REPORTING FROM FALLUJAH: It’s not very reliable.

“ANTI-DANDER SHAMPOO?” No, not the veterinary kind.

JUST GAVE BLOOD as part of the annual Blue/Orange blood drive competition with the University of Kentucky. The list of questions they ask just keeps getting longer, and I continue to wonder how much good (or harm) it’s doing, given that as a regular donor I get plaintive “we’re short of blood” calls on a regular basis now. (More on this here and here.) At any rate, they’re screening out so many people that I encourage everyone who is eligible to donate — there aren’t that many of us left.

One interesting observation: This is the first time I’ve donated on campus where there were more men than women giving. Usually it’s quite lopsided in the other direction. One of the techs there told me that it’s been that way this year; no idea why.

SOMETIMES I WONDER what people did to amuse themselves before there was PhotoShop.

(Via Physics Geek).

ASYMMETRICAL INFORMATION: No, not the blog. The situation, as described by Cathy Seipp:

One of the election lessons for Democrats is that while the Left doesn’t understand the Right, the Right can’t help but understand the Left, because the Left is in charge of pop culture. Urban blue staters can go their entire lives happily innocent of the world of church socials and duck hunting and Boy Scout meetings, but small-town red staters are exposed to big-city blue-state values every time they turn on the TV.

That’s true.

OLIVER STONE’S PREEMPTIVE STRIKE: Seems plausible.

UPDATE: Steve Sturm is using Michael Moore as a benchmark for Stone:

Moore pulled in something in the ballpark of $150+ million – for a movie that didn’t play too well with red audiences.

So, let’s set that as the bar – anything less than $150 million and Stone can’t blame America for his lousy movie… not that he won’t try, of course…

I hear it’s a stinker. Stone’s remarks suggest I’m right.

THE TRANSATLANTIC INTELLIGENCER is a new blog looking at U.S. / European relations.

ANTISEMITISM ON THE LEFT: David Bernstein observes: “Folks on the Left have been throwing around the term ‘Likudnik’ to refer to any non-left-wing Jew who differs with them on foreign policy, even when the relevant issue has nothing directly to do with Israel, Iraq being exhibit A. . . . Not surprisingly, the phrase ‘Likudnik’ is gradually becoming a general anti-Semitic term for Jews whose opinions one doesn’t like.”

I guess they’re just taking their cues from the United Nations.

HMM: “North Korea’s Dear Leader Less Dear:”

North Korea’s official radio and news agency has dropped the honorific “Dear Leader” from its reports on the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il.

The report by Radiopress, a Japanese news agency that monitors North Korea’s radio, follows news this week that portraits of the North Korean leader have been removed from homes and offices.

“Powell: North Korea May Be Easing Stance on Nuclear Talks:”

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says North Korea may be ready to resume multi-party talks to defuse a crisis over its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Powell told reporters en route to Chile for the APEC summit that the United States has seen signals coming out of North Korea where it said it never insisted the crisis be solved only through negotiations with the United States.

What’s going on? Beats me. Roger Simon has more thoughts.

HOWARD KURTZ has the best one-sentence take on the Tom Delay stuff I mentioned yesterday: “If lots of people are really getting indicted without cause, shouldn’t the House hold hearings on it, rather than worry about shielding indicted Republican leaders?”

Yes they are, and yes they should. But no, they won’t. Here’s an explanation.

ANOTHER DISCONNECT between news and editorial at the Times. Jon Henke suggests: “Time Saving Tip: Run N.Y. Times Editorials on Corrections page.”

The wall of separation was supposed to keep editorial opinion from infiltrating the news — not to keep factual information from infiltrating the editorials. Recent evidence suggests, though, that it’s doing more of the latter than the former. . . .

MARK CUBAN HAS THOUGHTS on the FCC as marketing partner.

AUSTIN BAY writes on Arafat’s true legacy.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, stories about the real cause of Arafat’s death abound. Here’s the official Arafat death Canard-o-Matic (shouldn’t Mad magazine get royalties for these things?) and Israelpundit has been following the rumors for a while.

JIM BENNETT has a website for his new book, The Anglosphere Challenge. But where’s the blog?

By the way, if you follow the book link you can see an interesting review by Lexington Green of the ChicagoBoyz blog.

ALEX TABARROK writes that space tourism isn’t ready for takeoff: “The problem is not the monetary expense, there are enough millionaires with a yearning for adventure to support an industry. The problem is safety. Simply put, rockets remain among the least safe means of transportation ever invented.” That’s true, though some people also have a fairly high risk threshold for voluntarily adventurous activities.

UPDATE: David Nishimura agrees with me, and has the numbers to prove it.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT looks back and asks: “If there had been no Internet, what would have been different in this election?”

Jim Geraghty, who’s back from his post-election vacation, has some related thoughts.

And Mystery Pollster has more on exit polls, and says that there’s no evidence of electronic-voting fraud — apparently, the exit polls were just as wrong everywhere, regardless of voting method. (Here’s the original item, an interview with exit-pollster Warren Mitofsky, that he’s writing about.)

WHY THEO VAN GOGH WAS MURDERED:

But why kill Theo Van Gogh, of all the people who have expressed hostility to radical Islam? Perhaps it was mere chance, but more likely it resulted from his work’s exposure of a very raw nerve of Muslim identity in Western Europe: the abuse of women. This abuse is now essential for people of Muslim descent for maintaining any sense of separate cultural identity in the homogenizing solution of modern mass society.

In fact, Islam is as vulnerable in Europe to the forces of secularization as Christianity has proved to be. The majority of Muslims in Europe, particularly the young, have a weak and tenuous connection to their ancestral religion. Their level and intensity of belief is low; pop music interests them more. Far from being fanatics, they are lukewarm believers at best. Were it not for the abuse of women, Islam would go the way of the Church of England.

Hmm. I’m not sure of that last, but read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A long and interesting post on Europe and Islam, including this observation: “If European politicians are already thinking in terms of fighting against the USA, then they are not going to be in any hurry to oppose the wave of Islamism which is currently the USA’s most active enemy. Just as France supported North American rebels against the British Empire in the 1770s, and Britain and France supported the Confederacy against the Union in the 1860s, these Europeans are likely to be sympathetic to any minor power that is likely to weaken the USA.” That last “proxy war” point has been made before. To the extent that this is actually European strategy, it strikes me as deeply unwise. But then, deeply unwise European strategy has been at the root of most of the world’s troubles over the past several centuries.

SOME MORE BABY PICTURES: Various people email to say that I was unfair to my brother in my earlier post. Well, you can decide which of us is the smart one, and which is the good-looking one. (Though one of his students once opined that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between us, which we both chose to take as a compliment. . . .)

And here’s a picture of Victoria, who’s clearly better looking than either of us.

There’s no need even to get a second opinion on that. As Stephen Green once opined, both of us Reynolds boys have married well.

We wouldn’t argue.

UPDATE: Robert Racansky emails: “Your brother looks like you, but with a beard. Sort of like Spock & Mirror Universe Spock.”

I find that observation, er, fascinating . . .

SOME BLOGGERS ARE CRITICIZING KEVIN SITES: Power Line is defending him, and so is The Confederate Yankee.

UPDATE: A related post from Donald Sensing.

JUST SAW JEFF JARVIS ON AARON BROWN, debating Rebecca Hagelin of Heritage regarding broadcast indecency and the Nicolette Sheridan Monday Night Football commercial.

I saw the commercial for the first time in that broadcast, and I have to say that it was an absolute disgrace, and that it should not have been allowed to air. It didn’t show nearly enough of Nicolette Sheridan to justify all the hoopla, and that’s a tragedy because, despite her perhaps overdone plastic surgery, she’s still hot.

The Aaron Brown show was good TV, though. Although I’ve chastised Jeff in the past for making the FCC’s indecency crusade — which, remember, has been led by a Democrat — into some sort of Bush/Religious Right campaign, he’s refined his approach since. As I’ve said before, I’d be happy to lose the broadcast indecency standards, which have no First Amendment basis. I have to say, though, that if you have standards at all I’m not shocked to see the Howard Stern and Janet Jackson complaints. (The Sheridan spot, however, really did seem quite tame and I don’t understand the fuss.)

Jeff also made a good move by in essence accusing Hagelin of being anti-American — he said there’s nothing evil or raunchy about American culture. Nice rhetorical move, and basically a good point.

To me, though, the whole debate seems a bit surreal. Broadcast TV is rapidly diminishing in importance, and broadcast radio isn’t far behind. It’s not yet like debating buggy-whip design, but it’s heading that way.

UPDATE: Reader Chuck Pelto doesn’t like this post:

All of our ‘best’ television glamorizes adultery. There’s nothing higher in our culture than sex. Nothing at all.

And just what denomination of “christian” are you? I want to make sure I avoid that particular group. They’ve got serious problems if you are representative of their beliefs.

I’m a Presbyterian. But I’m not very happy with the growing antisemitism I see in the leadership.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Perhaps the real sacrilege here was against football. Reader Sam Lindsey emails:

Actually, I didn’t see the promo when it aired, just replays. I agree with you that she is still hot. However, I thought the spot was notable for its tastelessness; if I want to see sexy sluts, I will tune to “Desperate Housewives”; when I want to watch football, I want to see football, not a mix of the two.

By the way, I think everyone is complaining to the wrong person; complain to the NFL, not the FCC.

That last point is a good one.

A READER JUST EMAILED that blogs are playing a role in tonight’s West Wing. I’m guessing bloggers won’t be the heroes of the episode. But since I don’t generally watch the show, I could be wrong.

UPDATE: More here. It’s supposed to be Wonkette?

LETTER FROM A MARINE — it’s a must-read.

UPDATE: More thoughts from military bloggers here. And read this, too. And this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a link-rich roundup on the subject, with this observation:

This is an information war; just as Al-Jazeera didn’t play the Italian or CARE snuff film murders and nobody showed the pictures of the horror we stopped in Falluja, and just as the pornographic obsession with Abu Ghraib dominated media, this will become a way to weaken the American center of gravity of public support. This is a warfare tactic as surely as cryptography use or artillery employment.

I wish that wasn’t true.

THE TIMES OF LONDON is making its content free online now. I recommend reading this story in its entirety:

Such is the fear that the heavily armed militants held over Fallujah that many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the US marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city.

A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night.

“I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months,” he said, trembling. Nearby, a mosque courtyard had been used as a weapons store by the militants. . . .

The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.

“They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys,” said Iyad Assam, 24. “I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe.”

It was not just pedlars of alcohol or Western videos and women deemed improperly dressed who faced the militants’ wrath. Even residents who regard themselves as observant Muslims lived in fear because they did not share the puritan brand of Sunni Islam that the insurgents enforced.

These are Michael Moore’s “minutemen.” Read the whole thing. And here’s a claim that the U.S. press is soft-pedaling the terrorists’ behavior in Fallujah.

(WEB)VIDEO KILLED THE TV STAR: More thoughts on this subject over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Heh.

AIRBORNE WI-FI: I wrote about this a while back, and now it’s starting to happen. “With Lufthansa, you’ll eventually be able to circle the world without losing your broadband. Battery life, however, is another story.”