ALAN BRAIN: “Save ’em all, and let God sort ’em out.”

I LIKE HUGH HEWITT’S BLOG BOOK, and I think Hugh understands a lot about blogs, but I think that “intelligent design” theory is, um, highly unpersuasive. Rand Simberg critiques a recent post of Hugh’s on that subject.

UPDATE: Over at Volokh (permalink not working), Jim Lindgren writes:

One thing that strikes me about Intelligent Design is that it must have been much more intuitively appealing before the failure of socialism. Socialism in the 1920s–1940s was in part based on the idea that the world had become so complex that central planning was necessary to deal with this complexity. Yet Von Mises was arguing just the opposite, that as the world became more elaborate, no one could plan it. ID seems to be based on an assumption that most conservatives reject in the economic sphere–that as the economy gets more elaborate, to work well it must be the product of the intelligent design of a master planner.

Heh. Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt responds: “I do believe in Intelligent Design –in Christianity, actually– but the point of my posts yesterday was not to wade into those battles, but to underscore the Washington Post’s lousy reporting on the controversy in Dover, Pennsylvania.”

MORE: Hugh’s book is now up to #66 on Amazon, which to most authors would constitute sufficient proof that there is a God all by itself!

THE BELMONT CLUB:

In an abstract way, the information flows surrounding the Tsunami of December 2004 structurally resembled those preceding the Pearl Harbor and September 11 attacks. The raw data announcing the unfolding threat was there, yet the pattern so evident in hindsight was invisible to those who were not looking for it. But if tsunamis and asteroid strikes are rare events, they are comparatively more common than that still rarer object, the unprecedented event: the something that has never happened before. Threats like that can emerge suddenly out of chaotic systems, like WMD terrorism or new viral plagues. Against such events, specific precautions are impossible because no one can prepare for what cannot be foreseen. The real challenge is not so much to create a new dedicated network of staring systems against known threats but to tie current sensors to systems which are capable of cognition. The most valuable survival asset is situational awareness — the ability to recognize threats you have never seen before and respond in an evolving manner — and that capability has not yet come to the world as a whole.

Read the whole thing.

STATUTORY RAPE LAWS: WHAT A BUMMER! That was the title of a mock-article for the Yale Law Journal when I was in law school. But this post from The Volokh Conspiracy shows a strong degree of “progressive” support (back in the 1970s) for setting the age of consent at 12. That seems low to me, though I think 18 is likely too high. My thoughts here.

DIGITAL CAMERA ROUNDUP: Jeff Soyer has a review of a $19.99 digital camera — “My conclusions… Well, I’m not throwing away my Sony Mavica.” The pictures he’s posted don’t suck, though, especially when you consider the price.

Meanwhile, reader Steve Cooper emails that the photoblogging has done him some good: “Thanks for all the great info on the D70! I dropped my Nikon Pronea 6i on the sidewalk on Xmas Eve and I’m sad to say that it has taken its last picture (really was a GREAT camera). I ordered my D70 from Abe’s this morning thanks to some furious research on Xmas day which included reading nearly everything you had on the subject.”

The D70 rocks. Next, frequent source of useful links Jim Herd sends two interesting items: this story on Kodak designing its cameras to appeal to women: “The company’s big decision was to focus on low-priced, easy-to-use cameras that would appeal to women, who take the majority of snapshots, rather than Sony’s forte – shiny toys for gadget-loving men.” Reportedly, it paid off. On the other hand, the Insta-wife thinks my Sony is very handsome. (But the Kodaks are certainly easy to use — I gave this one to the 9-year-old insta-daughter for Christmas, and she’s loved it).

Herd also sends this link to the first review of the Fuji Finepix S3 Pro DSLR. (I had posted a link to an informal review by a NASA photo guy here.) Still a bit pricey for me at $2,499 — especially in light of the lukewarm review, which suggests that you just can’t see a lot of difference in the actual images from all this better technology — but the good news is that whatever technology is available at $2,500 this year will be available at $500 in 18 months. That’s why I love this stuff. Well, that, and because I’m one of those “gadget-loving men!”

ASTEROID UPDATE: I’m not sure of the reason, but the risk of impact has been downgraded to negligible. Good! (More here.)

UPDATE: More discussion at Slashdot.

PHIL BREDESEN FOR PRESIDENT? The Democrats could do worse.

BLOGGING THE TSUNAMI: Over at GlennReynolds.com I observe: “Many of the blogs involved have been gathering first-hand reports from the affected areas, via telephone and email. First-hand reports, interviews, historical and scientific perspectives — blogs are acting like news services.”

I think we’ll see more of that.

UPDATE: Here’s a tsunami news blog set up by bloggers from the affected region. Lots of links to charities that accept online donations.

FORTUNE: “Why There’s No Escaping the Blog.” Lots of interesting stuff on blogs from a corporate PR and marketing perspective.

The only way this story could be better for selling Hugh Hewitt’s new book on blogs, with its strong emphasis on blogs and business, would be if it, er, mentioned Hugh’s book . . . .

UPDATE: Well, he doesn’t really need the help, I guess, as he’s already up to #98 on Amazon.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now it’s up to #88. And all without a review in the New York Times. Kinda proves his point.

DANIEL DREZNER NOTES that the Tsunami death toll has been increased to 24,000 and has links to various places you can contribute to help out.

Tim Blair has more, too.

A LAWYER IN BAGHDAD: Interesting article on the difficulties involved in applying occupation law in Iraq with a degree of fidelity never before attempted by an occupying power. Here’s the author’s bio.

ANTI-AMERICANISM doesn’t even impress the hipsters anymore. Just listen to the dismissive treatment of Green Day in the December issue of Q Magazine, which I just noticed:

On the roof of a photographer’s studio in a corner of Hollywood so drab it gives Slugh a good name, the three members of Green Day are discussing whether or not to desecrate the American flag. Singer Billie Joe Armstrong, who is dressed in black shirt and skinny red tie, is cautious but keen, while bassis Mike Dirnt, who is bleached blond and much more aloof, is keener still.

“It means nothing to me,” he sneers. “Let’s burn the f*cking thing.”

Only drummer Tre Cool, who is normally the designated prankster of the three and who comes across like Bart Simpson made flesh, offers the lone cautionary voice. “Isn’t it, like, illegal?”

It is reluctantly agreed that Cool has a point. It’s all very well being punk insurrectionists but there is an album to promote, and nobody wants to face jail time. In the end, a compromise is reached. The matches stay intheir box, and instead Armstrong spraypaints the word IDIOT across the flag in large capital letters, grinning at this apparently considerable fate of derring-do.

“Apparently considerable feat of derring-do.” Ouch. Johnny Ramone crapped bigger than these guys, and everybody knows it.

But it’s not working with the fans, either, as apparently Green Day’s anti-Bush songs don’t go over as intended. From later in the same article:

The next night, Green Day perform their new album in its entirety at the Henry Fonda Theater in downtown Hollywood to a partisan crowd of heavily tattooed fans who, in truth, care more about some good old-fashioned slam dancing than any political rhetoric. Afterwards, one beery fan happily confesses that the track Boulevard of Broken Dreams brought tears to his eyes. “It’s about a girl, right?” he asks. And 47-year-old maintenance specialist Gary Lansdon hasn’t quite heeded their message either.

“I’m a Democrat myself,” he says, beaming brightly.

So he’ll be voting for Kerry?

“Oh, no,” he says, the smile fading. “No band will tell me what to do. I voted for Bush last time, and I’ll vote for him again. He’s doing a fine job.”

“No band will tell me what to do.” The article was written before the election, but the handwriting was already on the wall.

UPDATE: Steve Sturm has comments, and observes: “And, for what it’s worth, you three idiots, it is NOT illegal to burn the flag. How can you guys even pretend to be intelligent and informed enough to tell other people how to vote when you don’t even know that?”

Well, I guess it just seemed like, you know, it had to be, since it was, like, John Ashkkkroft’s Amerikkka and everything.

JIM LINDGREN LOOKS AT the National Research Council’s assessment of John Lott’s work and reports: “From the portions that I have read, I found the report sober, impressive, and fair, though there are substantial parts of this literature that I am unfamiliar with. As to Lott’s work, I actually thought that the Council’s report was too generous to his work in spots. In particular, I thought that it failed to point out just how much Lott’s results are driven by poorly executed demographic controls, a point that Ayres and Donohue make effectively in their Stanford exchange.”

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up!

RESISTANCE IS NUBILE: This is likely to impress me about as much as anything the anti-nanotechnology crowd tries to do.

AUSTIN BAY’S COVER STORY ON IRAQ for this week’s Weekly Standard is now available online.

ASTEROID UPDATE: Leonard David has the scoop. And, by the way, the risk has been upgraded slightly, to about 1 in 37.

I HAVEN’T DONE A SURVEY, but here’s commentary on a surprising lack of enthusiasm for events in Ukraine in some quarters.

CATASTROPHES AND CURES: My TechCentralStation column, about killer asteroids and tsunamis, is up.

I FINISHED HUGH HEWITT’S NEW BOOK ON BLOGS LAST NIGHT, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s interested in blogs, new media, or public relations.

There’s a history of blogs, an analogy between the changes blogs are bringing to the media priesthood and the Reformation (with which I heartily agree) and — most significantly — a lot of good advice to businesses, of both the media and non-media varieties, on how they can use blogs to help themselves, and how to avoid becoming, like Trent Lott or Dan Rather, the focus of a damaging “opinion storm.” He also catches on (actually, I think Hugh was one of the first to make this point, in a post on his blog) to the importance of what Chris Anderson is calling the Long Tail — that in the aggregate, the vast hordes of small blogs with a few dozen readers are more important than the small number of big blogs with hundreds of thousands of readers. (Here’s an article on that topic by Anderson, from Wired.) I think that’s absolutely right, and Hugh has some interesting things to say about it. (And journalists mostly don’t get this point at all — every time I get interviewed it seems that they want firsts, mosts, and biggests, when I keep telling them that the real story of the blogosphere is the day-to-day interaction and writing of a whole lot of blogs).

Cutting to the chase (which is what blogs do, right?): This is the best book on blogs yet, which isn’t surprising since it’s by a successful blogger who also knows a lot about communications and the world in general. I’m sure it will get a lot of attention within the blogosphere, but I hope that it will get a lot of attention elsewhere, because the people who really need to read it are the people who won’t find out about it from blogs. Best quote: “Blogs are built on speed and trust, and the MSM is very slow and very distrusted.”

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE rounds up military bloggers’ posts on Mosul, including some first-hand reports from the scene. This is a must-read, and helps to illustrate just how valuable the blogosphere can be in providing multifaceted coverage in a way that the legacy media can’t, or don’t.

MICHAEL MCCONNELL AS CHIEF JUSTICE? I’d prefer Eugene Volokh, or Alex Kozinski, personally.

UKRAINE UPDATE: Yushchenko’s victory is official. Photos here.

THE YEAR OF BLOGGING DANGEROUSLY: Ed Driscoll looks at the year’s top ten blog-moments. And, speaking of blogging dangerously, Half-Bakered looks at the unfortunate fate of a journalist blogger.

TSUNAMI UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis has more links and reports, some rather harrowing, and points to this country by country roundup from The Independent. And scroll down, or click here for links to posts from bloggers in the region

Joe Gandelman has another roundup of asian bloggers’ resports.

Tim Blair has more, too, and so does Jay Manifold, including links to aid agencies that are accepting donations.

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster has thoughts on warnings.