HERE’S AN INTERESTING REVIEW of Ray Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, which I reviewed earlier here.

THE OFFICERS’ CLUB LOOKS AT IRAN, and thinks that a military solution is not unlikely.

THE BLAWG REVIEW, a law-blog carnival, is up!

LINCOLN AND IRAQ: Writing in The New Republic, Bill Stuntz argues that it’s a good thing the Iraqi insurgency has lasted this long. “Brief wars rarely produce permanent results, but long wars often do.” Interesting argument.

IN THE MAIL: This rather interesting-looking book by Daniel Nissanoff, arguing that online shopping will be far more revolutionary than current models suggest.

COFFEE: Is there anything it can’t do?

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

RON BAILEY WRITES on what we can learn from carbon markets.

HERE’S AN ARTICLE ON NANOTECHNOLOGY REGULATION from the Washington Post, noting the EPA’s appropriately cautious attitude toward overregulation. Some of the reasons for the EPA’s caution can be found in this report.

BACK IN THE HALCYON DAYS OF MP3.COM, one of my favorite bands was Digital Ritual. I just got an email from ’em, and a link to this new site. Makes me feel like I should get back to my own musical efforts, though all the hobbies have taken a beating since I started the book.

DANIEL SOLOVE looks at varying media treatments in the Tom Delay case.

Personally, I don’t like Tom “no pork here” Delay, and I think it’s good for the country (and the Republicans, actually) that he won’t be resuming his leadership position. On the other hand, I also suspect that he really is the target of a politically motivated witch hunt, and I can only imagine the howls we’d hear if the same kinds of legal theories were being applied to labor unions.

UPDATE: More here.

IT’S MURTHA VS. MURTHA over at Kausfiles. “Sorry, this man seems confused. In his current state I wouldn’t follow him either into battle or out of it.”

The Dems do seem in disarray over the war, but now they’re not just disagreeing with each other, but with themselves. It’s like the whole party has been Kerry-ized.

UPDATE: P.A. Miller has a theory about what’s going on.

MORE: “Karl Rove has made suckers out of the Democrats again.”

“POUTING SPOOKS” STRIKE AGAIN? Seems, as others have suggested, like something calling for more subpoenas. Because leaking classified information is always wrong, right, not just when it might implicate someone in the White House. . . . (Via Never Yet Melted). You do wonder whether anyone at the CIA ever manages to keep a secret. It seems clear that Bush made a dreadful mistake by not firing a lot of people after 9/11.

I’VE NOTICED LOTS OF DEMOCRATS on various TV shows calling for Bush to replace Rumsfeld with Joe Lieberman. Given that the Democrats don’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Lieberman on defense matters, I wonder what’s going on? Are they trying to get him out of the Senate for some reason? Do they expect things to get a lot better in Iraq before 2006, and want to split the credit? Do they think Bush is going to do it anyway, and want to make it look like they pressured him into it? (Kaus’s “Nader strategy?”) Or is there some other agenda I’m missing? Because it sure seems to have coalesced as an across-the-board talking point very quickly.

UPDATE: Here’s some Democratic thinking, according to Kos.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Kerry has jumped on the bandwagon, which makes me suspect that it’s not going anywhere.

IF YOU LOOK IN THE RIGHT SIDEBAR (below the credits buttons and just above the recommended links) you’ll see a box listing recent blog carnivals. I’m testing this for my cousin-in-law Brad Rubenstein — it’s a feature of his BlogCarnival.com site. Don’t worry — I won’t quit linking carnivals here. But I think it’s a useful guide. I believe you can get the button for your site, too, just by clicking.

UPDATE: The Carnival of Tomorrow is up!

HEH.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP OF VENEZUELAN ELECTION BLOG COVERAGE put together by Robert Mayer of Publius.

SO THE 9/11 COMMISSION IS COMPLAINING about problems with first responders’ radios. Who’s holding things up? Television networks:

As I noted in an earlier post, Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., and Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., have cited un-named television broadcasters who use the frequencies first responders want to use — Channels 63, 64, 69 and 69 — as holding up this legislation for years.

So who are we talking about? Which big broadcasters?

I’m told from Congressional sources that the big stations that would be affected by giving those spectrum numbers are the family-friendly PAX and Spanish-speaking UNIVISON, as well as some other broadcasters in particular markets.

I wonder if the family friendly and minority nature of these stations have anything to do with the politicians’ reluctance to name them?

Or is it just that it’s more nefarious-sounding to call them “big broadcasters”?

I wonder why this story isn’t getting more TV coverage . . . .

MARC COOPER:

I just came back from the Burbank studios of Warner Bros. where I saw a screening of the new thriller, Syriana.

In a word: disappointing.

Syriana’s commercial tag-line might, indeed, be “Everything is Connected” but its 126 minutes made me feel like I was pitched into a roiling sea of free-radical dots with very little coherence at all. As I watched a particularly gruesome scene of George Clooney’s character getting his fingernails pulled out, I briefly considered if it might be worth my time to trade places with him.

Ouch!

WHO SHOULD CONTROL THE INTERNET? A discussion.

FOR SOME PEOPLE, it will always be 1971.

UPDATE: But not for everyone.

THE 9/11 COMMISSION WILL NEVER GO AWAY, APPARENTLY: Now they’ve issued a report card.

On the other hand, there’s clearly room for improvement:

Connecticut homeland security officials were left in the dark for more than two hours Friday after a series of bomb threats forced the evacuation and shutdown of the state’s 45 courthouses, authorities acknowledged Monday.

Neither police nor Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s office _ which received one of the bomb threats at 10 a.m. _ had informed the security agency by noon, leaving top officials to learn about the first-of-its-kind evacuation from reporters.

Yes, this is a state issue — but supposedly we created a new cabinet department to help bring states up to speed.

FRESH BAKED: Nidra Poller offers firsthand reporting from Paris, where unrest continues. This time it’s the gypsies rioting. “Everybody and his brother can bring the city to a halt. Demonstrating is the last of the sacred rights.”

SO I GUESS FOXNEWS DIDN’T JUST MAKE IT UP: Brian Flemming has declared war on Christmas.

I hate to disparage a fellow blogger, but I’m not sure Brian is a match for Foamy the Squirrel. Maybe they can do a point/counterpoint on O’Reilly. . . .

AT LEAST THEY’RE CONSISTENT: Antiwar protesters practice cut-and-run.