MORE AGGREGATION: Another Army of Davids review, this one at Townhall.com. Excerpt:

Some reviewers have called Reynolds’ writing style “conversational,” and it is. This 268-page book, excluding notes and index, is a quick and engaging read. Reynolds’ prose style is just as absorbing as the ideas themselves. For example, he analogizes his beer-brewing hobby with blogging. As mass-produced beer, which has to appeal to the broadest market possible, tends to be “thin and flavorless,” mass-produced news and opinion journalism has become thin and flavorless.

Read the whole thing! But then, you knew I’d say that . . . .

AVIAN FLU UPDATE: A worrisome report:

The spread of avian influenza to at least 29 new countries in the last seven weeks — one of the biggest outbreaks of the virus since it emerged nine years ago — is prompting a sobering reassessment of the strategy that has guided efforts to contain the disease. . . .

The speed of its migration, and the vast area it has infected, has forced scientists to concede there is little that can be done to stop its spread across the globe.

“We expected it to move, but not any of us thought it would move quite like this,” said Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations’ coordinator on bird flu efforts.

Even if bird flu never mutates into a human-transmissible form, this should be a wakeup call about our preparedness for pandemics generally. The good news is that people seem to be noticing. One datum: Our podcast interview with Bill Frist on the subject is our most popular so far, with over 330,000 downloads. Interestingly, a much higher percentage of them are the lo-fi dialup variety than for our other episodes; I’m not sure what that means, but I’m guessing that there’s more international interest in the topic.

ARNOLD KLING:

Many people are eager to fight the Battle of the Borders. The idea is to prevent illegal immigration. In addition, what I might call the “new xenophobia” is eager to fight the Battle over Outsourcing and the Battle over Foreign Ownership. In my view, all of these battles represent misplaced priorities.

I believe that illegal immigrants bring relatively little economic benefit and cause relatively little economic harm. I believe that there are substitutes readily available for the work done by illegal immigrants. Legal residents could do some of the work. Other labor could be replaced by capital or by alternative production techniques. By the same token, because there are many substitutes available for unskilled labor, the salvation of American workers does not lie in immigration restrictions.

I’m not sure how much of the political resonance comes directly from economics, though. I think there’s a political aspect, too, having to do with the effort of people who aren’t citizens, and aren’t here legally, to wield political power within the United States. I think this has a particularly unfortunate resonance in light of recent events in Europe. It’s not The Camp of the Saints, but I think it has overtones of that sort.

Meanwhile, the obvious tendency of this weekend’s marches to provoke a backlash makes me wonder why they’re happening. One possibility is that the organizers are dumb, and don’t think there will be a backlash. The other possibility is that the organizers aren’t dumb, and figure that they’ll benefit from a backlash if it occurs. Either they win (which means they win) or they lose, and get a prop. 187 type response, leaving both illegal and legal Latino immigrants polarized and looking to them for leadership (which means they win). Given the GOP’s inroads into the Latino vote, this may be, in part, an effort to sabotage any Latino realignment toward the GOP.

Mickey Kaus thinks that this will wind up hurting the Democrats more than the Republicans. I’m not so sure — but I am pretty sure that the march organizers don’t think so.

UPDATE: Of course, the march organizers may not care as much about how this issue affects the Democrats vs. the Republicans as they care about how this impacts their own political positions. The creation of a visible Angry Latino bloc may hurt the Democrats, but still help those seen as the leaders of the bloc.

Meanwhile, Arnold Kling responds to my comments on his piece: “I can see his point. I would rather see immigrants assimilate first and become a political force later, rather than the other way around.” That seems to work better. As Jim Bennett likes to say: Democracy, Multiculturalism, Open Immigration — pick any two.

HENRY PORTER: “Blair will need to rush through his ID cards bill before people have time to wake up to how terrifying it is.”

JOHN HAWKINS interviews Claire Berlinski about her new book, Menace in Europe. “There is something going on in Europe, a flourishing of sects, all of which have something in common and that is an absolute, virtually pathological, refusal to profit from experience. . . . If young Germans are now seen muttering darkly about how they deplore American militarism-a sentiment, I am persuaded, that represents nothing more than their own stifled longing to switch on the tank’s ignition and thrill once again to the low deep rumble of its engine-it is certainly nothing new; Germans have complained for a very long time of these things.”

UPDATE: If you missed it, our podcast interview of Berlinski is here.

AIRBRUSHING at the Los Angeles Times.

J.D. JOHANNES ON BODY ARMOR — I told you so: “When I chased a Marine infantry platoon around Al Anbar last Summer I was armed only with a Canon XL-2 camera and only wore a kevlar vest similar to what a police officer would wear. By wearing/carrying 50 pounds less I was able to out run and climb the 21-year-old grunts.”

His earlier post on the subject is here.

UPDATE: J.D. would move even faster if he used a Canon GL2, which is smaller than the XL2 by far but has the same imaging. No interchangeable lenses, but I suspect that’s a minor drawback when covering combat.

The Insta-Wife shot most of her documentary with a Canon XL, but on one interview where she had to fly solo she took the GL2 and it was the best video — and audio — of the whole thing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Greg Johnson says I’m wrong about the GL2:

The image system on the XL2 isn’t identical to the GL2. The XL2 also has 24p option (the GL2 doesn’t), where frames are “pulled down” within the camera itself to simulate the film “look.” This is the big new development in DV prosumer technology in the past two years, the Panasonic DVX100 series has it as well. One step closer to under $5000 cameras looking no different from film (to a layman) on the DVD player.

Hadn’t noticed that, but then that’s not an option that I’m interested in.

And be sure to read this underlying story on the armor subject:

Extra body armor — the lack of which caused a political storm in the United States — has flooded in to Iraq, but many Marines here promptly stuck it in lockers or under bunks. Too heavy and cumbersome, many say.

Indeed. Of course, on the general subject of whether more armor is always better I can say I told you so too!

CORY DOCTOROW: “A video made by an elections observer in Belarus shows evidence of electoral fraud. . . . Damn I’m glad my grandfather left Belarus.”

JAY LENO says that Owner’s Manuals have changed for the worse. I think he’s right.

TROUBLE FOR MICROSOFT? Blogging is involved.

“MARRIAGE IS FOR WHITE PEOPLE.”

STRATEGYPAGE ON IRAQ:

Deaths from revenge killings now exceed those from terrorist or anti-government activity. Al Qaeda is beaten, and running for cover. The Sunni Arab groups that financed thousands of attacks against the government and coalition groups, are now battling each other, al Qaeda, and Shia death squads. It’s not civil war, for there are no battles or grand strategies at play. It’s not ethnic cleansing, yet, although many Sunni Arabs are, and have, fled the country. What’s happening here is payback. Outsiders tend to forget that, for over three decades, a brutal Sunni Arab dictatorship killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shia Arabs. The surviving victims, and the families of those who did not survive, want revenge. They want payback. And even those Kurds Shia Arabs who don’t personally want revenge, are inclined to tolerate some payback. Since the Sunni Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the population, and no longer control the police or military, they are in a vulnerable position.

After Saddam’s government was ousted three years ago, the Sunni Arabs still had lots of cash, weapons, and terrorist skills. Running a police state is basically all about terrorizing people into accepting your rule. For the last three years, the Sunni Arabs thought they could terrorize their way back into power. Didn’t work.

Yes, they chose unwisely.

AUTOBLOG reports that the first street-legal hydrogen powered Mazda RX-8s have been delivered in Japan. I’d like to test drive one when they get to America.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT IN BELARUS: Gateway Pundit has pictures.

ABDUL RAHMAN UPDATE: Charges have been dismissed.

UPDATE: Dean Esmay draws a larger lesson. And LaShawn Barber says it’s “A giant step toward civilized society.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Or maybe not, if this report is true.

SO NOW AMAZON seems to think that I’m interested in knitting. At least, recommendations for knitting books, knitting supplies, etc., keep showing up.

I don’t knit, I’ve never bought any knitting supplies or knitting books, and I have no idea where this is coming from. I’ve actually been buying less stuff than usual from Amazon, and the only non-book purchase I’ve made lately was not very knitting-related. Maybe they’re pushing knitting on everyone, like they did with the defibrillator? Hard to believe. I mean, I know all the cool kids are doing it, but still . . .

UPDATE: Apparently all the cool kids are doing it. Who knew?

ANOTHER UPDATE: My goodness, I mean all the cool kids are doing it! Maybe I should just surrender to the power of data-mining, like Mickey Kaus did!

ED MORRISSEY wants to censure Russ Feingold.

RUSSIA AND IRAQ: Gateway Pundit has an excellent roundup. It’s a must-read.

MORE AGGREGATION: An Army of Davids gets a good review in the Sun-Times: ” I will make a prediction — in December, when lists of the most important books of the year are drawn up, this one will be near the top.”

I could live with that. Plus, Nick Gillespie reviews it in the New York Post: It’s “breezy and eminently readable,” and Gillespie says “there’s no question that he is providing an essential guide to the new world we live in.”

AMBIENT REALMS: Long night last night, as I had to go get the Insta-mother-in-law from the hospital around midnight; she had gotten a bad case of the stomach bug that’s going around and had to go get rehydrated. (She emerged a new woman, walking under her own power and looking 20 years younger than just a few hours earlier — let’s hear it for Ringer’s Solution!)

While I was waiting in the hallway, something you always do a lot of at hospitals, there were three different monitor devices of some sort, beeping at irregular intervals. Their different pitches formed a perfect minor triad, and I was more or less right in the middle. I wish I’d had a digital stereo recorder: Instead of Todd Steed and John Baker’s Music for Bus Stations, I could do Music for Emergency Rooms. Or maybe not.

MARK FRAUENFELDER remembers Buck Owens. More here.

I’VE GENERALLY FAVORED OPEN IMMIGRATION, but I find myself feeling less and less that way in the face of mass rallies by illegal immigrants like this one.

Illegal immigrants as individuals just trying to make a better life are sympathetic. Illegal immigrants as a mass movement making demands on the polity are considerably less so.

I’m not the only one to get this impression, as Mickey Kaus’s report on the rallies in Los Angeles indicates. I think that these marches just made passage of strict immigration laws much more likely.

UPDATE: Reader Harmon Dow emails:

I saw the rally in Chicago about a week ago. Got caught up in it in the Loop at lunch.

What struck me was that it was a very pro-America rally. Here & there, a Mexican flag, quite a few anti-Sensenbrenner signs, but mainly American flags & signs, carried by a lot of young & middle-aged men & women. There were a number of kids, & I had the feeling that many of the marchers were family groups.

Right now, these people are positive about our country, and are interested in being Americans. I hope we have the sense to go with that, rather than subvert it, because at some point, I fear that they might decide that if they can’t be Americans, they’ll just have to be Mexicans. But not in Mexico.

Kaus’s take on the L.A. march is a bit different (then again, so is L.A.), but this is a good point.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A more positive take on the Los Angeles march here, from A.M. Mora y Leon. On the other hand, reader Jake Jacobsen emails:

With all due respect to Mr. Dow I attended the rally and covered it for my blog. I found the proportions of Mexican to American flags ran about ten to one and while yes, it was a primarily family affair I had zero sense that “these people are positive about our country, and are interested in being Americans.”

Didn’t see it at all.

His blog posts are here and here. And Virginia Postrel observes: “Workers, especially those who want to settle and become citizens (or have their children become citizens), are not threats. They’re contributors to American society.”

MORE STILL: Bill Quick thinks that Virginia is overly optimistic.

PERRY DEHAVILLAND has a report, with numerous photos, on today’s free speech rally in Trafalgar Square. By “free speech rally,” of course, I mean “rally to oppose efforts at Islamist censorship.”

Perry concludes: “On two occasions, The Plod tried to prevent certain signs being shown (one featured the Mohammed Cartoons on a placard from the Iranian Communist Party and another showed a mask of Tony Blair over a Nazi symbol). These incidents at a ‘pro-freedom of expression’ rally, and the presence of the police taking pictures of the crowd, were a useful reminder of the deadening hand of the state and just how precarious . . . civil liberties in Britain are.”

MORE ON PROBLEMS IN FRANCE, from Claire Berlinski in The Washington Post.

BRUTALITY IN BELARUS:

The other opposition candidate, Alexander Kozulin, marched a few hundred people to a detention center where the October Square demonstrators had been taken to. They faced a SWAT team and the army. Just hours after the peaceful rally, they were all beaten.

The head of the SWAT team beat Kozulin and arrested him. They fired smoke grenades, noise-makers, and tear gas into the crowd. They exploded directly above people. One by one they were stripped away and beaten in the face, back, and legs with batons until they bled. The women, instead, were punched in the face. Then they were taken away in paddywagons to who knows where. At least one person is confirmed dead with a skull injury. Even sicker is that Belarus state television showed up so that they could film a beaten man and say that he was stomped on by his fellow protestors. The protestors are hardly the animals here. All they could do was throw snowballs back at them.

Milinkevich’s press secretary Pavel Mazhejka was briefly detained, and for awhile Milinkevich himself was nowhere to be found. But he is alright and has said that the authorities are fully responsible for the slaughter of the protestors and they will be held to account. He has sworn that Lukashenko will not finish this five year term. It has become the top news on CNN.

More reports on BR23, and Veronika Khokhlova’s blog.