UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Matt Moore thinks that efforts to raise consciousness about steroid use may backfire:

The numbers being thrown around are incredible. 50% or even 85% of baseball players are (possibly) spiking it up. If I’m a highschool player, do I watch all these reports and think, “Man, all my heroes are cheating, precancerous scumbags”, or do I think, “Well, if that’s what it takes…”

Yeah. Kind of like when you see these media stories on how much sex teenagers are having. How many say “oh, my, I’m part of a destructive social trend,” versus how many say, “Hey, how come I’m not getting any of that?”

SONIA ARRISON USES THE GRAY DAVIS CASE AS A SPRINGBOARD for an interesting discussion of how technology can promote transparency and hence reduce corruption. I think she’s right — and the success of the OpenSecrets.org website shows how that can work.

But, of course, for it to really do the job there have to be people who care about corruption, and there have to be politicians who sufficiently less corrupt than others to allow people to vote (or shame) their way into more honest government.

HIGH COLLEGE TUITION is all about socialism, writes Peter Scheer in Slate. Which means that it’s inherently unstable once somebody figures out what’s going on. In fact, technology may be undermining their ability to do so already.

RAND SIMBERG writes about ice on Mars, China owning the Moon, and many other interesting topics.

DAVE KOPEL POINTS OUT that the Dervishes are on our side. As they should be.

STEALTH LEGISLATION? Some people are saying that the Brownback anti-cloning bill would also ban abortion from the moment of conception. Of course, such a bill would still be unconstitutional under Roe and Casey — but if you wanted to try putting the issue in front of the Supreme Court without taking political heat for it, this might be a good vehicle. George Annas notes the former, but not the latter, aspect in a statement quoted in the article (though of course he might actually have made both statements to the reporter).

This is an interesting aspect. While it’s true that there are some pro-life people who are opposing the Brownback bill, it’s also true that its supporters are largely made up of people who would like to see Roe overturned.

WEB TRAFFIC SMACKDOWN: Well, not exactly. John Garthwaite, over at the C-LOG (that’s “see-log” as in conservative-log, not “clog” as in plumbing) has criticized TAP’s numbers, and now TAPPED is firing back.

Well, this kind of thing is why I put an open counter on my site. It seems to undercount somewhat compared to my server stats logs (I don’t understand how this can be, but several people told me Extreme Tracker undercounts) but the difference isn’t huge — maybe 10% at most, and given the inherent unreliability of web stats that’s within the noise floor. I did it basically because I was unhappy with John Scalzi’s remark that some bloggers might be padding their numbers. So why not do the same?

I understand why actual commercial sites that sell advertising and stuff might be especially sensitive about such claims of number-padding (and read TAPPED’s response to see that they are), but I don’t understand why anyone would object to an open counter. Advertisers know your traffic — they can look at their own server logs. (Yeah, I know ad-blockers affect that some, but in a well-understood way). So who would you be hiding it from?

Print media are shy about this stuff because they do all sorts of things to inflate their paid circulation figures (like bundling “free” newspapers with hotel stays in a way that lets them be counted as paid) but on the Web advertisers are harder to fool. I recommend transparency.

BTW, Garthwaite seems to have broken his Blogger template. I had the same problem, and could only fix it by restoring my template from a backup file. Hope he’s got one. Another minor but annoying Blogger bug.

Hey John: Hire Stacy Tabb to move you over to Movable Type.

UPDATE: Seems to have fixed the Blogger problem.

TIM BLAIR TAKES ON AN IDENTITY HACKER: Let others beware.

MARTIN DEVON has a response to my FoxNews column on teen sex. He’s right about the drinking, and the rest.

UPDATE: Katie Allison Granju has some thoughts of her own. So does A.C. Douglas, and so does TAPPED.

The wonderfully ‘nymed Group Captain Lionel Mandrake shares some experiences, too, as does one of his commenters.

EUGENE VOLOKH has some interesting observations on open-mindedness in the Blogosphere.

KEVIN MCGEHEE says Tom Clancy may be right again. I kind of hope so.

LILEKS NAILS IT, in a discussion of the antiwarbloggers:

To my surprise, the site had an actual graphic. You might recognize the photo – Robert Capa’s famous “Death of a Loyalist Soldier.” It shows a soldier standing on a hill with his arms spread wide; either he’s just been shot or he is preparing to launch into the refrain from “Somewhere.” The site’s authors have written “Avoid This” below.

In other words: if you disagree with those who believe Bush masterminded 9-11, you are a fascist stooge; if you support fighting actual fascists, you are a blood-crazed warmonger. Anyway, lesson noted: avoid getting shot battling fascists. Stand aside and let them in.

Not hardly.

POLICE IN ONE PART OF LONDON have been basically ignoring marijuana and putting extra officers to work on street crime. The result: less street crime. Imagine.

VERY COOL DJ REID SPEED has (of course) a weblog. And in grand blogger tradition, she explains what’s wrong with airline security. (Thanks to Pieter K for the link).

ANOTHER COURT has found secret detentions unlawful, at least when used in sweeping fashion. I haven’t read the opinion, but this seems less broad than the headline might suggest.

D.C.’S HANDGUN BAN ordinance is being challenged by public defenders representing two men charged with violating it. They say that it violates the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.

It seems to me that this challenge is likely to succeed — if, indeed, the Justice Department will even defend against it. It is the Justice Department’s position that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms, subject to reasonable regulations. D.C.’s outright ban goes far beyond “reasonable regulation.” Challenges to state gun control laws under the Second Amendment are complicated by the question of “incorporation,” since not all of the Bill of Rights is applicable to the states, and the Supreme Court has never addressed the question of whether the Second Amendment is incorporated. (In fact, it hasn’t taken a relevant Second Amendment case since it developed the doctrine of incorporation).

But the District of Columbia isn’t a state; it’s the federal government. So questions of incorporation don’t matter in this context. And the ban — which amounts to complete gun prohibition — goes far beyond reasonable regulation. (The fact that gun crime in the District skyrocketed after the ban makes it hard to defend on the facts, too.) The Justice Department should simply admit that the D.C. ordinance violates the Second Amendment; if it doesn’t do that, it’s going to have a very hard time explaining how it’s consistent with the views that Ashcroft has expressed.

About the only weakness is that — based on the Post story — the men are charged only with carrying a pistol without a license, rather than with possession of a pistol without a license. The Second Amendment (in my view, and that of most, but not all, scholars) doesn’t necessarily protect a right to wear a gun, only the right to own one. That’s about the only “out” I can see here. Otherwise it presents the question rather squarely. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh, as he is wont to do, has come up with a new angle on this case.

ANDREA HARRIS HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON TEEN SEX and the virtues of unsociability.

KEN LAYNE HAS SOME THOUGHTS on the FBI’s organizational problem. But where’s my copy of his book?

SFSU UPDATE: Meryl Yourish, who is SFSU central, has the latest news and lots of links on her page. Do some scrolling, too. And don’t miss this update from Joe Katzman on the Blog Burst.

OLIVER WILLIS HAS A NEW MAGAZINE. Check it out: It’s a very interesting idea.

YOU DON’T TUG ON SUPERMAN’S CAPE: Jonah Goldberg reflects on what would happen if the Islamowackos who want an all-out holy war with America got their wishes:

It would be one thing if this relatively small band of fanatics were murdering people in pursuit of something achievable. You know, if their goal were simply to get McDonald’s out of Cairo or our airbases out of the Gulf. But, if you take them at their word, their ultimate goal is to bring about the total destruction of democracy, America, and the Christian and Jewish faiths. As a practical matter, to believe that this can be achieved through an all-out battle between our team and theirs is like believing war will make squares into circles and ducks will crap plutonium.

This doesn’t mean these daft murderers aren’t dangerous. They are. But they are tactically dangerous. Strategically, they’re cuckoo for Coca Puffs. They can blow up things and kill people. But their ultimate goal, victorious jihad against the “infidels,” is no more likely to happen than the Hale-Boppers were likely to get picked up by an intergalactic shuttle bus. So think about this the next time you hear some knee-jerk pundit exclaim that if we do X or Y we will give Osama bin Laden or the Islamo-fascists “exactly what they want.” What they want isn’t going to happen. Period. If they even get close to what they wish for, they will be very, very sorry.

Goldberg can make this kind of thing sound funny — and, looked at the right way, it sort of is. But in fact, I don’t want to see the mass slaughter of Muslims that would be the only result of something close to an all-out war between Islam and America. That’s why I don’t believe in encouraging the wishful-thinkers and the outright deluded by acting weak. It can only lead to worse things down the line.

STILL MORE TEEN SEX: Eric S. Raymond says that adults are jealous and resentful of teens, and want to control teen sex accordingly.

TEEN SEX UPDATE: My FoxNews column is up. It offers a more refined view of my earlier posts on teen sex.

Well, the hardware firewall (yeah, I got one) isn’t stopping everything anymore, and one computer can see the network, anyway. So that’s something!

POSTING IS A BIT SCARCE TODAY because of the various technical issues here, and at home. My air conditioning is out, and I’m doing some computer reconfiguring at home. Thanks for all the advice. I scrapped the WAP-11 in favor of a more secure approach. Of course, then I turned out to have the wrong cable and, well, you get the idea.

In the meantime, here’s a cool project to index NYC bloggers by subway stop.