THE WEDDING WAS YESTERDAY, and today, instead of going to the office as I usually do on Sundays, I took advantage of near-70-degree sunny weather to go to the mountains. I drove around in the RX-8, which hasn’t gotten enough exercise through the winter, and hiked the Laurel Falls trail. (It was a good thing I did, too, as the weather went to hell later this afternoon, just as I was on my way home). The picture above is from Laurel Falls, with the Toshiba, at the 1/1600 sec. shutter speed, which freezes things rather nicely. (Larger version here. As you can see, even consumer-grade digicams have gotten pretty good.)

Here’s another picture that shows one of the advantages of hiking during the off-season: this view will be completely obscured once the trees leaf out. It’s rather pretty.

The downside of hiking this time of year is slickness. There was a woman at the Falls looking pretty unhappy, as she had sprained her ankle badly slipping on some rocks. (A bystander said it was on ice, though I didn’t see any — it was 60 degrees there, but it’s still somewhat plausible as it may well have been below freezing there last night). The only ice I saw was the icepack on her ankle as she waited for rangers to haul her out. They use a rather clever stretcher that has a single mountain-bike-like wheel on it so as to navigate the trails without giving rangers hernias. I’m glad that they have it, and I hope that I never need it. . . .

JEFF JARVIS notes a suggestion that people post pictures of their blogging space. I agree with Jeff that I have too many locations for that, but you can see a picture of one of them here. I don’t generally blog in a suit, though. Here’s another, and I guess that this counts, too. But probably not this.

DURHAM, WE HAVE A PROBLEM: Here’s more on the flap over Duke’s diversity problem. “What’s clear is that the present administration has pledged a commitment to racial, gender, and intellectual diversity, but actual resources are only dedicated toward the first two components.” It’s not just that way at Duke, of course. Meanwhile, Lily Malcolm has observations of her own.

FORMER KASS COUNCIL MEMBER ELIZABETH BLACKBURN writes in the Washington Post that the Council is getting narrower as the result of politics:

When I read the council’s first discussion documents, my heart sank. The language was not what I was used to seeing in scientific discourse — it seemed to me to present pre-judged views and to use rhetoric to make points. Still, the debates we had in the ensuing months proved far-ranging, and all comments were politely received. And, despite the betting of outsiders, 10 of the council’s 17 members (one had retired) initially voted against recommending a ban on therapeutic cloning. A late change to the question being voted on turned the minority who were in favor of a ban into a majority of 10 favoring a four-year moratorium, an option the council had not discussed in meetings. But the report issued in July 2002 contained a breadth of views. It also contained a series of personal statements by council members, many of them dissenting from the report’s official recommendations.

In the year and a half following that report, I began to sense much less tolerance from the chairman for dissenting views. . . .

When I read the published views of the three new members (bringing the council up to its original total of 18 members), it seemed to me they represented a loss of balance in the council, both professionally and philosophically. None was a biomedical scientist, and the views of all three were much closer to the views espoused by Kass than mine or May’s were. One, a surgeon who was not a scientist, had championed a larger place for religious values in public life. Another was a political philosopher who had publicly praised Kass’s work; the third, a political scientist, had described research in which embryos are destroyed as “evil.”

Interesting.

THE ANNENBERG CENTER’S FACTCHECK.ORG is fact-checking a bogus anti-Bush ad from MoveOn.

UPDATE: Of course, this just echoes what James Lileks said about the ads:

Heard some of the moveon.org Soros-financed ad today, about Bush eliminating overtime. The ad made it sound as though he had signed an executive order that outlawed the practice of paying ANYONE any overtime EVER, which of course isn’t the case. It fits with the worldview of the intended audience, I guess – the people who think that once upon a time the United States strictly adhered to the Kyoto protocols, had legal gay marriage, and allowed overtime pay, and the President has undone these pillars of society one by one. Because he hates people, you know. He really wants to screw people over. That’s how you get reelected: wage unrelenting war against the electorate so they’ll vote for you in hopes that the beatings will slacken somewhat in the lame-duck term.

I don’t think that Soros is getting his money’s worth.

I’VE TALKED A LITTLE ABOUT JOHN KERRY’S RECENT SPEECH ON NATIONAL SECURITY and foreign policy, but this critical analysis over at Winds of Change is really worth reading.

TODDZILLA ASKS: “Where is everybody going to Spring Break? Daytona? Guantanamo Bay?”

Well, there are some similarities, according to this article in, of all places, The Guardian:

Cuba? It was great, say boys freed from US prison camp

James Astill meets teenagers released from Guantanamo Bay who recall the place fondly

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. “I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great,” said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.
Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times – a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah’s answer was always the same – “I don’t know anything about these people” – these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay. . . .

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah’s. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family’s mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. “Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them,” he said. “If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America.”

No doubt an apology will be forthcoming, from those who analogized Guantanamo to Buchenwald.

UPDATE: Roger Simon notes that some people are worried about “another Guantanamo” in Iraq.

PARANOIA STRIKES DEEP: A reader emails:

A thought occurred to me as I read bloggers who have done an about-face politically, which should be a very profound, well thought-out action. George Soros has said he is spending 10 million dollars to defeat President Bush and Teresa Heinz has said she will release soft money to fight for her husband’s reelection. How are we to know these about-face bloggers have not been recipients of some of this money? This could mean the end of bloggers before the concept really gets off the ground. That would be very sad. Is there some way to prevent this? I’ve turned to them in place of the mainstream media for my news but now I wonder if they are reliable.

I don’t know what bloggers the reader has in mind, and where we’ve seen changes it’s generally been because the Administration stepped on somebody’s pet issue; I can’t really think of an unexplained about-face.

But I guess people could buy off bloggers, though if there were a campaign for that I’d think that someone might have approached me, which certainly hasn’t happened. [Maybe you’re too obviously incorruptible! — Ed. That must be it.] And anyway, if a blogger stops making sense to his/her readers, those readers will probably just move on, and corruption too subtle to have that effect would probably also be too subtle to be worth paying for.

At any rate, the sad truth is that bloggers, despite their growing influence, probably aren’t worth bribing.

UPDATE: They say that everyone has his price, but Jay Manifold wants to be sure there’s no mistake about his. And he’s not the only blogger looking for some of that “sweet payoff cash.” I’m sure it would turn to ashes in your mouth, er, wallet.

ANOTHER UPDATE: What price integrity? $387.42, in this case.

SORRY FOR THE BLOGGING HIATUS: We had a wedding yesterday. Well, actually it was a re-wedding. My brother and sister-in-law were actually married in Nigeria a few months ago. But health and immigration issues kept some people here from going there, and vice versa, so the solution was to have two ceremonies. (It’s also easier to get married again in the United States than to have a Nigerian marriage between two American citizens recognized here.)

A wonderful time was had by all, and an impromptu blues band (including Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein on drums) rocked things into the night. And yes, that’s the InstaWife in the background, serving as videographer for the event. The Nigerian relatives will be getting a DVD of the festivities they missed, just like the one they sent us of the festivities there.

THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE’S BLOG RADIO SHOW will be airing shortly, at 1 Eastern / 12 Central. Captain Ed will be live-blogging it.

VIRGINIA POSTREL has two interesting posts about science and the Kass Commission.

DOES THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S NEW SPACE POLICY herald a new Age of Exploration?

Mr. Bush’s program will create a new American empire in space that will resemble the ocean-born empires of the European states in the 17th and 18th centuries. The United States will stake claim to new “open” territories, leverage their resources, and settle them on a small scale.

As in the first era of exploration, travel to new horizons will inspire some of the national virtues Mr. Bush extols: “daring, discipline, ingenuity, and unity in the pursuit of great goals.” If the past is any guide, however, exploration also will bring its share of problems, even for a country as powerful as the United States.

In spite of the problems, I hope that this analysis is correct.

MICKEY KAUS offers some interesting news on how John Kerry’s dating life impacts The New York Times.

As The Rainmakers put it, It’s a little tiny world, just like a little tiny town.

DUKE UNIVERSITY has been at the center of a controversy involving its apparent lack of intellectual diversity (see posts here and here.) In response, Duke held a panel discussion on the subject.

Er, except it was a discussion on the subject of academic freedom and whether affiliation matters, and none of the student critics got speaking roles — it was all Duke faculty and administrators.

Question: If a bunch of minority students challenged Duke for underinclusiveness, would the university put on an all-faculty-and-administrator panel, with most panelists suggesting that the race of faculty members isn’t important?

It’s not all bad by any means, and the very existence of this discussion is some evidence of progress. But the different treatment of different kinds of diversity challenges is striking, especially as intellectual diversity would seem more important to the university’s academic mission than skin-color diversity, which we’re always told is a proxy for the intellectual kind. And here’s an interesting bit from the only speaker to take a different tack:

Here’s a true statement: … every conservative faculty member recommended for [tenure] by the literature department has been tenured. That’s also true of every unicorn and every talking dog. . . .

When I first arrived at Duke, there was a party for new faculty. And when it was time to sit down, we were all told: “Since you’ve been hired at Duke, I’m sure that none of you is so foolish as to be conservative. So, please, spread yourselves liberally around the tables.” Now, I wasn’t offended. I wasn’t worried. I would never have mentioned the incident except I recently heard several people who were at that dinner and who laughed at that joke loudly insisting that politics should never play a role in hiring. . . .

Now, let me emphasize, it’s always unofficial, it’s not a statement of policy, I don’t think that there is any policy that takes that effect. It’s just an expectation. The policy is for openness. The actual expectation is that we’ll generally hire liberals.

It seems hard to justify such a policy, er, expectation, in light of the oft-stated importance of diversity in academic settings. It also suggests that many faculty members are unaware of their own prejudices, just as diversity consultants have been telling us, in other contexts, for years. Presumably, universities such as Duke will want to remedy this, as they have done in other contexts, with seminars for faculty on sensitivity, and guidelines for inclusiveness in hiring. . . .

(Thanks to Duke’s PR office for forwarding this link.)

UPDATE: Eric Muller says that I give insufficient attention to William Van Alstyne’s talk, which he says makes a similar point to the one above, but in a more understated way. Fair enough — though I think the transcript must not convey the full character of Van Alstyne’s talk, which seemed to me, from reading the transcript, to be understated indeed. But I couldn’t see the visual aids, which sound as if they increased the impact. (I couldn’t get any of the video links to play, and I guess that either Eric could, or he was there, though he doesn’t say which.)

NATURE has a nice summary of the evidence for water on Mars.

GERMANS LOVE GEORGE BUSH! Why, just look at this online poll!

ROGER SIMON ASKS — if Tony Blair were a Democrat, would you vote for him? I’m no fan of his domestic policies in Britain, but I’d vote for him based on his war stance.

FROM THE UNFORTUNATE HEADLINE DEPT: “Rosie weds longtime girlfriend, slams Bush.”

CAN BLOGGING RUIN YOUR LIFE? Sure — if you don’t blog.

IS EUROPEAN-STYLE ANTISEMITISM coming to America? I rather doubt it, but I could be wrong.

WE DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS YET, but there’s a Martha Stewart verdict. Halley Suitt is worried that suburban white women will riot. Message to the cops: Don’t let ’em get too close to you with those Manolo Blahniks. But try to snag me one of those Williams-Sonoma saucier pans.

UPDATE: Guilty on all counts.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s what Martha has to say about it. A reader writes: “So, am I correct in assuming she has been found guilty of covering up crimes the government couldn’t prove she committed?”

I haven’t followed this case closely, but I think that’s the gist of it.

VIA HARRY’S PLACE, a terrific speech by Tony Blair on the war and the various critics thereof:

But the key point is that it is the threat that is the issue.

The characterisation of the threat is where the difference lies. Here is where I feel so passionately that we are in mortal danger of mistaking the nature of the new world in which we live.

Everything about our world is changing: its economy, its technology, its culture, its way of living.

If the 20th century scripted our conventional way of thinking, the 21st century is unconventional in almost every respect.

This is true also of our security.

The threat we face is not conventional. It is a challenge of a different nature from anything the world has faced before. It is to the world’s security, what globalisation is to the world’s economy.

It was defined not by Iraq but by September 11th. September 11th did not create the threat Saddam posed.

But it altered crucially the balance of risk as to whether to deal with it or simply carry on, however imperfectly, trying to contain it. . . .

The point about September 11th was not its detailed planning; not its devilish execution; not even, simply, that it happened in America, on the streets of New York. All of this made it an astonishing, terrible and wicked tragedy, a barbaric murder of innocent people.

But what galvanised me was that it was a declaration of war by religious fanatics who were prepared to wage that war without limit. They killed 3000.

But if they could have killed 30,000 or 300,000 they would have rejoiced in it.

The purpose was to cause such hatred between Moslems and the West that a religious jihad became reality; and the world engulfed by it. . . .

This is not a time to err on the side of caution; not a time to weigh the risks to an infinite balance; not a time for the cynicism of the worldly wise who favour playing it long.

Their worldly wise cynicism is actually at best naivete and at worst dereliction.

This is what Blair gets, and the war critics don’t.

JEFF JARVIS NOTES that Howard Stern will receive record fines from the FCC.

Do I care? I don’t know. If I’m offended by anyone being fined for saying anything on the air I’m offended — but not any more than I would have been offended in 1992, when:

In 1992 the FCC fined Infinity Broadcasting $600,000 after Stern discussed masturbating to a picture of Aunt Jemima.

Is that better or worse than asking a Nigerian woman if she eats monkeys, or hosting a discussion of whether, when you have sex with a black woman, it smells like watermelons? I guess you can argue that point, but I’d be a lot more impressed with Stern’s defenders if they’d quote these comments verbatim in the process of defending him.

And, actually, I do oppose government regulation of broadcast content. But, on the other hand, if you agree that there are standards, then the only question is whether a “record fine” is appropriate in response to Stern’s on-air conduct here. I’d say that, if there are to be standards at all, then Stern’s conduct is over pretty much any line you’re likely to draw. (And Rush Limbaugh would be off the air for much less than this — in fact, he was taken off ESPN for much less than this, with no noticeable hue and cry from Stern’s current defenders).

So while other people are upset about this (including Jeff Jarvis, a smart and generally reasonable guy), I have to say that I just can’t muster much outrage. I’d like to see the FCC out of the business of regulating broadcast content entirely, but I’m resigned to the political reality that that won’t happen. And, given that the American public seems to want regulation here by a huge margin, it’s hard for me to call this particular exercise an abuse of regulatory authority.

I also think it’s silly — as the earlier example, which I picked up from Jeff’s comment section, which has others showing that Stern got in trouble all through the Clinton Administration, illustrates — to pretend that this is an example of Bush somehow crushing dissent. (And, as I noted earlier, Kerry supports the dropping of Stern from the Clear Channel stations). If you want to argue that Clear Channel’s dropping of Stern was an example of a big corporation sucking up to Bush, well, maybe it is — though I suspect that the Bush people would just as soon have avoided this issue entirely — but then you’ve got to grapple with the media concentration issues that people like me, and Larry Lessig, have raised: If the airwaves are dominated by a small number of big companies, they’ll always tend to reach an accommodation with the powers-that-be. That’s how these things work, and it’s why too much media concentration is bad.

In my ideal media world, we’d see a lot more low-power radio, and a lot less concentrated corporate ownership. We don’t live in that world. But in the world we do live in, it’s hard for me to see the Stern business as anything but more of the same Stern schtick, grown even more tiresome.

UPDATE: Reader Frank Lucco emails:

I read your blog regularly and agree with 99% of your viewpoints, but you are so wrong on the Howard Stern issue. First, how do you know what Howard Sterns politics are now, or what they were back during the Clinton administration. Stern is well known for being all over the political spectrum in his viewpoints. He has only come out recently as favoring the Democratic candidate in this election. Furthermore, he has supported numerous onservative candidates and held many conservative viewpoints over the years. Secondly, he fact that Kerry supports the dropping of Stern means absolutely nothing. Its just smart politics on his part. He’s not going to pick up any more votes by coming out as the defender of Howard Stern and free speech. Please learn a little more about whats going on here before spouting off with analysis which is clearly being affected by your own personal dislike for Stern.

I don’t have any special personal dislike for Stern. I don’t listen (he doesn’t air around here, as far as I know) but what I’ve heard seems lame and juvenile.

But Lucco misses my point — it’s “smart politics” for Kerry to back this because the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in some sort of broadcast decency standards. You may disagree with the idea of having those standards — I do, actually — but you can’t call them undemocratic, or the product of some sort of Bush-inspired right-wing cabal, when they’re so widely supported. This is what the Stern supporters can’t seem to grasp.

Frankly, the whole thing reeks of a manufactured issue, designed to give some people an excuse to bash the Administration. Where were these folks when The Greaseman was canned?

ANOTHER UPDATE: On the other hand, my former student Rob Huddleston, who sits well to my right, politically, sends this:

I happened to hear Stern this morning on his D.C. affiliate this morning. I don’t usually listen to him, although I did regularly when I lived in Chicago. By listening to a few minutes of his rant this morning, a few things were clear:

1) He believes he will be fired today after the fines are announced.
2) He believes that the Christian Right have undue influence over Clear Channel.
3) He agrees with your statements regarding Clear Channel sucking up to Bush, although he blames the Religious Right even more.
4) He is no big fan of Colin Powell’s son.
5) He really seems to understand that the FCC continues to make itself relevant through its fining practice.

I am no big Stern fan. Occasionally he is funny, but most of the time he’s just a waste of effort. However, I am a bit disturbed by the FCC’s actions in this case. What did Stern do recently that deserves this sanction? I can’t help but come to the conclusion that this is some sort of retroactive fine for lifetime achievement. Stern is being served up as the sacrificial lamb when the real people who should be on the alter are Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake (who have weathered the storm and will come out of this as heroes to the Left). The whole thing is starting to show the FCC’s fundamental weakness in the eyes of the public – it is THE censor in America, and the public does not like censorship as a theme.

Hmm. A “retroactive lifetime achievement award?” Interesting characterization. I agree that the public doesn’t like censorship, but I’m not sure that fines for the sort of thing Stern is in trouble for will seem that way in the public mind.

MORE: Reader Lawrence Theriot says that the market is taking care of everything already — we just haven’t noticed!

Yes a lot of what Stern does could be considered indecent by a large portion of the population (which is the Supreme Court standard) but in this case it’s important to consider WHERE those people might live and to what degree they are likely to be exposed to Stern’s brand of humor before you decide that those people need federal protection from hearing his show. Or, in other words, might the market have already acted to protect those people in a very real way that makes Federal action unnecessary?

Stern is on something like 75 radio stations in the US and almost every one of them is concentrated in a city. Most people who think Stern is indecent do not live in city centers. They tend to live in “fly-over” country where Stern’s show does not reach.

Rush Limbaugh by comparison (which no one could un-ironically argue is indecent in any way) is on 600 stations around the country, and reaches about the same number of listeners as Howard does (10 million to 14 million I think).
So in effect, we can see that the market has acted to protect most of those who do not want to hear the kind of radio that Stern does. Stern’s show, which could be considered indecent is not very widely available, when you compare it to Limbaugh’s show which is available in virtually every single corner of the country, and yet a comparable number of people seem to want to tune in to both shows.

Further, when you take into account the fact that in a city like Miami (where Stern was taken off the air last week) there may be as many as a million people who want to hear his show, any argument that Stern needs to be censored on indecency grounds seems to fly right out the window.

Anyway, I think both sides are making some decent points in this argument, but I hadn’t heard one up until now that took the market and demographics into account until last night, and we all know how much faith I put in the market to solve a lot of society’s toughest questions, so I thought I’d point this one out as having had an impact on me.

Hmm. Interesting argument. I think, though, that it’s better understood as an argument against decency standards at all, rather than an argument against enforcing them where Stern is concerned.

RALPH NADER IS AT SIX PERCENT in the polls. I wonder how his online contributions are going?

UPDATE: CJR thinks the poll is wrong.

MORE DUMB DELINKING from the Rittenhouse Review. Keith Berry links Wonkette, and is immediately delinked by Rittenhouse:

I’d like to be able to report that my link was removed because of a lack of space and not because Capozzola is a small, petty and cheap little man. However, as repeated e-mails to The Rittenhouse Review have gone unanswered, I simply can’t say.

To be fair, as far as I know there’s no actual evidence that he’s cheap. But seriously, I thought that this whole thing had died down. Sheesh.