AMIT VARMA, AMONG OTHERS, has started a new blog on the Indian Economy. It’s called . . . The Indian Economy.

CHRIS NOLAN HAS THOUGHTS on Cindy Sheehan and media spectacles. She calls Sheehan a lefty Terri Schiavo.

UPDATE: Brian Maloney thinks it’s a diversion.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh.

HURRICANE RECOVERY on Grand Cayman: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

REMEMBER THE GARBAGE EXPLOSION? Turns out it wasn’t real:

Simply put, operators of garbage dumps are stuffing more waste than anyone expected into the giant plastic-lined holes, keeping disposal prices down and making the construction of new landfills largely unnecessary. . . .

The productivity leap is the second major economic surprise from the trash business in the last 20 years. First, it became clear in the early 1990’s that there was a glut of disposal space, not the widely believed shortage that had drawn headlines in the 1980’s. Although many town dumps had closed, they were replaced by fewer, but huge, regional ones. That sent dumping prices plunging in many areas in the early 1990’s and led to a long slump in the waste industry.

Since then, the industry and its followers have been relying on time – about 330 million tons of trash went into landfills in the United States last year alone, according to Solid Waste Digest, a trade publication – to fill up some of those holes, erase the glut and send disposal prices skyward again. Instead, dump capacity has kept growing, and rapidly, even as only a few new dumps were built.

Now if we could just do the same thing for oil refineries.

I GOT THE LATEST Harry Turtledove book the other day, but I haven’t read it yet. Bainbridge liked it pretty well, though. And it’s certainly a warning shot to the neo-confederates, though I doubt they’ll take the lesson.

HERE’S MORE on The Great Raid.

DEREK LOWE IS blogging about science blogging.

MICHAEL ROSEN looks at the politics of stem-cell research.

PEOPLE OFTEN DEPRECATE BLOGS on the grounds that most of them are “dead” and unread. But blogs don’t look bad compared to law review articles! (Via the Law Librarian Blog).

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF offers more underreported news from Iraq. As always, there’s loads of stuff that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Why does the shape of the coverage, and the omission of good news, matter? Because, as Ralph Peters notes: “Our enemies know the Marines won’t quit. But they hope you will.”

UPDATE: Michael Barone writes that it’s all the bad news that’s fit to print. He also asks: “How much coverage would the press have given a World War II-era Cindy Sheehan who camped outside Hyde Park or Warm Springs demanding to meet with President Roosevelt?”

But back then, the press wanted us to win.

ANOTHER UPDATE: How do they feel now? Like this:

The Washington Post dropped its sponsorship on Monday of a walk organized by the Pentagon to remember victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks and to support U.S. troops, saying it was possible the event would become “politicized.”

The press views the war as a political story, not a matter of patriotism. That’s what’s different about today’s coverage, and it’s a disgrace. Meanwhile, reader C.J. Burch emails: “How long before Steve Lovelady tries to have Michael Barone fired?”

HEALTHCAREBLOGGING: This week’s Grand Rounds is up!

UNSCAM UPDATE:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered a massive investigation of the entire U.N. procurement division yesterday amid growing concerns about corruption and irregularities in the awarding of U.N. contracts. In yet another major organizational shake-up in response to the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, the embattled Annan placed the procurement office under the authority of U.N. Controller Warren Sachs, pending the outcome of a probe into the agency, which awards contracts worth billions of dollars.

Yakovlev seems to be singing like a canary.

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE regarding egg donation? “The conspiracy of silence makes egg donation look much rarer–and far more shameful–than it actually is. For people to get used to strange new technologies, they have to like, or at least adapt to, the consequences of those technologies. People like all these babies; society has certainly adapted to their births, with minimum dirsuption. But egg donation still sounds strange, because too many mothers and fathers pretend it isn’t happening.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: This sounds promising:

Human bones can shatter in accidents, or they can disintegrate when ravaged by disease and time. But scientists may have a new weapon in the battle against forces that damage the human skeleton.

Carbon nanotubes, incredibly strong molecules just billionths of a meter wide, can function as scaffolds for bone regrowth, according to researchers led by Robert Haddon at the University of California at Riverside. They have found a way to create a stronger and safer frame than the artificial bone scaffolds currently in use.

This isn’t molecular manufacturing, of course, but it’s important early work.

MAJOR EARTHQUAKE in Japan: Fortunately, damage appears light.

CHANGE IN THE WEATHER:

Julie Roehm has more than $2 billion to spend this year, and the way she’s been spending it worries executives at News Corp., the Washington Post Co., and virtually every other media company on the planet. As Chrysler’s director of marketing communications, Roehm, 34, oversees a budget that Advertising Age ranks as the sixth-largest pool of ad dollars in the nation. . . .

Roehm rarely misses a chance to talk about how delighted she is with online advertising. Last year she spent 10% of the budget online; this year she is allotting closer to 18%; next year, she says, she will allocate more than 20%. Do the math: In 2006 roughly $400 million of Chrysler’s money that used to go into TV, newspaper, and magazine ads will be spent on the Internet. Says Roehm: “I hate to sound like such a marketing geek, but we like to fish where the fish are.”

Something’s happening here.

ACCORDIONBLOGGING?

Remember the Far Side cartoon: “Welcome to Heaven. Here is your harp.” “Welcome to Hell. Here is your Accordion.”

At least it’s not a digital accordion.

LAW PROFESSOR KENNETH ANDERSON observes take your daughter to shoot day.

JOURNALISM IN AMERICA: Jay Rosen writes on “Things I used to teach that I no longer believe.”

UPDATE: There’s some useful advice for journalists here, too.

IRAQ’S CONSTITUTIONAL DELIBERATIONS will continue for another week. Is this good news or bad? That, not to put too fine a point on it, depends.

Publius thinks it’s good news. Noting that polls show the Iraqi people as considerably more progressive than the leadership that’s negotiating over the constitution, he thinks this will give time for that to be felt. I hope he’s right.

It’s probably neither good news or bad, but just part of the ongoing haggling, which as I’ve mentioned before is likely to be self-limiting once the Sunnis realize they’ve gotten as much as they can. But the big question, as Publius suggests, is what the Iraqi people want, and what they’re willing to demand. As with the American Constitution in 1789, it’s a republic — if they can keep it. And as with Americans, it’s ultimately up to them to do so.

Omar at Iraq the Model has been posting a lot on this topic, as you might expect. And Ian Schwartz has video of Condi Rice’s press conference. I’m still disappointed, though, that the oil trust idea didn’t get more attention.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis thinks the mainstream press is stuck in an Eeyore narrative: “On the Iraqi constitution, a week’s delay is seen as a defeat. But, of course, we should compare that with our own heritage: 16 months to negotiate articles of confederation that were a disaster; 13 years from the Declaration of Independence before we ended up with a constitution and a government.”

EVAN COYNE MALONEY is profiled by The Telegraph.

“REPORTERS ARE BEING TARGETED for violence and murder.” Someone tell Linda Foley.

IN THE MAIL: The latest (2006) edition of Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics.

Unlike his blog, it’s not free. But for those thinking about the 2006 elections, it’s indispensable.

ONAN THE HISTORIAN. Heh.

UPDATE: Heh, again.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

The federal budget-deficit picture turned brighter Monday as congressional scorekeepers released new estimates showing the level of red ink for the current fiscal year would drop to $331 billion.

The new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which does budget analysis for lawmakers in Washington, gave the latest proof that surging revenues and a steadily growing economy are combining to bring the deficit down from a record $412 billion posted last year. CBO predicts a $314 billion deficit for the budget year starting Oct. 1.

“Surging revenues and a steadily growing economy.” We’re not hearing much about those, in general. Nice to know that they’re there.

UPDATE: Reader Edward McNamara notes that the line about surging revenues and a steadily growing economy is now absent from the story, which was revised at 5:33 pm according to a new timestamp at the NYT. How irritating. This seems to be the earlier version, though it bears a later timestamp, from Business Week.