MY EARLIER POST ON THE POTATO GUN produced this email from reader George Putnam:

Minor comment on today’s entry that you want a potato gun for Christmas…What is REALLY fun is a potato cannon. You can find directions to build one here:

I built one a couple of years ago based on this book, and it is a blast! Who knew that hair spray was such an effective propellant?

(I have one of the potato guns, too. They’re OK, but not nearly as much fun as a potato cannon.)

Okay, now I know what I really want for Christmas.

KOS COMPLAINS that Kerry stole the limelight after Bush’s speech, screwing up the Democrats’ PR plans. Soxblog observes: “haven’t I been telling you all that everyone who knows him dislikes him?”

UPDATE: More problems with Kerry’s response here. And others’!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more, here.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on different styles of blogging.

MORE ON ELECTRONIC VOTING:

Even in this election off-year, the potential perils of electronic voting systems are bedeviling state officials as a Jan. 1 deadline approaches for complying with standards for the machines’ reliability.

Across the country, officials are trying multiple methods to ensure that touch-screen voting machines can record and count votes without falling prey to software bugs, hackers, malicious insiders or other ills that beset computers.

Still missing the obvious solution.

I’LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW (listen online here) about 8:30 Eastern time talking about hybrid cars, and Holman Jenkins’ dismissive Wall Street Journal article (sorry, subscription-only, but you may be able to read it at this link) on them. Jenkins was definitely wrong in saying that the hybrid Highlander doesn’t get better mileage than its gas equivalent. In fact, it gets about double the mileage in town. Read this report, too.

IS this report from New Orleans by Deroy Murdock an example of the mainstreaming of blogstyle? I’d say so.

SUMMER LAW STUDY IN RIO? Why didn’t I think of that? One of my colleagues will be teaching there, and I’m jealous.

THE MOVEON PHOTO STORY just gets funnier.

UPDATE: More: “The liberal political group MoveOn.org has yanked a video ad from its website after being criticized for using images of British soldiers to represent Americans in Iraq.” (Via The Officers’ Club).

STRATEGY VS. TACTICS IN IRAQ: Jon Henke has some thoughts.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse contrasts Bush’s language to Hillary Clinton’s.

SORRY, BUT THIS IS INCREDIBLY STUPID:

“You can always turn the television off and, of course, block the channels you don’t want,” Martin said, “but why should you have to?”

Um, so that other people can watch the shows they want to, maybe?

UPDATE: Reader John Vasut thinks I’m misreading this:

I think that Martin was talking about a la carte programming choice. Why should you be forced (if you wish to receive certain channels) to have to pay for channels whose content you find objectionable (much less go to the trouble of blocking if you don’t wish for your children to watch it). I personally refuse to subscribe to cable/satellite (except for the Basic/local channel and some Chinese channels for my in-laws) until they provide a la carte service.

Hmm. I didn’t read it that way, but if that’s what he meant it wasn’t stupid. I actually like the idea of a la carte cable pricing, though I’m not sure how the economics work out.

UPDATE: More on cable TV economics, here and here.

THE AD TO THE RIGHT was a little premature, but Claudia Rosett’s report on the U.N. and the Internet is now posted.

INCREASING DIVERSITY at Harvard Law School.

I TRY TO LINK TO A LOT OF BLOG CARNIVALS, but BlogCarnival.com tries to link to all of them. It’s got search tools and a lot of features to help you organize and find blog carnivals, too. My cousin-in-law Brad Rubenstein set it up.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN SAYS THAT THE LOS ANGELES TIMES doesn’t understand the role of propaganda in wartime. I’m not so sure about that.

Stephen Green has more.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs thinks the Los Angeles Times understands propaganda pretty darn well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on the L.A. Times’ latest here.

MORE: Rusty Shackleford has thoughts, too.

IN THE MAIL: Peter Schweitzer’s Do As I Say (Not As I Do) : Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

The back cover, on Michael Moore’s Halliburton stock, is amusing. I can’t tell you more, though, as the InstaWife immediately swiped it. She’s bad that way.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE LIBERATED IS UP, with links to posts from Iraqi and Afghan bloggers.

UPDATE: Also there’s the Carnival of Liberty and the Carnival of Classiness.

ADS: Yes, those are Pajamas Media ads on the right sidebar, which have replaced the BlogAds I used to run. The PJ Media ad folks want to test reader reactions, so if there’s something you like, or don’t like, about the look of the ads, email me with “New Ads” in the subject line and I’ll pass it on. (Hit “refresh” and the ads’ll change.)

In passing, I want to note that I never had any problems with Henry Copeland’s BlogAds operation. It’s a great boon to bloggers, and Henry is a great guy, blessed with smarts, good nature, and integrity. He and I have talked about this move, I left BlogAds with his blessing, and my experience with BlogAds was entirely positive. I moved to Pajamas Media because of what I hope it will eventually do to encourage firsthand blog reporting, especially from third-world countries and other areas that don’t get much media coverage now. I recommend BlogAds to anyone who’s interested in having ads on their blogs without joining an organization like Pajamas Media. It’s a big blogosphere out there, and there’s room for different approaches — and Henry’s is a good one.

UPDATE: Here’s a complaint that BlogAds is invitation-only now. Yeah, sorry, I forgot about that, and I gave away all my invitations already (guess who got the last one). If you really want in, you might ask some people with BlogAds on their site. But I suspect that any “open entry” model is going to wind up looking like Google’s AdSense, about which I hear mixed reports. I never tried it.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES is up.

THE WHITE HOUSE has released its Iraq strategy document. I think it owes a bit of a debt to Steven Den Beste. But hey, you can’t always rely on bloggers to explain the war plan.

UPDATE: Some people are asking what’s new about this strategy. The answer — as Jon Henke notes — is nothing, really. (“Naturally—after having paid more attention to the critics claiming there’s no plan than to, you know, the actual plan—everybody is acting all surprised and confused. . . .This isn’t the ‘first time’ the White House has disclosed the strategy for victory in Iraq, and the strategy isn’t ‘new’. This is something reporters really should know. . . . Granted, the White House should have done a better job at spreading this message from the very start. But it’s sheer laziness and/or incompetence on the part of the media and critics to pretend that the Iraq strategy hasn’t been widely available for a long time.”)

What’s new is that the White House is forcing people to pay attention to the plan, and to the fact that there is, and has been, a plan even though the press has ignored it. That many media outfits, as Henke notes, seem to think this is all new is merely evidence that they’ve been providing lousy war coverage all along.

But the White House, if a bit late in the day, is doing something it needs to do. You can’t rely on bloggers to do it all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Dunn emails:

Nothing new for those who pay attention.

Perhaps the White House should have slapped a yellow cover on it and called it “Iraq Strategy for Dummies.” They could make quite a series what with the confusion over intelligence, WMD, Al Qaeda, the word “imminent”, etc.

Heh. More on Bush’s speech, including video, here.

WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS: A Potato Gun.

MORE THOUGHTS ON ENERGY-SAVING AND EFFICIENCY: My TechCentralStation column is up.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

TOUGH TALK from Angela Merkel.

THE MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG: Simon World notes Beijing’s dishonesty. There’s a march Sunday; more about that here.

HAVE WE REACHED A BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS ON IRAQ? I explore this over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: A reader notes that this NPR story supports the notion, too.

HARRY REID: Osama is dead?