TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: The latest Blog Mela is up!

SISSY WILLIS notes some serious math problems.

WHAT KIND OF A GEEK AM I? First class, as shown by what showed up yesterday: The second season of Gilligan’s Island on DVD, and part of the second season of Lost in Space — though only part, because — inspired by the excellent sales of the first season, I guess — they’ve broken the second season into two pieces and I didn’t notice when I ordered it. That’s kind of cheesy.

My big question, though, is why The Addams Family isn’t out on DVD yet. America’s youth need role models, and who better than Gomez Addams?

UPDATE: Fritz Schranck notes another stunning omission from the video revival. Meanwhile, on the “how big a geek?” front, reader John McGuire emails: “I ordered the Lost in Space soundtrack. And I play it in my car. Top that!”

I can’t. I said first class, not world-class . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Peter Taylor emails:

You blogged:

“My big question, though, is why The Addams Family isn’t out on DVD yet. America’s youth need role models, and who better than Gomez Addams?”

I don’t know if you meant this as a joke, but The Addams Family was the *only* show I remember on TV when I was growing up in which there was much in the way of open display of affection between a married couple. Great show!

Hmm. I hadn’t really thought of that. But Gomez — a lawyer married to a striking brunette with morbid interests — was one of my role models, along with the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. And here I am, a law professor married to a striking brunette with morbid interests . . . .

EARLIER, I LINKED to a New York Times story on how the Ukrainian secret services helped the Orange Revolution. Veronica Khokhlova, however, suggests that this is a somewhat skewed portrayal.

UPDATE: More on that subject, here.

COLBY COSH IS EXCITED about the new Airbus superjumbo:

One feels a little embarrassed at the “See? Europeans aren’t entirely pathetic” part. And, after all, the A380 still does need to get off the ground. But in an age of exaggerated environmental and geopolitical anxieties, it is encouraging to see a feat of engineering and business flair celebrated without apology. . . .

For much of my own life, the aviation world seems to have been focused on finding new marginal vistas for air travel rather than devising grandiose new signature aircraft. Environmentalism and OPEC wiped out the dreams of supersonic air travel in the 1970s, and we have watched that glorious bird of prey, the Concorde, live out its entire life cycle as a frou-frou oddity. Now, at last, credible contenders to supplant the 747 are emerging.

Brian Micklethwait, on the other hand, is skeptical: ” I suspect that the A380 is costing Europe a whole lot more than is being officially suggested, and that Boeing decided not to build a similar aircraft for good, loss-avoiding reasons.”

I’ll be interested to see if they can really get 800-900 passengers boarded and seated in less time than it takes to fly across the Atlantic . . . .

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

I have to admit that I find James Fallows’ rather different vision of the future of air travel more compelling, though to be fair he’s really talking about domestic travel here, not long-haul international flights.

THE ROAD TO FIEFDOM. Great title; good post.

PREMATURE LAPHAMIZATION at The Nation. [Premature Laphamization? Isn’t that redundant? — Ed. Not this time]

AT LEGAL AFFAIRS, Eric Posner and Oona Hathaway debate the importance of international law. Key question: “Why do you think that states keep creating international tribunals after decades of failure?” (Via Opinio Juris).

PIECES ON BLOGS AND JOURNALISTIC ETHICS from AP and The Wall Street Journal.

SayUncle suggests that it might be ethical for journalists writing about blogs to link them. Then he codifies this as an ethical rule.

That’s reminiscent of something that James Lileks observed (and the link here is to a quote because his archives don’t seem to be working properly, which is kind of ironic):

A wire story consists of one voice pitched low and calm and full of institutional gravitas, blissfully unaware of its own biases or the gaping lacunae in its knowledge. Whereas blogs have a different format: Clever teaser headline that has little to do with the actual story, but sets the tone for this blog post. Breezy ad hominem slur containing the link to the entire story. Excerpt of said story, demonstrating its idiocy (or brilliance) Blogauthor’s remarks, varying from dismissive sniffs to a Tolstoi- length rebuttal. Seven comments from people piling on, disagreeing, adding a link, acting stupid, preaching to the choir, accusing choir of being Nazis, etc.

I’d say it’s a throwback to the old newspapers, the days when partisan slants covered everything from the play story to the radio listings, but this is different. The link changes everything. When someone derides or exalts a piece, the link lets you examine the thing itself without interference. TV can’t do that. Radio can’t do that. Newspapers and magazines don’t have the space. My time on the internet resembles eight hours at a coffeeshop stocked with every periodical in the world – if someone says “I read something stupid” or “there was this wonderful piece in the Atlantic” then conversation stops while you read the piece and make up your own mind.

Read the piece and make up your own mind. That’s what the link does, and it’s a big deal, something that journalistic accounts of blog ethics tend to ignore, and that journalistic practice tends to ignore, too.

UPDATE: Here’s the Lileks link in archival form, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

HEH: “**WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE IN PHOTO BELOW** Heh. I suppose that will just *encourage* some people to scroll down.”

But at least they were warned.

A MORE NAPOLEONIC BRITAIN: Seems inappropriate to me.

UPDATE: Well, why not — they’ve clearly forgotten English history.

WHAT YOU’LL WISH YOU’D KNOWN: Paul Graham offers advice to high-schoolers.

Slashdot readers respond.

MICHAEL POWELL IS RESIGNING: BlogCritics has a roundup.

UPDATE: Some fairly rare blogospheric praise for Powell, for some of his less-famous stances: “Over the last four years, Powell by his public statements and, ostensibly, private actions has managed to open more spectrum, consider innovative secondary uses of licensed spectrum, and build a framework for cleaning up the messier and least used bands that are needed for 3G and beyond and WiMax and beyond. In these areas, Powell’s leadership encouraged technologies that aren’t centrally owned or controlled and that may, in fact, dislodge primacy of wireline incumbents.”

CHARITY, SCHMARITY: Heh.

JOURNALISM STUDENT JUEMAN ZHANG from the University of Missouri is asking InstaPundit readers to fill out this online survey.

I STARTED SAYING THIS YEARS AGO, but now The New Republic is chiming in in support of the notion that national Democrats could learn a lot about winning elections from Phil Bredesen. And, as I’ve also said, the Democrats could do a lot worse than running him in 2008.

UPDATE: One of the things that’s interesting about Bredesen, by the way, is that he’s good on conservative talk radio. He goes on the shows, he answers questions rather than ducking them or retreating into slogans and sound bites, and as a result the hosts (and listeners) respect him even when they disagree. When he ran for governor I had real doubts; it was hearing him on Hallerin Hill’s talk show that made me think he had a chance to win. If you can imagine a Democratic Presidential nominee who could go on Hugh Hewitt’s show and hold his own, you’re imagining a Democratic nominee who can win.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Bredesen’s talk-radio presence and political prospects, here, and here. As I’ve said before, the Democrats could do worse. And probably will!

JEFFERSON’S “REIGN OF WITCHES” QUOTE in context.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

WASHINGTON — Former President Jimmy Carter was a target of the clandestine lobby campaign launched by an Iraqi-American businessman who admitted he was paid millions of dollars to undermine U.S. policy toward Iraq, it was revealed yesterday. . . .

Among Vincent’s American contacts was former GOP vice-presidential nominee and ex-New York Rep. Jack Kemp, who acknowledged working with him on a proposal to ease the economic sanctions if Iraq would readmit U.N. weapons inspectors.

In 1999, Kemp took those proposals to then-Defense Secretary William Cohen — and again in 2001, to Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, said Washington lawyer Lanny Davis, who was speaking for Kemp.

In his discussions with Powell and Cheney, Kemp said he wanted to go to Baghdad to pitch his plan with the younger Graham, who is an associate of Carter, Davis said.

Kemp was rebuffed.

Call me crazy, but a lobbying plan that revolves around Jimmy Carter and Jack Kemp isn’t exactly top-drawer. No wonder it was rebuffed.

More on Samir Vincent here.

WHY YOU STILL NEED A PRINTER:

There’s one in almost every American household: a shoebox stuffed with faded snapshots of days gone by, the kids’ baby pictures, the ugly dress you wore to the prom, innumerable views of the Grand Canyon, the college roommate passed out drunk. Americans have been filling such shoeboxes for generations, and now, thanks to the delete button on digital cameras, this widespread custom is coming to an end.

I think that this story makes too much of the loss of bad photos, but the loss of hardcopy is a big deal. As Neal Stephenson said a while back:

Paper’s a really advanced technology. That was brought home to me by working on this, when I read a lot of documents from that era, which were put down on really good, acid-free paper. They’re all pretty much as good as they were the day they were made 300 or 350 years ago. This is not going to be true of today’s electronic media in 300 years. There’s a lesson there.

Yes, there is. Home prints are potentially longer-lived than commercial prints, actually (there’s a lengthy discussion from a knowledgeable reader at the end of this post on what technologies are better) but you have to make them. Digital images are potentially immortal, so long as they get recopied from time to time onto fresh media, but reality being what it is, hardcopy in a shoebox is probably likely to outlast things that require actual human effort.

And this point, of course, goes way beyond family photos.

I MEANT TO MENTION THIS EARLIER, but the Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach has a blog.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Regular readers know that I’m very happy with my Nikon D70 digital SLR — but I’ve had one annoying issue, which is its occasional refusal to take a photo in a particular exposure mode. It’s not an autofocus issue, and it’s always fixed by switching to a different exposure mode. I emailed Nikon for help and got a response almost immediately (a real one, from a real person, not an autoresponse) suggesting that I reset the camera. I haven’t tried it yet, but I was just impressed with the speed of the response. I’ve heard that the support is good, but that was my first experience with it, and since I tend to complain about bad support, I thought I should note the good experience I’ve had.

And, BTW, those of you out there who own D70s should know that there’s a firmware upgrade available.

TOMASZ TELUK and Shanti Mangala are both skeptical of the EU’s planned war on obesity.

MORE ON THE NEW JERSEY KILLINGS, suggesting a possible link to Islamic extremism.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY is profiled in the New York Sun.

THIS seems promising:

An overwhelming majority of Iraqis continue to say they intend to vote on Jan. 30 even as insurgents press attacks aimed at rendering the elections a failure, according to a new public opinion survey.

The poll, conducted in late December and early January for the International Republican Institute, found 80 percent of respondents saying they were likely to vote, a rate that has held roughly steady for months.

(Via Captain Ed).