SOME NANOTECHNOLOGY CLAIMS have Derek Lowe bemused.

A BAD REVIEW FOR ROBERT FISK: “First there is the problem of simple accuracy. It is difficult to turn a page of The Great War for Civilisation without encountering some basic error. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not, as Fisk has it, in Jerusalem. The Caliph Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, was murdered in the year 661, not in the 8th century. Emir Abdallah became king of Transjordan in 1946, not 1921, and both he and his younger brother, King Faisal I of Iraq, hailed not from a “Gulf tribe” but rather from the Hashemites on the other side of the Arabian peninsula. The Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, not 1962; Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, was appointed by the British authorities, not elected; Ayatollah Khomeini transferred his exile from Turkey to the holy Shiite city of Najaf not during Saddam Hussein’s rule but fourteen years before Saddam seized power. Security Council resolution 242 was passed in November 1967, not 1968; Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, not 1977, and was assassinated in October 1981, not 1979. Yitzhak Rabin was minister of defense, not prime minister, during the first Palestinian intifada, and al Qaeda was established not in 1998 but a decade earlier. And so on and so forth.”

Fisk has never been strong on facts. Of course, his analysis has always been weak, too. (Via Austin Bay).

IS SCALIA AN ORIGINALIST? That’s the topic of Randy Barnett’s Taft Lecture. Larry Solum has more, including links to the text and to video of the lecture. He also observes: “This is a particularly significant occasion, because Barnett’s paper critiques Justice Antonin Scalia’s own Taft lecture–Originalism: The Lesser Evil (also available at 57 U. Cin. L. Rev. 849 (1989)). Scalia’s lecture is one of the milestones in the development of originalist constitutional theory. In particular, it was a turning point in the movement of originalism from ‘original intent’ to ‘original public meaning.'”

IS CRAIGSLIST A “DIGITAL WALMART?” Then instead of whining, become a digital Target, and kick Craig’s ass, the way Target is doing to Walmart. . . .

The newspaper industry keeps producing these columns, but what it really needs is to figure out how to compete. What does Craigslist provide that it’s not? What could it provide that people want, that it’s not providing? (Hint: Good, original hard news reporting!)

On the other hand, this column is better than some, and contains this piece of potentially useful advice:

We all get the need for online ads and community sites now; why not let the folks in Burlington (or wherever) build their own? Why not (gasp) help them, instead of using his clout to hurt them?

This isn’t such a radical idea. Check out the blog world, where the best political bloggers don’t try to corner the market – they encourage others to start their own blogs.

Perhaps Craigslist should consider a local-franchise model that would incorporate local news content, something that — as far as I know — they’re not doing. That would still kill off a lot of local weeklies that are nothing but vehicles for classified ads now, but so what? They’re doomed anyway. At least it might add something.

This site from Paulding County, Georgia is a sort of model for that approach. It might be worth a thought. Jeff Jarvis has some views of his own.

VALLEYWAG, the latest Nick Denton blog, is up. It focuses on Silicon Valley and the tech industry. Check it out, if those interest you. And why wouldn’t they?

UPDATE: A reader suggests, correctly, that the growth of sites like this one — or FuckedCompany — is another example of the Army of Davids effect, for good and for ill — the ability of people inside companies to share their stories with each other, and the world, when in the past the dirt involved wouldn’t have gotten past the water cooler. I’ve actually got a section on that in the book, which was inspired, appropriately enough, by some comments of Nick Denton’s.

ANOTHER UPDATE: With just a little modification, Nick could use these commercials! (Via Ed Cone, who’s wondering why this song is going through his head today. I blame Nick.)

IT’S BOEHNER. This take seems about right to me:

Electing Blunt would have been suicidal. Electing Shadegg would have instantly energized the base, and gotten the party respect. In short, the Republican leadership knows that going too far to ignore its believers will lead to a disaster this November… but they want to try to limit the scope of that to as much “business as usual” as humanly possible.

The Diet Coke of reform. One calorie — not reformist enough!

Boehner’s said some decent things; perhaps he’ll be more of a reformist than the above take suggests. For the sake of the Republicans, he’d better be. And Boehner rhymes with “explainer.”

Here’s a recent article by Boehner on competitiveness, here’s his Wall Street Journal piece on earmark reform and porkbusting, and here’s his interview with Hugh Hewitt.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear comments:

While the first choice of many of us in the blogosphere, Representative Shadegg, did not win the election, his impact on the race cannot be denied. His candidacy reminded his fellow Representatives that real reform, and real change in the leadership, was not simply the right thing to do, but utterly necessary to ensure the success of the GOP in November.

It is my sincere hope that Representative Boehner takes this message to heart, and takes up the banner of real reform with enthusiasm and commitment. And his past statements give reason for optimism. In our blogger conference call, and in his interview with Hugh Hewitt, Rep. Boehner reiterated his strong commitment against earmarks, and expressed support for the idea of posting legislation online for 72 hours prior to any vote. Limited government fans will be pleased with his direct and positive answer when asked if he’d support rules requiring legislation to contain statements identifying the authority within the Constitution that grants the Congress to legislate in that area (“That’d be fine with me.”), and his even more direct answer to concerns about McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform (“We ought to blow the whole bill up.”).

It is a critical time for the House GOP, and Boehner’s leadership will be essential in bringing the party out from the cloud of corruption scandals.

Indeed. More thoughts here: “So to Rep. Boehner, congratulations and good luck. We’ll be watching and writing. We hope you’ll do as you’ve said and seize the opportunity you’ve been presented to root out the endemic corruption (and change the structure which supports it) and return the House, and the party, to ethical and fiscal conservatism.”

A POSITIVE REVIEW FOR An Army of Davids on the Compass Points blog by Brad Miner of Doubleday’s American Compass, which has picked up the book. Excerpt: “I’m not prepared to say that Glenn Reynolds is about to become Alvin Toffler (FUTURE SHOCK) for a new generation, but I do believe that his book is just as powerful—and a whole lot more sensible than that 1970s bestseller. . . . This book is so rich in its contents that it’s practically impossible to do justice to it in so short a space as this.” Well, unlike most reviewers, he’s put his money where his mouth is by picking up the book-club rights!

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is just plain scary.

MICHAEL YON is suing the Army. Not only does the Army’s defense seem rather lame, but you have to wonder what sort of idiot would get crosswise with Yon over something like this to begin with. Perhaps someone with more sense will get involved now that it’s getting publicity.

More here.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

What has core Republican voters agitated is exactly what we’ve been warning about for months. Republicans are acting as if they are the party of incumbency and big government. The federal budget is now almost 40% larger than it was five years ago–thanks to a budget process rigged for spending by the Democrats in 1974 that the GOP hasn’t changed, and to such embarrassments as a highway bill with an average of four pork barrel projects for every Congressional district in America.

Republicans still have eight months to try for redemption with the voters who put them in charge. But the clock is ticking. Today’s vote will tell a lot about whether the process starts now–or ever.

Indeed.

RAZORBLOGGING REDUX: Last year’s razorblogging was popular enough that when I passed the rather absurd-looking Gillette “Fusion” 5-blade razor — on sale at Walgreen’s for $5.99 — I thought “why not?”

I bought one, and shaved with it with the expectation that five blades would be just plain silly. Shockingly, however, it actually does shave very well. The Insta-Wife’s verdict upon feeling my cheeks was that they were noticeably smoother than usual.

What’s next? Will my grandsons be shaving with 12-blade razors?

UPDATE: Reader Dan Jacquemin notes that this is another case of life imitating The Onion. Heh.

INSTAPUNK IS SPONSORING A CONTEST to rewrite Tom Toles’ disgraceful war cartoon.

UPDATE: Ron Coleman notes an instructive contrast in the handling of controversial cartoons.

HOW REPUBLICANS CAN GET THEIR GROOVE BACK: Jon Henke looks at the House Majority Leader race.

NICE START: So I’m drinking my second cup of coffee, and do what I do most mornings — go over to see what Lileks put up while I was asleep — and I discover that he’s plugging my book. With an Amazon link, no less. I hope this becomes a trend. . . .

HEY, I DO HAVE my own Pez dispenser! Somebody tell Laurence Simon.

I’VE BEEN SKEPTICAL of the alcohol-for-petroleum switch that President Bush was talking about, but Bob Zubrin is an awfully smart guy, and he thinks it can be the answer.

STRATEGYPAGE:

There appears to be a serious rift in the cabinet of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Some of his supporters are urging a hard-line against the US and adventurism abroad, while others believe that war with the US is not inevitable and that Iran can benefit from maintaining a low profile. Ahmadinejad has apparently let all the international media attention go to his head. Ahmadinejad always was a news hound, and enjoyed getting recognized for accomplishing things while mayor of Tehran. But now many Iranians are getting nervous, because Ahmadinejad is talking war and not getting anything done for the poor and oppressed (by the corrupt clergy who control the government and much of the mismanaged economy). Iranian Internet chatter is full of such misgivings. But Ahmadinejad’s playing of the nationalism card makes open demonstrations of opposition dangerous.

Stay tuned.

AN INTERESTING LOOK at reconstructing — or really, constructing — the power grid in Iraq, from the IEEE Spectrum. Excerpt:

Most officials, Iraqis included, agree that there is more power available in Iraq now than there was before the 2003 war. However, that fact is less germane than most people realize, because the allocation of electric power has shifted seismically, and more or less in sync with the shift in political power. Basically, parts of Baghdad and central Iraq now get much less power than they did before the war, while parts of the south and north actually get considerably more.

For many years, the mainstays of Iraq’s electrical capacity were steam generating plants near the huge oil fields in the south and hydroelectric plants [“Power Corridors” in the Kurdish regions in the north. Relatively few plants were concentrated around Baghdad, where most of the demand was. So to keep parts of the city energized close to 24 hours a day, as Saddam wished them to be, operators had to black out different parts of the Shiite south and Kurdish north on a rotating schedule.

Rotating blackouts are still a way of life in Iraq’s electrical sector, but now they’re not done for Baghdad’s benefit. The city still gets about half of its power from the north and south, but these days city residents get anywhere from 6 to 9 hours of electricity a day, compared with about 15 hours for people living in Basra.

In the most recent survey by the International Republican Institute, a prodemocracy advocacy group in Washington, D.C., 2200 Iraqis were asked which of 10 different problems “requiring a political or governmental solution” was most important to them. The first choice, by a margin of about 10 percent, was “inadequate electricity.” “National security” came in fifth; the “presence of multinational forces” was seventh; and “terrorists” was eighth.

Read the whole thing, which has a lot of interesting technical information on what’s being done, and what’s been done wrong — much of it, it seems, in an effort to move too fast. But there’s also this, which is a kind of good news:

Because electricity is essentially free, Iraqis have responded much as you might expect: by buying and using air conditioners, television sets, and refrigerators in record numbers. “We don’t even know what demand really is, because it is unconstrained by price,” says Crane, the Rand economist. Until the ministry begins charging more realistic rates for electricity, he warns, “you could put a hundred billion dollars into the electrical system and not satisfy demand.”

With its huge oil reserves and socialistic society under Saddam, Iraq always had some of the lowest electricity rates in the region. But those low rates didn’t keep pace with soaring inflation in Iraq in the 1980s and, especially, the 1990s. Under Saddam, when middle-class Iraqis made just a few dollars a month, few of them could afford refrigerators and air conditioners. Now average family income is $150 a month and a lot of people can afford appliances, as the runaway electrical demand attests.

Unless you’re in charge of meeting that demand, it’s good news.

UPDATE: The Iraqis can take comfort in this: “we are in danger of doing a far worse job rebuilding New Orleans than rebuilding Baghdad.”

ILYA SHAPIRO looks at problems with the immigration system.

As I’ve said before, it’s too porous and too strict at the same time.

BAD BOY OF RADIO, meet the bad boys of the Internet:

Sirius Satellite Radio Inc., which liberated radio shock jock Howard Stern from the federal decency standards that he felt had shackled him, is finding that freedom’s just another word for $500 million to lose.

Since Jan. 9, when Stern debuted on Sirius, pirated versions of the shows have been made available for free via several online file-sharing networks just hours after Stern signs off. The New York-based broadcaster signed Stern to a five-year, half-billion-dollar contract in 2004.

This was kind of predictable, really. (Via NewsAlert).

BUT NO TERRORISTS WERE HARMED BY THIS INVASION OF PRIVACY:

Credit and bank card numbers of as many as 240,000 subscribers of The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette were inadvertently distributed with bundles of T&G newspapers on Sunday, officials of the newspapers said yesterday. . . . In addition, routing information for personal checks of 1,100 T&G subscribers also may have been inadvertently released.

The Globe and T&G, which are both owned by The New York Times Co., share a computer system.

So it’s okay, then. (Via T.M. Lutas).

KARL ZINSMEISTER: Facts and fiction from the front:

Your editor has just returned from another month in Iraq — my fourth extended tour in the last two and a half years. During November and December I joined numerous American combat operations, including the largest air assault since the beginning of the war, walked miles of streets and roads, entered scores of homes, listened to hundreds of Iraqis, observed voting at a dozen different polling sites, and endured my third roadside ambush. With this latest firsthand experience, here are answers to some common queries about how the war is faring.

Read the whole thing. And here’s some related information from Jim Lindgren.

PIECE O’CRAP ALERT: So the Norton Internet Security 2005 on my laptop expired, and instead of just renewing, I foolishly “upgraded” to Norton Internet Security 2006. I’ve reinstalled several times, but it won’t update. When I try, it tells me that LiveUpdate isn’t installed. When I try to install LiveUpdate, it tells me that it’s already there and won’t install. Various visits to their support site have wasted a lot of my time, but left me right where I started. I’m ditching Norton and switching to something else — my time is worth more than their crappy product. Any recommendations? I need antivirus and firewall. Don’t care about spamblocking, adblocking, or parental controls.

UPDATE: At a reader’s suggestion, I downloaded and ran the Symantec “Intelligent Updater” program, which seems to have fixed the problem. Apparently you only get the “not terribly bright updater” bundled with the main program . . . . We’ll see how this works.

The other thing I’ve noticed from the email is that *every* program out there has *somebody* who hates it.

A DEMOCRATIC SHAKEUP: The Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” (free link) reports:

As three Republicans candidates vie to replace Rep. Tom DeLay as House Majority Whip in an election Thursday, Democrats showed that anything can happen in a closed-ballot election in Washington.

Democrat Rep. John Larson of Connecticut won a startling election to become the fourth-ranking member of the House Democrats’ leadership team.

Larson had just 18 publicly announced supporters heading into the election. Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York had 72 public supporters while Rep. Jan Schakowsky had 56. In the first round of voting, Mr. Larson received 60 votes; Crowley, 79; and Ms. Schakowsky, 56. Since no candidate won a majority of the votes, the top two vote recipients — Mr. Larson and Mr. Crowley — moved on to a second ballot. There, most of Ms. Schakowsky’s supporters backed Mr. Larson — and he won, 116-87.

Very interesting.

PAJAMAS THEATER 3000 is Ed Driscoll’s new blog devoted to home theater technology, videos, etc.

THIS, AS BEST I CAN TELL, is how the Cory Maye case should have turned out:

A little more than two years ago, Mario Barcia Jr. was awakened in the dead of night by banging on his door. Startled — and shaken from two previous robberies — he grabbed his gun and ran to the front of the house.

Within a matter of seconds his life would change forever. Seeing what he described only as a bright light shining through his back door, Barcia fired a single shot.

Five shots were returned. Then Barcia fired twice more.
His first shot had hit Miami-Dade County police officer Chad Murphy in the back.

Barcia was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, a crime that could have left him imprisoned for life. Murphy, wearing a flak jacket, survived with a bloody bruise.

On Wednesday, it took a Miami-Dade County jury less than 30 minutes to decide Barcia did nothing wrong in shooting Murphy, who had entered Barcia’s property without permission or a warrant.

It’s still been no picnic for Barcia, but at least he’s not in jail like Cory Maye, who acted similarly under very similar circumstances. Radley Balko has a lot more on the Maye case on his blog. Just keep scrolling.