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If you’re interested to see previous years’ results, you can click here and here.

A RALLY FOR DENMARK IN NYC THIS FRIDAY: Details at Kesher Talk.

BILL STUNTZ says that Harvard is the General Motors of universities: “rich, bureaucratic, and confident–a deadly combination. Fifty years from now, Larry Summers’s resignation will be known as the moment when Harvard embraced GM’s fate.”

It’s also clear that, as with GM, making the customers happy with the product is less of a priority than bureaucratic infighting.

UPDATE: Bad news for Harvard — when you compare it to GM, the GM fans complain! Reader William Girardot emails:

I usually find myself agreeing with your commentary and even when I don’t, your views are quite thought provoking. Unfortunately, your opinions on GM and its products don’t fall into that category. GM’s products, from its new offerings in the Cadillac line to its new convertible roadsters, are eye-catching automobiles that surpass most German engineered cars and are nearly the equal of the Japanese.

Well, it’s the arrogant GM of several decades ago that Stuntz was invoking, not the much more eager to please GM of today.

Of course, it’s worth noting that it’s not just Harvard that’s suffering from the problems that Stuntz points out.

DANIEL HARRISON looks at disruptive technologies in the Fourth Estate.

ARMY OF DAVIDS UPDATE: Reader Don Hodun reports that his copy has arrived in Seattle: “Looks great!”

I had ordered from Barnes & Noble and that one arrived yesterday, but my Amazon test-order hasn’t shown up yet. Since the book isn’t officially out until next week, I imagine both shipments and bookstore appearances will be uneven for the next few days. But if you get a copy — or see it in a bookstore — let me know! Photos optional.

And Brad Miner is certainly pushing it!

UPDATE: Another happy recipient!

CONCOCTING A POISONOUS DAY OF NEWS: Gateway Pundit is unimpressed with the press.

Meanwhile, Mystery Pollster looks at Zogby’s poll of troops in Iraq. Hmm. Apparently it’s sort of like an exit poll. Those certainly didn’t work out well. . . .

The Officers’ Club and Murdoc Online have some questions, too.

Just yesterday, Ralph Peters’ comment was: “You are being lied to.”

No doubt the reports are fake, but accurate.

UPDATE: LT Smash on the poll.

ANOTHER UPDATE: J.D. Johannes has a theory about what happened with the poll.

STEPHEN BAINBRIDGE WRITES on Howard Stern and CBS.

MAX BOOT: “ARE WE WINNING or losing in Iraq? Liberals and conservatives safe at home have no trouble formulating glib answers to that fundamental question. The former can always point to setbacks, the latter to successes. The picture becomes blurrier, the future murkier when you spend time in Iraq, as I did last week.”

CATHY SEIPP has thoughts on free speech.

JAMIE KIRCHICK HAS MORE ON THE YALE TALIBAN:

The administration believes Yale is lucky to have Hashemi. According to the New York Times, Yale had “another foreigner of Rahmatullah’s caliber apply for special-student status.” Said former Dean of Admissions Richard Shaw, “We lost him to Harvard. I don’t want that to happen again.” Who was the applicant? A member of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party? A protege of Robert Mugabe’s?

Don’t expect a word of protest from our feminist and gay groups, who now have in their midst a live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever. They’re busy hunting bogeymen like frat parties and single-sex bathrooms. The answer Hashemi gave five years ago when asked about the lack of women’s rights in Afghanistan, “American women don’t have the right not to find images of themselves in swimsuits on the side of a bus,” is the sort of sophistry likely to curry favor among Yale’s feminist activists, who make every effort to paint American society as chauvinistic while refraining from criticizing non-Western cultures. To do so would be “cultural imperialism,” and we cannot have that at an enlightened place like Yale.

I personally want to know whether Hashemi supports the flattening of homosexuals via brick walls, which was one of the ways the Taliban dealt with gay men. Having written a newspaper column for nearly my entire time at Yale, I suspect some of my peers would like to see me flattened by a wall, but I doubt any of them served a regime that carried out such a practice as official policy.

It’s not one of Yale’s finer moments.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS writes on The End of Fukuyama.

WRITING IN FOREIGN POLICY, PHILLIP LONGMAN expounds on a theme that James Taranto has been sounding for a while: “Across the globe, people are choosing to have fewer children or none at all. Governments are desperate to halt the trend, but their influence seems to stop at the bedroom door. Are some societies destined to become extinct? Hardly. It’s more likely that conservatives will inherit the Earth. Like it or not, a growing proportion of the next generation will be born into families who believe that father knows best.”

I’m somewhat skeptical of demographic arguments like this, but he’s a serious guy.

HOWARD BASHMAN: “Alabama’s sex-toy litigation ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

WHAT’S IN A NAME-CHANGE: Austin Bay looks at the U.N.’s latest on human rights.

BILL ROGGIO looks at Al Qaeda’s foreign fighters in Iraq.

IN THE MAIL: Simon Young’s Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto. Looks pretty interesting, and it has forewords by Aubrey de Grey and Robert Freitas.

IF YOU’RE IN THE D.C. AREA, I’ll be doing a book launch program at the National Press Club on Monday at 6:30, co-sponsored by Reason and TCS Daily. Barry Lynn and Joe Trippi will be debating the whole “Army of Davids” concept with me.

Details are here.

WILL AGING RESEARCH BECOME AN ELECTION ISSUE? My TCS Daily column is up.

IMPORTANT ADVICE ON PORT SECURITY from Frank J.: “Muslim extremists hate cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), so put an unflattering comic about Mohammed on your door. If anyone tries to kill you over it, treat that person with suspicion.” He’s got a lot more of ’em.

THOUGH THE WHITE HOUSE WAS MUM IN ADVANCE, Bush made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on his way to India.

UPDATE: Lorie Byrd writes: “I Love It When He Does Stuff Like This.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Last week the golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown apart. Sectarian riots followed, and reprisals and deaths ensued. Thugs and criminals came out of the woodwork to foment further violence. But instead of the apocalypse of an ensuing civil war, a curfew was enforced. Iraqi security forces stepped in with some success. Shaken Sunni and Shiite leaders appeared on television to urge restraint, and there appeared at least the semblance of reconciliation that may soon presage a viable coalition government.

But here at home you would have thought that our own capitol dome had exploded. Indeed, Americans more than the Iraqis needed such advice for calm to quiet our own frenzy. Almost before the golden shards of the mosque hit the pavement, pundits wrote off the war as lost–as we heard the tired metaphors of “final straw” and “camel’s back” mindlessly repeated. The long-anticipated civil strife among Shiites and Sunnis, we were assured, was not merely imminent, but already well upon us. Then the great civil war sort of fizzled out; our own frenzy subsided; and now exhausted we await next week’s new prescription of doom–apparently the hyped-up story of Arabs at our ports. That the Iraqi security forces are becoming bigger and better, that we have witnessed three successful elections, and that hundreds of brave American soldiers have died to get us to the brink of seeing an Iraqi government emerge was forgotten in a 24-hour news cycle.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Ralph Peters reports from Baghdad:

Yesterday, I crisscrossed Baghdad, visiting communities on both banks of the Tigris and logging at least 25 miles on the streets. With the weekend curfew lifted, I saw traffic jams, booming business — and everyday life in abundance.

Yes, there were bombings yesterday. The terrorists won’t give up on their dream of sectional strife, and know they can count on allies in the media as long as they keep the images of carnage coming. They’ll keep on bombing. But Baghdad isn’t London during the Blitz, and certainly not New York on 9/11. . . .

The bombing made headlines (and a news photographer just happened to be on the scene). Here in Baghdad, it just made the average Iraqis hate the terrorists even more.

You are being lied to. By elements in the media determined that Iraq must fail. Just give ’em the Bronx cheer.

Read the whole thing.

AN EXTRAORDINARY ACT OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE: Some Atlanta students drive the speed limit and videotape the resulting mayhem. As one of them says, “I’m just glad nobody got hurt. It had the potential to be dangerous, which was really, again, the point. We were dangerous because we were obeying the law.”

UPDAE: Alan, Esq. thinks that this was against the law, and there’s an interesting discussion going on in the comments with some of the students.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and The U.N. cares about human rights.

A MANIFESTO AGAINST THE NEW ISLAMIC TOTALITARIANISM: Bravo. Click “read more” to read it.

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BUSH AND BLOGS: Hey, maybe the message finally got through.