LEARNING TO LOVE SPRAWL: My TechCentralStation column, which revolves around Robert Bruegmann’s Sprawl: A Compact History, is up.

Bruegmann’s book is very interesting, and I predict that it will be very influential.

MORE THOUGHTS ON G.M., over at GlennReynolds.com.

Meanwhile, the UAW — with behind the scenes support from GM — is holding up pension legislation in Congress.

JULIE FIDLER has a survey she’d like people to take.

MARC DANZIGER BUSTS a conspiracy theory. Sheesh.

CLIVE DAVIS has a Narnia roundup.

IT PROBABLY LACKS THE POP APPEAL of his Harry Potter piece, but I just got a piece of fan mail from Rob Merges regarding this article by my colleague Ben Barton on tort reform, innovation, and playground design, so I guess I should link it.

JOHN LEO writes that Harvard Law is outperforming Yale on faculty diversity.

BOB WOODWARD IS VALERIE PLAME: Discussed at Tom Maguire’s.

VIOLENCE AT THE POLLS IN EGYPT: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

MOHAMMED OF IRAQ THE MODEL has a report on the impending Iraqi elections. The opening paragraph illustrates that the Iraqis have achieved parity with other democracies!

I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THIS SOONER, but Scott Adams has a blog. Not surprisingly, it’s quite good. I particularly recommend his advice on how to debate.

“GROWING OIL SUPPLIES MEAN LOWER OIL COSTS:” Wow, that’s more support for Mickey Kaus’s outrageous theory about prices. Someone should look into this!

SHOTS FIRED by air marshal at Miami airport. A suspect is dead, but it’s not clear what he’s suspected of.

THE CONSUMERIST, Nick Denton’s new shopping site with an angry, bitter edge, is now up!

And no, he didn’t buy me a sports car in exchange for this mention. Though feel free, Nick!

HAS THE WHITE HOUSE joined the War Against Christmas?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON ON THE CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL:

But we can’t let this collective carcass picking — as voyeuristically titillating as it may be — distract us from the two vital issues this story raises: the corrupting role that money continues to play in our politics, and the overly cozy relationship between those in power and those in the media whose job it is to cover them.

I mean, where was the Washington press corps on this story?

Here you have a Congressman making $158,000 a year, living (and partying with lobbyists) on a yacht docked at the Capital Yacht Club and driving a Rolls-Royce — and not a single Washington journalist thought this worth looking into? If one of them had followed the spoils, it would have quickly led to a defense contractor buying the yacht, christened the “Duke-Stir”, while at the same time receiving massive government contracts authorized by the defense appropriations subcommittee Cunningham sat on.

But, instead, the Beltway Gang turned a blind-eye — so jaded and accepting of how the game is played in Washington that the corruption didn’t even register.

Which isn’t uncommon. I suspect that bloggers could accomplish a lot in unmasking corruption by looking at politicians’ lifestyles and matching them against their declared incomes. So could journalists, but they don’t seem to do much of that.

AUSTIN BAY writes on Iraqi reconstruction efforts.

IN JUST A FEW MINUTES, Michael Ledeen and Marc Cooper will be debating online. There’s also a contest to name their show. I favored “Nattering Nabobs,” but they vetoed it. (There was also a potential naming dispute with the philosophical blog “Nattering Nabobs of Postivism,” and you can’t be too careful about those things, it seems . . . .)

A PEARL HARBOR ANNIVERSARY ROUNDUP at LaShawn Barber’s place.

NUDE PHOTOS OF JENNIFER ANISTON raise legal questions.

SOME OVERLOOKED ASPECTS of Condi’s Eastern Europe trip.

SATELLITE RADIO UPDATE: So after reading all the responses to this post on XM and Sirius, I wound up ordering this one. Though a few people had complaints, the vast majority of emailers seemed happy with either XM or Sirius, regardless of which they had. So as a tie-breaker, I decided to go with loyalty to the one that carries my brother’s stuff — and that was offering a really good deal.

SAMBUCKS loses to Starbucks. This seems silly to me.

THANKS, Business Week.

BURNING CARS AND BURNING GIRLS: A German feminist looks at the French riots. (Via Winds of Change).