VERNOR VINGE UPDATE: Last night, instead of doing what I should have been doing, I started reading the new Vernor Vinge novel, Rainbows End. It’s not a sequel to his far-future works. It’s set in the near future — 2025 — and it’s a world I recognize, because it’s an Army of Davids world. Check out the first two paragraphs:

The first bit of dumb luck came disguised as a public embarrassment for the European Center for Defense Against Disease. On July 23, schoolchildren in Algiers claimed that a respiratory epidemic was spreading across the Mediterranean. The claim was based on a clever analysis of antibody data from the mass-transit systems of Algiers and Naples.

CDD had no immediate comment, but in less than three hours, public-health hobbyists reported similar results in other cities, complete with contagion maps. The epidemic was at least one week old, probably originating in Central Africa, beyond the scope of hobbyist surveillance.

It’s not all sunny, though:

Every year, the civilized world grew and the reach of lawlessness and poverty shrank. Many people thought that the world was becoming a safer place . . . Nowadays Grand Terror technology was so cheap that cults and criminal gangs could acquire it. . . . In all innocence, the marvelous creativity of humankind continued to generate unintended consequences. There were a dozen research trends that could ultimately put world-killer weapons in the hands of anyone having a bad hair day.

Yep. As I note in Army, there’s a downside to this empowerment of individuals business, as well as an upside. Vinge, however, makes that observation considerably more, um, exciting.

THE GLENN AND HELEN SHOW is now listed as a “new and notable” podcast on iTunes — and what’s funny is that just above it are video podcast episodes of Helen’s TV show Snapped. Check out the one on “Rita Gluzman” if you’re interested.

UPDATE: Hey, just noticed we’re in the Top 10 for “talk radio” podcasts on iTunes, too: Ahead of Bill O’Reilly and the BBC, but behind Howard Stern.

THE JOY OF NUKES: My TCS Daily column is up.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Some Democrats are Sensing Missed Opportunities:”

In interviews, senior Democrats said they were optimistic about significant gains in Congressional elections this fall, calling this the best political environment they have faced since President Bush took office.

But Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president’s approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November.

Asked to describe the health of the Democratic Party, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said: “A lot worse than it should be. This has not been a very good two months.”

The problem stems from a lack of self-discipline, and a base that’s far from the electorate, but that must be assuaged. And as Barack Obama says: “We have been in a reactive posture for too long. I think we have been very good at saying no, but not good enough at saying yes.”

Criticism isn’t a platform, but they’ve failed to offer affirmative plans of their own:

“We’re selling our party short; you’ve got to stand for a lot more than just blasting the other side,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee. “The country is wide open to hear some alternatives, but I don’t think it’s wide open to all these criticisms. I am sitting here and getting all my e-mail about the things we are supposed to say about the president’s speech, but it’s extremely light on ideas. It’s like, ‘We’re for jobs and we’re for America.’ “

Indeed. Somebody run this guy for President.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (free link) reports on How Muslim Clerics Stirred the Arab World Against Denmark. Excerpt:

Keen to “globalize” the crisis to pressure the Danish government, Mr. Abu-Laban and his colleagues decided to send delegations to the Middle East. They prepared a dossier to distribute during the travels. The document, which exceeded 30 pages, featured copies of the published cartoons and Arabic media reports about the controversy. It also contained a group of highly offensive pictures that had never been published by the newspaper, including a photograph of a man dressed as a pig, with the caption: “this is the real picture of Muhammad.”

Read the whole thing. Also, Hugh Hewitt had Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, and Joe Carter on his show last night, talking about the Cartoon Wars. Transcript and audio are here.

UPDATE: Austin Bay’s latest column is on the Cartoon Wars. And on his blog he observes: “The Danish ‘Cartoon War’ is an information warfare operation conducted by Islamist terror groups and at least two Middle Eastern dictatorships (Syria and Iran).”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Power Line has much more on this rather contrived affair. And Harry Shearer wants to know why most American media are too chicken to run the cartoons.

MORE: Meryl Yourish notes a disturbing lack of context in media reports on the issue.

LAURA INGRAHAM is blogging from Iraq.

FREE PRESS WALKOUT:

The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper’s publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.

Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff:

New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group — consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.

This whole affair is certainly clarifying some things. (Via Andrew Sullivan).

UPDATE: Speaking of clarifying, Iraqi blogger Alaa writes:

I consider it offensive to show disrespect to Islamic religious symbols or any religious symbols of any kind, for that matter. However there is more to this than meets the eye. It seems to me quite suspicious that this storm is created at this particular time. To start with this is certainly not the first time that insults and affronts of this nature appear on print in western media in many countries and places. Such things do not deserve any kind of reaction other rather the contempt they deserve. Yet there are those who seem to seize upon such opportunities for motives that have nothing to do with the apparent religious sensitivities. Clearly there are those who wish to harm relations between the West in General and the Moslem World and more particularly we should not forget the contribution of Denmark to the allied effort in Iraq. Yes friends, I who consider my self a fervent Moslem, tell you that this is an artificial storm stirred by the same kind of people who are beheading, kidnapping and blowing up market places and day workers in Iraqi cities etc. Those in the West who give such people the ammunition and pretexts to launch such pitiful shows and stir up the emotions of gullible simple people, are their allies and facilitators.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: More on the walkout here.

SOUTH DAKOTA’S “intellectual diversity” bill is moving.

THE JEWISH STREET explodes.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Sooooiiieee! It’s feeding time for the hogs — and as they nose up to the trough they can fill out this Senate pork application form!

Be sure to write legibly, and use a Number Two pencil . . . .

THE GLENN AND HELEN PODCASTS are now available via Yahoo! which has a pretty good podcast setup.

TED STEVENS HAS PULLED AHEAD OF ROBERT BYRD in the PorkBusters Hall of Shame race. Can I call ’em, or can I call ’em?

It’s a closely watched race!

SOME THOUGHTS on the future of telecommuting.

WELLSTONE II: Apparently there was a lot of Bush-bashing at the Coretta King funeral, enough that some people are embarrassed.

Why does this keep happening? Part of it, I think, is that the Democratic Party is in a state where it finds it hard to get national TV coverage except when someone dies. I think that their behavior reflects another forlorn hope for regeneration. I guess looking at policies is out of the question, though.

UPDATE: Doesn’t look like the youth vote is going to save them.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Anchoress sees a Wellstone parallel, too, and observes: “No, none of it was surprising.”

MORE: Jay Reding writes: “Can we have some dignity, please?”

Apparently not. And this post by Eric Muller only serves to underline the very point it attempts to refute. The problem with today’s Democrats is that they try to invest the naked hunger for power with the dignity of the civil rights movement, a dignity that they no longer possess because it was based on a self-discipline that they no longer possess.

IN THE MAIL: An advance copy of Vernor Vinge’s next novel, Rainbows End. It’s a sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. I’m very excited.

UPDATE: Okay, the promo literature made it sound like a sequel, and Amazon tagged it as a “Zones of Thought” book, but looking at it I don’t think it is. Sorry. I’ll offer more detail when I’ve, you know, actually read it.

I’LL BE ON RIGHTALK RADIO (you can stream it live at that link), being interviewed about An Army of Davids by Ace of Ace Of Spaces HQ and Karol Sheinin of Alarming News. Ace emails about the book: “it’s not what I expected. It’s very good, just not as focused on blogging as I figured it would be. More of an Alvin Toffler reorganization-of-the-way-we-live-and-work thing.”

Yep. Hugh Hewitt pretty much preempted the pure-blogging-book area.

I’ll be on about 4:10 Eastern.

NOTHING IS SACRED: Just ask Sinead O’Connor.

ELECTION FAIRNESS: Michael Barone offers advice to Secretaries of State. Excerpt:

There are two other developments I find disturbing. One is the fact that large numbers of political players are charging that the basic requirement of showing voter identification at the polls is a form of undue intimidation. I think this is an astounding and indefensible argument. We have to show identification to cash a check or board an airliner. Identification is easily available to any American — and almost all of us carry official identifying cards on us at all times. To equate the requirement that identification be shown with the violence and intimidation visited on black Americans in the South up to and including the 1960s is, in my mind, to belittle and disparage the courage and bravery of those Americans, most of them black but some of them white, who literally risked their lives in order to see that all Americans would have the right to vote. Their efforts were successful, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 quickly proved to be the most effective civil rights legislation the federal government ever passed.

The other disturbing development is the proposal that election rules should be federalized, perhaps under the current advisory Election Assistance Commission. This raises severe practical problems. The federal government has found it difficult to establish uniform computer systems for individual federal agencies; I understand that a long-term program to do that in the Internal Revenue Service had to be abandoned. Establishing computer-compatible systems for the 50 states and District of Columbia would presumably be much harder. Second, and more important, federalizing election rules would allow nationwide manipulation that could affect election results.

Read the whole thing.

INTERESTING INTERVIEW with Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Read the whole thing.

CLERIC CONVICTED: “The Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was found guilty today by a jury in London on charges of using his sermons to incite murder and race hatred, news agencies reported.”

I’m against “hate speech” laws, but if they exist they should certainly be enforced evenhandedly, and there’s a lot of hate speech coming from guys like Hamza. This, however, appears to go beyond simple “hate speech” to include solicitation of murder, though it’s not entirely clear from the story.

TRADE RETALIATION? The EU warns Iran about boycotting Danish goods.

MICHAEL PETRELIS isn’t impressed with the New York Times’ reasons for not running the Danish cartoons.

UPDATE: The Philadelphia Inquirer runs them. Praise for the Inquirer here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Read this, too.

MORE VIDEO REPORTING from yesterday’s hearings, at NSA FILES.

Read this, too.

FREE EXPRESSION IN THE MUSLIM WORLD: The BBC reports:

A South African editor has received threats after her paper reprinted one of the cartoons that have angered Muslim groups internationally.

Ferial Haffajee, editor of the Mail and Guardian said she had received abusive letters and text messages.

On Friday, South African Muslim activists won an interdict barring another paper, the Sunday Times, from printing the cartoons. . . .

South Africa’s constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression.

The Mail and Guardian published one of the cartoons on its international news page on Friday, to illustrate a story about last week’s protests.

“People have been phoning my mother and exercising pressure through her,” Ms Haffajee told the BBC News website.

She said some groups had threatened to march on the newspaper’s offices in Johannesburg.

“It displays a lack of tolerance that is nerve-wracking,” she said.

Ms Haffajee said she felt she was being targeted personally because she is herself a Muslim.

The BBC itself is getting bad marks here.

Meanwhile, John Scalzi is unimpressed by the Iranian response:

A newspaper in Iran — run by allies of that country’s Jew-hating current president — printing cartoons that might possibly be anti-Jew? Who thought we would ever see that day?

Christ, this is boring already. Speaking in my capacity as Official Spokesman for The West®, I think Iranian newspapers — particularly ones run by pals of the current president of Iran — should go ahead and run any sort of dumbass Holocaust cartoons they want to. Indeed, I celebrate the right of Iranian newspapers to run whatever the hell they want. This is, alas, more than can be said about the Iranian government, whose grip on the press in that country is so total that the 2005 Reporters Without Borders Annual World Press Freedom Index has Iran listed 163rd in a field of 167 (a field in which Denmark, incidentally, ranked number one).

One can hope that when the allies of Iran’s president are enjoying their refreshing little taste of “free expression,” they might consider asking their pal for a little more genuine freedom of the press while they’re at it. But, you know. I’m not exactly holding my breath for that one. Because then the people who run the paper probably wouldn’t remain pals of the president of Iran. And we all know how problematic that can be. But in my capacity as Official Spokesman for The West®, I certainly hope they give it a try.

And of course I certainly hope someone who actually is a spokesman for The West® remembers to ask Iran when it plans to give its newspapers the ability to run actual news, as well as Jew-hating cartoons.

They’re pathetic little losers. They want to be pathetic little losers with nuclear weapons — but they’ll still be pathetic little losers, regardless.

UPDATE: But according to some on the left, raising concerns about Muslim extremism, death threats, and censorship just proves that you’re — a right-wing extremist!

Antonia “Notice Me!” Zerbisias of the Toronto Star, — best known in the blogosphere for attributing an anonymous commenter’s remarks to blogger Stefan Sharkansky and making the bizarre claim that warbloggers have “fallen silent” — is now claiming that the whole thing is about Muslim-hating Westerners. Riiight.

That’s why Iraqi Muslim blogger Zeyad noted:

The protestors are blasting free speech in Europe, yet they are using that same free speech to call for murder and bloodshed. I would strongly support deporting those people back to the miserable societies they originally came from.

Those damned American nativists!

Meanwhile, Canadian blogger Damian Penny has some more sensible thoughts. As usual!

Read this post, too.

STILL MORE: Reader Dave Murphy emails:

Ms. Zerbisias’ logic is flawless. I think if we’ve learned anything from this, it’s that the ONLY people to blame for the rioting are the people sitting in their homes on a continent where the cartoons did not originate and where there is no rioting. It’s as clear as day. Oh and also Michelle Malkin is fat.

Riight. Zerbisias isn’t even good about being catty! Meanwhile, Jay Homnick is unimpressed with apologies for Islamist terror.

And reader Michael McDowell isn’t having any of it:

Zerbisias condemns those Westerners who “claim to be morally superior.” Well that is absolute horseshit. I am tired of being told not to judge other cultures through my “American lens” because I don’t understand their circumstances. I believe in equal rights without regard to race, religion, color, gender or country or origin. I believe in the freedom of homosexuals to marry and live freely in society. I believe in freedom of expression, and speech, and the free exchange of ideas. I believe in kindness, compassion, consideration, and that dogs make life better. I don’t “claim to be morally superior” to those ass-hat murderers; I am morally superior.

Indeed. You’d expect lefties like Zerbisias to side with people like McDowell, and Zeyad, over a bunch of sexist, homophobic theocrats — but that would require that they side with America, too. Which is right out.

SO I READ THIS POST by Matthew Yglesias on the Trademark Dilution Revision Act, and was prepared to believe that it was terrible — “terrible” being a pretty good description for most intellectual property legislation in recent years. But this piece in Ars Technica suggests that it’s not quite that bad, though it still sounds like no prize.