DAN GILLMOR: “Google is a young company. We shouldn’t be surprised that it sometimes acts its age.”

A WHILE BACK, I wrote about Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II’s Most Dramatic Mission, and suggested that the story would make a good movie.

I guess someone else thought so too.

TOMORROW will be InstaPundit’s fourth bloggiversary. (Click here to see what I was writing about back when it started).

How has the blog changed? You may have a clearer sense of that than I do. I think it’s become a bit less opinionated — the older entries were mostly opinion; now I’m more likely to link to somone’s actual reporting, or to an item of news without commenting on it much. I tend to express my longer opinion-oriented takes elsewhere, at TechCentralStation or GlennReynolds.com, rather than here at the blog.

I think that the tone has gotten milder. This was never a rantblog, but I decided over a year ago, during the election runup, to try to be extra-conscious about word choice, and to avoid name-calling as much as possible. Over-the-top hysterics on other blogs turn me off even when they’re from someone I agree with, and I suspect many people feel that way. You can have strong opinions without strong language, and they’re usually more persuasive that way, or so it seems to me.

I’ve learned — well, come to appreciate, anyway — that there are huge numbers of very smart people out there, in all sorts of settings that aren’t usually thought of as smart-people settings. Every academic should have that experience.

The blogosphere has certainly gotten bigger, which I see as pretty much an unalloyed good.

The other thing I’ve learned: To take a vacation from blogging now and then. I’ll be away next week, and Ann Althouse, Megan McArdle, and Michael Totten will be filling in again. Austin Bay, as I mentioned earlier, will be filling in over on MSNBC at GlennReynolds.com. (My TCS column will run as usual on Wednesday).

See you guys next weekend. Enjoy the guestbloggers, who did a terrific job last time, and who I’m sure will do just as well this time.

DAVID BROOKS goes in search of explanations for the many improving social trends in America. However, he misses the important constructive role played by porn and videogames!

NOT VERY IMPRESSIVE: “Four DMV workers in Oakland took cash bribes from illegal immigrants and others in exchange for driver’s licenses or state identification cards, federal prosecutors said Thursday.” I doubt a National ID system would be free of this kind of fraud.

VIK RUBENFELD looks at the role of the blogosphere.

I think it may also have something to do with helping us choose which pictures we have in our minds.

IT’S NOT YOUR FATHER’S ARMY: “A pair of female Army captains temporarily traded in their camouflage uniforms and combat boots for evening gowns and high heels and entered and won each of their state beauty pageants.” This can’t hurt enlistment.

UPDATE: On a more serious note, Chester notes a different kind of change.

Meanwhile, Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule note that the judiciary seems less adaptable than the Army.

LESSONS FROM THE NON-FATAL AIR FRANCE CRASH:

The Air France evacuation required an extraordinary degree of social coordination – which emerged among a group of strangers with virtually no time to prepare. Once out of the wreckage, they were aided by other strangers who, on the spur of the moment and with no expertise in emergency situations, had pulled off a nearby highway and calmly charged into the scene, despite the risks posed by an exploding plane.

While this sort of behavior is often described as remarkable, it is actually what researchers have come to expect. Studies of civilians’ intense experiences in the London Blitz; the cities of Japan and Germany in World War II; the 1947 smallpox outbreak in New York; the earthquake in Kobe, Japan, in 1995; and even fires have found that people, however stressed, almost always keep their wits and elevate their humanity.

Indeed, the critical first responders in almost any crisis are ordinary citizens whom fate has brought together.

Indeed. David Gerstman has some thoughts. And I’ve written about this before, here and here.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA! The Carnival of Cordite is up. So is the Carnival of New Jersey Bloggers. And the Big Apple Blog Festival. There’s also Havel Havalim, and don’t miss the Carnival of Chinese Bloggers.

BUSINESS WEEK has an article on podcasters vs. Big Radio: They call it a “David and Goliath” battle, but it’s really an army of Davids against Goliath.

BLEAK NEWS on voting in Venezuela.

GLOCAL? Well, it doesn’t sound any worse than “blog.” . . .

BILL QUICK has his usual weekend cooking thread posted. In answer to his question, I’ve always wanted one of these, even though I have no use for it.

If you don’t have one of these, though, you’re missing out.

JOI ITO:

WHEN people ask my thoughts on the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I always feel uncomfortable. As a Japanese, I know how I’m supposed to respond: with sadness, regret and perhaps anger. But invariably I try to dodge the issue, or to reply as neutrally as possible.

That’s because, at bottom, the bombings don’t really matter to me or, for that matter, to most Japanese of my generation. My peers and I have little hatred or blame in our hearts for the Americans; the horrors of that war and its nuclear evils feel distant, even foreign. Instead, the bombs are simply the flashpoint marking the discontinuity that characterized the cultural world we grew up in.

Read the whole thing.

ARTHUR ALLEN: “As the writer who first told the thimerosal story in depth in the New York Times Magazine two and a half years ago, I have been astonished to see how badly it has been handled since. . . . Since then, four perfectly good studies comparing large populations of kids have showed that thimerosal did not cause the increased reporting of autism.”

I wonder if anti-vaccine activists will be held to the same standard of responsibility as the pharmaceutical companies they — often unjustly and sometimes dishonestly — criticize.

DAVID BERNSTEIN looks at racism and sexism on the Left.

A more effective argumentative style can be found here.

UPDATE: Related comments, here and here.

AUSTIN BAY will be guestblogging for me at MSNBC this week, so the least I can do is plug his Iraq novel, The Wrong Side of Brightness.

I read it, and it’s excellent.

AVIAN FLU NEWS: “Government scientists say they have successfully tested in people a vaccine that they believe can protect against the strain of avian influenza that is spreading in birds through Asia and Russia.” Good.

SALMAN RUSHDIE writes on the need for an Islamic Reformation.

A DRAMATIC RESCUE:

A small Russian submarine was freed today from its undersea entanglement off the Far East coast by an unmanned British rescue vehicle that cut away the nets that ensnared it. All seven inside were alive and rushed aboard a Russian surface vessel, where they were being examined by a medical team, Russian news agencies and the U.S. Navy said.

Nick Danger at RedState notes that the cooperative efforts to rescue former enemies offer a lesson:

I will confess that I did not expect to see this in my lifetime. It is a bit like my father’s reaction to seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon.

I’m not sure what the lesson is here… but I am certain it is something we need to keep in mind as we go about the War on Terror. The day will come when we will all rush off to aid Iranians trapped in a mine, and we will cheer when they are rescued.

May it come soon.

DAMIEN CAVE wonders why we’re not hearing more about the heroes of the Iraq war.

The answer, of course, is that those of us who are getting our war reporting from the right places are hearing about them, while those of us who are still relying on the Times probably aren’t.

More comments here, though I think they’re a bit harsh on Cave, who’s a good reporter in my experience.

UPDATE: Related thoughts, with video, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon comments. And here’s a related observation. So, sort of, is this.

The Mudville Gazette offers more background, and observes: “But kudos to the Times for wondering if they have a problem – the next step in recovery would be to admit that they do.”

Read the whole thing, especially if you’re an editor at The New York Times. Or one of its competitors.

MORE: Some help for the NYT is offered, over at Bayosphere.

LETTER TO ZARQAWI: Arthur Chrenkoff points to political and organizational issues for the Al Qaeda-backed insurgency in Iraq:

Abu Zayd claims that the Mosul Emirs are incompetent; attacks lack diversity; suicide bombings are focused more on quantity and not quality; those who are in the network are disobedient; a legitimate organization in Mosul does not exist; collaboration between the Emirs is lacking; “Muslim money” is squandered on petty expenses; numerous security violations occur; “inaccurate and blurred” updates to the Sheikh are reported; and foreign fighters endure “deplorable” conditions to include lack of pay, housing problems and marginalization.

Read the whole thing for some interesting political analysis, too.

WOLF BLITZER is slammed for military cluelessness. You know, we’ve been at war for almost four years. By now there’s really no excuse for that sort of thing.

THE ECONOMIST has an interesting article on the politics and culture of videogames:

Ironically, the “Grand Theft Auto” episode has re-ignited the debate over the impact of video games, just as the industry is preparing to launch its biggest-ever marketing blitz to accompany the introduction of its new consoles. Amid all the arguments about the minutiae of rating systems, the unlocking of hidden content, and the stealing of children’s innocence, however, three important factors are generally overlooked: that attitudes to gaming are marked by a generational divide; that there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent; and that games have great potential in education. . . .

Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too. “Thirty years from now, we’ll be arguing about holograms, or something,” says Mr Williams.

Indeed. (Via Martin Lindeskog, who also observes that Hillary Clinton is not a gamer). Some prior thoughts of mine on this subject can be found here and here. Also here.

IN THE WAKE OF THE LONDON BOMBINGS, we’ve heard — rightly — that Muslims need to be less tolerant of terrorist sympathies within their own communities. But implicit in that is the notion that authorities will act when someone tells them about threats, and that hasn’t always been the case in the past:

A leader at a mosque visited by one of the London July 21 bombing suspects says he warned police that Hamdi Issac was dangerous more than two years ago.

An elder at the Stockwell Mosque in south west London says he wrote to a senior police officer urging him to help deal with a group of young people who had been “harassing” and intimidating the moderate Muslims.

Toaha Qureshi, one of the mosque’s Trustees, told CNN that Issac — the alleged Shepherds Bush attempted bomber currently fighting extradition from Italy — was a prominent member of the group.

Qureshi told CNN that mosque officers had made it clear they regarded 27-year-old Issac as a threat and a destabilizing force.

Presumably such complaints will get more attention now. (Via Ed Morrissey).