A LOOK AT bloggers and the information war.

MICHAEL YON has thoughts on truth and propaganda.

IRAQ THE MODEL has more on politics in Iraq, where things look to be heading in a positive direction.

SINGULARITY UPDATE: Ray Kurzweil was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on Friday, talking about his book The Singularity is Near and technological change in general You can listen to audio here. Interestingly, the New York Times says that The Singularity is Near is one of the most blogged books of 2005. Read this article on Kurzweil and life extension, too.

Meanwhile, here’s evidence that a lot of people want to see progress in aging research: “Forget ’40 is the new 30.’ Now even twentysomethings are joining the quest for eternal youth by using anti-aging products and wrinkle treatments.” Think how big the market will be when the products actually work.

UPDATE: Reader Michael McFatter emails that Kurzweil will be on C-SPAN2’s Book TV tonight at 10:15 Eastern.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Stevens emails:

My wife (who just turned 21 today) has been using anti-aging treatments for a couple years now. People always tell her she doesn’t need it, but she claims now is the time to start, before the wrinkles show up. Once they appear, it’s too late. I think that’s probably true. I think it’s also worth mentioning that the $100 products you can buy at Macy’s probably don’t work any better than the $10 ones they sell down at the drugstore.

Sunscreen and moisturizer help — though you don’t want to short yourself on Vitamin D, either. And you want to exercise, but not too much. “The more your race ’em the less you trust — the less you drive ’em, the more they rust.”

I FINISHED TOBIAS BUCKELL’S Crystal Rain over the weekend, and liked it. It’s somewhat reminiscent of some of Ken MacLeod’s stuff in the series beginning with Cosmonaut Keep — an interesting mix of high- and low-tech.

UPDATE: Via an email from Buckell, I see that he’s started a blog. Cool.

SOME GOOD NEWS:

The 17-year effort to eradicate polio from the world appears to be back on track after nearly unraveling in the past three years.

A new strategy of using a vaccine targeting the dominant strain of the virus appears to have eliminated polio from Egypt, one of six countries where it was freely circulating. That approach is on the verge of doing the same in India. Twenty-five years ago, India had 200,000 cases of paralytic polio a year. A decade ago, it was still seeing 75,000 cases annually. Through November this year, it recorded 52.

This would be going better still if anti-vaccine hysteria hadn’t slowed things down.

POLITICS ON CAMPUS — AND OFF: Having elevated “diversity” into a value that trumps all others — except, perhaps, the right of students never to be offended — universities are in a poor position to resist this campaign.

MORE TSUNAMI STORIES: Gaijin Biker notes that the U.N. seems to have blown a lot of relief money on overhead. (“No wonder it was so concerned that America and other nations might be ‘stingy’ with donations — any less, and the refugees might not have received any aid at all.”) Those Mercedes don’t come cheap! The Times notes that a lot of money given to British charities seems to have gone unspent. Well, it’s not like there’s anyone who still needs help:

But the pace of reconstruction has been criticized, and frustration has grown with 80 percent of the 1.8 million people displaced by the waves still living in tents, plywood barracks or with family and friends.

In Aceh, one survivor dismissively gestured at a jumble of scrap iron and plastic sheeting _ all that remains of his neighborhood.

“You want to talk about changes, we’ve seen nothing,” said Baihqi, 24. “Many promises of aid, but that’s all we get _ promises.”

Stormtrack, meanwhile, remembers the disaster with a collection of pictures and video, and there’s a roundup over at Blogs4God, too.

UPDATE: Heh. As usual, Chris Muir’s Day by Day cartoon was way ahead on this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Did “Baby 81” get the shaft?

MORE: Here’s a big tsunami roundup by Martin Lindeskog.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, IRAQ!

UPDATE: Christmas in space.

A TSUNAMI ANNIVERSARY ROUNDUP:

One year ago, a massive magnitude 9 earthquake ruptured the sea floor off Indonesia’s Sumatra island, sending 10-metre waves roaring across the Indian Ocean at jetliner speeds that crashed without warning into seaside communities in a dozen countries.

The disaster’s scale was overwhelming.

At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in the waves, the Associated Press found in an assessment of government and credible relief agency figures in each country hit. The United Nations puts the number at least 223,000, though it says some countries are still updating their figures.

The true toll will probably never be known, as many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of places struck were not accurately recorded.

Hard to believe it’s been a whole year.

HERE’S AUSTIN BAY’S CHRISTMAS COLUMN.

He’s also got a blog post with a Christmas note from Iraq.

And it’s still Thank A Soldier Week. People certainly seem to be doing that.

Meanwhile, the Pope delivered a Christmas message on Darfur.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, or whatever you’re celebrating today. And here’s a one-size-fits-all Christmas Carol from Audra and the Antidote.

SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRATIC BLOGGER finds blue state too expensive. Heh.

MICKEY KAUS: “Another spy scandal and Bush will be at sixty percent.”

More here and here.

IN THE “WAR ON CHRISTMAS,” CHRISTMAS HAS OPENED a second front:

Hundreds of young men decked with tinsel wander outside Senegal’s mosques, hawking plastic Christmas trees. Women pray to Allah on a sidewalk where an inflatable Santa Claus happens to be hanging.

Senegal may be 95 percent Muslim, but it certainly knows it’s Christmas. In fact, for this nation of 12 million it’s a national holiday.

Blame it on globalization, which has turned the West’s yuletide icons into a worldwide commodity. Or the Internet, or Hollywood, or the availability of travel that allows new generations of Senegalese to sample Christmas at close quarters. But mainly, Senegalese revel in the trappings of Christmas because they can and want to. . . . Secularism elsewhere may mean the freedom not to celebrate a religious holiday. In Senegal many interpret it to mean they should celebrate all of them.

Someone tell John Gibson!

BRIDGES TO NOWHERE: They’re not dead. They’re baaack!

And to think I was just blogging about zombies.

HOLIDAY WISHES from the Insta-Wife.

ANOTHER REASON, BESIDES CORY MAYE, why no-knock raids are a bad idea.

OMAR HAS MORE on on developments in Iraq, where there seem to be signs of progress.

UPDATE: Austin Bay’s take on what’s going on: “Jaw, Jaw Emerges Instead of War War and Terror Terror.” Let’s hope.

ANOTHER HOMELAND SECURITY HOAX:

It rocketed across the Internet a week ago, a startling newspaper report that agents from the US Department of Homeland Security had visited a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth at his New Bedford home simply because he had tried to borrow Mao Tse-Tung’s ”Little Red Book” for a history seminar on totalitarian goverments. . . .

But yesterday, the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter.

The professor, Brian Glyn Williams, said he went to his former student’s house and asked about inconsistencies in his story. The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax, Williams said.

”I made it up,” the professor recalled him saying. ”I’m sorry. . . . I’m so relieved that it’s over.”

The student was not identified in any reports. The Globe interviewed him Thursday but decided not to write a story about his assertion, because of doubts about its veracity. The student could not be reached yesterday.

Williams said the student gave no explanation. But Williams, who praised the student as hard-working and likeable, said he was shaken by the deception.

”I feel as if I was lied to, and I have no idea why,” said Williams, an associate professor of Islamic history. He said the possibility the government was scrutinizing books borrowed by his students ”disturbed me tremendously.”

I’m disturbed tremendously that such a suspicious story was accepted so uncritically by alleged critical thinkers — and I’m a bit surprised that the student’s identity is still being protected. Why shouldn’t we know who’s behind this?

UPDATE: Tim Blair: “Molly Ivins and James Carville lied to the American people! Well, not really, but they did repeat information that was later shown to be false—which is the same thing, if you’re one of them Bush-hatin’ folks, yessir (must … stop … channelling … Ivins).”

MARK TAPSCOTT HOSTS a Carnival of the Cars.

CALIFORNIA’S VIOLENT-VIDEOGAME BAN has been struck down as a free-speech violation. I’m not surprised. As the Tech Law Prof notes: “So far, no law of this type has survived a challenge.” (Via PJM).

Here’s my column on this topic from last week.

HERE’S A FOLLOWUP on that missing-explosives case:

Authorities arrested four men and were searching for one more person in connection with the theft of 400 pounds of explosives _ enough to flatten a large building _ from a storage depot.

All of the explosives and detonating materials were recovered, and there was no evidence to suggest the theft was connected to terrorism, said Wayne Dixie of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Well, that’s a relief.

AUSTIN BAY has thoughts on Rumsfeld’s Christmas in Iraq.

INSURGENTS IN TIKRIT: A shocking interview.