GREG SCOBLETE does a New York Times compare-and-contrast exercise, looking at the treatment of Enron vs. Oil-for-Food.

VERIZON WIRELESS UPDATE: I like the go-anywhere quality of the Verizon EVDO data card. But when I signed up in November, the salesman told me that we’d go from the 122kbps “National Access” service to the 512kbps “Broadband Access” service by the end of the first quarter of 2005. They’ve got one day left, and there’s no sign of it happening. That’s a bit irritating.

OXBLOG looks at media-approved police brutality.

NASA PODCASTS: Cool. (Via Space Law Probe).

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: “I had sincerely intended to be the only scribbler in America who stayed out of this most stupid and degrading argument. . . . But, once you engage for even an instant, you are drawn into a vortex of irrationality and nastiness that generates its own energy.”

Indeed.

On the other hand, John Hawkins has put together a Terry Schiavo FAQ that is neither nasty nor irrational.

DON’T RAGE AGAINST THE BLOG: Embrace the blog! Advice for Big Media folks, over at GlennReynolds.com.

IS THERE HOPE FOR NASA? My TechCentralStation column is up.

MORE PROTESTS FOR DEMOCRACY in the Arab world:

In this roiling political spring of protest and debate about democracy in repressive Arab countries, cell phone text messaging has become a powerful underground channel of free and often impolite speech, especially in the oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchies, where mobile phones are common but candid public talk about politics is not.

Demonstrators use text messaging to mobilize followers, dodge authorities and swarm quickly to protest sites. Candidates organizing for the region’s limited elections use text services to call supporters to the polls or slyly circulate candidate slates in countries that supposedly ban political groupings. And through it all, anonymous activists blast their adversaries with thousands of jokes, insults and political limericks.

Ah yes: “There once was a man from Yemen . . .”

VARIOUS PEOPLE have been demanding spring-weather pictures from Knoxville, but I’ve been — alas — too busy to take any. I managed to take a few on the way across campus today, though, so here you are.

UPDATE: Moved to the “extended entry” area to speed page loads.

(more…)

AN ITEM I LINKED TO EARLIER, suggesting that the WSJ should have credited Roger Simon, was in error, as was I. As Roger notes, the WSJ says they got the same information independently.

SOME THOUGHTS on military nanotechnology.

SHOCKWAVES AND ECHOES:

The shock waves from Kyrgyzstan’s lightning revolution are spreading around the former Soviet Union – and into the heart of Russia – leading analysts to wonder which regimes might be next to face the peoples’ wrath.
Recent days have seen a spate of copycat protests launched by opposition groups that were perhaps hoping their own local authorities might fold and flee under pressure, as did Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev when demonstrators stormed his Bishkek complex last week. . . .

Two Russian ethnic republics, Ingushetia and Bashkortostan, have seen mass street demonstrations this week directed against Kremlin-installed leaders. Even in remote Mongolia, the former USSR’s Asian satellite, hundreds of protesters gathered last week to “congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers” and demand a rerun of last June’s disputed parliamentary polls.

Some experts see a common thread among these upheavals that began 17 months ago when Georgians overthrew Eduard Shevardnadze in a peaceful revolt and continued with Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” late last year.

“Every situation is different, but a single process is unfolding,” says Valentin Bogatyrov, a former Akayev adviser and director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Bishkek. “Kyrgyzstan is a kind of trigger that will spread this unrest to our neighbors, and beyond. We are witnessing the second breakup of the Soviet Union.”

Putin can’t like this. Here’s more on Ingushetia, including the observation that it’s “on the brink of revolution.” I don’t know if that’s true, but clearly there are a lot of people interested in democracy.

MORE ON THE U.N.’S AMBITION TO REGULATE THE INTERNET:

In a series of speeches over the last year, Zhao has suggested that the ITU could become involved in everything from security and spam to managing how Internet Protocol addresses are assigned. The ITU also is looking into some aspects of voice over Internet Protocol–VoIP–communications, another potential area for expansion.

“Countering spam is just one of many elements of protecting the Internet that include availability during emergencies and supporting public safety and law enforcement officials,” Zhao wrote in December. Also, he wrote, the ITU “would take care of other work, such as work on Internet exchange points, Internet interconnection charging regimes, and methods to provide authenticated directories that meet national privacy regimes.”

Gee, do you think any of that stuff could be used for censorship or something?

LOTS MORE NEWS FROM LEBANON: Heads are (figuratively) rolling. And they’re the right heads.

I’LL BE ON MSNBC’S CONNECTED COAST TO COAST at about 5:15 eastern.

UPDATE: You can see video here and here.

HERE’S MORE on Higher Education’s diversity problem, which is much worse than I had realized. I wouldn’t support quotas as a remedy. But perhaps “goals and timetables,” which are not quotas of course, might be considered.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: But people are pushing back.

I WONDER WHY THIS A.P. STORY on the non-combat death of a U.S. soldier in Iraq features a picture of George and Laura Bush, who have nothing to do with the story?

I sat on this for a couple of hours, thinking that it was just a glitch, but the picture switched from one of Laura to one of George and Laura.

UPDATE: A reader who works at Yahoo!, where the story is hosted, emails:

In this particual case, the picture points to a Yahoo! slide show about the military, and that happens to be the first photo in the slide show. I don’t think there was any intent here of kind of thing that I know what you’re alluding to. It was a military story that linked to a military slide show, that’s all. BTW, the photo is a Reuters pic on a AP story.

However, this one is a bit more ummm, well…you decide.

Purely accidental, I’m sure.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hmm. The picture’s different now.

ROGER SIMON has been reading the latest report on the Oil-for-food scandal, and has some observations. It’s a must-read.

I’VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT THIS GADGET, but I had no idea how easy it is to buy — or how cheap! Subverting the dominant paradigm, with help from Target . . . .

UPDATE: Two posts on the ethics of TV-zapping, here and here.