be doing the deciding--whether because of their greater expertise, or the moral superiority that comes from their greater willingness to sacrifice--then you are not a democrat (small d), but a militarist. In democracies, elected governments can certainly let their armed forces down. They can do so, for instance, by giving them a job and then failing to provide them with sufficient resources to accomplish it, as many argue the Bush administration has done in Iraq. But elected governments--and last I heard, our own included something called the "legislative branch"--cannot by definition let the troops down by debating policy, or changing it. This is the government's job. It can do it unwisely, but the fact remains that the troops' own job is simply to carry the policy out, however misguided it may be.

Okay, it's not actually presented as an attack on the "chickenhawk" canard, but it seems equally valid in that context, no?

["Chickenhawk canard"? Isn't that a multilingual poultry pun? -- ed. I like to include those little Easter Eggs. Eggs -- there's another! This is getting fowl! -- ed. Switch to decaf, please.]

ANOTHER PETRAEUS RADIO INTERVIEW: And crickets from the left.

MORE BOGUS REPORTING from Iraq?

IF CAIR KEEPS THIS UP, people will start thinking that they're a bunch of terrorist apologists or something. No wonder its membership is so minuscule.

UPDATE: More on CAIR at the Counterterrorism Blog.

MICKEY KAUS: "Markos Moulitsas' co-author and MyDD blogger Jerome Armstrong--recently quoted assessing the state of the left blogosphere in Salon--has agreed to pay $30,000 to the S.E.C. to settle stock-touting allegations, according to TimesSelect prisoner Chris Suellentrop. That seems like quite a bit to me, though I'm no S.E.C. expert. It apparently includes a $20,000 fine." More at the link. Note that Armstrong neither admits nor denies the charges.

UPDATE: More thoughts here. Meanwhile the Kos Krowd responds -- Matt Drudge is gay! -- and Dan Riehl collects more sane reactions. What is it with the lefty types and gay slurs?

DEPARTMENT OF "HUH?" Benjamin Zycher emails:

I notice that your blog has shined virtually no light on Steve Levitt's utterly embarrassing letter to John McCall, a letter that most scholars with a shred of dignity would write only after having crawled into a deep hole. (As best as I can tell, all you have done is offer an "update" posting with a link.) In case you missed it: Levitt admits that even as he claimed that the special issue of the JLE that Lott put together was not refereed, Levitt himself was one of the referees. Second, Levitt's claim that Lott invited only authors whose views were consistent with his was undermined completely by his admission that he had been invited to submit a paper. (As, by the way, were others with views differing from Lott's.) And, third, the comedy highlight of Levitt's letter is his claim that "[Levitt] did not mean to suggest that Dr. Lott did anything unlawful or improper in arranging for the payment of the publication expenses for the Conference issue." Of course not; precisely what, then, did he mean to suggest?

Perhaps you could offer some of your usual musings on that. More generally, your rather loud silence on this latest development in the Levitt/Lott controversy is interesting, particularly given the massive amounts of attention, quotation, and credibility over these past few years that you have deemed appropriate for those attacking Lott's integrity. Now, why is that? Could it be that you simply are far less objective or "fair" than you like to pretend?

No obfuscations, please: A straight answer would be appreciated. Feel free to post this note if you wish.

Really, I don't have anything to say besides "huh?" Well, and my earlier characterization of the Lott/Levitt dispute as "In my opinion, a lawsuit that shouldn't have been brought, over a chain of events that shouldn't have happened, and involving accusations that shouldn't have been made." Neither Lott nor Levitt has come off especially well in this, though it's true that the latest news, which I did link, makes Levitt look bad. As for the rest, I really don't think I've devoted "massive amounts of attention" to attacks on Lott's integrity, though I did mention some of the problems he's had, and I'm quite surprised to be accused of harboring some sort of brutal anti-Lott agenda resulting in "loud silence." Whatever. Judging by the email address, it's this Benjamin Zycher, (whom I actually gave space on my blog to defend Lott over an earlier matter) and the email seems a bit intemperate for a scholar.

THOUGHTS ON THE SURGE, FROM Victor Davis Hanson: "So the key is not debating whether the surge is 'working' (it is), but rather concentrating on the post-surge, and defining exactly what are the conditions that result from it vis a vis Iraqi security and our military situation and national mood."

UPDATE: More here.

"AUTODOCS" ARE A STAPLE of science fiction. Now they're moving closer to reality:

One of the first announcements at this year's three-day DARPATech conference is going to be hard to top: the first portable, self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency's Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully "treated" a mannequin during a test, with no complications.

It's remote-controlled, not autonomous, though.

IN WHICH I AGREE WITH A DAILY KOS COMMENTER:

Biden has single-handedly f****d more Americans than Wilt Chamberlain with his 2005 Bankruptcy bill. He can talk a good game from time to time, but don't kid yourself - he's playing for the other team.

Unfortunately, the other team doesn't lose many players. I think it's the excellent pay and benefits.

Earlier stuff on the bankruptcy bill, which inspired a lot of cross-blogospheric agreement, here, here, and here. I wouldn't mind if this came up in future Republican and Democratic debates.

DANIEL DREZNER ON THE DECLINE OF TERRITORIAL WARS, as a sign that the world is becoming "more pacific."

A JET-POWERED PORT-A-POTTY: And some of you will want one after seeing the photo.

BUT IT STILL SMELLS BAD: The Beijing Olympics are one year away.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS ON the Democrats' views of economics as displayed in last night's debate.

JAMES LILEKS: "What I wouldn’t give to find the exact location, and deepest fear, of the miscreant who’s spamming Buzz."

Hmm. Here's a suspect . . . .

O.J. SIMPSON'S HOUSE, WITH A KNIFE-SHARPENING VAN PARKED OUTSIDE: Yes, really.

DON SURBER: "Politics is a stock car race, meaning the crashes into the wall are just as important as who wins. And far more entertaining. Edmund Muskie crying. Gary Hart’s follow-me romp. Dr. Howard Dean’s scream. Ah, sweet memories."

A FACEBOOK FUNERAL.

A LOOK AT CAMPAIGN WEB DATA: Most surprising: "The oddest thing is that despite all of John Edwards net-roots efforts and his popularity with power-house web presences like DailyKos and MoveOn.org, he lags in fourth place with 12.08%."

UPDATE: "Interesting, but not surprising."

PELOSI ARM-WRESTLES OVER cash for the House Gym. "Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are not eager for a multimillion-dollar renovation of the congressional members-only gym to be one of the first accomplishments of the Democratic majority. They worry that freshman Democrats could be attacked on the campaign trail next year for approving a fancy new gym for themselves after winning office."

DAN RIEHL continues to bird-dog the Goose Creek arrests. [Bird-dog? Goose? -- ed. Just keeping the metaphors consistent.]

ETHANOL PRODUCTION CREATES A STEAK SHORTAGE in New York City?

Reminiscent of the Soviet Union -- because, of course, the subsidies for ethanol are, in a modest way, the kind of market-distorting policies that the Soviet Union loved. And with similar effects.

JOHN TABIN ON TNR and Beauchamp.

UPDATE: Further thoughts here.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: "At least 1 million pounds of suspect Chinese seafood landed on American store shelves and dinner plates despite a Food and Drug Administration order that the shipments first be screened for banned drugs or chemicals, an Associated Press investigation found."

FEMINISTS: They're everywhere.

HOW ORGANIC FOOD contributes to climate change.

BLOGGING FOR TIBETAN INDEPENDENCE, from Beijing.

REAGAN VET TO HEAD THOMPSON EFFORT: It's Bill Lacy. Here's a piece by Lacy on prior Fred Thompson campaigns.

IN THE MAIL: Stephen Baum's What Made jack welch JACK WELCH: How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Leaders.

Also, Dan Farber's Retained by the People: The "Silent" Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have.

RANKING THE Democratic candidates.

DOONESBURY turns anti-Chavez.

WINTER SOLDIER SYNDROME. "Self-aggrandizing soldier recounts war atrocities. Media outlets disseminate soldier’s tales uncritically. Military folks smell a rat and poke holes in tales too good (or rather, bad) to be true. Soldier’s ideological sponsors blame the messengers for exposing anti-war fraud."

GROWTH SECTORS: Online ads, former bloggers.

UPDATE: GM's Olympics TV advertising dollars shifting to online.

BAD NEWS FOR JOURNALISTS: Google News is adding a new feature:

We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we'll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective, rather than part of a journalist's report.

Lots of errors that usually slide by will get pointed out. I think it's good news for readers, though. (Via TechMeme).

JAMES KIRCHICK IS DISAPPOINTED WITH SOUTH AFRICA:

This stance toward Iran is cause for concern on its own. Unfortunately, it is also illustrative of a much broader and more chilling trend in South Africa's postapartheid foreign policy: one that cozies up to tyrants, and is increasingly orientated against the West--even at the cost of its self-proclaimed principles of human rights and political freedom.

Postapartheid South Africa's easy relationship with dictatorships, it should be noted, is not a new development. Until very recently, however, it has largely been overlooked by the media. . . . For decades, the international community rightly considered South Africa a pariah state. With the fall of apartheid, South Africa earned the unique right to be a clarion voice for freedom and human rights around the world. What a shame, then, that the ANC pursues policies hearkening back to its country's discredited past.

Read the whole thing. It's very troubling.

STRIKING OUT on Barry Bonds.

IT'S A PRINTER. No, it's a table. It's both!

YOU'D NEVER KNOW that the Republicans lost the 2006 elections: "There are now 162,000 American troops in Iraq, the most ever." The military part is going well.

Corruption, as noted here repeatedly, remains Iraq's single biggest problem, and one that's hard to address with troops.

UPDATE: Somewhat related thoughts, from Jules Crittenden.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Indeed: "The great lie from the anti-war side is that people like me don’t recognize the difficulty — or inherent tenuousness — of what it is we’ve been trying to accomplish in Iraq. But why else do these comfortable defeatists and inveterate contrarians think some of us have devoted so much time and energy to beating back their attempts to undermine the effort?"

HERSCHEL SMITH has thoughts on Iraq's borders. He's right, but I don't understand why we didn't do something like that years ago.

BRITAIN TO BUY two aircraft carriers.

EIGHT OUT OF THE TOP TEN PAKISTANI RECORDING STARS cut a CD that speaks out against terrorism.

MICKEY KAUS ON BLOGGER LISTSERVS: "Wouldn't it be better if these debates were conducted in public, where readers could at least listen in?"

INSTAPUNDIT IS SIX YEARS OLD TODAY: Here's what it looked like that first week.

I FIND THIS NOT ENTIRELY COMFORTING: "An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers." It's true, of course, that it's unlikely to be dangerous, but I'd prefer my germs a bit less robust. On the other hand, advocates of panspermia will feel their case has been strengthened.

JAMES FALLOWS: "There are a lot of smart people in China, but not many of them seem to work for the state propaganda apparatus."

August 07, 2007

CLINTON EARNS loudest boos, biggest applause.

UPDATE: Video here and here.

"AN EASY FORM of academic pandering."

Related thoughts, here.

MORE ON THE SURGE, from Max Boot.

NEW YORK TIMES: Army Says Soldier’s Articles for Magazine Were False.

UPDATE: More from Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post.

4,000 PEOPLE A WEEK, trying to leave Britain.

STILL MORE ON GOOSE CREEK, from Dan Riehl. Events are certainly curious. These guys are just lucky they aren't Goose Creek high school students.

A LOOK AT race, dating, and double standards.

ANOTHER GRIM MILESTONE.

GALLUP: "We’re seeing some slight hints of positive news for the Bush administration. For one thing, Bush’s job approval rating has stopped its downward trajectory. Bush hit bottom with his administration low point of 29% in early July (based on our USA Today/Gallup poll readings). Now – in the data just about to be released from our weekend poll – Bush's approval rating has recovered slightly to 34%. That’s not a big jump, but it is the second consecutive poll in which the president’s numbers have been higher rather than lower."

Will Congress go up next?

UPDATE: Maybe not. At least this argument seems persuasive to me, though not terribly flattering to Bush: "I think it’s a natural consequence of having the attention focused on Congress. By comparison, he looks pretty good."

A LOOK AT the politicization of science in recent years.

ACE: "If it is now the Washington Post's explicit style guidance that a man merely serving during a war is in fact a veteran of that war, then I expect them, in accordance with this odd new ruling, to begin referring to President Bush as a 'Vietnam veteran.'"

ANOTHER DEBATE? Stephen Green is liveblogging it.

UPDATE: Hillary channels Rick Santorum?

WHO KILLED THE AMERICAN CAR? Nobody, says Jim Dunne.

Plus, car owners on why people don't buy American.

ED CONE:

The Edwards campaign called. They are in a tizzy over a quote from my article, which is being sensationalized at this moment on Drudge: "Elizabeth Edwards on campaign's troubles: 'We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman'..."

The campaign staff didn't even know I had spoken to Elizabeth Edwards [clarification: some staffers knew because I told them after the fact, but I didn't go thru official channels to reach her]. That is how she rolls. The staffer wanted to know when I talked to her, and what she said. CNN just asked me the same thing.

Follow the link for the full story.

UPDATE: More on Elizabeth Edwards from Marc Ambinder.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Advertising Age isn't impressed: "This comment from Elizabeth Edwards might cut through the clutter, but perhaps in ways not expected."

THE NEW REPUBLIC UPDATES, but doesn't know much. Bob Owens comments.

UPDATE: The Weekly Standard responds: "They neglected to report that the Army has concluded its investigation and found Beauchamp's stories to be false. . . . We have full confidence in our reporting that Pvt Beauchamp recanted under oath in the course of the investigation. Is the New Republic claiming that Pvt Beauchamp made no such admission to Army investigators? Is Beauchamp?" More at the link.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Stephen Spruiell calls it a "non-rebuttal rebuttal."

MORE: Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

STILL MORE: I linked it before but this bit is worth quoting: "There's this notion that war makes the soldiers crazy. Journalists love it. Beauchamp reinforced it. It appears that war makes journalists crazy."

And editors. [And publishers].

MORE STILL: Phil Carter: "Every soldier has a story. Some are even true."

WHAT IS IT, "DOGPILE ON EZRA KLEIN DAY?" First Kaus, then Chait, now Goldberg?

Oh, well. I think Ezra's man enough to take the heat.

JOHN FUND: "But if pork remains part of the GOP governing model, it's one that voters are starting to reject. In exit polls last year, those who actually showed up to vote reported that political corruption was a more important issue than the war in Iraq. In Alaska, where they have seen incumbent Republican arrogance up close, voters last year sent GOP Gov. Frank Murkowski packing. Upstart Sarah Palin defeated him in a primary by a wide margin and then won in the fall. Her approval ratings now top 90%. Her secret is that she won over voters by campaigning against corruption within her own party--much as Nicolas Sarkozy was able to do in France." The GOP leadership, however, doesn't seem bright enough to take advantage of this. But maybe more challengers will.

I'VE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE: A "bogus study" from the Violence Policy Center.

THOUGHTS ON THE SURGE, from INDCJournal.