NOTHING wild about Harry.

A PROTEST PHOTO, contextualized.

THIS ZOGBY POLL of Iraqi business attitudes finds them quite optimistic.

MY REVIEW OF RAY KURZWEIL’S The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is out in today’s Wall Street Journal. The link is free to non-subscribers.

UPDATE: Reader Joe Ciccoro emails:

An interesting review of an interesting book.

“Mr. Kurzweil himself, thinking exponentially, imagines a plausible future, not so far away, with extended life-spans (living to 300 will not be unusual). . .”

Do we want that? Can we afford that?

Let us assume that those who will live to 300 will be active and productive, not demented for 200 of those years. Isn’t it likely that it will take a rather vigorous application of medical technology to keep them that way? We will simply not have the money, medical resources, or the physical space to accommodate that many more people. We count on disease, physical deterioration, and death to keep the population down, just like a herd of wildebeeste counts on lions to do the same.

If, in the future, we are able to expand lifespans to 300 years, it will necessarily be only for a few select individuals, not for the population as a whole. And it does not take much thought to consider how those few will be selected.

Actually, I don’t think that’s true. I’ve written on that very topic here and here. And Kurzweil argues that costs for life-extension technologies will decline just like costs for other technologies. At first, like cellphones, it will be very expensive and basically only for the rich. Not long afterward it will be ubiquitous.

Andrew Roth, meanwhile, has a post on the review that manages to work in Sandra Bullock.

JASON VAN STEENWYK says that Steve Lovelady is misrepresenting his work.

MORE QUESTIONS about who Judith Miller is protecting.

And if you read this item from Slate, you’ll see that rather a lot of people don’t think the official story adds up.

UPDATE: Hmm. Much ado about nothing?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more questions here: “her claims to be protecting a source and a principle are unbelievable. . . . Now, the Times has published a story about the release, and it doesn’t add up.”

TIGERHAWK REPORTS on a Condi Rice speech at Princeton.

Compare it to this AP report. (Via Roger Simon).

UPDATE: Another firsthand account that can be compared with media reports.

PUBLIUS:

While the most over-reported story (and the most debunked) story in the press this past August was the drafting of and the opposition to the Iraqi constitution, the most under-reported story in September is how ongoing negotiations have moderated large portions of the document’s opposition. In fact, as some of the contentious issues have been negotiated down, and the document has circulated amongst the general population, its approval and acceptance has become more likely. . . . Now, it appears that secular parties are rising to the top, while religious parties are beginning to wilt.

Read the whole thing.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN has more thoughts on intentionalism and interpretation.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: “Citizens Apply Internet Pressure.”

JEEZ, I HATE THESE THINGS: A reader sent me an email asking why I never link to The Belmont Club. Er, I do. But when I responded, I got this:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

I didn’t click. Don’t send me email if you have this service on your site, unless you’ve added me first. I don’t have time — or inclination — to waste my time in order to save yours, and I think the whole thing is rather rude.

On the original topic, I like The Belmont Club and have linked to it often, just not lately, I guess. No special reason. Same with InstaPunk and a long list of other sites. Usually, if I haven’t linked a site in a while, it’s not because of any special reason or because I’m mad(heck, I still link Junkyard Blog sometimes). It’s just, you know, whatever blogging groove I’m in at the moment.

UPDATE: Okay, now I’m really unhappy. Reader Anne Sullivan sent me an email complaining that I hadn’t answered some earlier email that I never saw, and when I sent a reply, I got the same damn message above.

I repeat — DO NOT email me if you are too lazy to have added my name to your whitelist before you do.

And I’m not the only one to feel this way.

PORK PROGRESS?

Rep. Mark Udall has joined Republican budget hawks on legislation that would give the White House new authority to pare congressional spending bills. . . .

It would authorize the president to pull specific items out of massive appropriations bills and then force Congress to hold up-or-down votes on the proposed cuts. It would apply to fiscal year 2006 spending bills, plus the huge, multiyear transportation plan that critics have said is loaded with wasteful, pork barrel projects.

Stay tuned.

A QUESTION FOR WAYNE ALLARD on Colorado Pork.

A U.N. EFFORT TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET domain system has been rejected. That seems like an awfully good thing to me.

UPDATE: Much more, including this observation: “But of course, it gets better. Because the UN bends itself into all kinds of twists to justify holding a summit on the Internet in a nation that does not allow open access to it.”

JONATHAN RAUCH on New Orleans: “In other words, if a severe hurricane struck, the city’s flooding and abandonment was not what would happen if the plan failed. It was the plan.”

IN THE MAIL: Pedro Sanjuan’s memoir, The UN Gang : A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat. It’s blurbed by Abe Foxman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Larry Eagleburger.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: It pays to read Instapundit! The Foresight Conference covers nanotech from every angle, from today’s applications and policy issues to advanced research and long-term visionary goals. If the cost has held you back, you can contact the organizers — disclosure: I serve on their board — to get the “Instapundit group discount”. Call Elaine at +1 650 289 0860 extension 256, or email for details.

LESSONS FROM KATRINA and the response:

Accounts from local officials of widespread looting and unspeakable violence — which now appear to have been significantly overstated — raised the specter at the time that soldiers might be forced to confront or even kill American citizens. The prospect of such a scenario added political and tactical complications to the job of filling the city with troops and set back relief efforts by days. . . .

Washington’s experience in Louisiana has prompted the White House to seek ways to shoulder locals out of the way if another similar disaster crops up in the future. President Bush has asked Congress to consider mechanisms that would allow him to quickly place the Pentagon in charge of such disasters, making it easier to use assets such as the 82nd Airborne Division, highly trained, regular Army soldiers who specialize in moving to an area quickly and securing it. As it was, cumbersome federal regulations generally prevent Mr. Bush from sending regular Army troops to enforce order in American cities unless they are expressly invited by a state’s governor.

For the Federal Emergency Management Agency, rumors of lawlessness simply delayed on-the-ground relief efforts and turned even routine errands into a cumbersome exercise. One official, who was posted at the Superdome, said federal rescuers and doctors were required to secure armed escorts even for short trips across the street.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Austin Bay thinks that federalizing, and militarizing, disaster response is probably a mistake.

JOHN FUND thinks that ABC is softening up the electorate for Hillary. I watched a little bit of Commander in Chief and I’m not sure it’ll work that way: I wonder if Hillary won’t wind up being compared to Geena Davis, which is more likely to harm her than to help her.

UPDATE: Hmm. Could the real beneficiary of all this strong-woman TV hype be Condi Rice?

MICHAEL TOTTEN is blogging from Lebanon, where he’ll be staying for quite some time.

IOWAHAWK SAVAGELY DEFENDS HIS STATE’S PORK against “a shadowy group of agenda-driven internet extremists.” As you might expect, though, he lost me at the puppy part.

THANK GOD PEOPLE ARE FINALLY CATCHING ON: Several years ago, my brother and I (as eco-folk band “The Meadowlarks”) released a song called “How Many Flowers Must Die,” about the senseless slaughter of our petalled friends on Valentine’s Day.

Driving home tonight, I heard an NPR story featuring a song by Brad Paisley called “How Many Flowers Have to Die?” addressing the same point in a highly similar fashion. (“Stop the senseless killing . . . Tell me, how many flowers have to die?”) Advantage: The Meadowlarks!

The Floral Rights movement is finally picking up steam. . . .

UPDATE: Of course, this effort from the same “we can invent a cheesy fake band and write and release a song in a single six-pack” era is also seeming pretty timely about now. Everything old is new again!

Hey, come to think of it, this effort is timely, too, though it wasn’t finished over a six-pack, alas.

MORE SERENITY reviews rounded up by Daniel Drezner.

By the way, I got an email from the PR guy who handled this, and he was ecstatic about how it’s worked out. I’m going to try to follow up on that later and get more details.

JUDITH MILLER IS OUT OF JAIL, and Plame expert Tom Maguire looks at what it may mean.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus: “You mean she was sitting in jail all because she never bothered to inquire and find out that the waiver that would free her was genuine?”

Orin Kerr: “If you’re Bob Bennett, Judith Miller’s top-shelf lawyer, wouldn’t you try to clear this up before your client spent three months in jail? Something about this seems fishy to me.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:

I’m ashamed that Lipscomb University, a school I attended for three years, hasn’t stepped forward to reject the $3 million federal subsidy it is supposed to get to build a parking garage, so that money can go to hurricane relief. A wealthy private Christian university really ought not to be asking taxpayers to fund its parking garage.

Lipscomb is currently in the middle of one of those alumni giving drives. I received the pledge/donations mailer just the other day. Until Lipscomb returns the $3 million, or donates it to hurricane relief, I won’t be donating another dime to the school – and I’ll be urging other alumni to take the same stand.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey is extending this principle to the United States Senate, and he’s not alone:

My good friend Mark Tapscott of the Heritage Foundation called me today and asked me why I had not yet blogged about Porkbusters. I told him that without having much to contribute that I didn’t want to distract from the effort made by other bloggers. He suggested that I could assist the program by expanding the Not One Dime More effort to Porkbusters … which I think is an excellent idea.

Not One Dime More targeted the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the failure of GOP leadership to get George Bush’s judicial nominees confirmed or even in process. Now we want to target both parties’ Congressional election commitees, the NRCC and the DCCC, by withholding funds while the parties act to protect their pork. For those representatives who refuse to pare the pork, we need to cut off their political oxygen until they turn blue and their campaign chests grow cold. Tell your Congressperson that while they protect the pork we discover, while they continue to vote for budgets with these useless and wasteful projects when the funding could defray the hurricane relief efforts, we will send Not One Dime to their efforts to re-elect their incumbents.

Seems like it would be smart for the GOP to get ahead of this issue, while it still can.