THE GUARDIAN: Surging U.S. Economy Leads to Global Recovery:

The US economy strengthened considerably in December, leading the global economic recovery and leaving Europe and Japan behind, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said today. . . .

The upbeat assessment of the US economy from the OECD came just hours ahead of a meeting of finance ministers from the G7 group of leading industrialised countries, with the weakness of the dollar the prime subject of concern.

Global recovery would be a good thing.

IN RESPONSE to my post on the Nikon D70, below, a reader suggests the Nikon Coolpix 8700 instead. It does look, er, cool — and it does 640×480 30fps video with sound! (But in Quicktime). No interchangeable lenses, though. And another reader sends this link to an article saying that it’s not time to give up film yet. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that has kept me waffling.

UPDATE: Coolpix 8700 review here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Billy Rawl emails:

Thanks a lot! Your item about the Coolpix 8700 is likely to cost me $999.95 (plus tax). Since most of my pictures are inside shots, I’m going to have to purchase an external flash unit too.

InstaPundit — helping to speed the economic recovery since 2001!

JAMES LILEKS mentions Animotion’s Obsession video, but what he doesn’t tell you is that you can see it on the Web here. I love his description of lead singer Astrid (“who looked like a thermometer on which someone had glued two basketballs”). He also disses Yes, which would constitute an insult to Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein (cousin of Yes member Trevor Rabin and — weirdly — also a distant Kennedy cousin, which is some sort of bizarre world-bridging feat) except that I think Trevor was still playing with Cinema when Owner of a Lonely Heart was made.

But he likes The Romantics’ What I Like About You, which I love, so all is forgiven.

UPDATE: Numerous Yes fans have already emailed to say that, er, yes, Trevor Rabin is playing on Owner of a Lonely Heart. Er, James, you really don’t want to cross Doug. He’s the J. Noble Daggett of the 21st Century. But now here’s a musician who really isn’t getting the respect he thinks he deserves.

I DIDN’T GO TO SEE JOHN EDWARDS: I had a teleconference this afternoon and just wasn’t up for going downtown. But Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein was there and reports via cellphone that Edwards got an overflow crowd. He says they played Creedence’s “Travelin’ Band” and John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World,” which is worth a few cool points.

TONY BLAIR, BLOGGER? Why the hell not?

ROGER SIMON has thoughts on the Moscow subway bombing, and what it portends for America.

WINDS OF CHANGE has an Iran Briefing that collects a lot of news that you might otherwise miss. Heck, who am I kidding — you’d almost certainly miss this stuff otherwise.

JEFF JARVIS offers an interesting spin report regarding media coverage of the latest economic news. It’s quite interesting to see the different slants on the same data.

THIS REPORT IS INTERESTING:

New footage has been released purporting to show Saddam Hussein paying large sums of money to a terrorist group.

Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Nicholson says the footage is “incontrovertible proof” of the former Iraqi dictator’s links to international terrorism.

It appears to show the former Iraqi President plotting crimes and paying money to members of an international terrorist group.

Let’s see if this pans out.

A PACK NOT A HERD: Homeland Security remains a joke, but alert airline passengers noticed a felon sneaking on board a plane at LAX:

Airport cameras captured it all: On a busy morning at Los Angeles International Airport last month, a convicted felon wearing a sweatshirt, sunglasses and gloves strolled unnoticed past two security checkpoints in Terminal 5 and walked onto a jumbo jet without a ticket.

Kareem Thomas, a 19-year-old Decatur, Ga., resident on probation for burglary, was discovered hiding in an airplane restroom by passengers and was apprehended by police before takeoff.

(Emphasis added.) One of our faculty candidates was on that flight, and told us the story — I was surprised that it didn’t get any attention at the time. He said that a passenger noticed the guy walk right past the ticket-taker and onto the plane, and followed him to see him sneak into the rest room.

Your (rather large number of) tax dollars at work. Maybe we should have pushed harder on that Impeach Norm Mineta campaign. Because, so far, the people who are paying for their seats seem to be the main source of airline security, not the people we’re paying to protect us.

DAVID KASPAR REPORTS that Gerhard Schroeder is on the way out as party leader. Note the picture: Efforts to, um, elevate himself by attacking Bush and America do not seem to have worked.

CASH AND KERRY: Wonkette wonders why kitesurfing is so expensive.

INSPECTORS LIED: People died. Fortunately, not nearly as many as would have died had Saddam remained in power.

DIGITAL CAMERA UPDATE: Here’s a review of the forthcoming Nikon D70. Sounds pretty good — I’m still surfing the price-performance curve before I replace my aging 35mm SLRs, but this looks like a worthy candidate. (Via Gizmodo).

TOM MAGUIRE has lots of interesting posts. Just keep scrolling.

FREDERICK TURNER says there’s a new political realignment going on, but it’s not about Democrats and Republicans.

ROBERT MUSIL notes that the Associated Press has backed away from the “imminent threat” claim noted below, but without confessing its error — and without noting the inconsistencies in its own coverage. And scroll down on Musil’s site for a lot of other interesting media criticism.

DSL’S OUT: Back on dialup. Dialup sucks.

THIS IS INTERESTING: You can donate to Presidential candidates, not just bloggers, via Amazon now. You can see how much each has raised, too. Bush is currently way behind Kerry, Clark, and Edwards. Here’s an easy “horserace” item for bored political journalists!

SOMEBODY JUST SENT ME this link to a post by Paul Boutin on the Wired piece he did about InstaPundit. But he’s awfully nice when he writes: “Glenn was great about editing the piece at least five times.”

The reason it took five times was that I’m a boring guy. At least, the original idea was to do a “tick-tock” piece where they tracked what I did for a day. I was dubious, but agreed to write down a day’s worth of doings. When they read it, they said, “you’re right — you are too boring to profile that way. . . .” Well, a collection of time-stamped items reading “Sat at computer. Posted to blog. Drank coffee. Taught a class. Sat at computer. Posted to blog. Drank coffee.” can only be so interesting.

Mmm. Coffee. Somebody asked me what it’s like to be called an “Internet rock star,” too. It’s just like being a real rock star, except for the absence of groupies, limousines, Gulfstream jets, and huge royalty checks. Otherwise, pretty much the same.