NOT QUITE A SISTER SOULJAH MOMENT, but maybe a Sister Souljah nanosecond:

“One good test as to whether folks are doing interesting work is, Can they surprise me?” he tells me. “And increasingly, when I read Daily Kos, it doesn’t surprise me. It’s all just exactly what I would expect.”

Just a foretaste of Obama’s campaign, I think. Unlike Clinton, who had to show his independence from the urban black base of his party, Obama will have to show his independence from the urban white base of his party. . . .

MORE BLOOD-BLOGGING, from Fritz Schranck.

VARIOUS PEOPLE have asked about the pictures I took for Helen’s blog. It was a pretty low-budget affair.

She wanted some new headshots, which we did, but we also took a blog photo — in her pajamas, natch — because she wanted to take down the old black-and-white picture on her blog and replace it with something more colorful. I actually took this one as I was setting up a different shot, but I liked it best for its spontaneity.

I used the Nikon D50 with a 50mm/f1.8 normal lens, and an aptly-named thrifty light set that I actually got to support some webcam video stuff I’m planning to do. It could have been brighter — quartz instead of photoflood — but it was adequate. That’s pretty much the description of the whole setup: Cheap, but good enough. My motto!

More from the D50 here.

UPDATE: Gerard van der Leun emails that he’s got the same light set, but that it’s not available on Amazon any more. True — the link was just an illustration. But this one is very similar. And if I had it to do over again, I’d buy this one.

THE ANTI-NORMAN BORLAUG? A nomination.

SOME ELECTRONICS RECOMMENDATIONS, from Megan McArdle.

19 DEAD AND 243,000 WITHOUT POWER AND HEAT in St. Louis. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

“I HAVE BEHEADED MANY PEOPLE WHO WERE MY FRIENDS.” Past tense, of course.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: “Cold comfort indeed, but the upside of John Bolton resigning as ambassador to the UN is that the UN does not deserve to be dignified by ambassadors of the stature of John Bolton. His presence there endowed the place with a seriousness it has not earned. Bolton has been valiant in his efforts to clean up UN corruption and malfeasance, and follow UN procedure in dealing with such threats as a nuclear North Korea, a Hezbollah bid to take over Lebanon, and the nuclearization of Hezbollah’s terror-masters in Iran. But it has been like watching one man trying to move a tsunami of mud.”

MCCAIN ON IRAQ: “Well in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose.”

BLOGGER ENEMIES LISTS?

RON BAILEY: “On Friday, April 13, 2029, Earth Has a 99.7 Percent Chance of Being Missed by an Asteroid–Is That Good Enough?”

Not for me.

JIMMY CARTER has an unfortunate moment on C-SPAN.

YOU REPORT, WE REPEAT?

It always pleases us at Pajamas Media when we can save the minions of mainstream media a little leg work, but we’d like to get some credit for it when we do.

Case in point: The Faking Imams story which Pajamas Media’s Washington editor Richard Miniter broke last Friday evening. The revelations in this story were grist for Fox News’ cable television reporting all through the weekend, but it would seem all their commentators “forgot” to attribute the source of their story.

I think they’ve just been reminded.

SOME THOUGHTS ON “THERAPEUTIC JURISPRUDENCE:” “not only misguided, but potentially dangerous.”

HONORING NORMAN BORLAUG: As regular InstaPundit readers know, I’m all for that. I love this:

Norman Borlaug “has saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.” This is a profound distinction. Like the society that sustains it, American academia takes achievements like this for granted. One must wonder how many professors, outside schools such as Tuskegee and departments dedicated to agriculture, have any idea that an American university professor holds the all-time record for lives saved.

I’m guessing that not many people do.

IN THE MAIL: Mark Elliott’s Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgee and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson, which looks quite interesting. Tourgee was the lawyer for the losing (anti-segregation) side in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case that gave birth to the doctrine of “separate but equal.” He had been a champion of racial equality during Reconstruction, but the U.S. public tired of keeping troops in the South and the national press painted Reconstruction as an unrealistic failure, leading to the takeover of pro-segregation forces and the enactment of Jim Crow laws. Tourgee continued to fight these — with some support from Civil War veterans — but it was mostly unsuccessful, setting the stage for long-term problems that affect America to this day.

It should go well with this book by Jennifer Weber.

OUCH: “A 45-year-old man was hospitalized after four sheriff’s deputies rescued him from the jaws of a nearly 12-foot alligator Wednesday, while he was naked and high on crack cocaine.”

The man, not the alligator.

THIS IS COOL:

Before long, “user-generated content” won’t refer only to media, but to just about anything: user-generated jeans, user-generated sports cars, user-generated breakfast meats.

This is because setting up a company that designs, makes and globally sells physical products could become almost as easy as starting a blog — and the repercussions would be earthshaking.

That’s the future Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos hopes to set in motion with the company’s new direction. If you tease out Bezos’ plan, you get to a point where a high school cheerleader sitting at home with a laptop could theoretically harness computing power, design capabilities, manufacturing and distribution from around the world, and make and market a cute little pink hot rod that would compete against General Motors.

Hey, somebody should write a book about this kind of thing. (Via Virginia Postrel.)

JOHN HAWKINS is now rounding up posts from the rightosphere at his “Conservative Grapevine” site.

MORE NEWS FROM BASRA at The Mudville Gazette.

I’M STILL BURIED IN COOKWARE EMAILS, notwithstanding yesterday’s post. (Who knew? Well, actually, it’s a long-standing InstaPundit reader interest.) I don’t have time to do another roundup at the moment, but if cookware’s your thing — and for a lot of InstaPundit readers, it obviously is, — check out this Jane Galt roundup.

WALKING ON EGGSHELLS: Today’s Washington Examiner has more on the flying imams.

Airlines have the right — and the duty — to protect their passengers. The security protocols established as a direct result of Sept. 11 inconvenience and sometimes even humiliate everybody who flies. If you don’t want to submit to the indignity, stay off airplanes.

And the only way to counter ideological jihad is to speak the truth: U.S. Airways did the right thing by removing these six provocateurs from the plane.

The imams’ behavior, and the followup by groups like CAIR, will only tend to support those who view American muslims as a threat. That’s unfortunate.

MEGAN MCARDLE offers thoughts on the H-word.