HERE’S A COUNTER of the number of lives saved each day by our invasion of Iraq. The counter is in the upper left corner of the linked page, which is mostly explanation of how the numbers were reached.
It’s better than Marc Herold’s!
Archive for 2004
January 4, 2004
I’M AT THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS CONFERENCE — where there’s in-room wi-fi at the hotel. I like that. More later.
MARK STEYN on Scott Ritter:
Ritter is rare in the extent of his depravity: He saw the horror close up and opted to turn his back.
Indeed.
ROGER SIMON IS PRAISING TONY BLAIR:
Blair is the anti-Chamberlain.
Read the whole thing. Armed Liberal, meanwhile, has thoughts on Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. This leaves only one logical response. . . .
IS IT “SWEEPS WEEK” ON THE WEB? I wondered when I saw this article on professor-student dating in Slate. (It’s actually a pretty good article.) My own impression is that there’s a lot less of that than you’d think from TV shows and movies (note: there’s a lot less office sex at most law firms than there is on TV, too — sorry to burst your bubble). Then again, maybe that’s just a law thing: Judging by posts from Beth Plocharczyk and Amanda Butler over at Crescat Sententia, there’s a lot more action in the humanities departments.
So why don’t those people seem more cheerful?
WESLEY CLARK’S CAMPAIGN FUNDRAISING is failing to meet expectations. Most damning, those expectations were set by his own people.
IS PROCREATION the only reason for marriage? If so, I guess I might as well file for divorce, because it’s not terribly likely that we’ll see any more Insta-Kids.
ERIC S. RAYMOND has thoughts on terrorists using “journalistic cover,” and the likely reaction of news services.
NASA yesterday said it has captured dozens of close-up images of a distant comet that show the frozen ball of rock and ice spewing jets of dust and gas into space.
The Stardust spacecraft took 72 images of the nucleus of comet Wild 2 on Friday during a flyby 242 million miles from Earth. . . . The spacecraft also collected dust and gas samples from the comet and is scheduled to jettison them to Earth in January 2006.
It’s not the lunar cities I was hoping for by now, but it’s something.
THOUGHTS ON politics and the Endangered Species Act, over at The Volokh Conspiracy.
I think that one of the great blows to the Endangered Species Act was struck by a (then) University of Tennessee law professor, who rather opportunistically seized on a putative threat to the snail darter as a means of holding up construction on the Tellico Dam. First, the threat to the snail darter was pretty obviously hyped (the Little Tennessee river was called their “sole habitat” because nobody had looked elsewhere, as the darter was only discovered in 1973; when people did, they found them in a number of places, and in fact, they seem to be flourishing, post-Dam). Second, nobody cared about the Snail Darter, and the obstructionist use of the ESA, which was sold using images of bald eagles and redwoods, to block a dam in the name of the snail darter, seemed, well, cheesy. It engendered a political backlash, and a loss of moral capital, that I think cost the environmental movement dearly. I often mention this case to students as an example of how clever lawyering may not always be clever politics.
CATHY SEIPP reviews dubious media achievements of 2003.
NASA’S SPIRIT ROVER has successfully landed on Mars, and is returning pictures:
“This just keeps getting better and better. The pictures are fantastic,” said mission science manager John Callas.
The Spirit’s successful landing on Mars bucked a trend of failed missions to the Red Planet. Just one in three past attempts to land on Mars have succeeded.
Good news.
UPDATE: Er, good news except for worshippers of Michael Moore, anyway.
BELLICOSE WOMEN on the IRAQI BORDER:
Because of religious and cultural taboos on touching between men and women who aren’t married or closely related, an all-male Border Patrol could not search women. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, whose 101st Airborne is responsible for northern Iraq, called for women to join the new Iraqi security forces that the occupation authority was trying to create. He said he was worried that terrorists would use women to ferry equipment and messages back and forth.
Several dozen responded. There were teachers, clerical workers and housewives as well as some former Kurdish guerrillas, known as pesh merga. . . .
Elite solders from the 101st Airborne were put in charge of training, and at first they worried that the women would be too timid and weak. Sgts. Jacob Dixson and Louis Gitlin said they were surprised to find that women did better than men in simulated missions.
“They would always find the bombs fast and search fast,” Dixson said. Added Gitlin, “The women had something to prove, so they took everything more seriously.” . . .
The women in the Border Patrol range in age from 17 to 54. They include young waifs with chips of polish still on their fingernails and bulky, tough ones with wizened faces who carry several pistols and knives in addition to the AK-47s they are issued.
The 101st has been doing amazing work in Iraq. Reader Wagner James Au emails: “Can we get behind a public push to give David Petraeus of the 101st Airborne the Medal of Honor?” I don’t think they give the Medal for this sort of thing, but he certainly deserves a lot of recognition.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION HONORS EX-KLANSMAN: Ralph Luker reports:
Finally, there is that other opportunity for some of my fellow high-toned historians to get up a decent picket line: at the AHA convention in Washington this week, when Jim McPherson presents the first Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award for Civil Service to Senator and former Klansman Robert Byrd of West Virginia (scroll down to 13 December). My fellow historian, H. D. Miller at “Traveling Shoes,” and Craig Schamp at “Logographer” join me in protesting the award to Senator Byrd. Can you imagine the howl of protest that would have gone up if the AHA had chosen to give such an award to Strom Thurmond or Trent Lott?
Well, yeah. But they’re Republicans.
RICH GALEN WARDROBE UPDATE: One of my moles in Baghdad (and yes, I’ve got ’em) emails: “You should see the results of a fully soldierized Rich Galen on Mullings.com probably sometime today or tomorrow.”
January 3, 2004
MY POST-CHRISTMAS TOY POST mentioned the limited appeal of the Flava dolls’ Liam, whose excessive metrosexuality got him dubbed a “girly boy” by one of my daughter’s friends. Back at the mall today, I managed to snap a picture of one of the (many) remaining Liam dolls at Kaybee Toys, so you can judge for yourself.
A couple of readers named Liam emailed to protest that they were quite manly, and to stress that Liam-the-Flava isn’t representative of Liamhood in general.
I certainly won’t argue. I don’t know exactly what Liam is supposed to represent, but it’s hard to imagine him having a lot of appeal in today’s world. And judging by available anecdotal evidence, he’s striking out on a number of different fronts, jaunty “man-purse” notwithstanding.
The Flava dolls, at any rate, are a poor attempt to match the unbeatable (in my house) Bratz line. And although the Bratz Boyz aren’t exactly oozing testosterone, they’ve got Liam beat. And that’s apparently the general rule, as Bratz are beating out not only the Flavas, but even the more-polished Barbie competition, called My Scene. Not a lot of testosterone there, either — but at least an absence of man-purses, and better clothes.
Yeah, toyblogging isn’t the usual thing here, but it’s a longstanding item going all the way back to this post from October of 2001, which even made Best of the Web. Hey, they say to write what you know. . . .
UPDATE: A reader suggests that it’s interesting to compare Liam with this action figure: Heather, from the 1st ID. Yes, it is. Meanwhile reader John Allore emails that Ken was the trailblazer when it comes to metrosexuality, and sends this link to Ken in a stunning tribute to Siegfried and Roy. But, you know, it’s okay to be in touch with your feminine side. [Hey, look! They’re having a cookware clearance at Amazon! — Ed. Like I said. . . .]
BIZARRE PICTURES from a cheap digital camera. I think it’s some sort of latency/delay effect, but that’s just a guess.
‘MOST” EQUALS “FOURTEEN PERCENT” at the Associated Press. Remember this next time you see a story that says “most Americans oppose the war.”
MISSING 727 UPDATE: Here’s the latest development in the saga last mentioned on InstaPundit last July. Meanwhile, there was a possibly suspicious crash in the Red Sea:
Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry said the crash was apparently caused by a mechanical problem and not terrorism. But it occurred as the British prime minister was visiting the resort and amid a week of heightened concerns about terrorism that have led to canceled flights around the world.
They’re calling it mechanical failure, which is certainly credible — though the plane crashed without any distress call, and had recently passed a maintenance inspection in Norway.
Trying to figure out whether these kinds of stories mean anything or not is hard, and perhaps provides some sense of what intelligence analysts go through all the time.
UPDATE: More on the Red Sea crash here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: More interesting stuff over at The Command Post.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more on the air-terror happenings rounded up here.
MORE: I can’t vouch for its reliablity, but here’s a story that purports to outline the busted terror plot.
INVESTIGATIVE BLOGGING: Actually, I think David Appell already raised money from his readers to do this, but I don’t remember seeing the result.
A New Year’s Eve incident at Tappahannock Municipal Airport had townspeople talking yesterday, but there was little anxiety about reports linking the village of 2,000 to al-Qaida terrorism.
According to the FBI, an illegal alien tried to enter the airport late Tuesday afternoon, then fled.
And the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported yesterday that unnamed sources said a Tappahannock resident has been under investigation for some time on suspicion of financing or assisting al-Qaida.
Airport Manager John McDonald said the Virginia State Police pursued a car that tried to enter the airport grounds, then sped off at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. State police overtook the car and stopped it.
“I don’t know what happened,” McDonald said yesterday. “They’re pretty tight-lipped.”
Interesting. The rest of the story downplays the incident. That’s probably appropriate, but I can’t help but feel that there’s a lot of stuff going on at the moment that we’re not hearing about.
WAR CRIMES IN IRAQ? It’s amazing that these aren’t getting more press attention.
DEAN SPOKESMAN: Bush Administration not to blame for 9/11:
“As many have said before, hindsight is 20-20 and no one could have predicted what could have happened on a terrible day in September 2001,” [campaign spokemsan Jay] Carson said.
Sounds like he agrees with Condi Rice.
KIM DU TOIT weighs in on the outsourcing issue:
My father was a civil engineer who had started off life as a boilermaker, and he always cautioned me to find a job which used your brain rather than your hands.
In retrospect, it was the worst possible advice he could have given.
There’s also this: “You don’t owe your company anything: not loyalty, not fealty, not anything. And you were not the one who broke this compact: they did it.”
SPECULATION IN THE MEDIA: Another Michael Crichton speech, this one via Donald Sensing.