A DOUBLE STANDARD AT GOOGLE-OWNED YOUTUBE:

The Google property has recently banned the popular atheist commentator Nick Gisburne. Gisburne had been posting videos with logical arguments against Christian beliefs; but when he turned his attention to Islam (mirror of Gisburne’s video by another user), YouTube pulled the plug, saying: ‘After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down.’

Christians who want similar consideration from Google will presumably have to start blowing things up and beheading people. As I’ve noted before, it’s quite unwise to create this kind of incentive structure. I thought the Google people were supposed to be smart.

UPDATE: Here’s a Christian blogger who nonetheless supports Gisburne:

I, like many of the greatest minds of the last 2000 years, think that Christianity is a perfectly reasonable and logical thing to believe. Still, I am appalled that Gisburne’s YouTube account has been deleted and his voice silenced.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Gisburne has a new account, and posts a video on the subject.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eugene Volokh comments:

YouTube is a private company that is entitled to choose what it carries; and while using YouTube is a convenient way to effectively get your views out, you can certainly get them out even without YouTube. Nonetheless, consumers are also entitled to criticize YouTube and other media organizations — organizations that make a living off our vibrant marketplace of ideas — for refusing to carry certain important viewpoints because some find those viewpoints offensive.

Indeed.

MORE: Further thoughts here: “Needless to say, this sounds familiar.”

RUDY IN CALIFORNIA. Sounds like he wowed ’em.

ERIC DREXLER’S CLASSIC BOOK, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, is now available online as a free e-book.

NO 757 NEEDED: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the subject of Republican criticism for her mode of air travel, flew home nonstop Thursday night aboard a 12-seat military aircraft set aside for use by lawmakers.”

That seems reasonable.

JUST GOT BACK from the area Bloggers’ Bash. Lots of local bloggers were there, including Barry from Inn of the Last Home, Mike Faulk, Lissa from LissaKay.com, Rich Hailey, Michael Silence, Katie Allison Granju, Perry Nelson, ToAAW, Jonathan Hickman, Randy & Michelle from KnoxViews, Doug and Cathy McCaughan, Les Jones, and — subject of a rock-star-like greeting from Helen — Say Uncle. A good time was had by all.

And, really, Mick Jagger or John Ondraisik wouldn’t have gotten half the greeting that SayUncle did. But then, neither one of them is half the blogger that he is.

LAPTOP UPDATE: Got the little Vaio laptop that I mentioned earlier. So far it’s pretty cool: Tiny, jewel-like, but easy to use. Surprisingly, the keyboard seems a bit bigger than the Dell (the Insta-Wife agrees) and the screen, though smaller, is very crisp and readable.

It comes with builtin WWAN and a 30-day trial for Sprint. I can also put my Verizon EVDO card in (it’s got a PC slot) but I may give the Sprint free trial a go. I can cancel the Verizon at any time if I like the Sprint better.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “The current flap over the Pentagon Inspector General’s report on Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans has embarrassed the Associated Press, the Washington Post and, if he has any shame, the Inspector General. The controversy does have the merit, though, of raising once again the issue of the relationship between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorists.” They’ve got video from 2000. If nothing else, it blows away the revisionist argument that claimed connections between Saddam and Osama originated with the Bush Administration.

UPDATE: Earlier it said “Saddam and Iraq,” not Saddam and Osama. Fixed now. Thanks to reader E. Cart for the correction. So far as I know, nobody has yet claimed that Bush made up connections between Saddam and Iraq, though it’ll probably happen soon . . . .

THE ECONOMIST: “Now that poverty means a risk of obesity, rather than starvation, it is harder to decide what constitutes the minimal decent standard of living a society should provide.”

SEX-ED FOR SENIORS:

“Sex is a part of life. People are sexual from the time they’re born until they die. People can be orgasmic into their 90s,” said Sallie Foley, a sex therapist who works with seniors at the University of Michigan’s Sexual Health Counseling Services in Ann Arbor, and writes a regular column on love and sexuality for AARP’s magazine.

But there’s a dangerous downside to sex in the golden years. Many sexually active seniors don’t realize that they may be at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, and even more may not know how to protect themselves.

“The hormone therapies and Viagra can keep sex going even into the 80s and 90s for some people,” said Dr. John Morley, a geriatric sex counselor at St. Louis University School of Medicine. “But a lot of the patients I see are not having sex with their life partner, or are also active with someone else, and those partners may not realize they need protection.”

I’m all for safe sex, but the AIDS fears seem exaggerated. If you’re 90, which is a bigger worry — something that might kill you in 10 years, or missing a shot at getting laid now? I guess it all depends on your discount rate . . . .

UPDATE: A reader sends this story to suggest that I’m wrong to be so cavalier. I stand corrected. Hey: Glove your love at any age.

MICHAEL LEDEEN ON IRAN: On this week’s blog week in review.

PAT DOLLARD ON Iraq, media bias, and George Clooney.

LOOK FOR the Mullah label. It’s the sign of quality IEDs!

TRAFFIC CAMERA UPDATE:

Hatala brought the findings to court to challenge his ticket.

“Becomes pretty clear that it wasn’t your vehicle that was speeding,” the judge said.

He didn’t have to argue much. Pohlman said the court admitted the ticket was issued to the wrong car, in the wrong lane.

“So based upon the testimony provided we are going to find you not liable for this violation,” the judge said.

Pohlman reported a different problem at that same location on Chester Avenue at East 71st Street.

Bill and Sue Faber of Massillon said they haven’t been in Cleveland for six months, but the city sent them a ticket.

“No way we could be in Cleveland,” Faber said.

“Do you have witnesses for that?” Pohlman asked.

“Yes, we do,” Faber said.

Yet Cleveland sent the ticket showing a car speeding, but the plate belongs to the Faber’s truck.

Pohlman said you can’t read the license in the picture at all. He said it appears Cleveland guessed and sent the ticket anyway.

“I always thought we were always innocent until proven guilty and now I find it’s guilty until I can prove I’m innocent,” Faber said.

These things are all about revenue.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT WIKIPEDIA.

And there’s more on Wikipedia’s problems here. I find it a decent place for casual reference when the subjects aren’t politically charged, but much less useful when they are.

UPDATE: Bruce Rolston emails that he thinks the worries above are silly. Perhaps so — I don’t really think that Wikipedia has any sort of “in” with search engines beyond what their algorithms give it — but Wikipedia’s biggest problem stems from lack of trust, which is an issue with a reference site. I’ve certainly seen stories on it being manipulated by people with agendas ranging from random individuals, to Microsoft, to Congressional staffers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Ben White emails: “For a new-media guy, your line above has quite the old-media-elite color to it.” Hmm. Really? It’s just that you go to Wikipedia for a reference, not an opinion. But the way it works means that — though errors probably do get fixed over time — people with an agenda and persistence can undermine the reliability of what you see on any given visit. I’m all for the “asymptotic approach to the truth,” as Kaus calls it, but I’m not sure it works well in the context of a reference. And I’m hardly alone in having such concerns. This isn’t a huge slam at Wikipedia — if you follow the link just above you’ll see that even Wikipedia folks share some of these concerns — but a warning about what’s there, especially on controversial issues. Just remember that Wikipedia is part of the low-trust environment of the Internet, even if it seems, somehow, more like, well, an encyclopedia.

MORE: Ed Driscoll reminds us that Big Media are not immune from this sort of thing, too.

STILL MORE: Ted Frank: “The problem is worse than he imagines, because lazy mainstream media are now relying on the site.”

THE FOLKS IN SHELBYVILLE ARE JEALOUS: Obama launches campaign in Springfield.

UPDATE: More on Obama here. Is he “black enough?”

HE WAS FOR DISSENT before he was against it. Er, or something.

ROUGHNECKS: Michael Yon posts a new report from Iraq. And here’s a radio interview of Yon.

UPDATE: Radio link was bad earlier. Fixed now. Sorry!

MARK STEYN: “Who lost Britain? Answer: The British.”

THE MOTHER OF ALL CORRECTIONS.

ANN ALTHOUSE HAS SOME THOUGHTS on Rudy Giuliani, abortion, and federalism. A couple of observations:

First, Ann refers to federalism’s role (under the inaccurate moniker of “states’ rights”) as a shibboleth for anti-desegregation forces. The segregationists used it as a slogan, naturally enough, because federalism was a popular idea that had appeal to people beyond their ranks. That’s usually why people choose such things. But, of course, the promiscuous way they deployed it in the service of a bad cause had the effect of undermining its appeal. (People on the left have managed to do the same thing to the notion of “equality” over more recent decades). Nonetheless, despite its abuse at the hands of segregationists, federalism plays a lot of positive roles in our system as well, roles that have nothing to do with race. I explore those at some length in my essay, Is Democracy Like Sex?, which looks at the unappreciated benefits of a number of Constitutional features.

Federalism is also relevant to abortion debates. Dave Kopel and I argued, in fact, that a proper reading of Congress’s enumerated powers doesn’t allow for federal regulation of abortion. I rather doubt that Rudy is taking that position himself, though I’d be gratified if he were.

YOU HEAR SIMILAR THINGS FROM SOLDIERS: “I find the war in Iraq much more frightening to watch on television when I’m on leave outside Iraq than I find it when I’m there.” (Via Romenesko).

EXTREME MORTMAN on the Washington Post Feith/Levin correction: “From Deep Throat to Deep Doo-Doo.”

MICHAEL YON REPORTS via email from the Transfer of Authority ceremony in Iraq:

This morning in Baghdad, General George Casey transferred authority of MNF-I to General David Petraeus.

Anyone who knows much about General Petraeus might agree that David Petraeus seems to have been born and raised to win this particular war. Frankly, the odds seem nearly impossible. Iraq is broiling and it’s getting worse. But there are glimmers of hope, and I see those glimmers with my own eyes here in Iraq. Troop morale is still good to high, and Iraqi Security Forces are improving, for instance. But make no mistake: America has asked David Petraeus to walk into a burning barn and perform brain surgery on a dying patient. If it can be done, David Petraeus is our man. The odds are against him. Personally, I am betting on General Petraeus, his staff, and the great number of hard-minded people who believe Iraq can stand again. This means I am betting for the good guys, and against the terrorists.

I am not naive; I was the first writer, back in early 2005, to begin loudly proclaiming that Iraq was in civil war. People said I was “pessimistic,” or did not know the definition of “civil war.” I was the first, to my knowledge, to outline that Afghanistan will become a bloodbath during the Spring of 2007. Yet I believe that today we have found the right mix of knowledge and experience to succeed in Iraq.

Fortunately for the United States, the outgoing commanding general, George Casey has not decided to retire. General Casey will take his great experience back to Washington where it will be vital to the outcome of this war.

Photo L to R: General John Abizaid; General George Casey; General David Petraeus; Chaplain Hoyt; Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger

The photo, of course, is by Michael Yon.

MARINES “HIT THE JACKPOT” near Fallujah.

UPDATE: Read this from Bill Roggio, too.

THE ANSWER TO BAINBRIDGE’S QUESTION is that the Wall Street Journal is a trusted brand in an industry where there aren’t many of those any more. Some background here.