KERRY QUOTES SCRIPTURE: LaShawn Barber comments: “Using taxpayers’ money isn’t a work of faith.”

LARRY LESSIG is guest-blogging over at GlennReynolds.com.

BEYOND THE BLOGOSPHERE: William Safire writes: “Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.”

Yes. More:

Responding to a harangue in this space on March 17, the spokesman for Kofi Annan confirmed that the secretary general’s soft-spoken son, Kojo, was on the payroll of Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland until December 1998. In that very month, the U.N. awarded Cotecna the contract to monitor and authenticate the goods shipped to Iraq.

Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines.

The U.N. press agent also revealed that Benon Sevan, Annan’s longtime right-hand man in charge of the flow of billions, was advised by U.N. lawyers that the names of companies receiving the contracts were “privileged commercial information, which could not be made public.” Mr. Sevan had stonewalling help.

Funny, isn’t it, that while people were accusing the United States of starving Iraqi children, it was actually the U.N. that was doing it? “Funny,” that is, in the sense that the crimes and hypocrisies of the international political classes are peculiarly unnoted, not funny in the sense of actually amusing.

Meanwhile Roger Simon has more, and observes:

While the Congress is playing the blame game with their 9/11 hearings… telling us all what we already knew (that no one did much about terrorism before 9/11–duh!)… the real investigation is beginning on 44th Street with potential information that can tell us a hundred times more about the terror game… no make that a thousand times more… than the partisan sniping going on on (where else?) Capitol Hill.

Leave no stone unturned. Or un-flung, at guilty UN officials and their co-conspirators.

IN A STRATEGY I’VE CRITICIZED AS SHORTSIGHTED, THE NANOTECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY, scared of backlash from Michael Crichtonesque scenarios involving molecular robots, has been pooh-poohing the possibility of advanced nanotechnology and stressing lower-tech nanomaterials.

The payoff? Articles like this one from the Washington Post: Nanotechnology Linked to Organ Damage — Study. The study isn’t about genuine molecular nanotechnology, but about nanomaterials of the sort that industry boosters would prefer the press to focus on. Oops.

In truth, these fears are rather overstated — as I noted in my report from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board meeting a few months back, this seems to be more of a workplace-safety issue than an environmental issue and toxicologists seem to feel they have a pretty good handle on these questions. It’s also true that (as is often the case with stories on technological risk) the “study” trumpeted by the Post isn’t exactly hard science yet: “The study, described at a scientific meeting Sunday, was small and has yet to be peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal.” And most nanotechnology enthusiasts wouldn’t consider “buckyballs” — the actual subject of the study — to be true nanotechnology at all, despite what the industry says.

Nonetheless, because of its worries about science-fiction-based fears where mature nanotechnology is concerned, the nanotechnology industry has mostly succeeded in exaggerating concern about shorter-term fears. Afraid that nanotechnology might be associated with lethal (and implausible) sci-fi robots in the public mind, it has produced a situation in which nanotechnology may come to be associated with lethal (and more plausible) toxic buckyballs instead. Call me crazy, but that seems worse. This ham-handed approach to public relations has the potential to do real harm to the industry, and in the process to a technology that the world desperately needs.

UPDATE: Howard Lovy notes that the Post story has a lot of other problems, too, and offers some very useful perspective.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster has advice for the nanotechnology industry.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Daniel Moore has comments.

LEE HARRIS WRITES on the uses of failure.

MICKEY KAUS: “Democrats demand more elective surgery for Kerry!”

SOFTBALL AND EGGS: A reader emails:

I’m wondering how long it will take for the scathing reproachments that are all over the blogosphere to start showing up as egg on the faces of the interviewers of such programs as Meet The Press. I was absolutely disgusted with the ‘free’ pass Clarke was given on that program this morning. If they had an audience and I had been in it, it wouldn’t have taken long for the egg to show up. As I would have been throwing them right then.

I didn’t see the show, but here’s a report characterizing their Clarke interview as soft as a baby’s bottom.

UPDATE: Reader Dan Chattos observes that Sixty Minutes dropped the ball:

I suppose I am naive, but is there any indication that the folks at “60 Minutes” are the least bit embarrassed by their interview with Dick Clarke?

Leaving aside Clarke’s assessment of the Bush administration, his claims on behalf of the Clinton administration (that fighting al-Qa’eda was an urgent priority) were obviously false (or at best spin).

Clarke acknowledged that Yugoslavia(!) was a higher priority for Clinton and thinks that was ok, but finds Bush’s concern with Iraq proof that Bush was not serious in fighting terrorism despite the fact that Clarke, himself, had made statements linking Iraq and al-Qa’eda.

Bottom line, much of what Clarke said over the last 10 years or alleged more recently was secret, insider information. It took most bloggers less that 24 hours to begin raising issues about Clarke’s credibility, yet “60 minutes” with Clarke’s book in hand, were apparently unable to identify any of these issues on their own prior to the interview.

I seems that a little preparation on the part of “60 Minutes” would have allowed them to encapsulated the entire debate of the last week within the context of a single show. Now that would have been investigative journalism at its finest…

Good point. And maybe the Sixty Minutes conflict-of-interest problem where Clarke’s book was concerned did some real harm, both to their program and to the national debate.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here on Clarke’s statements about Iraq.

ROD DREHER EMAILS:

If you’re the prayerful sort, please offer one up for our friend Stuart Buck. I have the privilege of knowing Stuart personally, but he’s got a lot of readers and fans in the blogosphere who will no doubt be grieved to hear what’s happened to him. He suffered two strokes over the weekend, and is in the hospital in Arkansas near his folks. Lawyer Stuart had just moved with his wife and two small children from Dallas to his Arkansas hometown last week … and now this. I don’t have any specifics on his condition, except that I’m told he can speak. Stuart is all of 29. He’s a good man, and he and his wife and kids need all the prayers or good wishes we can muster. Pass it on.

Jeez, that’s terrible news. Please send him your best wishes for a full recovery. I don’t know any more (and there’s nothing on his blog), but I’ll see what I can find out.

TOOK MOST OF THE DAY OFF and went to the mountains, digital camera in hand. I drove up US 129 from Maryville toward Bryson City, NC (known as “the tail of the Dragon” to motorcyclists as it’s both twisty and hilly), though I only went a little bit past Deal’s Gap, NC. I saw lots of bikers, almost all of whom were going much faster than I was. (Notwithstanding the RX-8’s very impressive performance, especially in light of my somewhat rusty heel-and-toe skills, I didn’t try to keep up, and I suspect that the Supra that I saw in the ditch had made the mistake of attempting just that.) You don’t try to keep up with a motorcyclist in the mountains — you just figure you can always find him in the emergency room, later. . . .

Took a lot of lovely photos, and enjoyed the spring weather — it got up to 82 today, and it was surprisingly warm even up in the mountains.

I’ve been enjoying the photography a lot, and I may post an online gallery later, in case anyone is interesting. While I suspect that most readers don’t care much, there are definitely some whose interest is very strong. And as I mentioned a while back, I’m recovering an early love of mine with this.

UPDATE: Here’s a motorcycle blog with photos, devoted to the Dragon’s Tail.

IN RESPONSE TO MY COLUMN ON DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY from last week, reader Jim Herd sends this interesting piece on how the switch to digital photography has affected the aesthetic at Sports Illustrated. Excerpt:

The pictures themselves, Fine says, have changed the look of the magazine. “For years [with film], we’ve been fighting a battle between sharpness and grain, especially in low-light shots. You try to sharpen and you just end up building more graininess. I’m amazed at the quality we’re getting in low-light shots off our digital files. We’re running [low-light pictures] up to two-page size that we could never have done before. Sometimes [digital] looks like it’s underwater, a little bit too smooth. A strobed basketball game on a Hasselblad has a sharp line and a punch that digital doesn’t have. But we don’t have grain anymore. In really poorly lit situations, the ability to make a clean picture far outweighs the downside.” . . .

Digital photography has changed not only the magazine’s workflow but also its visual aesthetic, says Geoff Michaud. “There’s a different quality expectation with digital vs. film. With film, grain was accepted and tolerated. It was a by-product of sharpness. When we moved to digital we found that the expectation changed. I’m not 100% sure why. Now a softer feel image [is considered good], and when noise becomes apparent it’s a negative thing, where it wasn’t with film. I’m concerned with my operators now that because noise or grain has become a negative thing, sometimes they’re holding off on sharpening. [Sometimes] I look at images, and I feel they’re not quite sharp enough.” That said, Michaud adds, “I think [the magazine] looks better now, but maybe that’s because my expectations about what looks good have changed.”

To invoke another one of my hobbies, this reminds me of sound. With audio, people like analog distortion, within limits. Nobody likes digital distortion. I think there’s something similar going on with digital imagery.

PIERRE LEGRAND links a letter from Operation AC, saying that “people are sick and tired of hearing about the war,” and that they’re worried that this will make it hard for them to generate donations to support the troops again this year.

Feel free to go to their site and prove them wrong!

I was writing about postwar malaise nearly a year ago — and I had an MSNBC post, pre-Iraq, about how I was tired of the war. I don’t blame people for being tired.

Who wouldn’t be tired? But that’s no excuse for slacking off.

UPDATE: Reader Diana Sebben emails:

Dear Mr Reynolds, I read your post about people being tired of hearing about the war. We are going to donate via the site you linked to. Thanks for giving us another opportunity to help our troops. We have helped as much as we can right from the start, we have adopted soldiers, sent bicycles and tons of toys and school stuff to Wiggles-just trying to put our money where our mouth is-but aware that it is not enough…..

As far as your assertion that we are sick and tired of war-I hope that you are wrong. Good grief, what would this say about our sticking power, our courage and endurance. It would make me sick to think that we can send these people to fight for us while we sit on the couch and talk about how tired we are. The only thing that I am sick of is the constant negative carping and snivelling from the BBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times et al. they do a huge diservice to our troops and their families. I just have one major request for you and the other bloggers. Please, please refrain from making appeals for help for our troops on the weekend. Hit us on a Monday when we’re all on line and ready to help. No offense, but I would say that you have less readers on a weekend…. Keep up the good work.

I will. As anyone who has toilet trained a child knows, “sick and tired” isn’t the same as “ready to quit.”

SYRIA: The next Libya?

SYRIA has appealed to Australia to use its close ties with Washington to help the Arab nation shake off its reputation as a terrorist haven and repair its relations with the US.

Secret talks between the two nations have been under way for months but have become more urgent as rogue nations reconsider their role in allowing terrorists to thrive, in light of the US determination to take pre-emptive military action.

It’s working.

ROGER SIMON has more on the continuing United Nations oil-for-food scandal.

ACCOUNTABILITY? THAT’S FOR OTHER PEOPLE:

Senior BBC staff are threatening to take some flagship programmes off the air rather than face criticisms from an internal inquiry launched in the aftermath of Hutton. . . .

Read the whole thing.

DANIEL OKRENT: “In the coming months I expect columnist corrections to become a little more frequent and a lot more forthright than they’ve been in the past.”

UPDATE: Donald Luskin: “As a quick-take, it seems like a cautious but sensible stance for Okrent.” But he claims another “rowback,” too, though a minor one. Still, a quote should be a quote.

EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN:

Question:

Richard A. Clarke makes assertions in his book Against All Enemies that can be easily checked against external and unambiguous sources. Is Clarke truthful in verifiable assertions he makes?

Answer:

No, in at least one instance Clarke totally fabricates a position he attributes to another author’s book, and then use his fabrication to discredit that author’s position.

Ouch.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn:

Does this mean Clarke is Enron – an equal-opportunity scandal whose explicitly political aspects are too ambiguous to offer crude party advantage? Not quite. Although his book sets out to praise Clinton and bury Bush, he can’t quite pull it off. Except for his suggestion to send in a team of “ninjas” to take out Osama, Clinton had virtually no interest in the subject.

In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qa’eda’s attack on the USS Cole: “‘What’s it gonna take, Dick?’ Sheehan demanded. ‘Who the s*** do they think attacked the Cole, f****** Martians? The Pentagon brass won’t let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qa’eda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?'”

Apparently so. The attack, on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clinton’s Defence Secretary Bill Cohen as “not sufficiently provocative” to warrant a response. You’ll have to do better than that, Osama! So he did. And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be “pre-emptive” about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11. . . .

Bush got it right: go to where the terrorists are, overthrow their sponsoring regimes, destroy their camps, kill their leaders.

Instead, all the Islamists who went to Afghanistan in the 1990s graduated from Camp Osama and were dispersed throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, where they lurk to this day. That’s the Clarke-Clinton legacy. And, if it were mine, I wouldn’t be going around boasting about it.

Double-ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jon Henke emails:

I’ve noticed the Democrats are calling the Administration’s response to Clarke “character assassination”. Odd, considering the response has largely consisted of pointing out Clarke’s own words.

Wouldn’t that more accurately be called “character suicide”?

I prefer “self-Fisking,” though I suppose that might sound a little racy to blogosphere neophytes. . . .

DONALD SENSING has some interesting thoughts on root causes of terror. And this one is interesting, too.

“WHY THE FEDS FEAR NANOBOTS:” Interesting article from U.S. News, though unaccountably Mark Modzelewski is not quoted.

HERE’S ANOTHER ARTICLE ABOUT BLOGADS, from the Star Tribune. Excerpt: “Advertising that would cost you $70,000 on WashingtonPost.com would cost $3,000 on blogs.” Let’s hear it for low overhead!

THE WASHINGTON POST is flip-flopping on Clarke, reports Oxblog: “Without admitting they ever got the story wrong, the WaPo correspondents on the Clarke beat are backing down from their initial assessment of Clarke’s criticism.”

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Enough of Richard Clarke and politics for a while.

Some people were surprised that I ran an ad for the Shifting Baselines project of the Oceans Conservancy a while back. But it’s actually something I care about, as the picture above may demonstrate. The main point of diving is to observe and enjoy the aquatic life. And one reason I like to dive in Cayman is that they’ve done an excellent job of preserving things — though the surfeit of cruise ships there is causing even the local merchants to wonder if they’re facing too much of a good thing.

And even there, people argue about how the reef is doing. I’ve heard people say that it’s much better than it was decades ago when it was regularly fished with purse seines, and I’ve heard other say it’s not as good. (And there are still calls for more protection) It’s hard to say who’s right, and it depends on exactly which parts of the reef you’re talking about, too. That’s what the whole “baselines” idea is about.

Anyway, as a break from the usual stuff, I’ve put up a short selection of dive videos, showing what a pretty damn good reef looks like. You can see ’em in high-bandwidth WMV, in low-bandwidth WMV, or in high-bandwidth QuickTime. The fellow on the right (er, I think he’s the fellow) is part of a mating pair of pufferfish we observed, which is pretty rare. You can also see sharks, spiny lobsters, crabs, etc. (I make a cameo appearance or two as well, as does Doug Weinstein).

Divers have been pretty good about trying to preserve and improve the marine environment, through things like PADI’s Project A.W.A.R.E. And I suspect that if more people dove, more people would care about these issues. It is seven-tenths of the planet, after all.

UPDATE: Technical and other questions answered: Shot on mini-DV using a <a href=”DCR-PC330 camera and an Amphibco housing (I think, it was a renter). Edited using Vegas Video 4 (which still rocks).

VIRGINIA POSTREL has thoughts on technology and outsourcing.

IT’S GETTING UGLY: Pro-Bush blogger Matt Margolis was beaten up at an anti-Bush rally.

UPDATE: Reader Greg Miskin emails:

Something I never wanted to believe seems to be playing out daily: the Democratic party has been overrun by totalitarians. The party is marginalizing old-guard Dems who might (might!) hold differing opinions but who also could be counted on for civility and a rational basis for their arguments. . . .

There is no room for dissent, discourse, debate. My experience is that people behave this way when they hold indefensible beliefs, and they know just how weak their position is. A dog with this behavior is called a “fear-biter” and I can think of no better description for these people.

I guess it’s the 1930s again in more ways than one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Miskin’s view seems borne out by this comment posted by “Hot Dem 1” on Margolis’s blog:

Hitler had his beliefs, just like Matt has his. Sometimes violence is the only way to show people how devastatingly bad their ideas are. When society is so distraught about policy that individuals feel the need to take violent action, revolution is not only expected, but neccessary. I’m no union man, but I’d have probably taken a swing at you too.

As the devolution of the Left continues, it’s probably a poor historical moment for leftists to assert that “violence is the only way to show people how devastatingly bad their ideas are.”

MORE: A followup post, here.

STILL MORE: Willow has further thoughts.

MORE STILL: And read this response:

I think the more revealing aspect of Hot Dem’s comment is what it tells us about when the left finds violence acceptable. Imagine, for example, a despot who oppresses the population of an entire nation. Women are raped. Children are murdered. Political opponents are fed into shredders or steamrolled underneath the asphalt of new road construction. Stipends are paid to the families of suicide bombers who kill and terrorize the innocent. The left’s response to such a despot is that we must negotiate. Endlessly. Using force against him without French permission is a violation of international law. If, hypothetically, the despot’s two sons were to be killed in a military engagement, we should put the soldiers who killed him up for war crimes.

But if someone dares to express a viewpoint that the left finds disagreeable, well then by gum it’s time for a bit of the old ultra-violence!

Read the whole thing. “Ultra-violence” is a bit strong for what happened here, but the point about what gets people angry stands.

EVEN MORE: Philosoraptor: “We have very little control over what Republicans and Bushies do, but we have at least a tiny bit of control over what our side does. Perhaps Senator Kerry should give our side a good talking-to…”

THE SELF-FISKING CONTINUES:

WASHINGTON – Top Republicans in Congress sought Friday to declassify two-year-old testimony by former White House aide Richard Clarke, suggesting he may have lied this week when he faulted President Bush’s handling of the war on terror.

“Mr. Clarke has told two entirely different stories under oath,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Stay tuned.

ASK AN IMAM:

A Muslim preacher in eastern Turkey says he is being boycotted for telling local men to help their wives with the housework, Turkish media reported.

“Women do all the work in this village. All I said was men should at least carry the water (from the local well),” Mustafa Platin told Sabah newspaper.

His angry flock, who stopped attending the mosque, have asked authorities to remove the preacher.

That it’s an issue at all is probably a sign of progress.

UPDATE: A Muslim student from Northwestern emails:

I enjoy your website a great deal and check it frequently. I just wanted to drop a quick note regarding one of your posts. The story of the Imam who was boycotted for advising men to help in their wives’ housework is most certainly a travesty. It is a well-established part of the Islamic tradition that the Prophet Muhammad mended his own clothes, cleaned his own living space, and never requested domestic assistance of anyone. The Prophet literally implored men to assist their wives and worked to elevate the status of women at a time when they were treated as chattel. Because men who call themselves Muslims today choose to flagrantly disobey a firmly established aspect of Islamic history in the name of advancing their own chauvinistic interests, does not make it Islamic (this is also painfully obvious in the communities who turn their backs on Imams who rightfully condemn suicide bombings as impermissible and sinful; again, the racism and chauvinism that bring about these feelings are not Islamic, as the Prophet prohibited the killing of innocents, use of fire in war, destruction of the land and livestock—the evidence is overwhelming, and I’d be happy to engage you on that topic as well).

I have attended, and led, many prayers here in the States and abroad, and never have I encountered a community of men who would become angry with an Imam for advising them of something so consistent with the Islamic tradition as helping their wives. That these men in Turkey did so is repugnant.

If you perceive this email to be a worthy contribution of information, feel free to post any part of it. If possible, just refer to me a as a Northwestern University Law Student.

It’s certainly true that many who call themselves Muslims follow something other than the teachings of Islam, and that many kinds of sexism popularly associated with Islam — even by their practitioners who call themselves Muslims — are actually rooted in tribal traditions or simple prejudice.