DISASTERS AND DISTRIBUTED RESPONSES: My TechCentralStation column is up.

AN INTERESTING DEBATE on the whole “Constitution-in-Exile” question.

GREYHAWK OFFERS A ROUNDUP OF SUCCESSES IN IRAQ that haven’t gotten much mention because of the tsunami story. And, of course, Arthur Chrenkoff’s regular feature of underreported stories from Iraq is up, over at OpinionJournal.

UPDATE: Bin Laden’s nightmare approaches.

BLOGGING IS LIGHT because my leave is over, and I’m back in the office. Actually that’s kind of nice. Classes don’t start until next week, but quite a few of my colleagues are in, and people stopped by all morning to say hello, and we had a nice lunch where tsunamis, changes to the grading system, and holiday DVD purchases were discussed. (The Simpsons Fifth Season is the big hit in our household.)

PHOTOS OF THE TSUNAMI RELIEF EFFORT, released by the U.S. Navy, are available here. Such efforts are, as U.N. representative Jan Egeland noted this weekend, worth their weight in gold. More or less literally.

UPDATE: Reader Phil Beckman notes that Dan Rather is on the scene, which is surely a tremendous relief to the victims. And he’s wearing a flightsuit!

WALTER SHAPIRO IS BACK, with a Los Angeles Times oped that is, as always, worth reading in full.

(Via the National Ledger, which observes: “It’s still hard to fathom why the collective brain trust at the USA Today would dump veteran scribe Walter Shapiro. His nine-year run was full of interesting musings and he rarely disappointed.” Indeed.)

BELLESILES UPDATE: Jim Lindgren reports that Garry Wills is calling Bellesiles a “con man.”

AUSTIN BAY is on C-SPAN right now.

NOTE TO THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Democratic Underground” is, as reported, often loony. It is not, however, a blog. It is a bulletin board.

Is the NYT going out of its way to try to make blogs look bad, or are their reporters just that clueless?

UPDATE: James Joyner notes more problems with Big Media reporting on blogs.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails:

During Rathergate, many of the MSM stories were calling Free Republic a blog as well, and “Buckhead,” (who kicked the whole thing off there) a blogger. Given their abysmal performance in so many other areas of knowledge, my vote is for clueless, with the making-blogs-look-bad thingie as virtuous side effect.

Good point. Perhaps to some, “blog” is a synonym for “things on the Internet that we don’t read or understand, but feel compelled to write about.”

MORE: The Times dissed Wizbang (which is, at least, a blog), too. Wizbang’s response is here. And in another post, Wizbang observes: “In the last 90 days Wizbang has been mentioned by the AP, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. In every story -including the one that focused on how errors are corrected in the blogosphere- the big media outlet made significant errors of fact.” Get used to it, guys . . . .

JOHN HAWKINS OFFERS the 40 most obnoxious quotes of 2004.

RAJAN RISHYAKARAN NOTES that some people were agitating for an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system back in 2003.

I’VE BEEN PREDICTING FOR QUITE A WHILE that multimedia and video would be a big deal in the blogosphere soon. Judging by this Wall St. Journal story, (free link) the time has come. (Via Pundit Guy, who’s mentioned.)