THE CARNIVAL OF GAMERS IS UP!

TECH EDITORS: SOMEBODY HIRE HOWARD LOVY so that he can get back to blogging!

ED MORRISSEY says that the flag-burning amendment would put us on the road to being like the E.U. Ugh.

WORSTALL’S LAW: “Any Organization Will, In the End, Be Run By Those who Stay Awake in Committee.”

FOODBLOGGING: If you like Indian food — and, well, you should! — check out N.D. Rai’s Indian recipe blog.

IS THERE A HOUSING BUBBLE? In a word, yes. Not everywhere, but both David Bernstein and Bill Quick have some potent indications.

VIA CATHY SEIPP, I’ve discovered that Bewitched is out on DVD now. (That’s the original black-and-white — there’s also a colorized version that will no doubt sell well but infuriate purists.)

I leave the argument as to who made a better Darrin — Dick York, or Dick Sargent — for others.

UPDATE: David Gulliver emails:

Dick York owned the role of Darrin! He and Elizabeth Montgomery had a real chemistry, like a real husband and wife. Dick Sargent may have been a better actor and a more likeable fellow, but he never had a spark with his leading lady. It was like watching an actor play a husband instead of watching a husband. Dick York also had an incredible talent for making extreme facial gestures—the sort you would expect of a person witnessing supernatural phenomena. As for the movie… Will Farrell???? What the heck???? They should have begged, pleaded, and shelled out the cash for Jim Carrey. Carrey could have had me believing I was watching Dick York. Farrell will be lucky to pull off Dick Sargent.

Ouch.

INTERESTED IN GADGET BLOGS? Check out Gadget Madness.

IF YOU’RE A BLOGGER, consider taking the MIT blog author survey.

HEH. Don’t trust — but don’t verify, either . . . .

WELL, THIS SHOULD PUT AN END to flag-burning, at least in the Middle East: White House Proposes Printing Q’uran On American Flag.

MELISSA SCHWARTZ is photoblogging Brooklyn.

IT’S PLEDGE WEEK FOR KEVIN DRUM AND PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Support the blogger of your choice.

AUSTIN BAY has more reporting from Afghanistan.

DURBIN UPDATE: A Salon article on apologies says:

“I’m sorry I was rude” is good.

“I’m sorry if I was rude” is not. It weasels. It implies that maybe you weren’t rude. It implies that the person being apologized to has a twisted little worldview if they think “Oh, shut up, frog-lips” is rude.

An apology should give the sense that you actually feel some form of regret. “Sorry if” is a conditional apology. Conditional apologies make things worse, not better.

Words to the wise, but usually unheeded. Compare to Durbin’s apology:

“I’m sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time,” he said, adding, “I’m also sorry if anything I said in any way cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military.”

Kind of iffy, I’d say. . . . (Thanks to Wagner James Au for the tip).

LOOKS LIKE A STRAW-POLL BLOWOUT FOR CONDI RICE.

GUANTANAMO BLOWBACK FROM JAMES LILEKS:

Q: What is Gitmo?

A: Contrary to what some suggest, it does not stand for “Git mo’ Peking chicken for Muhammad, he wants a second portion.” It stands for “Guantanamo,” a facility the United States built to see if the left would ever care about human rights abuses in Cuba. The experiment has apparently been successful.

Hysteria and political point-scoring have turned this into a joke. That happens when you overplay your hand. As Ryan Sager observes:

There’s an important debate to be had in this country about just how far we’re willing to go in our interrogations. But it’s a difficult debate to even get started when one side thinks that we should be extremely concerned with the possibility that someone, somewhere might have desecrated the Korans of the people responsible for the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, three-thousand Americans and now hundreds upon hundreds of Iraqi civilians. . . .

While it would be extremely easy to gloat over this continued meltdown, there’s simply nothing here to be happy about, unless one is among the most partisan of Republican partisans.

For those who have supported the war all along — or at least want to see us win — it’s sad not to have a loyal opposition to help keep the administration honest.

Indeed. Marc Danziger offers some perspective. So does Donald Sensing. Unfortunately, some people are taking a different line.

Interestingly, only 20% of Americans think that the Guantanamo prisoners are being treated unfairly, which is pretty astonishing given the colossal amount of uniformly negative Guantanamo-related coverage. This suggests that overplaying their hand has been as big a mistake as I thought.

UPDATE: Don Surber offers political perspective.

THE “FLYPAPER STRATEGY” is getting strange new respect.

UPDATE: Read this post by Tigerhawk, too.

MILBLOGGER DOWN: But he’ll be okay, according to this update from his wife. Send him your prayers and good wishes.

THE OPEN MEDIA 100: Why not?

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: Both Rand Simberg and Stephen Bainbridge have thoughts.

SOUNDS COOL TO ME: A wireless network covering all of New York City. Bring it on! (Thanks to Micah Sifry for the headsup).

JON HENKE on the Administration’s plans for postwar Iraq. He’s discovered some shocking secret documents.

UNSCAM UPDATE: In the latest oil-for-food casualty, U.N. procurement official Alexander Yakovlev has resigned. (Via Roger Simon).

MICKEY KAUS thinks that Michael McConnell might not be as supportive of campaign finance “reform” as some others have suggested.