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.

ANN ALTHOUSE has thoughts on the gender dynamics of The Apprentice: “generally, women watching the show shouldn’t really be using it as a source of tips on how to look and act in the business world.”

TIM BLAIR has a new poll up. I voted for the “Sky Turtle,” but “Nobel Peace Prize” seems to be in the lead.

RICHARD CLARKE IS SUGGESTING an Al Qaeda connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Plenty of people have suggested that, and also suggested an Iraqi connection. But given the way such suspicions have been generally pooh-poohed, it’s interesting to see it coming from this source, and the domestic political implications are dramatic.

UPDATE: Roger Simon has further observations that are, as always, worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: David Adesnik:

Is there any hope of getting past partisan antagonism and coming up with a fair evaluation of what Richard Clarke has to say about the Bush administration? No, not really. At least for now. I think a big part of the problem is that the newspapers have been portraying Clarke as an immaculate hero and the President as a black-hatted villain.

Indeed. Adesnik has quite a survey of responses to Clarke’s testimony. Referring to an earlier post of his defending Clarke, Adesnik observes: ” I missed the real story: that Clarke was rewriting the history of what happened before September 11th.”

A lot of other people missed it — or ignored it — too.

MORE: Here’s some interesting linkage of Iraq and Al Qaeda, from Richard Clarke.

STILL MORE: Here’s a 9/11 Commission hearings flowchart that illustrates Adesnik’s point.

THIS CARTOON sums up the media worldview quite nicely.

HALLEY SUITT needs a vacation.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH is fact-checking Paul Krugman.

REMEMBER THE PLANELOAD OF SAUDIS that left shortly after 9/11? Who decided to let it go? Richard Clarke!

Full article, from the Boston Herald, here. “It’s too bad Clarke cuts no one in the Bush administration the same slack he so easily cuts himself.”

JAMES LILEKS notes that press coverage of Richard Clarke seems to be soft-pedaling his self-contradictions and dissembling:

When I said yesterday that Clarke should have expected some push-back, I should have been more clear. I meant that he must have known his contradictory statements would be made public, quickly, and these remarks, combined with his exquisitely timed book and PR push, would have an impact on his credibility. But he’s obviously smarter than I will ever be; he expected that the climate was right for his contradictions to be explained away or ignored.

Yep, it’s an election year, with a Republican incumbent. Read the whole thing, as Lileks offers rather a lot of specifics. He more or less fisks the entire Big Media coverage in one sitting.

Meanwhile Charles Krauthammer writes that Clarke is a “partisan perjurer:”

It is only March, but the 2004 Chutzpah of the Year Award can be safely given out. It goes to Richard Clarke, now making himself famous by blaming the Bush administration for Sept. 11 — after Clarke had spent eight years in charge of counterterrorism for a Clinton administration that did nothing.

First, if the Clarke of 2002 was telling the truth, then the Clarke of this week — the one who told the Sept. 11 commission under oath that “fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration — certainly [there was] no higher priority” — is a liar.

Second, he becomes not just a perjurer but a partisan perjurer. He savages Bush for not having made al Qaeda his top national security priority, but he refuses even to call a “mistake” Clinton’s staggering dereliction in putting Yasser Arafat and Yugoslavia(!) above fighting al Qaeda.

Clarke gives Clinton a pass and instead concentrates his ire on Bush. For what? For not having preemptively attacked Afghanistan? On what grounds — increased terrorist chatter in June and July 2001?

Read the whole thing. But the press — many of whose leaders quietly gathered to give Kerry a hand back in the fall — is doing its best to soften up Bush for November now. If Clarke were attacking a Democratic president, they’d have been all over his contradictions. But this spin will only make his unravelling more damaging, and contribute to the ongoing self-marginalization of the old media.

UPDATE: Belgravia Dispatch says thta TNR’s Clarke coverage is dropping the ball.