IF THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW means that we’re all going to suffer from instant global warming — and an ice age, at the same time! — did The Poseidon Adventure accurately predict a sudden epidemic of capsizing passenger ships?

As far as I know, it didn’t, and Patrick Michaels writes in The Washington Post that anyone who gets his or her climatology from the film is an idiot.

So just watch, as the idiots self-identify. . . .

UPDATE: Then there’s this. Sheesh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Plus this expert clarification:

The Tsunami, as shown in The Poseidon Adventure, is a pure figment of the imagination of someone in film.

A Tsunami in open ocean water is about a meter high……..it suddenly mushrooms into a giant wave near shore where all the damage can occur. Tsunamis do, however, move extremely fast…….up to 700 K/hr……and it can travel extremely long distances with little dissipation of its original energy. The famous 1960 Tsunami, originating off the coast of Chile, reached Hawaii, Japan, etc.

The high speed is what causes the energy to mount a wall of water up to several hundred feet high as the water approaches shore…..identical to the action of waves around the world…..just on a much larger scale due its speed and transmitted energy.

Paul DeLand, Tampa, FL
Former USCGAuxiliary National Staff Branch Chief
Department of Marine Safety and Environmental Protection

Good thing The Poseidon Adventure came out 30 years ago — or we’d be hearing how tsunamis are caused by Bush’s environmental policies!

MEGAN MCARDLE ON FASHIONABLY MORBID FATALISM:

Yet we made it through, with a modicum of liberty and a splash of human kindness, and now democracy is springing up like mushrooms everywhere you look, poverty is steadily decreasing, though perhaps not as fast as we’d like, and wars are killing fewer and fewer humans each decade. The world is a pretty good place to live, and getting steadily better for almost everyone. As flawed as the human race is, we seem to be a lot better than the doomsayers think at muddling through.

Indeed. She has an interesting and lengthy post that’s well worth reading in full.

BILL HOBBS offers a succinct report on Condi Rice’s appearance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

TORONTO STAR OPED PAGE FALLS SILENT: Antonia Zerbisias of the Toronto Star — last seen here making a fool of herself by misattributing a quote to Stefan Sharkansky — is now gleefully claiming that warbloggers are “growing silent.”

Er, except that I’m pretty sure that in the past two weeks InstaPundit, though admittedly at a somewhat lower rate of blogging than usual, has still published more words than the entire Toronto Star oped page. So I guess I should write a column saying that “Wracked with shame at publishing pieces by Antonia Zerbisias, the Toronto Star has fallen silent!” (I won’t say “growing silent,” as that phrase makes no sense.)

Sheesh. You hate to feed a troll, but Kathy Shaidle and Damian Penny have more, if anyone cares. And given Zerbisias’ track record, I’m not sure anyone does. In fact, I’ll make a prediction: Most of the bloggers that Zerbisias mentions will still be blogging after she’s gone from the Toronto Star’s oped page. Which, to judge by the quality of this piece, should be soon.

Meanwhile, the very model of a modern “insult-happy web gun,” Jeff Goldstein — recently returned from a period of genuine silence as an existence disproof of Zerbisias’ entire thesis — comments: “”Fat, drunk, and Canadian* is no way to go through life, Antonia.” You’ll have to follow the link to see what the asterisk is for.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis: “I hardly hear the the quiet, do you?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: And Rachel Lucas is back, too. Be very afraid, Antonia. The dead have risen!

MORE: Jason van Steenwyck notes a factual error and suggests who to contact about it.

MORE: James Lileks: “The guns fall silent, because we’re reloading.”

HOW BADLY IS THE LOS ANGELES TIMES SPINNING THE WAR? Eugene Volokh mercilessly dissects a story by Esther Schrader from today’s L.A. Times and then, with help from his readers, dissects it some more. (“That the LA Times is eager to paint our military situation as darkly as possible is probably not a big surprise.”)

It seems that once the press herd decides on a storyline, the facts don’t matter. So why bother even using reporters?

NOT MUCH BLOGGING THIS WEEKEND, as my new nephew is visiting the Knoxville family for the next couple of weeks, while my brother-in-law (a single dad) travels on business. He’s nine months old, and one of the most cheerful babies I’ve ever known. He crawls, and talks a bit. It turns out I haven’t forgotten how to give a bottle or change a diaper.

Donald Sensing, who as far as I know isn’t changing diapers, has some interesting stuff. Be sure to visit him. Belmont Club has some new and interesting posts, too, including a great suggestion about the Iraqi Olympic soccer team. Plus this: “The political storm over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and, to a lesser extent the decapitation of Nick Berg, has effaced the really important story in the Iraqi campaign: the US has just beaten back a major counteroffensive by Syria and Iran.”

Indeed. Back later.

JEFF JARVIS has some excellent suggestions for media organizations who want to do a better job covering Iraq:

If I were in charge of a bureau of reporters in Iraq — are you listening NY Times, Washington Post, FoxNews, NBC, CBS, ABC, Reuters, BBC? — I would assign one reporter, just one, to the rebuilding beat. . . .

I see no reporters covering the rest of life in Iraq. The stories would be easy to get; all you have to do is read a few of the Iraqi weblogs.

I just wonder if there are such organizations? Aside from the Christian Science Monitor (which, as Clayton Cramer notes, is “not generally thought of as a right-wing newspaper” but which seems to be trying harder to do actual reporting) there don’t seem to be many.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING SPEECH ON THE WAR ON TERROR by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong of Singapore. Excerpt:

The war against terrorism could shape the 21st Century in the same way as the Cold War defined the world before the fall of the Berlin Wall. To win, we must first clearly understand what we are up against. I am grateful to the Council on Foreign Relations for the opportunity to share my views on this important subject.

Terrorism is a generic term. Terrorist organisations such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or ETA in Spain are only of local concern. The virulent strain of Islamic terrorism is another matter altogether. It is driven by religion. Its ideological vision is global. It is most dangerous. The communists fought to live whereas the jihadi terrorists fight to die, and live in the next world. . . .

But the threat remains. It stems from a religious ideology that is infused with an implacable hostility to all secular governments, especially the West, and in particular the US. Their followers want to recreate the Islam of 7th Century Arabia which they regard as the golden age. Their ultimate goal is to bring about a Caliphate linking all Muslim communities. Their means is jihad which they narrowly define as a holy war against all non-Muslims whom they call “infidels”.

Read the whole thing. And note this story about Saudi-funded Islamist schools promoting the violence in Thailand.

Saudi Arabia, ultimately, is the real problem. When are we going to do something about them?

UPDATE: A reader emails:

“Saudi Arabia, ultimately, is the real problem. When are we going to do something about them?”

We didn’t go after Iraq for WMDs, or primarily to free the Iraqi’s.

Everybody knows we have to cut off the flow of Saudi petrodollars to Islamic terror. But if we go after Saudi today, their oil production shuts down, the oil market melts down, the world economy crashes and millions die in the third world due to lack of fuel and fertilizer for food.

What to do? One, set up a secure base of operations for the eventual attack on Saudi (Hey, there’s a weak, easily conquerable county right next door to Saudi!) and two, secure an alternate supply of oil to temporarily substitute for Saudi oil when we do attack (Hey! The second largest oil reserve in the Middle East is in the same weak country, AND, it’s basically off the market, except for Oil-For-Food, so grabbing it won’t wreck the oil markets! A twofer!! Can’t pass this up!)

What I believe to be the ultimate Bush strategy will take years to set up (especially getting oil production online), will work (maybe even without firing a shot, once we’re set up, the Saudis will be cornered) and will accomplish the goal of cutting off the flow of oil money to terrorists without killing millions, and maybe start the Middle east on the road to democracy (but that isn’t necessary for the strategy to work).

Iraq cannot become another Vietnam, since the Iraqi resistance has no superpower sugar daddy resupplying it, unlike Vietnam. Iraqi resistance will ultimately peter out, due to lack of supplies. Saddam’s weapons caches will inevitably be used up.

Syria is boxed in, Iranians will either overthrow the mullahs themselves, cutting off Iranian terror funding, or they will get the bomb, at which point Israel will nuke them out of self preservation. If God loves Iran, the mullahs will get overthrown first.

Interesting and, I think, mostly correct. Nonetheless, we should be attacking the Saudis’ support for terror in a more immediate way.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Holsinger spelled out the whole plan in 2002.

MORE: The Saudis are trying to buy protection from the French — it didn’t work for Saddam, did it?

MY SISTER LIVES OUT IN THE BOONIES of Sevier County, which is kind of a drag since it’s not that close to me.

She lived in town until a few months ago, and I miss having her close by.

But she gets to enjoy views like this one from her back porch, so it’s easy to understand why she likes it.

Hope you’re having a nice weekend. If you’re bored, go read this very interesting Iraqi blog post from Mohammed of Iraq the Model. It hits a somewhat different note than some of the stuff you’ve been hearing lately.

(More semi-rural bliss here.) Back later.

ROGER SIMON HAS A SCOOP regarding horrific Iraq prison videos that are about to come out.

DONALD SENSING HAS A ROUNDUP OF SCANDALS INVOLVING UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING FORCES and it’s pretty damning stuff. I knew about most of these, but seeing them all together in one place is, well, pretty damning.

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT THE MIRROR, but this is certainly the kind of forthright admission of error (for its publication of fake photos regarding Iraqi prisoner abuse) that we don’t see enough of in the news business.

The Mirror’s actual <a href=”apology contains a certain amount of weaseling, but in light of the front page I’m not going to complain too much.

I think that some American papers could learn from this example. And I can’t help noting how often media people — from the BBC in the Gilligan scandal, to The Mirror and The Globe this week — have gotten themselves into humiliating positions as a result of being too anxious to run things that they hope will make the war effort look bad.

And, speaking of the Globe, Sherrie Gossett, who broke the fake-photo story there, says that yesterday’s Ombudsman column was dishonest and is a case of “playing dumb to save face.”

QU QLUX QAEDA: A worthwhile point.

BLACKFIVE HAS A LETTER FROM A MARINE IN FALLUJAH — and reminds us that tomorrow is Armed Forces Day.

WANT TO KNOW ABOUT HIDDEN TAX ISSUES IN THE FRASIER FINALE? Of course you do! And TaxProf’s got you covered — with special bonus links to discussions of tax issues in Extreme Makeover and in the Friends finale, too!

AGAINST TORTURE: Phil Carter has an interesting article in Slate.

I share his opposition to torture, as I noted back when Alan Dershowitz was floating the idea.

And like Phil, I’m so opposed to torture that I’m against it even when it’s done by non-Americans. Now if we can just get the rest of the world to go along.

HEH. INDEED.

AN INTERESTING OPEN LETTER to people who are finding blogs while looking for links to the Nick Berg video.

WHAT WMD? THESE, I guess:

Tehran to unveil plaque denouncing Germany’s supply of chemical weapons during 1980s

Iranian authorities plan to erect a plaque outside the German embassy on Friday denouncing Germany’s contribution to Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons arsenal. . . .

The head of the city council, Mehdi Chamran, demanded the German government apologize to the Iranian nation and to the victims of the chemical weapons and their families.

Heh.

A CALL FOR SEN. CARL LEVIN TO RESIGN over prison abuse.

UPDATE: More here.

MIRROR EDITOR GONE OVER FAKED IRAQ PHOTOS:

Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has been sacked following pressure over faked photos of soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner.

The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment earlier told a press conference the Mirror had to apologise for running the pictures and endangering British troops.

A statement from the Mirror said it had fallen victim to a “calculated and malicious hoax”. The Mirror board said it would be “inappropriate” for Morgan to continue. . . .

Deputy leader and foreign affairs spokesman, Michael Ancram, said: ”Looking at the facts objectively, this is the right thing for Piers Morgan to have done.

“The photos that were published in the Daily Mirror have done great damage to the reputation of our troops, who are serving under some of the most difficult conditions in Iraq.”

Earlier Colonel Black, a former regiment commander of the QLR, said the pictures put lives in danger and acted as a “recruiting poster” for al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, here’s the Boston Globe’s ombudsman on its own fake-photo scandal. They’re still not coming right out and admitting that the photos are bogus, though. But there’s this: “We are not firing anybody.” Here’s a story from Editor & Publisher, too.

Dan Kennedy has more, and observes:

Where [Globe ombudsman] Chinlund falls short is in her narrowly stubborn insistence that because she couldn’t find the porn photos on the Internet, she can’t verify that Turner and Kambon were indeed passing off porn shots as evidence of American atrocities.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

I remain surprised that this has gotten relatively little attention from the media-ethics watchdogs. Somehow I think that if FoxNews were snookered by porn we’d be hearing more about it.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Walter emails:

While the Ombudsman for the Globe does not say the photos are bogus, she
does say they are “unauthenticated”. She blames miscommunications,
deadlines, and all the other usual stuff, but I sent her a letter asking her
a simple question:

“Would the Globe have been as careless about authenticity, fact-checking and communication if we were talking about pictures purporting to show Senator Kennedy doing beer bongs on Chappaquiddick in 1969?”

Because if she wants some, I can make some up and have them to her post
haste.

Heh. Meanwhile Stephen O’Brien emails:

Recurring theme: If the Globe had anyone in the newsroom even vaguely familiar with the military they would have immediately recognized the photo as fake. It wasn’t even a close fake. Since when are the soldiers in Baghdad wearing woodland green? And the haircuts? The footwear? They didn’t even try to make it realistic, and the Globe took it hook, line and sinker. It’s like a Rorschach test: you see what you want to see.

This isn’t the first time military ignorance has led to humiliation for media outlets. And reader Douglas Morris notes a real-world example of media skepticism when it suits their purpose:

In your bits on what verification the Boston Globe, et al., would employ for a Kennedy tryst, howzabout the immediate denunciations that happened with that Jane Fonda & John Kerry PhotoShopped pic?

Yeah, they didn’t run that one without checking.

STILL MORE: Here’s Cosmo Macero’s column from the Boston Herald on this event, which he’s posted on his blog so that you can read it without subscribing:

Globe editor Martin Baron deserves credit for acting quickly.

Yet the original decision – by three unnamed desk editors – to publish the photo and story suggests a significant breakdown in institutional news judgment on Morrissey Boulevard.

Even the most rookie radio producers in Boston know when to pull the plug on Sadiki.

Moreover, Slack’s copy should have triggered a kill switch – loaded as it was with expressed doubts about the photos’ authenticity. . . .

The story may just have been too good a fit with the Globe’s news agenda to pass up – a localized angle on the outrage over actual abuses committed by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

But you’ve got to know when you’re being had.

Indeed. And it’s perhaps worth noting here — as Dan Kennedy does in the item linked above — that the Globe’s editorial on this event is more forthright than the ombudsman column.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is talking sense. “We are doing to ourselves what the enemy could not.”

Well, some people are trying to do that to us, anyway.

UPDATE: Great quote: “Our current struggle is the first in our history as a nation in which the roll call of the dead contains a majority of civilians. This is our enemy’s goal, for they are murderers, not soldiers.”

More thoughts here.

THINGS I’M NOT WRITING ABOUT, but that people keep asking about:

1. The Vanity Fair/Graydon Carter story: Don’t care; if you want more, go to Drudge.

2. Air America’s Randi Rhodes’ calling for President Bush to be shot: If you make a death threat on a radio network no one listens to, does it make a sound?

3. Further evidence for a Saddam / 9-11 link: It’s interesting, but how many minds will it change?

X-PRIZE UPDATE: Another flight for Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One. And this is cool:

Given all the rocket plane activity at the Mojave Airport, steps have been taken to have the facility certified as a spaceport.

Stuart Witt, General Manager of the Mojave Airport, envisions the site busily handling the horizontal launchings and landings of reusable spacecraft.

Witt said the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is reviewing an application to license Mojave Airport as an inland spaceport. In fact, the airport is already a natural center for research and development and certification programs, such as the rocket plane work of Scaled Composites and XCOR Aerospace.

Bring it on!

UPDATE: Here’s a very cool photo, via the Mojave Airport website.

ANOTHER STORY OF FAILURE BY THE U.N.:

While the UN dithers in Sudan, the people of Chad struggle to avert disaster.

In the past year, Tine’s population has more than doubled as refugees have poured out of the Darfur region of western Sudan, fleeing Arab militiamen mounted on horses and camels who are waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against their black Muslim neighbours. . . .

The United Nations has described the war in Darfur as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis at the moment.

It is running an emergency relief programme for Darfur refugees but will not operate on the border, saying it is too dangerous.

Families have been waiting for up to two months, their lives at risk from shelling, cross-border militia raids and water shortages, to transfer to UN camps 20 miles into Chad.

Aid workers from other agencies have accused the UN of inefficiency and perhaps worse.

“What is going on here is very dark,” said one western aid worker at a non-UN agency.

“Money seems to have disappeared. Who knows whether it has been stolen or whether it has just disappeared in the UN machine. The inefficiency is astounding.”

Sigh. A United Nations that wasn’t a corrupt and inept dictators’ club would be a good thing. Unfortunately, that’s not the United Nations we have.

UPDATE: More on the undercovered Sudan story here.