A BAN ON SOCK PUPPETS? This could be bad news for some people.

DANIEL DREZNER ON GETTING OLD IN THE BLOGOSPHERE: I think that not taking it seriously is actually the key.

K.C. JOHNSON: “In recent months, there’s been a totalitarian whiff to events in Durham, as we witness attempts to rewrite history.” Plus a Sunday roundup of developments.

O TEMPORA, O MORES!

GEORGE WILL: “If the defining doctrine of the Republican Party is limited government, the party must move up from nostalgia and leaven its reverence for Reagan with respect for Madison.”

SUNDAY NIGHT in Baghdad.

UPDATE: Okay, that deserves more than a bare link. Excerpt:

Baghdad is still enjoying some days of relative calm interrupted only with minor sporadic incidents. In general there’s a feeling that these days are better than almost any other time in months. This is more evident in the eastern side of Baghdad than the western part, because the former part has received more US and Iraqi military reinforcements than the latter. . . .

Signs of such efforts can already be seen on the streets, through political work instead of military. Yesterday the “popular support” committee headed by Ahmed Chalabi succeeded in reopening a Sunni mosque in Sadr city, returning control of the mosque to the Sunni endowment department after it was occupied by Sadr’s office personnel last year. The mosque was reopened with a celebration where Sunnis and Shia prayed together behind a Sunni cleric. Before the ceremony Shia volunteers cleaned up the area around the mosque from garbage and fixed the sign that carried the name of the mosque. . . .

The arrest of al-Zamili indicates that the new plan will not hesitate to target leaders of militant groups no matter what their position in the government was. The Sadr movement responded to the arrest only by saying that it was an insult to all Iraqis. One of their spokesmen said, in a clear sign of helplessness, “If one from our movement is to be arrested, then others from other factions should be arrested as well”.

I don’t know whether this current attitude of submission is going to last when more senior members are arrested. Still, I like the idea of arresting senior bad guys from both sects. This both satisfies public opinion, and gives credibility to the announced plans of the government to deal equally with all regardless of sect or background.

Some people are hoping it fails but I’m hoping for success.

WHEN UNLIMITED doesn’t mean unlimited. A good reason to avoid Comcast, I guess.

UPDATE: Reader Marty Sherrill emails: “Does it look to you like the fellow with the Comcast complaint is using his residential service to power an internet cafe?” Hmm. The story doesn’t say anything like that, but if it’s the case, then Comcast has a legitimate gripe.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Gebert emails: “Does it look like an Internet cafe? Well, it does if we assume that picture that says ‘No internet today’ is from Frank, the guy who got disconnected. Since it doesn’t appear to be on his blog, though, I’d bet that it’s just a stock photo Consumerist put up.”

USING REFRIGERATORS to store power. It’s really more like load-shifting, but it’s clever.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

GIULIANI: Macho, or not?

GLOBAL WARMING AND COSMIC RAYS: We must, of course, follow the science, and not let the fact that a lot of politicians have invested their credibility in greenhouse theory affect the analysis. It’s wrong to politicize science.

UPDATE: More on this. Bill Hobbs: “It would be an inconvenient truth.”

SENIOR MOMENTS AT THE Libby Trial.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, is thinking of regulating nanotechnology.

One hopes they do better than they did with their effort to regulate biotechnology back in the 1970s, which was something of an embarrassment. (More on that here.) I have some thoughts on the subject of nanotechnology regulation in general in this paper. And I’ve written more on the subject here.

UPDATE: People seem to be having trouble getting to the nanotechnology paper — I guess SSRN is having some computer problems. I got an HTTP error when I clicked, but it was working fine when I posted. No doubt they’ll have it fixed soon.

MORE ON THE LIBBY TRIAL, at Tom Maguire’s.

A REVEALING COMMENT from the Washington Post’s ombudsman. So I guess it’s okay to call William Arkin “anti-military” now that he’s bragging about being “probably one of the best-known and respected anti-military military bloggers,” right? Hey, maybe the Post should hire a pro-military military blogger! Naw, that’s crazy talk . . . .

UPDATE: Heh: “Howell has actually made a case against having an editor.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Contrasting William Arkin with The New York Times’ John F. Burns. Burns: “And the United States military that we encounter are wonderful. They’re magnificent.”

MORE: The post-objective media. Plus this: “Burns is even more impressive when you consider the environment he functions in.”

PERRY DEHAVILLAND: Who cares what Putin thinks? “The Russian GDP is about $1.7 trillion… i.e. slightly less than Italy… and does anyone really lose much sleep over what the President of Italy thinks? Still, it seems a bit perverse for a man who seems keen to sell technology to Iran to be complaining about all those things the pesky Yanks are doing which are not in his interests.”

I suspect he’s selling the arms to Iran to make sure that we do care what he thinks.

FOR ALL THOSE WHO COMPLAINED that the New Zealand butter was out of stock when I mentioned it before, I notice that it’s available again. I quickly ordered some, before they run out; here’s your chance if you want to do the same.

DON’T BE EVIL — OR STUPID. OR STUPIDLY EVIL:

Google is a company with a cute name and a cuddly reputation; 30-percent profit margins and a market capitalization of $144 billion; and a freshly inked, sweetheart deal to build a data center in the Caldwell County city of Lenoir.

Google’s reputation is one of the keys to its financial success. People trust the company, which uses “Don’t be evil” as its unofficial corporate motto, to safeguard their privacy and provide accurate, unbiased information as they search the Web and use its other online services. If Google comes to be seen as just another soulless moneymaking machine, it might lose some of its competitive advantage.

And that’s what makes the California company’s behavior as it negotiated its Tar Heel deal so hard to understand. Google strong-armed the public partners with which it worked on the incentive package, in ways that would be unseemly even for a company that doesn’t publish a lengthy Code of Conduct that says things like, “Being a Googler means holding yourself to the highest possible standard of ethical business conduct. … When it comes to ethical conduct, we believe in erring on the side of caution.”

Except, apparently, when an annualized amount equal to two-tenths of 1 percent of its profits for the trailing 12 months is on the line. . . . But it turns out that there was a lot more to the story. Google leaned hard on North Carolina lawmakers and officials, not just to get the fattest deal possible but to choke off the flow of information along the way.

As I’ve noted before, Google’s reputation is its biggest asset, as it operates in areas that are open to competition. I’m surprised that it’s so careless of the value of that asset.

I’LL BE ON HOWARD KURTZ’S RELIABLE SOURCES, on CNN, at about 10:30 Eastern this morning, talking about events of the week.

UPDATE: The show’s downloadable here. Direct link to video here. I’m at the halfway point, more or less.

72 VIRGINS, by Steve Martin.

RUDY THE UNITER: “As America rushes into the wide-open 2008 presidential primary season, about the only thing that is certain is this: Bush fatigue. Republicans desperately need a new face painted on their party. Enter center-right Rudy Giuliani. For many, he appears to be holding the right brush.”

I’ve noted this before, but just as George H.W. Bush ran as not-Reagan in 1988, the GOP nominee will run as not-Bush in 2008.

UPDATE: Don Surber: “He is a stand-up guy. Let him waffle on abortion and gay marriage. Presidents don’t decide those issues: The people do by having abortions and being gay.”

STRATEGYPAGE REPORTS ON an improvement, of sorts, in Algeria: “The major problem in Algeria is no longer Islamic terrorists, but corrupt, inefficient government. The next rebellion will likely be based on desire for a better government, or ethnic grievances (the Berbers), not Islamic radicalism.”

CAFFEINE AND CHOCOLATE cut risk of heart attack, while Vitamin D blocks colorectal cancer. I guess I’ll sip a mochalatte in the sun.

I WAS ON WEEKEND AMERICA talking about NASA, space law, and murderous astronauts. You can hear the segment here.

My favorite part is that it was done from my home studio — we spoke on the phone, I recorded my end, and I uploaded the file for them to splice together with the questions from their end. It sounded good, and it was a lot easier for me than driving downtown to the local NPR affiliate. Plus, they plugged my space law book.

DON SURBER TREATS Hillary’s war amnesia.

FLY PRIVATE JETS WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE by buying “carbon offsets?” Or is it just a modern version of buying indulgences?

So you can still fly to the Caribbean and the conscience-free answer is to grow a shrub. Actually, someone else grows it for you – but it doesn’t matter, your guilt is still expunged. Such is the popularity of carbon offsetting that scores of projects, such as the preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, will be labelled ‘carbon neutral’.

Pop bands have also jumped on the bandwagon, claiming to be carbon-free in terms of their tours. Banks, insurance companies, hedge funders and diplomats are all offsetting like crazy. These schemes sound wonderfully simple. But how do they work? Indeed, do they work?

Apart from planting trees, another way is to fund energysaving initiatives, usually in the Third World. So you fly, for example, to Goa, and in return, a village elsewhere in India is given half-a-dozen low-wattage light bulbs or a hundredth of a new wind turbine.

In theory it all adds up, but there are sceptics who doubt that such schemes work. According to a recent report in Nature magazine, there are myriad problems with such programmes. It said: ‘The first problem is simply calculating the amount of carbon that needs to be offset.’ . . . But the main problem with offsetting is that it is, at best, a sticking plaster. If we are serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, then simply paying £30 to a company every time we jet off to the tropics is the equivalent of putting a paper bag over our heads and wishing the problem away.

Count me among the skeptics. This sounds like a way for fatcats to continue to live high while preaching at the rest of us. On the other hand, there’s this: “A growing army of eco-refuseniks is making the ultimate sacrifice in the age of cheap air travel by pledging to give up flying and using slower modes of transport instead.” We’ll see if it catches on. . . and lasts.

UPDATE: Jim Ashmore notes that he was way ahead of me on this: “it appears the carbon neutrality culture is nothing more than guilt riddance via checkbook matched up with an entrepreneurial opportunity.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More skepticism from Jay Reding:

It’s typical hypocrisy — the very rich can afford to buy “carbon credits” while those of us for whom money is an object cannot afford to do the same. For all the talk about how the left abhors social stratification and pitting the haves and against the have-nots, that is precisely what this sort of thing does. It allows Al Gore to emit tons of pollutants directly into the upper atmosphere while preaching his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Gaia message to the masses, then buy his way to a clean eco-conscience afterwards. Meanwhile, the rest of us are told that we have to make dramatic sacrifices to “save the planet.”

It starts at the top. No more “eco-tourism” for the rich. No more private jets to the Super Bowl. No more jet-setting across the country for high-priced speaking engagements. Either this is a crisis that will destroy all of mankind if it isn’t fixed now or it’s just another way for the world aristocracy to purge themselves of a false sense of noblesse oblige. If it’s the former, then the private jet-set are spoiled beyond belief for acting in such an ecologically injurious manner — if it isn’t then they’re peddlers of snake oil and fear.

Indeed.