PHIL BOWERMASTER has thoughts on life extension, his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, and Six Feet Under.

SIGNS OF PROGRESS in Libya? Gateway Pundit has a roundup of what looks like good news.

NORMBLOG has much more on the Iraqi Constitution, from Brendan O’Leary.

UPDATE: Publius has comments, too. The more people look at this, the better they seem to feel.

HERE’S A PAGE THAT REPORTS ON reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Lots of stuff I hadn’t heard about.

RANDALL PARKER: Treat biomedical research as a capital expenditure:

Think of it this way: If potholes in the roads were causing damages to vehicles that far exceeded the cost of fixing the potholes then the political cry would go out to fix the potholes. Well, the cost of diseases and aging – both for expensive treatments and for the costs of disability – run into the trillions of dollars per year. So why do the US National Institutes of Health get less than $30 billion dollars per year while US federal, state, and local governments spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 to $800 billion per year for medical care and nursing care? Why does the private sector spend even more while the government also spends money to provide income to old folks who are too aged to work? . . .

The faster we develop therapies built upon the rapid advances in biotechnology the sooner we will start reaping the return on our collective investments in therapies that repair and rejuvenate aged, malfunctioning, and diseased body parts.

This makes sense to me. I think it would be politically popular, too. Related thoughts here.

PATRICK RUFFINI is running his monthly Presidential straw poll again. Looking at the choices, I can’t help but feel that the Republicans are in trouble in 2008. Unless one of the “fantasy candidates” runs.

On the other hand, my two favorite candidates out of Ruffini’s field(Giuliani among the “real” candidates, and Condi Rice among the “fantasy” candidates) are on top.

I WOULD MANAGE TO CONTAIN MY DEJECTION if someone bumped off Hugo Chavez, but Mark Daniels notes that Pat Robertson’s call for just that is bad politics and bad religion.

Well, those are Robertson’s stock-in-trade, which is why he was one of the original models for the term “idiotarian.”

BILL ROGGIO says that worries about Islam in the Iraqi Constitution are overstated. I hope he’s right.

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh thinks it looks pretty good, but that the real action will be in subsequent legislation.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dave Price is similarly untroubled.

Meanwhile, here’s why the Sunnis don’t like it:

But at root of the Sunni rejection of the constitutional process is fear itself. The psyche of this community, from which Saddam Hussein’s most fervent supporters were drawn and who enjoyed privileged positions until his regime was toppled, has been badly damaged in the past few years.

Many fears about the new Iraq are expressed throughout Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods. They fear that Iraq’s new masters will punish them for supporting Mr. Hussein’s regime; they fear they don’t have leaders or social cohesion; and they fear their former status will never be regained.

It’s this fear and doubt that feeds their distrust of Iraq’s other communities and their desire to see the writing of the constitution delayed. . . . The current draft constitution on the table specifically outlaws Hussein’s old Baath party, which many Sunnis interpret as an effort to target them as a community.

I’m unmoved. But note that even among Sunnis, the population seems substantially more progressive than the leaders. Jeff Goldstein has further thoughts. So does Michael Totten.

IN THE MAIL: John Farrell’s The Day Without Yesterday: LeMaître, Einstein, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology. I read a fair-sized chunk of it last night, and it looks quite interesting.

RALPH PETERS ON IRAQ COVERAGE:

What should have made headlines? It would’ve been nice to see more attention devoted to the complexity and importance of drafting a new constitution for Iraq. But my nomination for the “Greatest Story Never Told” is a quieter one: Locked in a difficult war, the U.S. Army is exceeding its re-enlistment and first-time enlistment goals. Has anybody mentioned that to you?

Remember last spring, when the Army’s recruitment efforts fell short for a few months? The media’s glee would have made you confuse the New York Times and Air America.

When the Army attempted to explain that enlistments are cyclical and numbers dip at certain times of the year, the media ignored it. All that mattered was the wonderful news that the Army couldn’t find enough soldiers. We were warned, in oh-so-solemn tones, that our military was headed for a train wreck.

Now, as the fiscal year nears an end, the Army’s numbers look great. Especially in combat units and Iraq, soldiers are re-enlisting at record levels. And you don’t hear a whisper about it from the “mainstream media.”

It’s as if they’re biased or something.

UPDATE: Jane McCalla Miller notes this claim that Peters is overstating things — recent months are better, but the Army is still likely to finish the year in the hole.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this post from Intel Dump, too.

MORE: Peters, interviewed, says he had the numbers wrong.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF LIBERTY is up!

UPDATE: Sorry — wrong link before. Fixed now.

OUCH.

HERE’S THE LATEST on the in-progress Iraqi Constitution. Here’s the current text.

UPDATE: Saudi blogger The Religious Policeman is not impressed with the course of developments.

ARNOLD KLING HAS THOUGHTS on incumbent politicians and the Long Tail.

DEALING WITH BROADBAND: Via Daniel Drezner.

A FUEL SHORTAGE IN CHINA.

A bra shortage in Europe.

Perspective here.

HEALTHCARE BLOGGING: Grand Rounds is up!

WARD CHURCHILL UPDATE:

A faculty group has sent the investigation of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill to the next level.

Seven complaints of alleged plagiarism, historical fabrication and other research misconduct by Churchill have been recommended for a deeper investigation, while two other complaints that were part of the original inquiry were dropped, his lawyer said. The report from the faculty subcommittee that had spent about four months looking into the allegations was delivered Monday, said David Lane, who represents Churchill.

Here’s a Rocky Mountain News editorial on the subject.

IT’S GAY DAY at The Volokh Conspiracy. Just keep scrolling.

WOW: I said that Andrew Breitbart was a media mogul, but I didn’t realize he was such a mover and shaker.

CHECK OUT ED CONE’S Greensboro blog conference announcement. It’s scheduled for October 8.

HELP SMASH get a new job!

THE FRENCH ARE WONDERING: Why do they hate us?

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “Iraqi Parliament Delays Constitution Vote.” I don’t think that making the Sunnis happy is priority number one, but I hope to see more progress on other issues.

STEVE STURM EMAILS ON ABLE DANGER: “I know you haven’t been a big follower of the whole matter, and I’m starting to see why you’re probably the better for it.”

As I’ve said before, my pre-9/11 view was that we were best off treating Islamist terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, but otherwise trying to ignore it until it collapsed under the weight of its inherent idiocy. That was wrong, but it’s hard for me to blame the Clinton folks for seeing things the way that I did — except when, occasionally, they pretend otherwise.