HUH. Over 53,000 pageviews today. That’s a lot for a Sunday. Must be the protests.

Does this make me a tacit supporter of A.N.S.W.E.R.?

No.

ANTIWAR PROTESTS: A pale shadow of what we saw 12 years ago?

DESTINATION: BRITAIN! Adil Farooq, who lives there, is horrified by Britain’s asylum policies.

NOOO!

UPDATE: NOOooo!

ANOTHER UPDATE: NOOOOOoooooo!

WATCH THOSE HARD DRIVES: They’re harder to clean than you think. The last sentence in this story makes me think that there’s an interesting story behind the story.

(Via Ray Garraud).

PROTEST NUMBERS from around the world. There’s more, including the attendance at the Detroit Auto Show (where people showed up Saturday to look at SUVs in numbers dwarfing the entire American protest turnout) here. And some questions for protesters, and answers, linked here. Also, photos and firsthand reports from the protests here.

UPDATE: Environment-friendly marchers? Well. . . . In a weird kind of way, these pictures make sense.

GENIUS MUST BE RECOGNIZED.

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ? Robert Musil looks at history.

History? Hey, Saddam just had an election!

A PACK, NOT A HERD: I got an email saying that the story about two high school students downing a would-be school shooter (or at least a would-be “Jeremy”) that I posted on Friday night will be reported on CNN tomorrow.

WE’RE ALL JUST PUPPETS, and Cathy Seipp is pulling the strings. Well, yeah. But we don’t mind.

JUST SAW THE MEDIA MATTERS BLOGGING EPISODE, which was quite different from the rough cut that I had seen earlier. I liked the old music better (techno vs. the Bobby McFerrin — I think — in the new cut), but overall I thought it was pretty good. And I still think that Oliver Willis should have a TV show.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has a review up (two key points: Megan McArdle is “hot” — and why not a sequel focusing on Iranian-Jewish webloggers?) And Anil Dash has comments focusing on the, um, “opportunities” he hopes the appearance will produce. . . .

A WHILE BACK, I linked to a story from the Los Angeles Times pronouncing Milwaukee the “most segregated” city in America. Angry Milwaukee reader Rob Burg sends this story and this story reporting a study that pronounces the Census Bureau data leading to that conclusion wrong.

TACITUS is issuing a challenge to anti-war bloggers: Disavow A.N.S.W.E.R. and what it stands for. And he’s got some pretty graphic stuff on what it stands for.

UPDATE: Radley Balko responds. Oliver Willis has a response, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Megan McArdle comments:

I’ve seen a number of people say that it doesn’t matter that A.N.S.W.E.R. organized the anti-war marches — they may be quasi-marxist apologists for Stalin using the anti-war rallies to advance a hard-left statist agenda, but why should we let that stop us from marching in a good cause?

Come again? Would you go to a fundraiser for abandoned puppies organized by the Klan? Please do not bother trying to convince me; of course you wouldn’t. You’d donate money to a shelter, or adopt a puppy, but no matter how good the cause was, you wouldn’t stand up to be counted alongside the guys in sheets.

She’s also designed some nifty t-shirts. Where do I order one? (LATER: Why here, of course!)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots of comments on Tacitus’s original post. My favorite, however, is not precisely on point, but it is funny:

hmmm connecting dots.

Stalin: big mustache, vicious dictator

Saddam : big mustache, vicious dictator

A.N.S.W.E.R.: Stalinist organisation opposes move to unseat Saddam.

question, if Bush had a big mustache would they be ambivalent over their support of Saddam?

Hmm. Big mustache. Cowboy hat. . . . All I can say is, Tom Selleck for President! Let’s bring America back together. . . .

Heh.

Meanwhile, Steven Jens asks, “What is it with evil men and mustaches?”

JUSTIN KATZ WRITES on conservatism and change in the Islamic world.

ELECTROMAGNETIC WEAPONS? DefenseTech has some links and information. And scroll down for more on the unfolding Los Alamos scandals, which are getting less attention than they deserve.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste, who knows about this kind of thing, has comments here, and here.

RON BAILEY WRITES ABOUT NEUROSCIENCE AND ITS CRITICS, particularly Francis Fukuyama.

I’ve written about neuroscience, too, but while I was worried about how other people might use it to control us, Fukuyama is more worried about how we might use it to control ourselves. Which sums up the difference between my position and Fukuyama’s on a number of subjects.

STUFF I MEANT TO LINK THIS WEEK, but never got around to:

This article by Buzz Aldrin and Ron Jones on space tourism;

This magisterial post by Lynxx Pherrett on human trafficking worldwide (it’s not just the UN peacekeepers!);

This column by Rand Simberg on space commercialization;

Reality Carnival — the whole blog, which as you’ll see lives up to its name;

This post on why I was wrong, and this post on why I wasn’t, in my discussion of Eldred (LATER: Larry Lessig says I was “sensible”); and

This post from the Bitch Girls, commenting on the C-SPAN coverage of the protests yesterday.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a bunch — when I find this stuff I leave the screen open meaning to go back to it, and sometimes I just don’t get there.

DOES THIS ELECTION mean I’m not supposed to call Castro a “dictator” any more? I’m with Josh Chafetz on this one:

This just goes to show that, in addition to being brutal and oppressive, the Cuban regime is also incompetent. All 609 ran unopposed? Which genius in Fidel’s inner circle was in charge of this? Couldn’t they at least scare up two Communists to run against each other, so they could at least plausibly claim to be holding free elections? As it is, why even bother with the election? — it’s not fooling much of anyone …

But there are those who will point to it, just as there are those who think that Saddam just won a democratic election.

DAMIAN PENNY is running a contest for the dumbest protest sign seen yesterday. Get your entries in!