EARTH DAY CONTRARIANISM from The Fat Guy.

A LOOK AT Rachel Carson’s legacy.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL DEMONSTRATES HIS IGNORANCE ABOUT FIREARMS AND FIREARMS LAW, but his lack of knowledge doesn’t stand in the way of strong opinions! Video here.

Really, this kind of ignorance is inexcusable, at least among people who pretend that their opinions matter. It’s like commenting on sex education when you don’t know which bodily parts go where.

UPDATE: A commenter observes: “This sort of cluelessness would be laughed off the set of any sports panel show. Why do we tolerate it in our political discussion?”

You’d think the McLaughlin Group would set a higher standard.

MORE: Reader Michael Kemp notes that Cathy Seipp had Lawrence O’Donnell figured out years ago.

ERIC POSNER: “Liberal democracies, not activists and international law, protect human rights.”

HARRY REID GETS HAMMERED IN HIS HOMETOWN PAPER: “The Democratic strategy to use the ongoing violence in Iraq to their political advantage in the run-up to the 2008 elections requires some skill and nuance. But it’s growing harder to believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — Nevada’s own — actually possesses those skills.”

Via Don Surber, who comments: “By the way, Reid was among the 77 senators who voted to send the troops into Iraq. It was popular then. Now that it no longer is popular, he opposes the war. Support the troops? He exploited them.”

THOUGHTS ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND “SAY ON PAY” from Professor Bainbridge.

STOP COMING TO WORK AND SAVE THE PLANET:I’ve written on this topic before. And Rep. Frank Wolf has been pushing the idea too. But a lot of employers don’t like telecommuting for various good — and not-so-good — reasons.

Then there’s always the prospect of losing weight: “How much is one’s carbon footprint increased by the consumption of food? Isn’t everyone who is overweight overconsuming? I’d like to see a number representing the environmental damage we do for each excess pound we carry. . . . It’s a serious matter that’s got to be at least at the level of leaving the wrong kind of light bulbs on when you’re out of the room. Plus, it might help people lose weight if they could reenvision their problem in terms of environmental responsibility. And if you’re going to say to me that it’s bad to shame people into good behavior, then are you against all the other shaming we are subjected to about the environment?” On the other hand, if you’re fat aren’t you just sequestering carbon?

Let’s start with the telecommuting. More thoughts on that here.

UPDATE: Reader John McGinnis emails:

Key component being missed in the whole discussion — the inability of management to match deliverables with work. I’ve worked in the IT business for 30 years in all that time management in some 10 firms have never been able to measure my productivity or those of my peers. As a consequence rewards go to the suckups. Here is a classic difference. I can setup a trip approved by management and rack up $5k in expenses in Chicago for 4 days. That will be most likely considered a ‘success’. However if I was to suggest that I need 4 days of privacy away from phones and interruptions to get a project done it is reviewed with a great deal of scrutinty. Management has to get over thier fears and come up with a reasonable objective measurement system that works.

Yeah, I had some related thoughts on that phenomenon here.

“END THE WAR:” Right message, wrong address. But it’s all about that message control.

THOUGHTS ON the war, politics, and message control, from The Mudville Gazette. And don’t miss the “key message” at the end.

MARK STEYN: “To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you’re not in the real world. The ‘gun-free zone’ fraud isn’t just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia’s distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality.”

UPDATE: More thoughts on the perversity of treating helplessness as a virtue.

FRENCH ELECTION RESULTS ARE IN: Fausta has been liveblogging. Nidra Poller — who predicted the outcome pretty well — is commenting, too.

IN BRITAIN, WASTING AWAY: “A third of women graduates will never have children, research has concluded. The number of highly educated women who are starting families has plummeted in the past decade, according to findings that provide the most detailed insight yet into education and fertility.”

UPDATE: “The future belongs to those who show up for it.”

ONE BILLION BULBS: An energy-saving initiative that’s worth your attention.

And they’re not just for the utility closet, either!

Plus, compact fluorescent bulbs compared.

A LOOK AT FAKE NGOs: NGOs offer power without accountability. Why wouldn’t governments get into the game?

AT POPULAR MECHANICS, a look at what should be in your home toolbox.

I’m not sure it’s quite the kind of thing they’re talking about, but I’d hate to do without this.

Some earlier toolblogging, here.

UPDATE: Some more thoughts on tools. They’re getting better and cheaper!

THE LOGJAM ON IMMIGRATION AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL has produced record amounts of state legislation on the subject. There’s an employer-sanctions bill moving in Tennessee:

Senate Bill 1870 by Sen. Jack Johnson (R-Brentwood) passed the Senate on Thursday by 27-2.

Known as the �Employer Responsibility in Hiring Practices Act�, the bill requires employers to use the Employment Eligibility Verification Basic Pilot Program to ensure that new hires are eligible to legally work in the United States.

The program is a web-based system that is operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Here’s a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures on immigration bills across the country.

WERE THE VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTINGS a sign of “the crisis of young males in a feminised society?” I’m skeptical.

TIM BLAIR is back from hiatus.

UPDATE: Via Blair, quote doctoring!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Lambert responds to the charges of quote-doctoring, though he acts as if they originate with me instead of their actual source. Is that “link-doctoring?” I’m just enjoying the show from the sidelines.

IT’S EARTH DAY, “the Festivus of the environmental movement.”

And yes, I still have the unpowered push mower. Works great!

A LOOK AT EUROPEAN SCHIZOPHRENIA over gun control. Frankly, schizophrenia is an improvement over monomania, in this case . . . .

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, looks more like mental retardation . . . .

ARE THE DEMOCRATS IN DANGER OF LOSING THE BLACK VOTE?

That’s what Don Surber says, inspired by Angela McGlowan’s new book, Bamboozled. It’s an interesting argument, but it would be more persuasive if the Republicans were smarter.

THE PLANET IS SAFE: The Eco-Socialites are on the case. But not too much:

Still, she has no plans to reduce the family’s significant carbon footprint by, say, selling the Manhattan second home. “I’m not a perfect person,” she said. “I’m not the greenest woman in America.” And there was scant indication that other guests, most of whom, presumably, knew their way up the steps of a private jet, were contemplating major lifestyle cutbacks. Glancing about the room, Ms. Barnett said, “We aren’t all going to move to one-bedroom apartments.” . . . She plans to practice conservation, to a point. Energy-saving light bulbs are fine — for the utility closet, perhaps. In other rooms, “they don’t give a very pretty light,” she said.

That’s for the little people.

THE INSTAWIFE ON THE VTECH SHOOTINGS: Video at the link. (Click the camera icon at the upper right). Or click here.

A BLIND COMPARISON TEST using recycled printer cartridges.

The cartridges for my printers are pretty expensive — and one of the many colors is always running out — so maybe I should give this a try.

HEH. But it’s not just Nifong.

“MOST GUNS ARE SEMIAUTOMATIC:” Mickey Kaus explains firearms technology to a bemused Robert Wright, on Bloggingheads TV.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh similarly educates the editors of The Economist, who appear in great need of education. Really, if The Economist is going to opine on this sort of thing, its writers need to know something on the subject.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rahm Emanuel needs educating too.

MORE CRITICISM OF NBC, this time from Harry Shearer at The Huffington Post:

Not so easy is the answer to the question: what is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho’s self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air? Did we learn anything useful during the spate of interviews of Charlie Manson years ago, except that he was one crazy motherfucker? Cho’s pathetic outpourings deserved to be put back where they came from–in a small room, with FBI guys sentenced to read/see and parse them Instead, a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time. A society in which it’s easier to become famous for killing people than for doing something useful or constructive is one remarkable place in which to live.

Create bad incentives, get bad behavior. Meanwhile, some thoughts from Dave Cullen in Slate.

BOINGBOING BANNED IN BOSTON: This is the best argument against municipal wi-fi systems — they’re sure to be run by idiots who can’t resist meddling and censoring.

ED CONE WANTS JUSTICE for fired Duke Lacrosse coach Mike Pressler.

He’s owed a lot of apologies. And more than that.

CLAYTON CRAMER IS STILL TOURING in support of his book, Armed America, and Eric Scheie attended one of his appearances and — of course — blogged about it.

SPYING FOR IRAN? “A former engineer at the nation’s largest nuclear power plant has been charged with taking computer access codes and software to Iran and using it to download details of plant control rooms and reactors, authorities said.” Ed Morrissey has further thoughts.

THE COLOR OF MONEY: Colbert King charges Hillary Clinton with Hip-Hop hypocrisy.

CHINA JUNKS SPACE DEBRIS MEETING:

China has canceled the hosting of the 25th meeting of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).

The China National Space Administration was slated to host the IADC April 23-26 at the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing.

The IADC is a confab of countries that, in a governmental forum, discusses worldwide coordination of activities related to issues of human-made and natural debris in space.

On January 11, China created the largest debris cloud of satellite fragments in Earth orbit after they destroyed their own weather satellite in an anti-satellite test.

The April issue of NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News labels the Chinese ASAT test as creating the most severe orbital debris cloud in history.

I guess they figured nobody was going to say anything good about them anyway . . . .

FROM IRAQI BLOGGER ALAA, a mixed assessment of U.S. security strategy. “However, between the extreme course of total withdrawal and the present detailed involvement with daily operations; there is a middle way that few are talking about. Complete abandon and retreat by the Americans would indeed constitute defeat and a victory for the enemy, and would turn the tables completely and ignite a larger conflagration in the region. On the other hand the level of involvement of American and other allied foreign troops with detailed street to street policing, house searches etc. etc. should not continue indefinitely. . . . What must be realized is that as long as the U.S. is strategically present, the enemy has no hope of achieving any of his objectives. This enemy knows this only too well; and his prime objective is to bring about this withdrawal and retreat by all means. He pins his hopes on the internal situation in the U.S., and this is his most potent weapon. Therefore most of his actions and attacks are basically publicity stunts aimed primarily at the MSM and American and western public opinion.”

STUDENTS REMEMBER Professor Librescu.

TECH ADVICE BLEG: Anybody out there own this Panasonic HD camcorder? It looks pretty sweet, and the Popular Mechanics folks like it, but what’s it like in actual long-term use? We’ve got some video projects in mind for this summer, and I’m wondering whether to upgrade. The one we have now works quite well, but it’s bulkier, tape-based (so capture has to take place in real time) and not HD. My sense is that waiting a while makes sense, but I’m not sure. Advice from those who haven’t waited would be appreciated.

UPDATE: Andrew Marcus emails:

Glenn- I saw the “pro” version of this camera at NAB and was blown away! I haven’t had time to check out the differences between the consumer version and the “pro” version, but if they are similar enough, it is a winner. I’ll do more research later today and let you know.

Hmm. The descriptions look pretty similar. This review says: “The big difference – a portable 40GB hard drive that can store the contents of the SD cards and a color space more closely matched to their pro camcorders.” Software seems not quite ready, though.

BLOGGER AND PODCASTER MAGAZINE is a new magazine for, er, bloggers and podcasters. Looks pretty interesting to me — but then, I’m surely at the core of its target market.

LIEBERMAN ON HARRY REID: “We should not surrender in the face of barbarism.”

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: A look at the 1957 Far Rockaway High School Rifle Team. It’s certainly a sign of how New York has changed, and not for the better.

Meanwhile, in 2007 Yale is banning fake weapons on stage. And to think that universities hold themselves out as bastions of critical thinking where people can make fine distinctions . . . .

As Sigmund Freud said: “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”

Or intellectual maturity, anyway. It’s certainly evidence for Robert Epstein’s thesis.

UPDATE: Perhaps the Yale cast should show up in this apparel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eugene Volokh: “Do Yale students have a hard time telling theater from reality? Are they so emotionally fragile that they would be traumatized by seeing a realistic sword on stage?”

I think that’s the Yale administrators. It’s all about the unwillingness to face reality and its consequences.

MORE: Reader Ryan Robinson notes something fishy at Wikiquote:

Just wanted to point this out…

At some point since you posted the Sigmund Freud quote “A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity”, somebody went on to wikiquote.org and edited the page. They have that quote now marked as O“Misattributed”. Whoever edited the page says that they searched Google Print, but apparently they neglected to note that the version they searched is NOT the complete text of Freud’s work. Perhaps someone with access to a library can confirm or deny that quote.

Interesting how quickly the wikiquote page was modified… Also interesting that they *speculatively* attribute the quote to an opponent of gun control.

This is why wikis suck. That quote has been there for years — then I link it and it vanishes. I think the quote’s real — at least I’ve seen it elsewhere before. But either the quote was bogus when I linked it — which means that wikiquote sucks — or the quote was real and has been deleted/marked as misattributed for political reasons — which means that wikiquote sucks. And there’s no obvious indication that it’s changed since I cited it. Which means that wikiquote sucks.

STILL MORE: The Freud quote reappeared, but is now back to “misattributed” on Wiikiquote. Here’s a suggestion that it isn’t accurate from another source. What I hate is that it’s very hard for readers to tell when I’ve linked to Wikiquote what it looked like when I established the link.

MORE STILL: I went to the library to look the Freud reference up myself. The quote above doesn’t appear on p. 33 as cited. Instead, there is what’s seen below, which appears right after an account of a dream in which a woman tries to unsheathe a dagger to kill herself, only to awaken and find she’s tugging on her husband’s penis:

This is consistent with the (currrent) WikiQuote version, saying that the Freud quote is actually quoting Kates’ commentary on what Freud might think, rather than what Freud actually said.

Which doesn’t make Yale look any less dumb. Any speculation on the sexual underpinnings of Yale’s policy regarding swords on stage will be left as an exercise for the reader. . . .

JONAH GOLDBERG looks at “emotional vampirism” in the press.

A FORMER MISS AMERICA confronts some thieves:

Ramey, who won the elite beauty crown in 1944, confronted one of the three robbers on her farm in Waynesburg, Ky., about 140 miles south of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

“He was probably wetting his pants,” said Ramey, who balanced on her walking stick as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.

More here.

UPDATE: She’s picked up a new fan!

40 THINGS THAT ONLY HAPPEN IN THE MOVIES: Well, 39, anyway.

JOHN SCALZI EXPLAINS why blogs are egocentric.

Except when they’re phony!

JEFF GOLDSTEIN: “Strange that those who call themselves ‘progressives’ haven’t been able to progress much since 1968, don’t you think?”

OUCH: Rutgers team skips Clinton meeting.

I HAVEN’T BEEN FOLLOWING THE WOLFOWITZ / WORLD BANK STORY very closely, but a reader sends this defense of Wolfowitz by Ruth Wedgwood that I had missed: “The most amazing thing is that all the facts were reviewed for a second time by the World Bank ethics committee last year, and again it found nothing wrong. The chairman of the ethics committee pronounced in a Feb. 28, 2006, letter that ‘the ethics committee decided that the allegations … do not appear to pose ethical issues.’ It is hard to square the record with the entertaining claim that the World Bank’s president somehow concocted a do-nothing job for his girlfriend. It’s a bum rap, and one that women professionals in dual-career families might worry about.”

UPDATE: There’s also this piece from today.

THEY’RE LOOKING FOR A CO-MANAGING EDITOR at Global Voices.

REAL TIME INVESTIGATIONS at the Sunlight Foundation.

KATHY SIERRA ON NPR ON BLOG COMMENTS AND CIVILITY: Makes me glad I don’t have comments. Especially this: “Jacquelyn Schlesier is a full-time moderator for Chowhound, a food discussion Web site. She says keeping things civil is a lot of work. She spends as many as 12 hours a day reading through posts and deleting anything offensive, abusive or off-topic. It’s a food blog. How bad can things get? Really bad, Schlesier says, especially with some topics.”

People just tend to get nasty on the Web; the subject at hand, whatever it happens to be, isn’t so much a provocation as an opportunity.

Also, some wise thoughts on comment moderation by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, including this indisputable truth: “Furthermore, the kind of jerks who post comments that need to be deleted will infallibly cry ‘censorship!’ when it happens. . . . Anonymous nastiness is easy to write, and will always find an appreciative audience. I don’t care. It’s not a manifestation of the free and open discourse of the internet; it’s a thing that destroys that discourse.” Read the whole thing.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON looks at colleges.

ERIC SCHEIE ON Why facts should matter (even on the Internet).

“THIS GUY WAS PRESIDENT BEFORE I WAS:” And with many more slips like that, some other people will be, too . . . .

Obama’s smarter than this. I think he’s tired. Tired politicians make mistakes. He should take a rest — the primaries are most of a year away.

“I FOUND SADDAM’S WMD BUNKERS:” Er, wouldn’t this be news if it were true?

Maybe not, these days. . . .

MICKEY KAUS:

Alert emailer S.F. asks if NBC, when it broadcast baseball games, refused to show video of fans running onto the field. Most broadcasters don’t, on the grounds that it would only encourage more attention-seeking disruptions. … If that’s NBC’s practice, why is it OK in order to prevent the disruption of a baseball game but not to prevent mass murder? Just asking.

A cynic would say that when fans run onto the baseball field NBC doesn’t make money. But when copycat mass shootings occur, NBC makes money. . . .

A LOOK AT WHO’S TAKING AID AND COMFORT from Harry Reid’s statements.

THE LYRID METEOR SHOWER will strike this weekend. Should be pretty, for those in the right place at the right time.

A CALL FOR “common-sense restrictions” on freedom of assembly. From an unimpeachable source!

SHOTS FIRED AT JOHNSON SPACE CENTER: Reports seem pretty confused at the moment — I’m watching CNN. Wolf Blitzer says weapons aren’t allowed on the property, but it sounds like that didn’t work. . . .

But early reports are usually unreliable, so stay tuned.

UPDATE: A report that it’s a contract employee, plus much more, here. More reports, and live video streaming, at KHOU TV.

MORE: Gunman and one hostage dead; another hostage freed. Reports that gunman was shouting “Put me on TV, NBC!” are likely not true . . . .

THOUGHTS ON CHINA, and the academics who study China.

“THE BEST CHILDREN’S NOVEL about World War II.“

FRED THOMPSON: “Some people think that power should exist only at the top, and everybody else should rely on ‘the authorities’ for protection. . . . Whenever I’ve seen one of those ‘Gun-free Zone’ signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I’ve always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don’t mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.”

A ROUNDUP OF Earth Day technical tips.

SUING YAHOO! FOR RATTING OUT a Chinese dissident.

HAS OBAMA-MANIA PEAKED? “What really struck me about that audio clip though was what a gasbag Obama is. I hear a tired-sounding man, who rambles on and on. I know he’s speaking before a group. I hear them respond now and then, when he mentions that Iraq is a war that should never have been waged and when he says teachers deserve higher pay. But if I didn’t know who he was and that there was a crowd there, I would picture an old man slumped in an armchair, expatiating for the benefit of anyone unlucky enough to be within earshot. It’s formless stream of consciousness. Oh, there is that theme of hope. The stream swirls back there at predictable intervals.”

CANDIDATE CARICATURES by Roman Genn.

JAMES Q. WILSON: “Gun control isn’t the answer.” Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Wilson observes:

AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply.

Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.

The main lesson that should emerge from the Virginia Tech killings is that we need to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.

It is a problem for Europeans as well as Americans, one for which there are no easy solutions — such as passing more gun control laws.

More on that here.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

And read this: “We decided a half a century ago that our more eccentric and, indeed, crazy fellow citizens would not be easily locked in asylums. It was a humane decision, but with the inevitable consequence that some who really need quarantine are allowed to roam the streets.”

DON SURBER on NBC’s airing of the Cho video: “NBC should not have shown it. This video was a peep show, not news. There was nothing to be gained in showing it. . . .As a member of the mainstream media, please, accept my apology for the airing of this video. I’m sorry.”

IN THE MAIL: The latest Harry Turtledove novel, Beyond the Gap, part of an entirely new alternate-history series.

A HERO IS LAID TO REST: A report from Liviu Librescu’s funeral.

MCCAIN TO CRITICS: “Get a life.”

Is it just me, or has he started to enjoy himself on the trail again?

WHO IS SICK? A user-generated epidemiology map. Cool.

RADLEY BALKO looks at the National Association of Broadcasters’ hatred of satellite radio.

JOHN SCALZI’S NEW NOVEL, The Last Colony — sequel to Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades — is now officially out. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy, and I recommend it highly.

MICKEY KAUS: “The Imus affair does look kind of small in retrospect, doesn’t it?”

ADVERTISING FOR SOLAR ENERGY:

Next month Sharp plans to send a trailer with a rooftop solar panel to sites in California, for demonstrations of how the system can run a television set and other appliances (needless to say, the trailer will be towed by a hybrid vehicle). And in August, when the current campaign runs its course, Sharp expects to send posters and lesson plans to elementary-school teachers to help them teach about solar energy.

“It was children who taught parents about recycling, and children will teach parents about solar energy,” said Ronald Kenedi, vice president of Sharp’s solar energy solutions group.

Hmm. I thought ads aimed at kids, designed to influence parents, were supposed to be bad.

LETTERS TO Harry Reid.

A ROUNDUP ON YESTERDAY’S GONZALES TESTIMONY: It was mostly buried by the other news, but having heard a bit of it on the radio I have to say I was unimpressed.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “That’s because Gonzales is unimpressive.” Yes, he is — not only were his responses unimpressive, but his manner. He came across as a mediocrity entirely out of his depth.

And there’s this: “Yes, the AG has the right to fire these people for pretty much any reason, but he, at least, should know why he’s firing them.” The only winner in this deal is John Ashcroft, who’s looking better in retrospect — even to Democrats, I suspect.

MASS SHOOTINGS: “ONLY IN AMERICA” — It only seems that way if you’re uninformed.

Plus, questionable numbers in the gun-control debate.

HOWARD KURTZ: “In all the years I’ve been chronicling the media, I have rarely seen the tidal wave of resentment that has washed over television organizations that showed the now-infamous Cho video. In the minds of many Americans, this was a horribly offensive act, and no amount of explanation about the obligations of journalism is going to change that view.”

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “The media used up its reserve of good will when it refused to show all of the 9/11 images and when it went to court to show the most offensive Katrina images. The rest of the nation has figured out that all of their claims of journalistic integrity and ehtics are simply nonsense. Journalism is about protecting media organization profits and advancing a political point of view, period.”

A LOOK AT MODERN CANCER RESEARCH: Faster, please.

PATRICK LASSWELL, with the Peshmerga in Kirkuk.

CHO OVERLOAD: “Whenever anything really bad happens, you can be sure that ‘the media’ will instantly become more emetic than ever, bombarding you round-the-clock with pseudo stories that endlessly repeat the some two-and-one-half facts and skein of groundless conjecture they first broadcast 36 hours ago. The banner ‘New Developments’ regularly flits across the bottom of the television screen, but there are almost never any new developments, only those nauseating talking heads emanating concern and sincerity while milking the story of every last drop of sentimental indulgence.”

This produces higher ratings in the short run, but I think it costs them over the long run.

ORWELL’S TELESCREENS come to Britain.

CANADA JOINS ANTI-KYOTO BLOC:

This week’s announcement by the Canadian government — that it may join a U.S.-led coalition focused on voluntary emissions cuts — could be part of a global shift away from Kyoto’s binding targets.

In a somewhat surprising development, Canada, a long-time supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, announced that it may want to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a six-nation coalition focusing on voluntary emission-reduction steps and technology transfers. Many environmentalists oppose AP6 out of a fear that it may undermine political support for the legally binding Kyoto treaty.

Expect more of this kind of thing. It was a fine agreement, until it came time to live up to it!

BAD NEWS FROM NIGERIA:

The government is using the police and army to assist political gangs that are attacking opposition campaigning efforts. Last weekends local elections were often invalid because of the intervention of the more powerful government backed gangs. This weekends presidential elections appear to be headed in the same direction. If that is the case, the country will have un-elected government at the state and national level. That, plus the usual corruption, could be enough to trigger the long feared civil war.

I hope not, but that’s becoming not-quite-unthinkable.

WHEN MOVIE STARS ATTACK — their own children.

A LOOK AT Iran in Bosnia.

MARCHING AGAINST ISLAMIC EXTREMISM in Pakistan.

And in Iran.

JOE TRIPPI signs on with John Edwards. I think this is Edwards’ best hire so far.

NEW GOOGLE CONTENT-REMOVAL TOOLS.

A DRAFT ARTICLE ON PREVENTING VIOLENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION that may prove of interest. The Insta-Wife is one of the coauthors.

A POLL ON GUNS IN PUBLIC PLACES.

PLAYING “NAME THAT PARTY” at the Associated Press.

RUSSIA PUTS $1BILLION IN OIL REVENUES into nanotechnology research.

MICKEY KAUS: “NBC shouldn’t have shown that video. It seems less like an ‘ethical challenge’ than a no-brainer. Why encourage other potential Cho’s to try for a similar publicity bonanza? This isn’t a Unabomber like case where publicizing a killer’s electronic media kit might help identify him. We already know who did it. . . . NBC’s responsibility seems especially heavy since, as the sole recipient of Cho’s posthumous publicity kit, they had the power to keep it bottled up and deny him the reward he sought, no? That’s not usually the case–i.e., when a killer is still at large or communicates through multiple media outlets.”

FACT-CHECKING THE BRADY CAMPAIGN, at Reason. “In any case, note that the ‘children’ killed by firearms include older teenagers, among them 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds, a.k.a. ‘adults.’ Judging from the breakdown in 1998 (I can’t find comparable data for 1997), more than 80 percent of gun deaths for the under-20 group involve teenagers 15 or older. About 58 percent of the gun deaths that year were homicides, and these included drug dealers shot by other drug dealers, violent criminals shot by police, and other noninnocent nonchildren. About 33 percent of the gun deaths were suicides; 7 percent were accidents.”

Follow the link for more (Brady) errors and misrepresentations.

AUSTIN BAY SLAMS HARRY REID FOR WAFFLING DEFEATISM: “It would be refreshing if Reid even had the courage of his defeatist convictions. Thing is, his ‘convictions’ aren’t convictions. They are the political postures, and this statement is an example of his political game. He tosses a line to the Dems’ defeatist nuts then edges toward reality with an oily pirouette.”

Ouch.

UPDATE: More here: “Those Democrats sure know how to support the troops!”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh.

AN OCTOPUS’S GARDEN at Arms and the Law. (POST UPDATED: See the update about the VPC, which doesn’t appear to have been behind this story after all, as initially reported.)

CAN AMERICA TRUST THE BBC?

EUGENE VOLOKH: “What exactly is the reason for not allowing professors to carry guns?”

UPDATE: Heh.