A PACK, NOT A HERD: Rand Simberg notices something in the Miami plane crash response.

MICHAEL TOTTEN has a long, and mostly depressing, interview with Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh — but with one spot of good news.

I DIDN’T SEE BUSH’S PRESS CONFERENCE, but here’s a post at Dartblog. And both Michelle Malkin and AnkleBitingPundits liveblogged it.

UPDATE: Meryl Yourish says that something was missing from Bush’s speech last night. And Laurence Simon notes that there’s a transcript — and video — of Bush’s press conference online already at the White House website. They seem to be getting quicker. Laurence observes: “Kinda makes you wonder when Presidents won’t bother asking ‘The Big Three’ networks for airtime and instead ask the wireless providers for videostreaming to wireless phones time.”

Sooner than the Big Three would like, I expect . . . .

LEAKS ARE CAUSING TROUBLE IN IRAQ, according to Omar:

The IECI stressed repeatedly that no results should be considered official until the commission itself announces the final results but still, numbers and percentages keep leaking from different sources, including people in the commission.

The worries of voters are being fueled by the announcements that keep coming from this or that list declaring “smashing victories” here and there.

Some lists are taking partial results that leak from a single polling center and generalize them over an entire province to give the impression that they have won. Of course none of this can be confirmed or denied until all votes are counted and sorted out.

Maybe one day Iraqi government officials will be as disciplined and leak-resistant as people are here. Come to think of it, they already are!

DOES THIS PHOTO mean that Valerie Plame is starting a blog? She’s wearing pajamas!

THE CARNIVAL OF TOMORROW is up! So is the first-anniversary Haveil Havalim.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

So much for the popularly peddled view that anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is so pervasive and deep-rooted it might take generations to alter. A new poll from Pakistan, a critical front-line in the war on terror, paints a very different picture–by revealing a sea-change in public opinion in recent months.

Long a stronghold for Islamic extremists and the world’s second-most populous Muslim nation, Pakistanis now hold a more favorable opinion of the U.S. than at any time since 9/11, while support for al Qaeda in its home base has dropped to its lowest level since then. The direct cause for this dramatic shift in Muslim opinion is clear: American humanitarian assistance for Pakistani victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed 87,000. The U.S. pledged $510 million for earthquake relief in Pakistan and American soldiers are playing a prominent role in rescuing victims from remote mountainous villages.

Read the whole thing.

PROF. LIONEL TIGER WRITES: “At my university as at countless others, one of the very first official greeting to students is a rape seminar predicated on the intrinsic danger males carry with them.” Read the whole thing, and read this, too.

FOLLOWING UP on my earlier post, an interesting look at casualty rates in various conflicts and settings.

MORE NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN:

The country has had no elected national assembly since 1973, when coups and a Soviet invasion plunged it into decades of chaos that left more than one million people dead. Civil war raged in the early 1990s, followed by the disastrous rule of the Taliban. . . .

The inauguration of the assembly formally concludes the political transition process agreed on by Afghan factions under UN auspices in December 2001, although Afghanistan is still a long way from stability.

Read the whole thing. And Gateway Pundit has much, much more.

THE NATIONAL JOURNAL’S DANIEL GLOVER looks at Cory Maye, “Tookie” Williams, and the blogosphere.

And Dave Kopel writes in The Rocky Mountain News: “After all the attention the mainstream media, including the Denver dailies, gave to the execution of the unrepentant quadruple- murderer Tookie Williams, it would be nice if the media focused on a man on death row who is actually innocent.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Leo looks at the Tookie case. But why not a column on Cory Maye?

IN THE MAIL: George Basalla’s Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligent Extraterrestrials.

The cover is pretty cool, and there’s a lot of interesting history on the topic of scientists’ thoughts on extraterrestrial life. I found Basalla’s technological relativism a bit unconvincing — alien science, if it exists, may look different from ours in some ways, but he almost makes it sound as if physical laws are cultural artifacts, which no amount of postmodern argument can make true, or even persuasive. What’s more, he doesn’t really engage the point made by Ernst Fasan years ago in his Relations With Alien Intelligences: While it’s possible to imagine aliens with whom we have nothing whatsoever in common, the aliens we’d be most likely to deal with — as competitors or friends — are those who are more like us.

ANNALYN HAS A CELLPHONE with a built-in flashlight. Great for power failures. In Nigeria, actually, people favor phones with bright screens so that they can be used as emergency light sources during the frequent outages, so I guess this is the next logical step.

ALEX KOZINSKI: “Call me a Panglossian.” I’d rather call him “Justice,” but oh, well.

READER BILL DARROW EMAILS:

With Christmas approaching, I’m thinking of giving some books. Would you consider posting what you regard as some kind of Top 5 or Top 10 books (to think about as gifts)? They needn’t be published in 2005, or limited to non-fiction. But it would be helpful and interesting. I fear that my nieces and nephews (at Cornell, Smith, Marlboro, and some outfit in Montreal) are not getting directed to important books or good history.

Who do I look like? Frank Wilson? But hey, send me some recommendations and I’ll post ’em.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: Check out the latest from the Indian blogosphere at Blog Mela, and don’t miss this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists. There’s also the law-bloggers’ Blawg Review, and the always-amusing Carnival of the Insanities. And if that’s not enough, there are lots more blog carnivals listed here.

CIVILIAN DEATH TOLLS AND WAR: A rather striking graphic. (Via Ann Althouse).

UPDATE: More here.

RON BAILEY:

Why are Americans so well off? It’s not just because of America’s fruited plains and its alabaster cities. In fact, it turns out that such natural and man-made resources comprise a relatively small percentage of our wealth.

Read the whole thing.