IRAN UPDATE: When going to Brussels is a crime.

RUSSIAN SPAMMERS behind the shutdown of TypePad and LiveJournal?

MORE ON COFFEEMAKERS: My earlier coffeemaker post generated so much email that it’s taken me this long to digest it.

The bottom line is that there’s a huge market opportunity here for someone, as lots of people are unhappy with their coffeemakers. The major problems are the ones I described: Flimsy construction even in the expensive ones, carafes that dribble — what’s with that, anyway? — poor temperature control, and various annoying “features” that get in the way of the basic task.

Various people even suggested that I go with a classic percolator (they do seem to be making a comeback) or a French Press, or an old fashioned Melitta pour-through. But I really like the convenience of setting up the machine the night before and waking to fresh coffee.

Several readers liked this Capresso, though it’s a bit pricey. Reader Ed Hack writes: “Yep, it’s expensive. However, my wife and mom say it makes great coffee. The latte attachment is a bonus and the carafe keeps it hot for quite a while. (I don’t drink coffee, but usually do the setup each night.)” You’re a good husband, Ed.

Reader G.L. Carlson recommends the DeLonghi Nabucco: “Try a DeLonghi Nabucco – it has controls for brew strength and time. When set up correctly (strong, double brew time), it makes a most puissant potion. The pot does dribble if you get the pour cap on off center, or if you pour too fast. Dribble pots are ubiquitous these days.”

Why is that? Isn’t getting the spout design right a matter of high-school physics?

A reader who works at Starbucks, meanwhile, recommends this machine, which they sell. It’s certainly handsome!

Going far downmarket in terms of price, a lot of people liked this cheap Black & Decker. The best coffeemaker I ever had was a Black & Decker. I liked it so much that I replaced it with one of their undercabinet models — which promptly leaked so much steam that the cabinet it was bolted under swelled up and looked terrible, requiring me to do unpleasant things with clamps and Elmer’s Glue to make it look OK again That kind of soured me on the brand, but maybe unfairly.

Ted Gideon, another Black & Decker fan, has this on going cheap and why he likes his low-end model:

All it does is make coffee, keep it hot, and stand up to the neglect I visit on it (in terms of preventive maintenance) year after year.

My experience with the German brands (Krupps, Braun, etc.) is that, without exception, small appliances from der vaterland are overpriced and underwhelming. . . . On the other hand, if you buy cheap and the product doesn’t meet your needs, you are not out that much and can try another budget special or two and still pay less than for the trendy yupster machine.

That’s true, though for some reason I hate to have to replace a coffeemaker, when I’d spend a similar amount to replace some other appliance without a second thought. I’m not sure why.

Several readers are big Mr. Coffee loyalists, and a few point out that they’re not ugly anymore (this one is certainly attractive). Attractiveness isn’t everything, of course, but you’d rather something that sits on your kitchen counter look nice, or at least not bad.

And reader David Ward says I should give the Cuisinart I mentioned earlier another chance: “I’m a coffee machine buying nut and the Cuisinart, which I bought 6 months ago, is excellent. It beeps about 4 times when its done which doesnt seem to me to be as big a drawback as it is to you. I’ve gone through 3 or 4 coffeemakers that didnt beep but did make crummy coffee so my advice is to deal with the couple of beeps. Its not like a freakin car alarm is going off in your kitchen. Plus if you program it, the coffee making and beeping will be done just as you finish putting on your shoes and heading downstairs.”

Hmm. I’m going to research this further and report on my results. Stay tuned.

(Hey, it’s no worse than ketchup-blogging!)

UPDATE: And the mail just keeps coming. James Lileks emails:

Perhaps you want the Cuisinart DCC-2000:

It solves the dribble-glass carafe problem – by eliminating the carafe. Voila!

I’ve had one for almost a year, after going through three machines in 12 months (including that stylish Mr. Coffee, which lost its will to live after six months.) The DCC-2k makes two fine pots per day, and I am satisfied. I also expect it to break within the year, but that has less to do with the Cuisinart brand than the general end of the era of immortal appliances.

Yes, appliances did used to be pretty much immortal, but not now.

GATEWAY PUNDIT LOOKS INTO THE BACKGROUND of a Rumsfeld heckler. This reminds me of Matt Welch’s old project of googling antiwar people to discover how many (quite a few) had been apologists for Slobodan Milosevic’s genocidal efforts. Why don’t the Big Media do this kind of thing?

MY MENTION OF THE SHANGRI-LA DIET produced a wave of email from people saying they’d lost a lot of weight on it, painlessly.

I’m . . . well, not exactly skeptical, but unpersuaded. That’s because whenever I mention any diet I get email like that. People say that diets don’t work, but that’s a half-truth: in fact, pretty much every diet works, if you stick to it. It’s the sticking to it that’s hard.

I follow the “eat less, exercise more” diet, and that works pretty well, as long as I stick to it. I’ve been reading the book, though, and it looks fairly sensible. For me, exercise is key: Not only is it good in itself, but I tend to eat better when I’m exercising regularly.

BECAUSE THERE’S A BELIEVER BORN EVERY MINUTE? Lee Harris wonders why socialism hasn’t died.

BRING IT ON: A look at the upgradable you.

THE MICKEY KAUS / ROBERT WRIGHT BLOGGINGHEADS.TV VENTURE gets a nice writeup in the New York Times.

J.D. JOHANNES offers video of an IED attack.

LAPDOGS? STEPHEN SPRUIELL fact-checks Eric Boehlert.

SHOULDN’T THE KENNEDYS JUST HIRE DRIVERS? I mean, they can afford it.

UPDATE: TigerHawk answers my question.

BACKLASH UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup of polls on immigration, and the protests seem to have produced less support for amnesty, rather than more.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Dennis Hastert says the Senate spending bill is dead on arrival:

As it’s currently drafted, the Senate’s $109 billion emergency spending bill is dead on arrival in the House. President Bush requested $92 billion for the War on Terror and some hurricane spending. The House used fiscal restraint, but now the Senate wants to come to the table with a tab that’s $17 billion over budget. The House has no intention of joining in a spending spree at the expense of American taxpayers.

Good. Bill Frist doesn’t like it much, either, though only a few of his colleagues joined him in voting against it.

A SHORTAGE OF ANTIBIOTICS:

The CDC is conducting a campaign to prevent antibiotic resistance in healthcare centers that consists of four main strategies: prevent infection, diagnose and treat infection, use antimicrobials wisely, and prevent transmission. However, federal officials have paid little attention to the flip side of the problem: the shortage of new antibiotics. Twenty years ago, approximately a half-dozen new antibiotics would appear on the market each year; now it’s at most one or two. For decades we’ve relied largely on new variations on old tricks to combat rapidly evolving pathogens: Most antibiotics in use today are chemically related to earlier ones discovered between 1941 and 1968. During the last 37 years, only two antibiotics with truly novel modes of action have been introduced — Zyvox in 2000 and Cubicin in 2003, the latter of which is used only against skin infections.

Market forces and regulatory costs have exacerbated the antibiotics drought. Until about a decade ago, all the major pharmaceutical makers had antibacterial research programs, but they have dramatically trimmed or eliminated these efforts, focusing instead on more lucrative drugs that treat chronic ailments and other issues. Think Lipitor and Levitra, for example. Whereas antibiotics cure a patient in days, and may not be required again for years, someone with high cholesterol or erectile dysfunction might pop expensive pills every day for decades. Moreover, drug development has become hugely expensive, with the direct and indirect costs to bring a drug to market now averaging more than $800 million.

Read the whole thing.

POLITICAL DISCOURSE: In the gutter?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Mark Tapscott observes:

In other words, the conferees appointed by the Senate’s Republican and Democrat leadership to negotiate with the House voted in favor of earmarks twice as often as they did against earmarks. Of the 28 conferees, 13 voted for earmarks every chance they had. The only conferee who voted against earmarks at every opportunity was Kohl.

Of the 23 votes cast by conferees against earmarks, 11 were by GOP senators, the other dozen by Democrats. That apparent balance is a bit deceiving, however, as there were 8 GOP senators who voted against earmarks every time, compared to five among the Democrats.

I’d like to see a lot of incumbents voted out.

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ON NBC NIGHTLY NEWS in a little while, talking about blogs and the media.

UPDATE: Well, I watched it, and I don’t want to be rude to the NBC people, who were quite pleasant. But jeez, that was a 2002 story. If you hadn’t heard of blogs before, I guess it was news. Otherwise, not so much. But I guess there’s not a lot you can do within the confines of a roughly 2 minute news story.

Ian Schwartz has the video, if you’d like to watch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rick Lee emails:

Well… these stories are still needed. It seems that most of the people I come in contact with either have no idea what a blog is or they are only vaguely aware but don’t read them. The word itself is very off-putting to most people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked about blogs with somebody who struggles to get the word out and then giggles after saying it… as though they had just said “poop” or something. Blogs are still far, far from mainstream in this country.

Good point.

THOUGHTS ON COLBERT AND COMEDY, over at GlennReynolds.com.

TIM WORSTALL: “Something stunningly sensible has just occurred in the field of climate change research.” I like his title.

A ZARQAWI BLOOPER REEL: This’ll wow ’em at the fan conventions.

UH OH: Will the election be decided by Lou Dobbs voters?

UNO DE MAYO is a new film by Stuart Browning on the less-savory participants in Monday’s marches. You can see it online here.

Boy, those marches sure have launched a lot of web videos.

OVER AT HOT AIR, a video interview with Ramesh Ponnuru. I’m not on board with his whole Party of Death approach, though I share his disregard for bioethicists. The Hot Air video interview setup is really well done, too, and offers a look into the future of web video.

UPDATE: Or maybe this is the future. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails on the “Party of Death:”

Isn’t that the one with Leon Kass in it?

You’d think.

THIS WEEK’S BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW PODCAST is up, over at Pajamas Media. I’m on, and so are Austin Bay, Eric Umansky, and Tammy Bruce.

SPACE IS HOT AGAIN: Dale Amon is blogging from the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles and reports: “Before we open the gate we have over 1100 persons expected. With walk-ins tomorrow we will very possibly pass 1200 or even more.” I’m pretty sure that’s a record.