VERIZON EVDO UPDATE: Reader Doug Wingate writes:

I’m considering getting onto the Verizon EVDO network, having read your blog entries in which you praised the Verizon service some weeks ago. Will you consider giving your readers an update on your satisfaction with that service and any thoughts you may have as to whether it’s the best thing going for wireless connectivity in the urban areas where the service is offered?

Well, since — in spite of the salesman’s promise to me last fall — Verizon hasn’t rolled out its broadband service in Knoxville yet, I’m not sure I can answer that. I’ve used the broadband service when I’ve been in Washington, New York, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and other areas that offer it. It seems quite zippy. Around here it’s the slower “national access” — nominally 122kbps, though it’s sometimes slower (and, actually, sometimes faster) than that. That’s not a patch on wifi or DSL, but it’s perfectly usable. And you can blog from a moving car, which is kind of cool. The service is pretty reliable, although it doesn’t work everywhere. I’ve used it out in the boonies, but there are areas (for example, a stretch of I-81 in southern Virginia from about Abingdon to Roanoke) where there’s no service at all.

I like it a lot. I’m not sure I’d make it my primary Internet service, but it’s very cool to be able to work anywhere.

I still wish they’d roll out broadband in Knoxville, though, as I was promised.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF NOTES A NEW IRAQI POLL that’s kind of interesting.

VIVA EL PRESIDENTE!

MORE ON CHINA AND JAPAN:

Beijing has been stoking the fires of Chinese nationalism recently, precipitating one diplomatic crisis after another. In the process, it has called into question whether China remains committed to pursuing its self-proclaimed “peaceful rise.”

Indeed.

ACCURATE BUT FAKE: Randy Barnett recounts his personal experience with New York Times fact-checkers.

HOWARD KURTZ ON JOURNALISTS ON BLOGS:

Some journalists are unperturbed. CNN analyst Jeff Greenfield likes many blogs and doesn’t much worry about “the baked-potato brains who say you’re a media whore. . . . On the whole, I’m real happy to know there are a lot of people watching with the capacity to check me. I don’t think that’s chilling. It’s just another incentive to get your facts right.”

As for “smear artists” on the Internet, Greenfield says, “The freedom that it gives anonymous twerps to spew out invective — that they don’t like the way you look or think you’re an idiot or a child abuser — that’s just part of the process.”

That seems like the right attitude to me.

HERE’S A RATHER EXTENSIVE REVIEW of Jim Bennett’s book, The Anglosphere Challenge, by Keith Windschuttle in National Review. Money quote: “Whatever the outcome, The Anglosphere Challenge is one of the important books of our time.”

And here’s an online Anglosphere Primer, also authored by Bennett, though in truth Bennett, and his ideas, are pretty well-known around the blogosphere already.

BAINBRIDGE ON KLEIMAN on Clark.

Clark seems like a non-starter to me; not enough support or charisma to make it as a presidential candidate. But then, I thought that about Bill Clinton in 1991.

IT’S A WAR NEWS ROUNDUP at Winds of Change. And don’t miss Ike’s observation about the occupation of Germany.

UNSCAM UPDATE: There’s a Canadian connection to the oil-for-food scandal.

IN THE MAIL: One Solder’s Story: A Memoir, by Bob Dole. Reading just the first few pages, it’s easy to see why he got so angry at John Kerry last year.

REMEMBERING APOLLO 13:

A group of engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center came up with a unique design using plastic bags, cardboard and duct tape 35 years ago to save the three astronauts aboard Apollo 13.

Sunday marked the 35th anniversary of the spacecraft’s return to Earth. It was crippled by an oxygen tank that overheated and exploded, causing concern the carbon dioxide the astronauts expelled from their lungs would eventually kill them. Two of Apollo’s three fuel cells, a primary source of power, also were lost.

The engineers’ work to save astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert is to be recognized Tuesday by a company that runs an engineering search engine. Engineers, astronauts and flight controllers are expected for the ceremony at the space center.

Ron Howard’s film is absolutely superb, and I wish we saw more movies with engineers as heroes.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Coates: “Yes, I agree. And the IMAX version in the anniversary release is fantastic played on on wide screen HDTV. Check it out.”

I put off buying the TV I blogged about a couple of months ago, but I think I’m going to take the plunge shortly. When I do, I’ll take that advice.

UPDATE: Much more on Apollo 13 here: “Rather than hurried improvisation, saving the crew of Apollo 13 took years of preparation.” A fascinating read, from IEEE Spectrum, in their free area.

BIZZYBLOG writes that President Bush should veto the bankruptcy bill. Won’t happen, alas.

CATHY YOUNG writes that there’s an Andrea Dworkin whitewash going on: “Whatever her defenders may say, Dworkin was a relentless preacher of hatred toward men.”

LEBANESE FREEDOM ACTIVISTS have their own blog, Pulse of Freedom, which is being published from the tent city itself. Check it out.

Michael Totten has more, including photos of the bloggers.

KNOX COUNTY SCHOOLS: My local school system, which is aggressively pursuing truants and threatening parents with jail time, also seems to cancel school itself for all sorts of reasons, according to no discernible pattern. (Once, I kid you not, I took my daughter to school only to find it closed — because of fog.) We sure didn’t have this many days off when I was a kid. That has at least allowed me to get a late start this morning, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Perhaps they’re having a seminar today, in which they explain to one of her teachers that evolutionary theory hasn’t actually been scientifically discredited in favor of creation science, despite what he told my daughter. Sigh.

There are good teachers there, and the Insta-Daughter’s intellectual advancement certainly isn’t being held back (though, like me, she learns much more on her own than from sitting in class). But there are days when I think that the strident-sounding criticism of “government schools” by Neal Boortz, et al., just might have something to it.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

If I were going to post something about my daughter’s school system, (Williamson County) I would have posted exactly the same thing you did about Knox County Schools.

You wouldn’t believe the number of memos that are sent home with long lists of symptoms for which the students should remain at home, but should your child actually stay home with one or more of those more than, perhaps, once, you are instantly guilty of not taking your child’s education seriously.

Apparently, our children really belong to the County Board of Education and we are just renting them for the evenings and weekends.

I couldn’t agree with you more that the random number of scheduled days off do not indicate the same level of “seriousness” on the part of the school system.

My daughter, like yours, also learns far more on her own than she ever has learned in the seven hours and thirty two minutes a day she is required to be in the school building.

Should anyone from the school ever hear me say that….. rest assured there will be letters and a knock on the door from yet another government agency-the almighty DCS!

I’m so glad to see your post about this.

Well, you know, DCS isn’t that bad. But it’s that attitude, coupled with the inconsistent behavior, that bothers me, too.

I was on Tennessee’s Juvenile Justice Reform Commission a few years ago, and was appalled to hear state agencies offer the very same excuses — lack of time and money, for example — that they wouldn’t accept from parents, when they failed to provide children with services required by law. (Indeed, Knox County is being sued right now for not providing adequate alternative education and is offering those excuses). I was pretty astringent about it, too.

I don’t buy into the argument that teachers are lazy, dumb, etc., which you often hear on talk radio. Most of them — like most of the people on the frontlines in any agency — are pretty dedicated and pretty good. Some are much better. But the systems as a whole tend to be bureaucratic. And it seems to be that way everywhere: I spent the first part of elementary school in Cambridge, Massachussetts, and the second part here (with a year in Germany as the divider) and you got pretty much the same stuff regardless.

I wonder, though, if the increasing availability of private education and homeschooling doesn’t make things worse, by draining off some of the parents whose complaints would otherwise force the system to behave better. At some point, I suppose, the effects of competition will shift things the other way, but that dynamic doesn’t seem to be taking hold, yet.

ORIN KERR: “Given that the Constitution in Exile movement doesn’t seem to exist, some may be wondering why the editors at the New York Times commissioned Jeff Rosen to write a long and detailed cover story about it for the Sunday Times magazine. I’ve been mulling it over, and have come up with four possible explanations for their interest.”

My favorite: “Any story that features a hot picture of Richard Epstein is going to sell a lot of newspapers.”

PATTERN RECOGNITION: Yes, we’ve seen this sort of thing before.

UPDATE: Austin Bay: “This tawdry fillip is from the get- Clarence Thomas-playbook, but post-Clinton and Lewinsky such dirty ‘j’accuse’ merely demonstrates a peculiar form of political and media decadence.”

It also shows that it’s not the generals who are fighting the last war, nowadays.

ASTEROID UPDATE:

A HUGE asteroid which is on a course to miss the Earth by a whisker in 2029 could go round its orbit again and score a direct hit a few years later.
Astronomers have calculated that the 1,000ft-wide asteroid called 2004 MN4 will pass by the Earth at a distance of between 15,000 and 25,000 miles — about a tenth of the distance between the Earth and the Moon and close enough to be seen with the naked eye.

Although they are sure that it will miss us, they are worried about the disturbance that such a close pass will give to the asteroid’s orbit. It might put 2004 MN4 on course for a collision in 2034 or a year or two later: the unpredictability of its behaviour means that the danger might not become apparent until it is too late.

Scientists are proposing that we tag it with a transponder, so that we can keep closer track of its position.