JUST NOTICED this on HPV vaccination by Linda Seebach.

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman criticizes the editorial.

GREENLAND’S GLACIERS: Not melting as fast as previously. That’s good news, I guess.

People in Buffalo would probably like to see some melting start up about now, there. They’ll have glaciers of their own soon, at this rate, with over 100 inches of snow already and another four feet expected. Glad I live in the south.

UPDATE: Reader Steven Erickson emails: “The 100” is in Oswego, which is 100 miles from Buffalo, north of Syracuse!” It’s still a lot of snow.

REALITY. TV.

But several years ago, the 34-year-old mother of three stopped watching the morning shows. After getting TiVo, she had no patience to sit through multiple commercial breaks during a live newscast. On top of that, the segments began to seem more and more frivolous.

“Watching morning television for me is the equivalent of reading People magazine in the dentist’s office,” said Lauck, who writes for websites from her home in Santa Rosa, Calif. “They don’t have anything new or particularly relevant to my life. It seems like a lot of fluff. I feel like I can get information faster and cleaner on the Internet.”

Lauck’s not alone in souring on network news programs. In particular, this season has seen a significant erosion of the morning shows’ demographic sweet spot: 25- to 54-year-old women.

Those shows’ producers may be the first ever to go broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Also, the tv news folks have been going beyond their usual negativity and sensationalism by playing up the bad news even more to make Bush look bad, but judging from this story by doing that they’re also chasing away their audience, which now finds their programs too depressing. Oops.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A GREAT IDEA:

British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, with former vice president Al Gore at his side, on Friday offered a $25 million prize for anyone who can come up with a way to blunt global climate change by removing at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the Earth’s atmosphere.

Branson, saying that the “survival of our species” is imperiled by current environmental trends, said the prize was similar to cash inducements that led to some of history’s most notable achievements in navigation, exploration and industry.

Congratulations to both of them for a very positive effort, which as Lance notes goes beyond the usual “hair shirt” environmentalism. Some thoughts of mine on the value of prizes can be found here.

UPDATE: It’s only sort of related, but this piece on how to save energy is worth mentioning.

POLITICIZING SCIENCE: Hey, maybe there’s more of it than I think.

HEH: “They Were For Dissent And Alternative Analysis Before They Were Against It.” All of this focus on prewar intelligence by Sens. Levin and Rockefeller is just more of the antiwar historical revisionism that I’ve noted in the past, designed to give Democrats who voted for the war some protective cover between now and 2008. Though “vote for us, we’re gullible” seems like a weak slogan.

UPDATE: It’s a bad slogan — but an appropriate one — for the Washington Post, too, which seems to have been misidentifying Carl Levin’s quotes as coming from the DoD Inspector General. Oops! From the WaPo correction:

References to Feith’s office producing “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” and that the office “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda” were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith’s office drew on “both reliable and unreliable reporting” to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq “that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration” were also from Levin’s report. The article also stated that the intelligence provided by Feith’s office supported the political views of senior administration officials, a conclusion that the inspector general’s report did not draw.

Can anyone play this game? And Stephen Spruiell observes:

As I write this, Chris Matthews is peddling the phony WaPo scoop on Hardball, prattling on about how this report proves that Doug Feith “cooked the intel” to get us into war.

Oops. Will Matthews apologize on his next show?

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Jules Crittenden: “If the Pentagon doubted what the intel agencies were telling them, and said so, I’m not particularly surprised. I’m glad they weren’t just sitting around allowing themselves to be spoon-fed analysis by people with a pretty poor track record.”

SLASHDOT: “ARMY OF DAVIDS BEATS PENTAGON PROCUREMENT.” The article they’re writing about, which includes Bill Roggio, is here.

Nice plug, just as the paperback edition comes out!

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue:

This budget week, there was one thing on which Democrats and Republicans agreed: It’s time to do something about earmarks. And in a nod to voter disapproval with these special-interest projects, this year Congress will do its pork spending in secret.

Welcome to Congress’s new and dirtier earmark game, in which the big spenders are setting all the rules. In front of the cameras, both parties claim to have found earmark religion, and are talking up a bill that would reform the way Congress asks for billions in goodies for lawmakers’ home districts. Behind the scenes, they’re working feverishly to keep the earmarks rolling, this time using a technique outside of the legislative process and hidden from public view.

Read the whole thing, and remember that we have to keep the pressure up.

SOME DIVERSITY QUESTIONS that the Association of American Law Schools doesn’t want to answer. But for good reason, it turns out.

JONAH GOLDBERG SPANKS ELLEN GOODMAN for a silly column comparing people who disagree with global warming theater to holocaust deniers.

This sort of behavior by global-warming enthusiasts is offputting, and justifies those who compare them with religious fanatics. As Arnold Kling wrote the other day:

The Left’s religion often comes dressed up as science. Marxism is one example. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century is another. The Global Warming crusade is probably another.

On a practical level this doesn’t matter that much to me — as I wrote before, we should probably be acting as if global warming theories are true regardless — but acting as if isn’t the same as crushing all dissent. And I can’t help but feel that for people like Goodman, getting to compare people you disagree with to holocaust deniers is the main point, and global warming is just the excuse. Don’t want me to get that impression? Don’t act that way, then.

UPDATE: Don Surber: “How offensive to Holocaust survivors. To equate the Nazi slaughter of 12 million Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Catholics and others based on their ethnicity and gender with the debate over whether mankind’s “sin” of driving an SUV (but never the pickup truck) is appalling. A rabbi should wash her keyboard out with soap.”

A SURVEY OF “OBSCENE AMENITIES” at Hot Air.

IN THE MAIL: A copy of Blogalicious! the blogosphere cookbook. I offered a couple of recipes and a rather succinct introduction. It’s also got contributions by “Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Power Line, The Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, Captain’s Quarters, The Anchoress, Stop the ACLU, Crooked Timber, The Belmont Club, Black Five, The Mudville Gazette … and Bitch, Ph.D.” Plus some rather nice cover art by Cox & Forkum!

A NATIONAL REVIEW EDITORIAL on Rudy’s candidacy.

UPDATE: Some thoughts on the NRO editorial, from Eric Scheie.

SMACKDOWN IN GOTHAM: Here’s more on Mike Bloomberg’s illegal gun purchase program:

Bloomberg sent civilian private investigators into gun stores across the country, and had the investigators pose as straw purchasers. Bloomberg never informed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives about the sting operations, and when the stings were announced, several law enforcement officials said as many as eighteen active law enforcement investigations were put in jeopardy.

For months the ATF was silent on the matter, but recently disclosed that an investigation into Bloomberg’s actions was taking place. Now the Battle letter, first made public by the New York Daily News, details the problems with Bloomberg’s attacks on firearms dealers.

According to the Daily News, none of the gun dealers Bloomberg is suing broke federal law and took part in straw purchase transactions. The letter also took Bloomberg to task for conducting these stings “without proper law enforcement authority,” though there is no indication that BATFE or the Justice Department would seek to file charges against Bloomberg or his civilian private investigators. Instead, the letter warns that Bloomberg’s operations could put the city at risk of legal action.

Straw purchases are illegal, and Bloomberg has no more right to violate this law than anyone else. (In fact, it’s “vigilantism” of the sort that antigun folks often complain about.) All he’s got is the political protection against prosecution that comes of being a bigshot. Which means he’s demonstrated a weakness in the firearms laws, all right, just not the one he intended to.

THE RELIGIOUS LEFT is unhappy with John Edwards over the Marcotte affair.

INEQUALITY WARS, at Cato Unbound. Alan Reynolds, btw, is no relation.

TOM MAGUIRE: “I love the smell of dropped felony counts in the morning.”

HERE’S MORE of that “vigilantism” that Robert Spitzer was complaining about:

The male victim, whose identity wasn’t disclosed, told police the attacker pushed a gray pistol into his stomach and demanded the keys to the car.

The unidentified woman reached into the car and pulled a pistol from the glove box, according to a sheriff’s report. She fired five shots at the attacker, who dropped his pistol as he ran away. He fled in a burgundy Buick.

“We’re kind of hailing (the man and woman) as heroes,” Lott said.

He said police don’t encourage people to go out and “just start shooting,” but they do encourage people to protect themselves.

This is a distinction that Spitzer still hasn’t learned to make. Fortunately, the unidentified woman did better: “Jeffcoat, who is accused in 10 armed robberies in Richland County and Columbia in less than a month, has an arrest record dating back 12 years.” (Via Dave Hardy.).

HOWARD KURTZ: “This Air Pelosi story is gaining altitude.”

RAND SIMBERG on astronauts gone wild.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on what the Marcotte Affair means.

UPDATE: One of the interesting tropes employed by Marcotte’s defenders is that Bill Donohue is just as bad. I don’t think that really withstands a side-to-side comparison of their writings, but even assuming arguendo that it does, there’s a big difference: Donohue hasn’t just been hired as a spokesperson by a Presidential campaign. And if he were hired, people would rightly draw conclusions about that campaign from the fact of his hiring, and many of the same people who are complaining about the exhumation of Marcotte’s frothing remarks would be eagerly bringing up Donohue’s past statements. This is why smart campaigns are careful about who they hire.

IN RESPONSE to my computer post below, Jose Guardia emails:

I read you’re considering buying a smaller Sony laptop; have you seen the Sony Vaio UX series? It’s barely bigger than the Nokia you just tested, but has cell connectivity and better features in general. Here’s a video review: Link.

It’s not available in Spain yet, and perhaps in the US is neither. I was tempted trade the Inspiron I also use for one of those small 2 lbs Vaios, but I think I’ll wait for the UX at least to try it in my hands and then decide.

Actually, I ordered the small but not quite that small Vaio TX. But I’m supposed to be reviewing the Vaio UX for Popular Mechanics at some point. I did see a UX at the Consumer Electronics Show and it looked pretty cool. Not really a laptop-replacement for all purposes, but a terrific go-anywhere blogging tool from all appearances. I’ll see if it lives up to appearances.

JOHN TAMMES rounds up news from Afghanistan that you probably missed.

AN OPEN LETTER TO GOOGLE from Shanghai blogger Isaac Mao.

AUDIO GEEKERY: So I’m an audio geek, and I care more about sound quality than most people. But the public radio folks are absolutely insane. I did an interview with Weekend America from my home studio — one of those things called a “tape sync” (though there’s no tape anymore) in which they record their end, I record my end, and then they edit the copies together into one seamless whole. That produces better quality than a phone connection, of course. But when I uploaded the file to their site, they wanted it as a .wav file, rather than an .mp3 file, meaning that our little interview was over 135 MB in size, and took a long, long time to upload. I’m absolutely sure that by the time it’s put on FM or satellite radio no one will be able to hear the difference, but they were adamant. Sure, the dulcet tones of my speaking voice are worth going to any length to preserve, but still . . . .