MY BROTHER’S BAND, COPPER, will be playing at The Annex in Madison, Wisconsin tonight. If you’re in the area, drop by!

A REPORT FROM THE FRONT LINES of the comfy-chair revolution: My TechCentralStation column is up.

UPDATE: Reader Chris Driggers emails:

As a resident of Athens and a certified tech geek by trade, I can attest to the accuracy of your observations. The Cloud is a recent phenomenon, but even before it was put in place, you couldn’t go anywhere downtown without having to elbow your way through throngs of people with their laptops. I began to notice that establishments were actually paying money for electricians and carpenters to rearrange their floor plans to accommodate more ‘walking offices’, such as installing more power outlets. And even before the Cloud was up, most places that catered to loiterers already had some type of free wi-fi.

What strikes me as more significant is the fact that places that are not located downtown are installing wi-fi and actively catering to folks like me. I think by limiting your comparison to the chain bookstores, you may be missing the real growth that is taking place in this area. Wi-fi is so cheap for a business to install that it really damages a business not to have it, and especially local businesses that may be competing with chains are quick to take advantage of this edge. We have a Starbuck’s and they are using a type of wi-fi that is not free, and you see fewer people with laptops sitting in there.

Speaking as a very busy computer tech, anything that keeps me from having to go back to the office to check my email is a good thing. I can go for days without having to go back to the office. I let my pda synchronize whenever I have something new and I stay on top of my appointments. Hopefully this trend will lead towards a more flexible and comfortable work environment.

Indeed. And the free model seems to be the way to go. I’m in a Barnes & Noble right now, where they’ve (finally) installed wi-fi — but it’s pay wi-fi so I’m using the Verizon cellmodem instead. And worse, it’s pay wi-fi on a different provider than the Borders uses, adding to the hassle factor. It does seem that the local businesses have caught on faster to the free-factor: Most of the free wi-fi places in Knoxville are independent, rather than chains.

Meanwhile, reader John MacDonald emails this link to an article on the trend I describe, which calls it “hotelling.”

I DIDN’T SET UP A TEAM for this competition, but don’t let that stop you from giving generously to the Spirit of America’s blogger challenge.

UPDATE: It’s endorsed by The Motley Fool, too!

INSTAPUNDIT’S AFGHANISTAN PHOTO-CORRESPONDENT, Major John Tammes, sends these photos: “Charikar (population 130,000ish) is the capital of Parwan Province. I happen to like the place and the people there have always been good to us. Here are some scenes of daily life.” He also reports: “On the way to Kabul, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld came through our humble base yesterday. The VP had a bunch of highly…er, protective…Secret Service folks, but he was nice enough to those that did manage to get to meet him. Rumsfeld seems totally at ease with the troops – and they like him. Really it is a mixture of respect and liking. He really conveys that liking and respect back to everyone. There might be things on which to take issue with both men, but you cannot get away from the fact that they respect us and value what we are doing here.”

Somewhat at odds with this portrayal by The Guardian’s Steve Bell. But then Major Tammes was there, and Bell wasn’t. (Via Clive Davis)

And I like this line from Cheney, which is also at odds with Bell’s portrayal:

Earlier, Mr Cheney rallied American troops in a speech at Bagram airbase, north of Kabul. “Freedom still has enemies here in Afghanistan, and you are here to make those enemies miserable,” he said.

Actually, judging by Bell’s cartoon, it’s working . . . .

UPDATE: People wonder what kind of camera Maj. Tammes is using. It’s an Olympus C-750. He sends me the full-sized images, and I resize ’em, usually (but not always) adding a bit of color correction and unsharp-mask. And for those of you doing digital photography, I want to stress that unsharp mask is your friend. Nearly all digital images benefit from a judicious application. Depending on your photo editing program, it’s probably under either “filters” or “effects,” and it can really add sharpness and impact to photos that are a bit soft, especially after resizing. Just don’t overdo it.

UKRAINE UPDATE:

MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday.
Doctors at Vienna’s exclusive Rudolfinerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Mr Yushchenko’s face disfigured with cysts and lesions, Nikolai Korpan told The Times in a telephone interview.

Who could be behind such a dastardly act? Perhaps we should consult an expert on free and fair elections.

DID ACORN re-elect Bush?

THE RED ENSIGN STANDARD: A roundup of postings by Canadian bloggers.

You can hear Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle taking on Canadian law professor Michael Mandel (who wanted President Bush arrested as a war criminal) on David Gold’s radio show, too. Kathy is painfully polite; Mandel is painfully obtuse. (Damian Penny’s comment: “Howie Mandel would put up a more intellectually challenging argument than this guy.”)

A LITTLE LATE FOR CHRISTMAS, but here’s the page for Mark Steyn’s new book.

JOANNE MARINER OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH writes on “How the Abusive Protect the Repressive at the U.N.” It’s not just UNScam:

Sudan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Russia: one thing these countries have in common is that their governments violate human rights flagrantly and systematically. But another thing they share, astonishingly enough, is membership on the U.N. body meant to monitor and prevent human rights violations.

Pakistan, China, Egypt, Congo–the list goes on. When it comes to rights-abusing countries, the 53-member U.N. Commission on Human Rights has plenty of depth. . . .

Groups such as Human Rights Watch have been complaining about the U.N. commission’s membership problem for years. The focus of the abusive governments on the commission, Human Rights Watch warns, is on “minimizing the exposure of their own human rights record rather than on stigmatizing the worst human rights violations in the world and devising methods to bring about effective responses to these abuses.”

The recently-released report on the future of the United Nations deserves credit for acknowledging this issue, except that the problem is clearly too glaring to ignore. Eight months ago, at its last annual session, the commission’s trend toward rejecting censure of its most abusive members was unmistakable.

The U.N.’s claim to moral legitimacy seems rather shaky.

IS NOAM SCHEIBER CALLING HARRY REID A RACIST? Or just a dope?

THE DLC HAS “CLARIFIED” the piece on Kofi Annan that I linked to earlier, robbing it of most of its impact, I’m afraid:

(CORRECTION: the original sub-headline of this New Dem Daily mistakenly summarized the piece as calling for Kofi Annan’s resignation. Actually, in calling for the secretary general to “step aside,” we simply meant to convey that he should remove himself from any involvement in the oil-for-food investigation, and let Paul Volcker, a man of unquestioned integrity and ability, conduct it independently and publicly release his findings. We deeply regret this error.)

Or as Emily Litella would say: “Never mind.”

UPDATE: A contradiction is noted.

TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: This week’s Blog Mela is up!

RICH LOWRY: “The AARP’s most fundamental principle is ‘Get all you can, while you can — young people be damned.'”

Well, yeah.

IT’S A BAD DAY FOR PAUL KRUGMAN. Ouch.

MARK STEYN ON SELF-DEFENSE IN BRITAIN — or, more accurately, the lack thereof:

Just over 10 per cent of US burglaries are “hot” burglaries, and in my part of the world it’s statistically insignificant: there is virtually zero chance of a New Hampshire home being broken into while the family are present. But in England and Wales it’s more than 50 per cent and climbing. Which is hardly surprising given the police’s petty, well-publicised pursuit of those citizens who have the impertinence to resist criminals.

These days, even as he or she is being clobbered, the more thoughtful British subject is usually keeping an eye (the one that hasn’t been poked out) on potential liability. Four years ago, Shirley Best, proprietor of the Rolander Fashion emporium, whose clients include Zara Phillips, was ironing some clothes when the proverbial two youths showed up. They pressed the hot iron into her flesh, burning her badly, and then stole her watch. “I was frightened to defend myself,” said Miss Best. “I thought if I did anything I would be arrested.” There speaks the modern British crime victim.

Perhaps she should have beheaded them on TV. Then people would have blamed America! Dave Kopel has more on this topic over at GlennReynolds.com:

Thanks to strict criminal laws, working conditions in Great Britain are the safest in the Western world—that is, if your profession is burglary. On the other hand, if you’re a law-abiding citizen quietly staying at home, you’re at much greater risk in the nearly gun-free United Kingdom, than in the gun-happy United States of America.

Self-defense is a human right. Its denial is monstrous.

INTERESTING DEBATE ON JOURNALISTIC PRIVILEGE over at Legal Affairs, though so far not enough attention has been given to the question of why this profession deserves a constitutionally based privilege. Rather, it seems to be assumed that we face “a choice between a parade of journalists going to federal prison or citizens contenting themselves with a daily portion of news that comes only from official sources.” Why is that, exactly?

PAT BUCHANAN AND NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN: Singing from the same choirbook?

UGH. For those wondering why blogging has been lighter than usual, I’m at about this stage of Stephen Green’s illness, though I was clever enough to try his treatment option three last night, and thus got a decent night’s sleep.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “A next-generation leukemia pill designed to help patients not cured by the successful drug Gleevec works even better than doctors had hoped, researchers said Sunday. The new drug, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb put 86 percent of patients who tried it into remission — meaning signs of their cancer disappeared, the researchers said.”

WOMEN AND JEWELERS: this new Amazon film with Darryl Hannah explores a question that has been raised at InstaPundit recently. I like the answer.

Review here.

UPDATE: Review link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry.

DAVID BROOKS: “People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.”

UPDATE: Interesting response to Brooks, here.

DAVE KOPEL IS GUESTBLOGGING THIS WEEK over at GlennReynolds.com.

THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL MEDIA: Ernest Miller interviews University of Virginia Law Professor Tim Wu on copyright and communications, over at Corante.

IPODS HAVE REALLY TAKEN OFF, and I’ve decided, as a Christmas present to myself, to replace my iRiver with one. So do I get the iPod mini or the 40 GB model? (I’m guessing that the 20 GB model is a worst-of-both-worlds compromise, but I could be wrong.) I’m leaning toward the mini at the moment. Any advice?

BLOGGING FROM IRAQ: Don’t miss this week’s Carnival of the Liberated, a roundup of posts by Iraqi bloggers. And also check out Life in This Girl’s Army, the blog of Sgt. Lizzie in Iraq. She was recently wounded, but will soon be redeploying with her unit. Her reaction: “GOING BACK!!! YAY . . . My mother now firmly believes I have lost my ever living mind.”