HARRY POTTER REVIEW COUNT: It’s now up to 176.
UPDATE: Hmm. Clicking around a few sitemeters, it appears that yesterday was the slowest Saturday in a long time for the blogosphere. Coincidence? Or all those people reading Harry Potter?
Okay, I didn’t check enough to be scientific, but I still think we should be glad J.K. Rowling didn’t release the book on a Monday, as the economic drag would probably tip us over into recession . . . .
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ilya Somin liked it.
PENELOPE TRUNK: It doesn’t matter that journalists misquote everyone. Because it’s all narrative.
How convenient.
WELL, WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS: Norm Geras profiles someone unexpected.
JOURNALISM 101: Blowing it on Iraq.
Oops. Link was wrong at first. Fixed now.
UPDATE: John Tabin responds.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Advice to journalists: “For people who love their ‘Question Authority’ tee shirts so much, they don’t seem to actually do an awful lot of it; witness how little Questioning Jesse Macbeth initially got on claiming to be an Authority on Iraq. . . . Before trying to concoct myths, you should spend some time in the company of actual soldiers. Actually knowing a soldier other than the ones you saw on the screen in Platoon or Jarhead would make your myths so much more believable. Of course, actually knowing a soldier might make you pause before concocting your myths in the first place.”
BETTER THAN THE BOOMERS? Dean Barnett on the 9/11 generation.
IT’S A BAD IDEA TO BURGLARIZE a place marked “K-9 Training Facility.”
CRUSHING DISSENT IN SPAIN? (But note that the link is possibly NSFW in the U.S.). Here’s a work-safe report.
TIM BLAIR: “If these guys can’t get simple trade stories right, how can we trust them on complex scientific issues?”
And if they can’t report accurately about Prince William County, can we trust them on the Middle East?
MEGAN MCARDLE looks at the economics of Harry Potter. “I am an economics reporter, and the books are chock full of terrible economics.”
UPDATE: Further thoughts from Ron Coleman.
A PROFESSIONAL JOURNALIST defends his guild by attacking bloggers. That’s so 2003.
I HAVEN’T PAID MUCH ATTENTION to the whole JetBlue / Bill O’Reilly / DailyKos kerfuffle, but I see that JetBlue has pulled its sponsorship of YearlyKos. Theres’ some gloating on the right, but I actually think this is bad for the blogosphere as a whole.
Since I haven’t followed this closely I may have missed something, but is it possible that this is payback for the Netroots’ efforts to keep Democratic debates off of Fox?
JAMES LILEKS: Internet killed the newspaper star.
MORE MONEY PROBLEMS FOR IRAN:
What would you do when faced with a cash flow problem? You might try to curb expenditure, work harder to earn more, borrow money, or, when all else fails, put up the family jewels for sale. The latter is precisely what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration is trying to do as it faces a cash shortage.
Signs that the government may be running out of money have multiplied in recent months. Tens of thousands of civil servants, including school teachers, have not been paid since January. Bills from private contractors working for the government are piling up, threatening the survival of many businesses. . . .
All this may seem surprising if only because Iran has earned almost $150 billion from oil exports since Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005. So, were did the money go?
Um, centrifuges, maybe?
MORE EXCITING THAN SEAN HANNITY’S AMERICA: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!
CALLING BULLSHIT ON TPM.
UPDATE: More here. “Rudy moves higher on the Candidates I Would Like To Have A Beer With list.”
THE NEXT WINDOWS VERSION is now supposed to ship in 2010. Given the lousy experience people I know have had with Vista — including some very technically sophisticated people — I predict that XP will still be in wide use then.
A MORE FASHIONABLE space suit. The idea’s not actually new — they tested these things in vacuum chambers at JPL back in the 1960s, I believe — but materials have come a long way.
THE BOOK’S BEEN OUT FOR 8 HOURS and there are already 29 33 Harry Potter reviews posted on Amazon.
UPDATE: Not everyone is sharing the enthusiasm.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Now it’s up to 50 reviews, and my guess is that the dam will really break in another couple of hours.
A LOOK AT THE WEDDING-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: That’s the topic of One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding
MORE ON CONGRESS’S PLUMMETING APPROVAL NUMBERS:
Congress now has no base outside of its staff, the reporters who cover it and Mom, and even she is wavering.
I am not laughing. I am not gloating. I am troubled. . . .
In a democracy, people must have faith in their institutions. In a totalitarian government, fear will do.
The problem is that neither party shows leaders in Washington who are in touch with the realities that their constituents face. Congressmen and senators have too much money, too much power and too much tenure.
Last year, the congressional Republicans went hog wild on pork spending. Prosecutors put a couple of them in prison for selling favors. One of them was caught messing with the House pages, who are the equivalent of political altar boys.
Voters threw the bums out. But unlike 1994, when voters voted in new Republican leadership, voters elected the old Democratic leadership. Democrat David Obey of Wisconsin became House appropriations chairman — again after a 12-year absence.
This is reform?
Meet the new boss, yada yada.