A LOOK AT bloggers and the information war.

MICHAEL YON has thoughts on truth and propaganda.

IRAQ THE MODEL has more on politics in Iraq, where things look to be heading in a positive direction.

SINGULARITY UPDATE: Ray Kurzweil was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation on Friday, talking about his book The Singularity is Near and technological change in general You can listen to audio here. Interestingly, the New York Times says that The Singularity is Near is one of the most blogged books of 2005. Read this article on Kurzweil and life extension, too.

Meanwhile, here’s evidence that a lot of people want to see progress in aging research: “Forget ’40 is the new 30.’ Now even twentysomethings are joining the quest for eternal youth by using anti-aging products and wrinkle treatments.” Think how big the market will be when the products actually work.

UPDATE: Reader Michael McFatter emails that Kurzweil will be on C-SPAN2’s Book TV tonight at 10:15 Eastern.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Stevens emails:

My wife (who just turned 21 today) has been using anti-aging treatments for a couple years now. People always tell her she doesn’t need it, but she claims now is the time to start, before the wrinkles show up. Once they appear, it’s too late. I think that’s probably true. I think it’s also worth mentioning that the $100 products you can buy at Macy’s probably don’t work any better than the $10 ones they sell down at the drugstore.

Sunscreen and moisturizer help — though you don’t want to short yourself on Vitamin D, either. And you want to exercise, but not too much. “The more your race ’em the less you trust — the less you drive ’em, the more they rust.”

I FINISHED TOBIAS BUCKELL’S Crystal Rain over the weekend, and liked it. It’s somewhat reminiscent of some of Ken MacLeod’s stuff in the series beginning with Cosmonaut Keep — an interesting mix of high- and low-tech.

UPDATE: Via an email from Buckell, I see that he’s started a blog. Cool.

SOME GOOD NEWS:

The 17-year effort to eradicate polio from the world appears to be back on track after nearly unraveling in the past three years.

A new strategy of using a vaccine targeting the dominant strain of the virus appears to have eliminated polio from Egypt, one of six countries where it was freely circulating. That approach is on the verge of doing the same in India. Twenty-five years ago, India had 200,000 cases of paralytic polio a year. A decade ago, it was still seeing 75,000 cases annually. Through November this year, it recorded 52.

This would be going better still if anti-vaccine hysteria hadn’t slowed things down.

POLITICS ON CAMPUS — AND OFF: Having elevated “diversity” into a value that trumps all others — except, perhaps, the right of students never to be offended — universities are in a poor position to resist this campaign.

MORE TSUNAMI STORIES: Gaijin Biker notes that the U.N. seems to have blown a lot of relief money on overhead. (“No wonder it was so concerned that America and other nations might be ‘stingy’ with donations — any less, and the refugees might not have received any aid at all.”) Those Mercedes don’t come cheap! The Times notes that a lot of money given to British charities seems to have gone unspent. Well, it’s not like there’s anyone who still needs help:

But the pace of reconstruction has been criticized, and frustration has grown with 80 percent of the 1.8 million people displaced by the waves still living in tents, plywood barracks or with family and friends.

In Aceh, one survivor dismissively gestured at a jumble of scrap iron and plastic sheeting _ all that remains of his neighborhood.

“You want to talk about changes, we’ve seen nothing,” said Baihqi, 24. “Many promises of aid, but that’s all we get _ promises.”

Stormtrack, meanwhile, remembers the disaster with a collection of pictures and video, and there’s a roundup over at Blogs4God, too.

UPDATE: Heh. As usual, Chris Muir’s Day by Day cartoon was way ahead on this.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Did “Baby 81” get the shaft?

MORE: Here’s a big tsunami roundup by Martin Lindeskog.