IN THE FEDEX: At my door this very minute, a copy of Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts, by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan. It’s a much-expanded version of the Popular Mechanics mythbusting article from last year, with a foreword by John McCain on the toxic nature of the circulating conspiracy theories. Perhaps they should teach it at the University of Wisconsin.

The Amazon comments, however, suggest that the conspiracists are alive and well.

WHO SAYS BLOGGERS DON’T DO ORIGINAL REPORTING? The Washington Post is relying on bloggers! “The Washington Post did not review the full 439-megabyte data set but contacted bloggers who had looked at it.”

More illustration of Wagner James Au’s point on relative competencies. (Thanks to reader Fred La Sor for the tip).

IN THE MAIL: Rory Stewart’s The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, a not very positive take on the first year post-liberation.

LANNY DAVIS looks at the netroots and doesn’t like what he sees:

A friend of mine just returned from Connecticut, where he had spoken on several occasions on behalf of Joe Lieberman. He happens to be a liberal antiwar Democrat, just as I am. He is also a lawyer. He told me that within a day of a Lamont event–where he asked the candidate some critical questions–some of his clients were blitzed with emails attacking him and threatening boycotts of their products if they did not drop him as their attorney. He has actually decided not to return to Connecticut for the primary today; he is fearful for his physical safety.

Some of us have been noting this new climate of fear in America for a while, now.

UPDATE: Paul Mirengoff says that Davis hasn’t been paying attention.

And I should probably note that Robert Musil was on the “climate of fear” story early on.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY ON “Jihad Journalism:”

Is Reuters a patsy or collaborator? Either way, it is helping the cause of terrorism and undermining civilization.

Unless it wants to become just another branch of Al-Jazeera, it had better make meaningful institutional changes soon.

I think it’s the “unless” that’s the problem, here.

PAUL BOUTIN: “It’s been nearly a year since Apple added downloadable videos and a couch-surfing remote to its lineup. How are those doing, Steve? One more question: How come none of my Apple-loving geek buddies have Macs in their living rooms?”

A LOOK AT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH and false moral equivalence.

MAX BORDERS RESPONDS to my column from last week on disaster preparedness.

The Space Review: “Today, the Chinese are attempting to do to the Galileo system the same thing that Europe tried, and failed, to do to the US. China has registered with the ITU its intent to use frequencies that are as close to Galileo’s as Galileo’s were planned to be to GPS 3. The speculation is that this is the Chinese response to the European refusal to allow China into the charmed circle of senior Galileo management.”

Philip Chaston: “It takes some level of incompetence to have the Chinese do to you what you tried to do to the Americans . . . . I mustn’t gloat.”

Oh, no.

A NEW, IMPROVED RedState.

A LOOK AT Harold Ford’s track record on guns.

DEAN BARNETT answers your questions about Lieberman / Lamont.

MORE ON THE REUTERGATE STORY from Ed Driscoll and Thomas Lifson, plus new photo analysis from Power Line.

JOE LIEBERMAN’S WEBSITE HACKED? Stay tuned.

REGARDING THE NICK LEMANN / REUTERGATE ITEM BELOW, Wagner James Au emails:

It’s worth pointing out the spectacularly poor timing of Lemann’s essay, since he complains how “It ought to raise suspicion that we so often hear the same menu of examples in support of [the blogosphere’s]
achievements”– he cites Rathergate, Lott-gate– only days before Reuter-gate explodes. And this latest instance of blogosphere reporting also undermines Lemann’s larger point. It would be unfeasible for mainstream media outlets to devote pages and pages of editorial space or airtime analyzing news photos, or aggegrate the blogswarm effect of different blogs bringing together different pieces of the puzzle within hours. More key, most of the top news outlets totally *depend* on wire services for their own reporting, so they actually have a disincentive to undermine their credibility.

(Mysteriously, two days after it broke, none of the major news outlets have even mentioned the Reuters scandal.)

So that would be my question to Lemann: does he think Reuters-gate is a worthwhile form of investigative journalism? And why does he think major outlets have been so slow to pick it up?

I actually think that the Reuters scandal has gotten some mention (Charles Johnson was on CNN talking about it), though I’m still spooling back up today after being offline for a week. But the general point’s a good one, and I stand by my statement that a similar piece of fakery by a blogger would have gotten a lot more attention from Big Media.

Nick: If you’re reading this, any answers to WJA’s questions?

UPDATE: Blogometer is giving it attention.

ATLAS is shrugging.

IS LEBANON the next Iran?

POPULAR MECHANICS looks at automotive fuel saver devices and inflatable spacecraft.

THANKS TO GLENN for letting me be one-fourth of Instapundit again. It’s always a pleasure. Now I’m heading to Tel Aviv in 24 hours so I can cover the war from something other than an armchair.

NICK LEMANN PROVES MY POINT: Writing in The New Yorker, he observes:

“Millions of Americans who were once in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff—and that many unknowns can do it better than the lords of the profession,” Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who operates one of the leading blogs, Instapundit, writes, typically, in his new book, “An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths.”

The rhetoric about Internet journalism produced by Reynolds and many others is plausible only because it conflates several distinct categories of material that are widely available online and didn’t use to be.

I appreciate the book plug. But, actually, it’s Lemann who’s doing the conflating, taking my comments about punditry and then applying them to hard-news reporting. Lots of other people responded to Lemann while I was away — Rebecca MacKinnon has a response and a big roundup here — so I’ll just note one recent event that suggests that the standards set by alleged professionals aren’t very high.

That, of course, is Reuters’ use of faked photos from Lebanon, part of a larger trend on the part of allegedly professional and objective Western media to use local stringers who are thoroughly anti-Israel and anti-American and then present the resulting reporting as if it were neutral and factual. And it’s not as if the most recent developments are unusual.

I agree with this take: “Quite apart from the dismaying ineptitude of missing the clear evidence of manipulation that bloggers will eagerly and easily throw in their faces, we should worry that there is much more subtle and expert use of photoshopping going on all the time.”

Despite claims to the contrary, I haven’t argued that blogs will replace traditional journalism. But this stuff makes “amateur hour” look pretty good. And if a blogger had perpetrated this kind of a fraud and had it reproduced all over the world, I suspect we’d be hearing much more in the way of tut-tutting from the likes of Lemann.

MICKEY KAUS: “If you’re Hillary Clinton, and you fear people might interpret a Lieberman loss in Tuesday’s Connecticut Senate primary as trouble for other pro-war Senate Dems, what do you do? Get the credulous New York Times to print your damage-controlling spin on the front page!”

Plus, a dialogue with Kevin Drum on Democratic strategy.

BEACH READING, I enjoyed Chris Moriarty’s new book, Spin Control, the sequel to Spin State. I think I enjoyed the first book a bit more, but it’s been long enough that it’s hard to say.

WHILE I WAS GONE, I did a rebreather dive as part of an article I’m working on for Popular Mechanics. I’ve been diving with the folks at DiveTech for years, and they set me up with a familiarization course — the full rebreather certification course takes 6 rather rigorous days. The warning label suggests why that’s the case.

I don’t want to give away the article, but although I found the rebreather dive interesting — you don’t make bubbles, which means fish are less scared of you, and you can stay down for three or four hours — I don’t think I’m ready to take the, er, plunge and do the full certification course. But from comparing the unit I used (two years old) to one of the newest cutting-edge units, I can say that the technology in this area is on a steep learning curve, and that might well make it a lot easier, safer and more user-friendly in the near future. Right now, the need to continuously monitor your oxygen levels via triply-redundant analyzers (one of which had to be replaced during the gear-up because it wasn’t working right — see the gauges strapped to my arm in the photo below), and a variety of other necessary tasks makes this more trouble than I’m really willing to go to, especially with the cost of equipment running around ten grand. Happily, lots of tech-diving enthusiasts are driving the market here, and that should fix things. Thank you, early adopters!

You’ll note, though, that the folks at DiveTech seem to be managing to stay calm about everything. I think that’s easier when you live on a tropical island . . . .

THANKS TO GLENN for letting me dwell in Instapundit territory, and thanks to Brannon, Megan, and Michael for the excellent company. After driving all over The West — unaccompanied — and double-blogging for the past week, I have a delightfully mellow feeling about being back in Madison, Wisconsin and confining my blogging to Althouse. I hope you’ll keep reading me there. You might want to start here, with last night’s podcast, recapping the week’s blogging and — as usual — digressing. And digress over to Althouse whenever you can. I don’t need to tell you to keep reading Instapundit. How far can you get into a day without checking to see how the world looks from Instapundit? So, thanks again to Glenn for letting me stand on this lofty peak of the internet on those days when I was driving my car around the thrilling mountain roads of The West. Now it’s time for me to descend via the twistiest road over to the gently rolling, Wisconsinite landscape of a blog called Althouse.

THANKS TO GLENN for the invitation to fill in, and to my other co-guestbloggers for a great week. I enjoyed it very much.