I GUESS IT ALL DEPENDS on which files you want to share . . . . (Via TaxProf).

IN THE MAIL: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Looks pretty interesting, though its Cold War history appears a bit conventional.

TIM WORSTALL’S BRITBLOG ROUNDUP is up.

IF YOU’RE NEAR A BEACH ON THE INDIAN OCEAN, you may want to move away for a while in light of this news:

8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra Monday close to where a similar quake triggered a tsunami that left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

A USGS spokeswoman told Reuters the quake struck 125 miles west northwest off Sibolga, Sumatra or 880 miles northwest of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, close to where the 9.0 magnitude quake struck in December.

A spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey told CNN that the earthquake could cause tsunamis.

Or not, but I wouldn’t stick around the beach.

UPDATE: Much more here. And here.

ANOTHER MADE-IN-THE-BLOGOSPHERE MARRIAGE is in the works. Congratulations! And details on the proposal are here, including a cool Simpsons reference.

MORE crushing of dissent. (Via LGF).

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up! And so is this week’s Carnival of the Cats!

HUGO NOMINATIONS ARE OUT: They include not just one, but two books that I liked a lot.

MIKE KREMPASKY, NOMINATED FOR A FIRST AMENDMENT AWARD for his defense of free blog-speech. It’s deserved.

HEH: Well, I warned you about those wacky credit card companies.

AMBER ALERT: Jason van Steenwyk notes a missing headline at The New York Times, and elsewhere in the news media. Meanwhile Lawrence Kaplan is noting the curious reluctance of the press to report good news from Iraq:

At what point does the press report a trend? The question comes to mind because, over the past month, the news from Iraq has been unusually good. Depending on which military official you ask, insurgent attacks have dropped by either a third or nearly half. The number of Americans killed in action has declined. Civilians have begun killing terrorists. Over the past week alone, U.S. forces have killed scores of insurgents in lopsided battles–in the latest, Iraqi forces spearheaded the offensive. Does this mean America has turned a corner? Can we see a light at the end of the tunnel? Does it mean anything at all?

At least to judge by the amount of press coverage devoted to the past weeks’ progress in Iraq, the answer would seem to be no. . . . The overall tenor of press coverage suggests that, if anything, the reverse is true: Even as I write these words, ABC News’s Peter Jennings briefly relays news that U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 80 insurgents today, before moving on to a much longer and gloomier feature on the ingenuity of the resistance.

Kaplan wonders if journalists are so habituated to negative spin that they can’t, or won’t, recognize good news. Meanwhile, Arthur Chrenkoff continues his effort to round up the good stuff that gets buried, though it’s telling that he leads with a story that was such good news “that even the New York Times had to sit up and take notice.” Though he notes that the Times still managed to insert an error that undermined its significance.

STRATEGYPAGE:

Terrorism isn’t the biggest problem in Iraq, nor is political instability or the high crime rate. All of those are easy to solve compared to the biggest, and most persistent problem; corruption. Lack of fair and efficient government has been a problem in this region for thousands of years. When the officials were honest and efficient, mighty empires flourished. But most of the time, the bureaucrats are on the take, and everyone suffered. It’s been going on for so long that it’s been accepted as the way things are. But one of the unexpected side effects of global communications (especially email and satellite news) is that most Iraqis now know that it doesn’t have to be that way. To reinforce these heretical views, visitors, or migrants, to these distant lands of honest government, come back and tell wondrous tales of cops who are not crooks, and politicians going to jail for taking bribes.

But the current reality in Iraq is that of thieves getting back into power. . . . While many Iraqis are willing to pay any price for peace and quiet, and many others are willing to accept intimidation, an increasing number are willing to put their lives on the line for clean government. People know that this will eventually bring rule of law and safety. But first, it’s a fight to the death between groups of Iraqis who have very different views of Iraq’s future. A happy ending is not assured. If enough Iraqis do not step up for honest government, the country will end up with another Saddam.

Another reason not to bug out too soon, as the article notes that the presence of Coalition troops, and investigators, is key to bringing corruption under control.

“FAKE BUT ACCURATE,” AGAIN? John Hinderaker looks at another phony-memo story.

All I know is that when some blogger is taken in by a phony memo, which is bound to happen eventually, we’ll probably hear some Big Media folks brag about their superior fact-checking. But this episode demonstrates that there’s no basis for such bragging.

ROGER SIMON HAS BEEN INVESTIGATING OIL-FOR-FOOD and has the first installment of his report up. It’s real blog-journalism, and very interesting. Among other things, Kojo Annan appears to have had a much closer relationship with the Saddam regime than has been previously reported.

THE EMAIL CONTINUES TO POUR IN on yesterday’s Razorblogging post. I had no idea this was a topic of such intense interest, but I think I’ve gotten more email on that than on anything else in ages.

NOW THEY’RE MARCHING FOR DEMOCRACY IN MONGOLIA: That should make the neocon who authored these words very happy. . . .

This victory of freedom is practical, not ideological: billions of people on every continent are simply concluding, based on decades of their own hard experience, that democracy and markets are the most productive and liberating ways to organize their lives.

Their conclusion resonates with America’s core values. We see individuals as equally created with a God-given right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So we trust in the equal wisdom of free individuals to protect those rights: through democracy, as the process for best meeting shared needs in the face of competing desires; and through markets as the process for best meeting private needs in a way that expands opportunity.

Both processes strengthen each other: democracy alone can produce justice, but not the material goods necessary for individuals to thrive; markets alone can expand wealth, but not that sense of justice without which civilized societies perish.

Don’t you think?

TREY JACKSON HAS VIDEO of a discussion of blogs and journalism featuring Jeff Jarvis, Peter Beinart, David Brooks, Ana Marie Cox, and more. I disagree with Ana’s claim that the Trent Lott affair was driven by partisanship, though — it was pretty thoroughly bipartisan. See the Kennedy School study on that topic for the full story.

AUSTIN BAY IS SOLICITING SUGGESTIONS as to who should fill Kofi Annan’s job, given that Kofi’s tenure appears short.

I’ve already made my suggestion. You can make yours in the comments to Austin’s post.

HAPPY EASTER: I’d planned to spend the day taking it easy, following the advice in the post just below. Instead I wound up in the Emergency Room at Children’s Hospital, as the Insta-Daughter’s sore throat turned into a galloping case of strep. Sigh.

WORDS OF WISDOM:

If you ever wish you could have more time to get something done, just remember: if you did have more time, you wouldn’t get more done. The extra time would melt away, and you’d be back feeling pressure to get it done in too little time. You might as well enjoy the free time and not moan about the things you didn’t achieve. Idle moments at the dining table, talking about this and that, are much more your real life than all those grand accomplishments, achieved and unachieved.

Indeed.

NOT 95 THESES, BUT 11: Bill Quick nails his complaints about the GOP to the church door, and offers a proposal for change:

Am I suggesting the formation of a new party? No, not at the moment. But we do have tools available to us, most especially the Internet and blogs. Moveon.org, as much as I dislike its goals, has perfected these as a method of exerting enormous influence. It has, in effect, taken over the machinery of the Democratic party. What they did, we can do as well, and I am proposing that we do it.

Only in a more moderate way, I hope.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More dissatisfaction here, from the retired publisher of the Omaha World Herald: “I would think that I’m not the only Republican who feels the party’s leadership has engaged in an irresponsible and perhaps unprecedented effort to subvert the traditional separation of government powers.”

RIVAL PARLIAMENTS IN KYRGYZSTAN: I don’t know what to make of this, but things actually seem to be settling down.

UPDATE: Nice roundup from The Post on the complications created by a revolution that happened faster than the revolutionaries expected.

WE WATCHED THE CITY CONFIDENTIAL EPISODE based on the Insta-Wife’s documentary last night. It was pretty interesting, as they told the same story (and used some of her footage) but in a rather different fashion from her film. And though she thought her interviews had been cut, she was actually featured a lot. The indefatigable Trey Jackson posted a video montage of her segments from the film.

HAPPY EASTER!

TENS OF THOUSANDS MARCH FOR DEMOCRACY IN BAHRAIN: This strikes me as excellent news.