SCHEDULING ALERT: I’m heading to the law school for a faculty meeting. Then I’m leaving town for a couple of days as I travel to Memphis and Nashville to talk about the Tennessee Constitution, a document that I find fascinating. (Try following the link and reading Article I secs 1&2 and see if you don’t agree. The Tennessee Supreme Court has repeatedly, and recently, interpreted them as supporting a right of revolution against a tyrannical government, and also held that they support a narrow reading of governmental power — if the Constitution gives you a right to revolt against arbitrary, excessive government power, after all, it can hardly be read as granting the government the legitimate power to act in arbitrary and excessive ways. But I digress). I’m taking the laptop with me, so there will probably, God and MSN willing, be some intermittent blogging. But it won’t be at the usual rate. I’ll try to check in again before I hit the road, but here’s a heads-up. Follow the many excellent links to your left.

Oh, and you can always read my new TechCentralStation column, which in a shattering new development is not about Mars.

It coins a new term (at least, Google says it’s new): “Version fatigue,” to describe how tired I am of learning how to do the same damn thing in a different way after a software upgrade, new VCR purchase, etc.

UPDATE: Eric S. Raymond has a response to my column — and I’ll bet that those of you who know him can guess what it is.

SOME QUESTIONS ANSWER THEMSELVES. Martin Devon just asked one of those. And how.

WELL, I was feeling pretty good about my traffic levels. And I still do. But this shows who’s still number one.

THIS ARTICLE ON ELECTRONIC MUSIC is pretty good, though I don’t buy the analogy with soccer.

A NEW CURE FOR DEPRESSION: Well, duh.

YALE LAW PROFESSOR AKHIL AMAR has an interesting Q&A piece in The New Republic concerning the detention of “dirtybomber” Padilla / Al Muhajir. I’m not sure that I buy Akhil’s analogy between the draft and jury service as forms of “detention without trial” and the kind of detention that Al Muhajir faces. Both the draft and jury service have built-in safeguards against the government singling out people it dislikes in a way that the Al Muhajir confinement doesn’t.

And that’s the big risk. Fairness to individuals is important — but it’s no more important here than it is elsewhere in the criminal justice system. On the other hand, the danger that special government powers will be abused is far greater here, and thus we need some additional reassurances in this context. I’m not concerned with Al Muhajir, but I worry that such powers tend to expand over time, and I don’t like where I see things heading if that happens.

A PRETTY GOOD OP-ED on human exploration of Mars in the Los Angeles Times. It’s interesting to me to see that mainstream media — who were looking down their noses at space exploration a few years ago — seem to be coming back around to viewing it in a positive light. That’s not only a good thing in itself; it’s also, I think, a healthy sign for the culture.

DEN BESTE has a thoughtful analysis of Israel’s likely strategy in response to Palestinian terror-bombers. I think that the strategy he outlines will work, if the Israelis are willing to stick it out in the face of international criticism. And why shouldn’t they be? They get criticized no matter what they do anyway.

STEPHEN GREEN is following the trend toward transparency with an open third-party counter on his site. Now if some of the Big Media folks would just do the same, we’d have a triumph of openness, and the flamewars about traffic could come to an end.

MICKEY KAUS says that Woodward and Bernstein were proto-bloggers when they were covering Watergate.

THE WASHINGTON POST is happily editorializing on free speech in the wake of the Supreme Court’s new Jehovah’s Witnesses decision. And it’s a good decision.

But while it’s nice that Jehovah’s Witnesses can knock on doors and peddle The Watchtower, free speech isn’t doing as well elsewhere. Paul Trummel spent several months in jail, after all, because Washington State judge James Doerty thinks the First Amendment only applies to “paid journalists.” And the sleazy Big Entertainment forces are doing their best to shut down free speech on the Internet in the name of protecting intellectual property. So let’s not get too excited about a decision that protects free speech in a context that, frankly, doesn’t really matter (except to Jehovah’s Witnesses); instead, let’s keep the pressure on regarding free speech that does matter.

HERE’S A FIRSTHAND REPORT from the Colorado fire scene, by reader Pete Farrell, forwarded via the Blackberry of reader Carl Frank:

Hello to all our friends and family on this mail-out,

The largest wildfire in Colorado history (possibly in US history as well) is approaching the western edge of our community. 2 miles to the west, the town of Monument is on voluntary evacuation status and the middle school at the bottom of our road is now a designated evacuation shelter. People in the town proper (particularly those with children or physical limitations) are being “encouraged” on local TV stations to voluntarily evacuate the area.

We are outside the stand-by evac box by about a mile and three quarters but have our cars packed to leave if sirens sound.

Outside our window, the plume dominates the sky. Local authorities say the fire “died down” since this afternoon and they “don’t expect” to have to put us on mandatory evac. Expectations, however, can change.

The “tri-lakes” area west of here is all under the “red flag” (meaning get out now if you prefer). The red flag zone runs from the county line three quarters of a mile from our house down to the fringe of the US Air Force Academy about ten miles from here. Yes, the mighty USAFA could conceivably get scorched.

The smoke layer engulfing Denver this morning was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen. The smell permeated the entire metro area and the mountains were completely invisible — on a sunny morning. The layer settled in below 6,000 feet where it reduced visibility to about a half mile. For almost two weeks now we have witnessed gargantuan smoke plumes like something out of Independence Day.

Last week, it looked like the worst was over. Then it broke a fire line west of Colorado Springs Monday. Today, the fire added another 10,000 acres to its running total, which now stands at 113,000 acres. Not everyone around here believes it can jump the interstate. I think it can. Speculation varies as to what it might do in open country; some think it will lose intensity for lack of timber, but it will be countered by increased speed as it consumes wild grass and pasturelands.

The woman who started the fire has confessed after first lying about it. In something worthy of an Italian opera, it turns out she was enraged by a letter from her estranged husband and torched it in her back yard. To add sheer black humor to injury, it turns out she’s a Forest Service employee. Her job that day was enforcing fire restrictions. She was in federal court today facing charges. She probably won’t be released from jail for her own safety and for being a flight risk. (She’d probably be gunned down in the streets before she could get very far.)

Appeals on local radio are going out for all kinds of material assistance — ziplock bags, ladders, gloves, soda pop, food, clothing, cash and even washers and dryers. This comes from AM 740, a Pueblo radio station, yesterday afternoon. The assistance is not only for families, it is also for fire fighters, some 1500 of whom are on duty around the clock.

While reactions in our neighborhood vary, not everyone is just sitting around waiting. Many are getting ready, though it’s not like Independence Day yet. If the worst happens, this may be the last email from us for a while. But so far, we’re hopeful.

We’ll keep you apprised as events warrant. Oh, and your prayers would be appreciated, too.

Pete & family (upstairs packing)

Good luck, folks. Hope you get some rain. Diana Hsieh is providing steady updates on this, too.

ENERGY-POLICY GODDESS LYNNE KIESLING has a long and informative post on the GAO report on FERC oversight. Yeah, I know, that sentence reads like a policy-wonk parody (well, except perhaps for the “goddess” part), but this stuff is pretty important (it’s gotten a lot of coverage, which she links to), and she’s smart. Excerpt:

This report is not an argument against competition and market processes in electricity, as many market foes and some of the commentaries I have read today would have you believe. Instead it is an argument for FERC to do the strategic planning and implement performance measures to create a set of regulatory institutions that rely on rules that encourage transparency, and focus on deterring the great majority of bad behavior.

The GAO report lacks something that I think is extremely important. It fails to point out that FERC was not to blame for the over-engineered, overtly politicized, dysfunctional rules that the state of California forced into laws governing its “market.” FERC has admitted that in hindsight it would have changed some decisions, but California’s politicians have not been so introspective in public.

Lately, many of California’s politicians have been busy trying to avoid being sent to jail — a particularly pressing concern since California Attorney General Bill Lockyer regards prison rape as a useful punitive measure — but perhaps they, or their unindicted successors, will find time for such introspection in the future.

THIS PIECE ON BLOGS has (appropriately enough) lots of links to other articles on blogs.

NPR HAS JOINED THE anti-deep-linking Mafia. Jeez, how pathetic. Follow the link for Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s comments, and an email address where you can express your concerns.

MORE ON THE CARIBOU COFFEE STORY, which James Lileks wrote about last week.

I DON’T USUALLY RELY ON DEBKA, but an item today is kind of interesting, and has some plausibility. It says that U.S. security forces are playing cat-and-mouse with Al Qaeda around shipping containers and facilities in many ports within and without the United States — and suggests that chemical or biological weapons smuggling may be involved.

Container, oil and bulk ports are especially vulnerable. Some of the stowaways arrive complete with arms or explosives, the nature of which – conventional, radioactive, chemical or biological – the US authorities are at great pains to keep dark. However, shipping sources told us witnesses had seen suspect containers appearing to be quarantined after their al Qaeda infiltrators were killed, suggesting the suspected presence of toxic substances.

The threat applies equally to the international container traffic that carries much of the world’s lifeblood. Experts have opined that a “dirty bomb” exploding in a container at sea would stop the world’s container traffic cold until a credible security system for sea-going containers was in place.

How much of this story is true I can’t say, and some parts of it seem questionable — Debka is an anonymous news source, and I don’t like those, and they specialize in reporting on things that they say are being kept quiet, making them difficult to check. But it’s certainly true that the current flag-of-convenience system is likely to collapse under the threat of terrorism.

CHARLES JOHNSON is creeped out by Yasser Arafat’s apparent need to have baby wipes nearby at all times. Yeah, I’ve noticed that in other photos — there were even some on the nightstand in the bombed-bedroom photo a few weeks back.

My guess: He’s afraid somebody’s going to contaminate him with something.

Or maybe he’s got a bad case of piles, though that (hopefully) wouldn’t explain their presence at the conference table.

WHODUNIT? Blogger Michael Kielsky has a long and technical post on ballistics, relating to a story by a Palestinian teenager who says he was shot by an Israeli woman sniper. Problem is, the bullet (of which he has a photo) is a .22 Long Rifle, a puny round that is not generally used by military snipers. He says this casts doubt on the story.

And it does. However, I recall reading somewhere — and I’ve looked, but can’t find it now — that Israel has actually used snipers with .22 rifles in riot situations. The round is incapacitating but, properly placed, almost never deadly, and it’s not very noticeable (especially if the gun it’s shot from is noise-suppressed). I recall reading that they’ve used them to incapacitate leaders in riots, etc., when they don’t want to kill people but when rubber bullets aren’t suitable — since they’re much less accurate.

Anybody know if I’m remembering this correctly?

UPDATE: Boy, that didn’t take long. Somebody emailed me this link to a post by Armed Liberal, who remembers hearing the same thing.

I HAVEN’T WRITTEN ANYTHING ABOUT THE LATEST ATROCITY FROM HAMAS, OR HEZBOLLAH, OR WHOEVER IS BEHIND IT THIS TIME. But someone else has.

WHY SYRIA IS SO EAGER TO PLEASE: I wondered about that earlier today. An alert reader suggests that this may be the answer:

TEL AVIV — The United States blocked a major military offensive by Israel against Syria last month, but shares Israeli concerns that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is openly arming Hizbullah and Palestinian militants.

Israeli officials said the attack was to have taken place last month in response to a spate of Hizbullah strikes along the Lebanese border with the Jewish state. The officials said Israel’s military had mobilized its reserves for what they termed was to have been a heavy blow on Syrian military positions in Lebanon and Syria, Middle East Newsline reported. . . .

Officials said the turning point for Syria came during a weekend visit by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to Damascus in April. They said Powell warned Assad that Israel was preparing a massive attack on Syria and that Washington would not restrain the Jewish state.

Good cop / bad cop, apparently.

GARY REBACK (another Knoxvillian with an interest in IP — I actually knew him very slightly when I was a kid) has a good article in Forbes on why too many patents are as bad as too few.

SOMEBODY EMAILED ME TO NOTE THAT JUDGE JIM DOERTY — the Washington State judge who locked up Paul Trummel for posting names and addresses of public officials on his website (and who ruled that the First Amendment didn’t apply because Trummel isn’t a “paid journalist”), now has the same information on his own (Judge Doerty’s) website. Just go quietly, Judge, and don’t make a fuss.

ANOTHER DEVASTATING PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSAULT on Islamist terror is being prepared. Tremble, followers of bin Laden. Tremble.

GRAY DAVIS UPDATE: “We got taken to the cleaners.” That’s the conclusion of a legislative investigation into the Oracle contracts, which found a “culture of corruption” in California state government.