DIET-BLOGGING, CONT’D: Jeez, if you want email, forget politics. Write about dieting, and especially the Atkins diet.

Reader Joe Zengerle sends a link to this story in The New Republic, and adds: “Aerobics and weights are good — but don’t forget the essential third leg of stretching, or your stool will fall down (is there a better metaphor?).” Uh, I hope there is. But he’s right about the importance of stretching. I neglected it for a while this summer, and I’m still trying to get all the limberness back.

Reader Mark Martino sent a link to the site of bodybuilding lawyer Clarence Bass. Uh, I don’t look like that. But I have more hair.

Reader Mark Brittingham, who has a Ph.D. in (I think) exercise physiology, writes:

I run a software company that provides health and fitness assessment software to clubs, universities, wellness centers and hospitals around the world. . . .

Regarding BMI – you are quite correct. Bodyfat assessment is far superior to BMI in assessing body composition for individuals. BMI is widely used in population studies since the great majority of people simply aren’t as “hypertrophic” (extra-muscular) as you are: they simply have too much bodyfat. So BMI provides an easily obtained proxy for “real” body composition measures like %bodyfat.

“Extra-muscular” — I like the sound of that!

On the Atkins diet, Oliver Willis writes:

I was skeptical of the Atkins diet. No longer.

Link

Link

But I think the last word on the subject comes from Doonesbury.

Some things never change.

COULD THE JOHN EDWARDS JUGGERNAUT have just become unstoppable? No wonder Tom Daschle has bowed out. He can see the handwriting on the wall, now that Edwards has locked up the most important base of support in the Democratic Party.

OKAY, I’M NO MICHAEL BARONE, but a 43% re-elect number doesn’t seem especially strong. Am I wrong here?

UPDATE: Michael Barone emails: “you’re no Michael Barone.” Well, I said that. . . . He adds:

On the 43% reelect number:

As I recall, when Peter Hart (my boss 1974-81) started using the reelect question, we all assumed that an incumbent with an under 50% reelect was in some trouble. That seemed to be right then.

But in the last few cycles I’ve noticed that almost no one gets a 50% reelect–and these have been strong incumbent cycles, starting in 1996. Lots of incumbents who get 43% reelect go on to win quite nicely.

What I think is going on here is that only strong partisans say either “reelect” or “elect someone else.” Thus Bush scores pretty well on this Ipsos-Reid poll, because 43% reelect is a lot better than 29% elect someone else.

I think Bush–unless his numbers go sharply down, which of course could happen–is headed for reelection with something like 54%-56% of the vote. I think the strong cultural divisions in the country mean that over 40% are going to find themselves on one side or the other, no matter how well they think the incumbent has performed. So numbers like Johnson’s 61% in 1964, Nixon’s 61% in 1972 and Reagan’s 59% in 1984 (notice: it’s just a little bit smaller) are just not in the cards for 2004. I think the 43%-29% in Ipsos-Reid translates to something like 55% for Bush, 40% for the Democrat and 4% for Nader– a number that could go up or down depending on how lefty the Democrat is.

That would be a nice electoral college victory for Bush, but he still wouldn’t carry California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Vermont and probably Illinois–151 electoral votes. So his electoral vote count would not be much better than Clinton’s in 1996, when the popular vote was 49%-41%, and most of the Perot voters were anti-Clinton.

Thanks. I feel like Woody Allen when he pulled in Marshall McLuhan from off-camera to settle an argument!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Caruso, (who, I should point out, isn’t Michael Barone either) has some thoughts.

COLBY COSH POINTS TO ethnic cleansing in Lebanon. Where was Robert Fisk while this was going on?

UPDATE: Damian Penny posts the not-so-startling answer to this question, just in case you didn’t know already.

THIS POST from earlier today about “prank calls to dictators” has produced a few emails from people outraged that I would call Hugo Chavez a dictator. Oh, the humanity! Hesiod Theogeny emails:

Does this mean we can now call Dubyah a “Dictator?”

Cool!

Thanks for breaking the ice, Glenn!

Sadly, Hesiod is behind the curve as usual. (I emailed back “What do you mean ‘now?'”). After all Spinsanity was chiding assorted lefties like Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and the ubiquitous Michael Moore for doing just that, months ago.

Anyway, we’ve already been over all this — Hesiod must have been playing hooky that day. Here’s an earlier post pointing out that, yes indeedy, you can be elected and still be a dictator. Am I the only one besides Dr. Weevil who studied this stuff?

UPDATE: Tim Cavanaugh doesn’t feel sorry for Chavez.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Randy Paul, sadly, may have the last word on Venezuela: “At the end of the day it doesn’t seem like there will be any winners here.”

CHRIS MOONEY is unimpressed with Bill Frist’s medical positions.

I’M GOING TO FOLLOW UP THE DIET-AND-EXERCISE POST later tonight. But I can assure you that this proposal by Rand Simberg isn’t likely to become reality.

MICHAEL MOORE IS STILL A JERK — and he’s rude to the help, too. I’ve noticed in academia, too, that it’s often the loud lefties who are rudest to the secretaries and copy-room people.

Meanwhile, Rachel Lucas offers a psychological analysis.

UPDATE: Nelson Ascher emails:

According to you:

“I’ve noticed in academia, too, that it’s often the loud lefties who are rudest to the secretaries and copy-room people.”

Well, I’ve noticed something similar in my country too. . . . The trouble with the lefties everywhere is that, just as they believe that anti-semitism is strictly a rightist thing, and thus they may hate the Jews without being suspected of it (after all, they’re just anti-Zionists, right?), in the same way, because being a leftist vaccinates anyone against any kind of social bias, they feel free to despise the poor with a light conscience.

Yes. And many academics seem to feel that since their work is noble, by necessity they must be noble, too, without any need to actually act in a noble fashion. It’s not so.

A READER EMAILS (and I hope he doesn’t have any inside knowledge) that I should link again to this column on what individual citizens can do to prepare for terrorist attacks. Okay. Hope nobody needs it, though.

BELLESILES UPDATE:

NEW YORK – Publication has been halted on a disputed book about the history of guns in the United States.

Questions about Michael Bellesiles’ “Arming America” had already led Columbia University to rescind the prestigious Bancroft Prize for history.

When Columbia made the announcement last month, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said the book would remain in print. But Jane Garrett, Bellesiles’ editor, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the publisher would no longer sell it.

“We are in the process of ending our contractual arrangement with Michael for `Arming America,'” Garrett said. . . .

According to Garrett, the book has sold about 8,000 copies in hardcover and about 16,000 in paperback.

Bellesiles spent 10 years working on “Arming America,” published by Knopf in 2000. The book challenges the idea that the United States has always been a gun-oriented culture and that well-armed militias were essential to the Revolutionary War.

“Arming America” was praised in both The New York Times and The New York Review of Books and won the Bancroft Prize, presented to works of “exceptional merit and distinction in the fields of American history and biography.”

The Bancroft Prize has been revoked, of course. No word on what, if anything, the New York Times and the New York Review of Books plan to do.

Thanks to reader Adam Bonin for the headsup.

UPDATE: Brian Erst emails:

The thing that really stood out to me in your item about Knopf ending publication of “Arming America” were the total sales figures. I’m not sure what the normal market is for “serious” history books, but you’d think one that was as highly touted and controversial as this one would have sold more than 24,000 copies (8K in hardcover, 16K in paper). About the only (totally unfair)comparison I could quickly come up with was David McCullough’s popular history of John Adams, which sold 1.5 million hardcover copies in 2001 alone.

To me, this would indicate that except for the most die-hard gun buffs and history nuts, the vast majority of the people who have any opinion at all on this subject (including myself) are probably only familiar with the discussion surrounding the book, and not the book itself. I suppose this is true of many things, but it really struck me this time. Far more people have read James Lindgren’s Yale Law Journal article (100K+ just via links from your site) than have purchased the original book. Fascinating.

Actually, 24K in sales is pretty good for what’s called an “academic trade” book, where 15,000 copies is considered a strong seller. (People don’t realize how atypical those million-copy books are). Interesting point about the Lindgren piece, though. The count on that one (just checked for the first time in a while) stands at 119,593 — meaning that (given that it’s available elsewhere, too) something over five times as many people have read Lindgren as have bought Arming America.

VLOG TRAFFIC UPDATE: Here’s what Don McArthur reports about the Vlog Noir video of his that I linked last night:

The Instapundit linked to my little digital video on 06 Jan 2003 at 20:20. I just checked my logs, and the file has been requested 3,591 times since then. Go Red Hat and Apache.

I had trouble reaching him, and so did Jeff Jarvis, so I imagine that the numbers would have been even higher if everyone who tried could have gotten through. In an email, Don said that the bottleneck appeared to be his Linksys router. I don’t think they’re made with quite that kind of traffic in mind.

Still, it’s definitely another milestone in vlogging. Historians and sociologists of the blogosphere, take note!

ONLY THE TITLE TO THIS ARTICLE IS ONLINE: But I think that’s all we need to realize that it’s probably dumb. Here’s what’s on the Washington Monthly’s website:

License to Kill

How the GOP helped John Allen Muhammad get a sniper rifle.

by Brent Kendall

How do we know it’s dumb from this tiny amount of information? Let me count the ways. First, the Bushmaster rifle that John Allen Muhammad used isn’t a sniper rifle. It’s what is more commonly called an “assault rifle,” a term of art that means it’s a civilian rifle, like many other civilian rifles, only with military look. At least, that’s what anti-gun people used to call guns like that, during the previous phase of their PR campaign. But, now that there’s a sniper, guns they don’t like have mysteriously morphed into “sniper rifles,” even though — as was exhaustively pointed out during the attacks — no self-respecting sniper would use a gun like this, and Muhammad wasn’t a sniper anyway.

Second, notice the blood libel: “how the GOP helped” John Muhammad get the gun. Riiiight.

I suppose I could be wrong here. The article could be sensitive, nuanced, and technically accurate, rather than simply recycled PR poop from the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign. But I rather doubt it, and certainly the folks at the Washington Monthly have gone out of their way to make it look as if it’s the latter.

UPDATE: Heck, here’s a quote from the Washington Post article linked above. Don’t people at the Washington Monthly read the Post? Don’t they realize that other people do, too?

His choice of weapon reveals something as well. It’s notable that he hasn’t selected a firearm or a cartridge that’s linked to sniping as it’s practiced professionally. The police have described the recovered fragments as being from a “.223 bullet,” a particular vagueness that suggests they know a lot more than they’re letting on or a lot less. In any event, the .223 family of cartridges — it could also include a target round like the .222, a varmint round like the .22-250 or a specialized pistol round like the .221 Fireball — aren’t part of authentic sniper practice or the more informal “sniper culture” that surrounds this most disturbing but necessary of jobs. Most government and police snipers use a .308 Winchester rifle because it is far more lethal (its muzzle-energy, which measures force in pounds by mathematical formula, is around 2,300 pounds, while the .223’s is around 1,200; in most states the .223 — or any .22 centerfire — is illegal for deer hunting because it wounds without killing too frequently.) The .223, as a combat round, has proved disappointing; one merely has to read “Black Hawk Down” or the specialized gun press to sample the discontent with its performance in Mogadishu or Afghanistan.

So why the misleading title? Could it be because it’s consistent with the current agendas of anti-gun advocacy groups? I think that just might be the case.

DID BASEBALL BLOGGERS SCOOP BIG MEDIA on the Hall of Fame? Not exactly, but this is certainly proof that it’s hard to hide anything from the blogosphere.

OOPS! I’m not really sure how much to blame the FBI for this one. Better safe than sorry, I guess, but if this happens too often the real warnings won’t get listened to.

I seem to recall bloggers having doubts about this story from day one. Kathy Kinsley wrote, not exactly presciently but certainly skeptically, “It will probably turn out that these guys wanted to go gamble in Las Vegas or something.” Weren’t some other people skeptical of this one, too?

UPDATE: Suman Palit was skeptical, though not sympathetic. . . .

PARIS CORRESPONDENT CLAIRE BERLINSKI REPORTS on the Israeli boycott effort’s inglorious end:

The debate on the motion to recommend the rupture of the European Union’s scientific cooperation agreements with Israel was scheduled to take place at the University of Paris VII this afternoon, but when I called to find out how the issue had been resolved, I was told that the president of the university, Benoît Eurin, had declared the motion to be incompatible with the University’s charter.

The university issued a press release a few moments ago (Link): The communiqué begins by mentioning that the university will be taking its obligation to remove asbestos from its buildings before January 2005 very, very seriously. As an afterthought, the University’s board of directors observe that judgments on the suspension of scientific exchanges with Israeli universities are outside the institution’s realm of competence, and, in compliance with Article 3 of the January 26,1984 Law on Higher Education, the board was in favor of reinforcing Paris VII’s scientific cooperation agreements with all the universities of the world. The motion was passed with 39 in favor, six against, and an abstention. (Readers will be relieved to know that the asbestos resolution was adopted with 41 votes and four abstentions: a principled stand of which the French Academy can be proud.)

It’s a very French solution to the problem of how best to deal with nitwits, and reminiscent of the Oriana Fallaci case, in which the French courts declined to take a stand on the essential problem — whether the French courts should be in the business of banning books — and instead dismissed the suit against Fallaci on purely procedural grounds. These procedural evasions get the job done, I suppose, but without much glory. Not a bad description of France political life in general, really.

Incidentally, when I called this morning to ask whether I might be permitted to watch the proceedings, I was told, categorically, that the debate was closed to the public. When I asked why, I was told by the secretary to the president that it was because the whole business was “just too disgusting.”

No argument there. And, you know, I’m getting some pretty good reporting out of the Paris Bureau this week. Especially considering what I pay them. . . .

On the other hand, they get the same salary that I do!

NOW THIS is my kind of deal. Kind of like the old days of the Web, isn’t it?

WILL TYSSE NOTICES something in a CNN story on the London ricin arrests that’s missing from the BBC story I link below:

U.S. officials said in August that the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam had tested ricin along with other chemical and biological agents in northern Iraq, territory controlled by Kurds, not Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The group is allegedly linked to al-Qaeda.

United Nations weapons inspectors who left Iraq in 1998 listed ricin among the poisons they believed Saddam produced and later failed to account for, The Associated Press reported.

You don’t say.

UPDATE: Here’s a bit of skepticism on the ricin issue — though as I mentioned below it would be interesting to know what these guys planned to do with it. Did they work in the food or beverage industry? Could they have been planning Bulgarian-style assassinations? I presume that — if it’s not a false alarm — we’ll know eventually.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more on Iraq and ricin:

Intelligence sources told ABCNEWS there is evidence the terrorists tested ricin in water, as a powder and as an aerosol. They used it to kill donkeys, chickens and at one point allegedly exposed a man in an Iraqi market.

They then followed him home and watched him die several days later, sources said.

That sort of delay could have terrorist applications, I would imagine.

NATIONAL ID: Mostly dead here, but alive — and creepy — in Britain.

ADVICE TO YOUNG — AND NOT-SO-YOUNG PROFESSORS: When I was just starting out, an older colleague advised me to save everything — clippings of newspaper articles mentioning me, thank-you notes from undergraduate classes that I guest-lectured to, letters from people who liked my scholarship, etc. Thank goodness I did, because putting together your tenure “file” (usually several fat binders) is a lot easier when you have all that stuff in one place.

And then keep the file! I just needed a copy of something from 1989, and though I’m sure I have other copies somewhere, it was easy to just pull the tenure binder off the shelf and make a copy. No digging necessary.

TERROR POLICE FIND DEADLY POISON:

Anti-terrorist police have arrested seven people after discovering traces of the highly toxic poison, ricin, in London.

In the early hours of 5 January, six men of north African origin and one woman were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 at premises in North and East London by officers from the Metropolitan Police Anti -Terrorist Branch. . . .

Ricin, which comes from the castor bean, is considered a likely biowarfare or bioterrorist agent and is on the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention’s “B” list of agents – considered a moderate threat.

It is relatively easy to manufacture in small amounts but would be considered an unusual agent to use for a mass attack as it must be ingested or injected to take effect.

Remember, though, that the Al Qaeda training manuals encourage people to infiltrate the food and beverage industries. If this is real — and not, say, a false-positive brought on by organic laxatives — it’s something to take quite seriously.

HIGH-TECH IRANIANS: Pejman Yousefzadeh reports.

HOORAY FOR KNOXVILLE musician Sarah Lewis, who just won a prestigious national songwriting award. I don’t know her, but my youngest brother’s band has played with hers, and he says they’re good.

I KNOW YOU OFTEN HAVE TO GIVE A LITTLE TO EASE PEOPLE OUT, but is this a good idea?

CLAYTON CRAMER has an article on History News Network summing up the Bellesiles affair. Excerpt:

Michael A. Bellesiles’s Bancroft Prize for Arming America has been revoked—the first time that a Bancroft Prize has ever been taken away from an author.[1] He has also resigned from Emory University after a blistering criticism by a blue-ribbon panel.[2] Is this embarrassing moment for the history profession a fluke, or indicative of deeper problems?

I fear that it isn’t a fluke. Arming America reveals that there are some very serious problems in the history professorate, and they are not confined to just one history professor’s demonstration of hubris. . . .

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER LOSS FOR BIG MEDIA:

Jon Lech Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, has been acquitted of charges over his development and distribution of DeCSS, a program that can be used to break the digital copy-protection mechanism of DVDs, his attorney said Tuesday.

The court found that Johansen was entitled to access information on a DVD that he had purchased, and was therefore entitled to use his program to break the code, attorney Halvor Manshaus said Tuesday.

Amazingly sensible. Jack Valenti must be furious.

UPDATE: Reader Jacob Corre sends this link to a gallery of descramblers presented in various ways. Including a guy singing.