TAXPROF: “The report reveals that the IRS made 4.6 billion disclosures of tax return information to federal and state agencies.”

MORE WORRIES about Soviet biowar labs, many of which are still around:

The labs today are seeking to fill a critical role in preventing epidemics in regions where medical services and sanitation have deteriorated since Soviet times. But an equally pressing challenge is security: How to prevent the germ collections and biological know-how from being sold or stolen.

“They often have culture collections of pathogens that lack biosecurity, and they employ people who are well-versed in investigating and handling deadly pathogens,” said Raymond A. Zilinskas, a bioweapons expert and coauthor of the draft report on the antiplague system. “Some are located at sites accessible to terrorist groups and criminal groups. The potential is that terrorists and criminals would have little problem acquiring the resources that reside in these facilities.”

Managers of the old antiplague stations are aware of their vulnerabilities but lack the most basic resources for dealing with them, according to the Monterey authors and U.S. officials. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, budgets at the institutes have fallen so steeply that even the simplest security upgrades are out of reach.

Read the whole thing, but only if you don’t scare easily.

JOE GANDELMAN thinks that John Kerry is giving bad advice to the Democrats.

OUCH:

Take the woes Dell Computer has faced. In recent months, big-name blogger Jeff Jarvis, on his Buzzmachine.com blog, has hammered on Dell for its poor customer relations. That, in turn, unleashed a deluge of similar comments from his readers, and spurred other bloggers to whine about Dell, too. On Wednesday, the University of Michigan released a survey confirming a drop in Dell’s customer satisfaction ratings, something that may or may not have been related.

If I ran a company, I’d have somebody search the company name on Technorati several times a day to find out what people are saying, and try to get ahead of the buzz.

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Crosby emails:

Not trying to pile on here, but I read Jeff Jarvis’ rants about Dell and it turned me off, just when my two kids (age 12 and 14) wanted to replace our aging (Win 98) desktop with a Dell. This came just after a small businessman friend had multiple problems with a new Dell system. I opted for a very price competitive system from a local builder who was highly recommended, built to my specs.

Dell’s fears have come true – a blogospherian rant negates all those brochures and ads. Am I the only one under the Jarvis spell?

I should note that my own experiences with Dell have been quite good.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Sandison emails:

About Jeff Jarvis and Dell – for me the turn off has been the other way round. As my experience with Dell’s support has been so good, I found Jarvis’ many complaints irritated me enough that I was reluctant to visit his site.

With Dell, I have twice called them on a Friday and had replacement parts delivered on the Monday (one of them a power converter I’d left out in the rain). I have also had a tech guy come to the house to replace a motherboard. All with no fuss, no hassle.

Yeah, my experiences have been pretty good too. That’s the trouble with anecdotal evidence, of course, but if I were Dell I’d be using blog complaints as an early warning system.

REGINA LYNN LOOKS AT sex, technology, and generational differences.

MORE SPACE NEWS:

Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian space officials confirmed earlier reports from Moscow that their partners at the European Space Agency would join the Russian effort to build a new reusable orbiter, dubbed Kliper. After the cautious optimism they expressed at the beginning of 2005, Russians are now confident that their European partners will be on board for the largest, boldest Russian endeavor in spaceflight in more than a decade. . . .

The Russians and Europeans, with few good alternatives, have seen their aspirations and needs converge around the Kliper project. If they are successful, this could open new horizons for manned spaceflight in this century.

I wish them luck.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF CORDITE is up!

SAUDI BEACHWEAR: Via Publius.

UPDATE: David Nishimura emails:

The company, according to the website, is based in Istanbul. The name is clearly Turkish, in any event, and the bathing suits shown probably too revealing (especially the short–leg models) for Saudi mores.

I thought they looked a bit racy.

ANDREW BREITBART: Media mogul.

I liked his book.

JAMES TARANTO:

The whole [Cindy Sheehan] kerfuffle was, however, informative in some ways. For one, it reveals that very few people on the antiwar left have any compunction at all about making common cause with someone who espouses virulent anti-American and anti-Semitic views. For another, it showed something we’ve long suspected: that some on the left–and not just the America-hating fringe–want America to lose this war.

I wish this weren’t true, but I think it is.

UPDATE: Blowback: “I actually felt myself become a republican today.”

I wouldn’t go that far.

I’VE SUDDENLY STARTED GETTING A LOT OF EMAILS LIKE THIS ONE:

I am disturbed by your continual smears of honorable Americans like Jamie Gorelick. If you disagree with the opinions of Ms. Gorelick, then please voice that at your discretion, but engaging in personal smears campaigns at the behest of Karl Rove and Grover Norquist really do a disservice to your readers. Jamie Gorelick’s memo did not disallow sharing of information between the military and the FBI. Please issue a correction in your next blog.

The thing is, I haven’t written anything about Jamie Gorelick and Able Danger, so I guess I’m dropping the ball in the “continual smear” department. This post by Ann Althouse from when I was on vacation a week ago quotes an Investor’s Business Daily editorial that mentions her, but that’s the only mention of Gorelick on InstaPundit in over a year. So why the emails now?

None of the emails contains a link or reference to any particular post, which makes me think that this is some sort of mass email campaign. Any idea where they’re coming from?

UPDATE: Ah, here.

MORE: Apparently I’m not the only one who’s getting these.

STILL MORE: In response to an earlier post, reader Holger Uhl emails:

I am disturbed by your continual smears of honorable Americans like Mr. Ed and My Favorite Martian. If you disagree with the opinions of Mr. Ed and My Favorite Martian, then please voice that at your discretion, but engaging in personal smears campaigns at the behest of Karl Rove do a disservice to your readers. Please issue a correction in your next blog.

Sorry, but both of them are pictured on three-dollar bills. I don’t need orders from Rove to notice that!

And, by the way, The Addams Family and The Munsters are about black families in white neighborhoods and the prejudice they face. Meanwhile, reader John Jorsett emails:

I am disturbed by your continual smears of honorable emailers like me. If you disagree with my hallucinations regarding your blog posts, then please voice that at your discretion, but engaging in personal smears campaigns at the behest of Chuckles the Clown and Joe Stalin really do a disservice to your readers. I never said that yo … SNAKES! SNAKES! Please issue a correction in your next blog.

Watch out for the SNAKES!

STILL MORE: A failure to retract.

My earlier posts about Gorelick’s conflict of interest, though not growing out of Able Danger, are, you know, right. But never mind. SNAKES!

MORE STILL: Heh. I should have known.

YET MORE: At least no one is calling me a “Jew prick.”

FINALLY: More comments here. And here: “A shorter Atrios… Wait! You can’t get any shorter. I mean: Thanks to Atrios for providing an instant example of what I’m saying about lefty blogs. Sigh.”

Indeed. And the comments illustrate the lefty blogs’ problems. Somewhere, Karl Rove is chortling over the left’s ongoing self-destruction via self-parody.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the transcript of a terrorist’s confession from Iraq.

UPDATE: Comments, from Chester.

IT’S FRIDAY, so it’s time for this week’s Carnival of the Recipes!

JIM DUNNIGAN: “Moderate Moslem voices are now being heard, which is a major victory in the war on terror.”

IS AMAZON TAKING OVER the Adult Toy business?

Apparently so.

(Second link may not be safe for work — unless, I suppose, you work for Amazon!)

But this adult toy link should be safe anywhere. . . . I want one!

UPDATE: For those afraid to click through, here’s the caption on the not-safe page: “1 – 24 of 27482 results in: Products > Sex & Sensuality > Adult Toys & Games.” That pretty much gets the point across.

BILL QUICK: “How can you avoid blog triumphalism when you read things like this?”

UPDATE: And things like this? Jeez.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Podhoretz: “This will be the subject of about a billion blog entries today. Did Krugman really think he could get away with this?”

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

MORE: Kaus defends Krugman.

(Kaus link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry.) There’s a response to Kaus here.

STEM CELLS AND SPACE: A twofer! Discussed over at GlennReynolds.com.

WAS THERE A SECOND ATTA? On the grassy knoll!

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, (free link) looks at media coverage of the economy, and finds that it often doesn’t match the actual numbers.

I’ve noticed something similar.

A GAY WEDDING IN CAIRO?

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE:

Large, transparent sheets of carbon nanotubes can now be produced at lightning speed. The new technique should allow the nanotubes to be used in commercial devices from heated car windows to flexible television screens.

“Rarely is a processing advance so elegantly simple that rapid commercialization seems possible,” says Ray Baughman, a chemist from the University of Texas at Dallas, whose team unveils the ribbon in this week’s Science.

Cool.

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR:

They’re called “synthetic biologists” and they boldly claim the ability to make never-before-seen living things, one genetic molecule at a time. . . .

The idea is to separate cells into their fundamental components and then rebuild new organisms, a much more complex way of genetic engineering.

The burgeoning movement is attracting big money and some of the biggest names in biology, many of whom are attending the “Life Engineering Symposium” that begins Friday in San Francisco.

“Synthetic biology is genetic engineering rethought,” said Harvard Medical Center researcher George Church, a leader in the field. “It challenges the notion of what’s natural and what’s synthetic.”

Dave Price is excited.

AUSTIN BAY IS GUEST-POSTING OVER AT JAY ROSEN’S, on The White House, the Press, and the war on terror.

I FIND EFFORTS TO CONNECT Star Trek with pedophilia unconvincing but amusing.

On the other hand, Mr. Ed, and My Favorite Martian, were clearly all about being gay and in the closet.

(Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry.)

STEM CELL UPDATE:

By making mice grow furrier coats, researchers have discovered that an enzyme known to serve as a last-ditch defense against cancer also activates adult stem cells, which the body uses to repair its tissues.

The insight could lead to new treatments for certain diseases, possibly even promoting hair growth in animals other than mice.

The research, reported by Steven E. Artandi and colleagues at Stanford University in Nature today, shows that adult stem cells can be activated by an enzyme called telomerase.

The finding is surprising because telomerase is well known in a quite different context, protecting against tumors by limiting the number of times a cell can divide. The new findings put the enzyme astride two major biological pathways, one that promotes the growth of new cells for maintaining tissues and the other that prevents the excessive growth that leads to tumors.

I’d like to know more, but this is interesting. So is this.