ANALYZING AL QAEDA VIDEOS: Things are not as they appear.

HUG A TRIBOLOGIST: RAND SIMBERG NOTES A BREAKTHROUGH IN LUBRICATION with potentially dramatic results.

THE EDUCATION of young Ezra.

SPACE SHUTTLE COMMANDER disputes alcohol reports.

A NEW REPORT FROM MICHAEL YON is posted. “The American press that flooded in for the kinetic fighting in Baqubah left when the shooting stopped. Their interest waned for covering these aspects of counterinsurgency. They were gone and missing the real story. Nobody was even watching, but this play was not for the Americans journalists, it was for the Iraqi people. ” Read the whole thing, and note his stress on the problems created by corruption, something that has been mentioned a lot here, and on Strategypage: “Two officials were engaged in a conversation about how al Qaeda was able to infiltrate trouble spots in Iraq so effectively. The illuminating exchange revealed how much of the strife in Iraq is rooted not in religious fervor, but in greed. Greed for power, greed for money. The video camera was running.”

A FAREWELL TO ALMS:

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution — the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues.

Because they grew more common in the centuries before 1800, whether by cultural transmission or evolutionary adaptation, the English population at last became productive enough to escape from poverty, followed quickly by other countries with the same long agrarian past.

Other countries are still working on this transition. It takes a lot of social capital, I guess.

A FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT to create a vote swap site.

KIDS AS STATUS SYMBOLS, and “competitive birthing.”

HEY, WHY DIDN’T I GET THIS ASSIGNMENT? Popular Mechanics tests underwater digital cameras.

SUPPORT FOR SURGE SURGING: “In the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, taken Friday through Sunday, the proportion of those who said the additional troops are ‘making the situation better’ rose to 31% from 22% a month ago. Those who said it was ‘not making much difference’ dropped to 41% from 51%.” These numbers still aren’t stellar, but the magnitude of the shift is pretty impressive, particularly given the generally negative treatment from traditional media.

ECOTALITY: New Orleans will never be safe. Love the graphic.

UPDATE: Link’s not working now, I’m disabling it; will let you know when it’s fixed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fixed now.

JOHN PODHORETZ:

The New Republic has, in essence, defended the personal essay by U.S. soldier Scott Thomas Beauchamp on all grounds save one: That Beauchamp relocated to Iraq an incident in which he participated in Kuwait. In that incident, he supposedly made fun of a horribly burned woman while others laughed along.

It is now looking like that incident was entirely invented, and that The New Republic had reason to know there were problems with its veracity before it published its defense of Beauchamp.

Follow the link for more.

UPDATE: Thoughts on semiotics, from Jeff Goldstein.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Podhoretz, here.

MORE: Now this is news: Beauchamp recants: “THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed ‘Shock Troops’ article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous ‘Baghdad Diarist’ columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the words of our source. . . . According to the military source, Beauchamp’s recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military’s investigation.”

STILL MORE: More on Beauchamp here: “So Beauchamp was lying the whole time, and now that he has two entirely different stories, he was either lying to TNR, which probably paid him $50 per article and which can’t put him in prison for lying to them (because he’s not under oath when he’s spouting off to Franklin Foer), or he lied to the Army, which pays his entire salary and can and will put him in jail for quite a while if he lies to them . . . . So guess which one Beauchamp is more likely to have lied to — the people who couldn’t jail him, or the ones who could. And would. That’s about as definitive a refutation as we’ll get in this saga, but it’s a good one.”

Plus, a victory dance from Ace.

And Bill Quick observes: “The biggest mystery to me is why the mainstream media has any credibility left at all. Maybe its users aren’t looking for credibilty any more. Just reinforcement.”

Still more at Cadillac Tight.

Mark Steyn comments: “If that Weekly Standard story is correct, it moves Private Beauchamp into full-blown Stephen Glass territory. In essence, they made the same mistakes all over again – falling for pat cinematic vividness, pseudo-novelistic dialogue, all designed to confirm prejudices so ingrained the editors didn’t even recognize they were being pandered to. But this time they did it in war, which is worse.”

DOES THIS MEAN WE’RE ALREADY INTO THE SINGULARITY? William Gibson gives up on predicting the future:

Even renowned science fiction author William Gibson has given up guessing what the future looks like – for now at least.

The novelist is famous for inventing the word ‘cyberspace’ and predicting the implications of the networked world long before it became a reality. But his latest book Spook Country is set in the present (in fact, the near past) rather than the far-flung future.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Gibson said: “The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can’t convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years.”

If the next 10 or 15 years is that unpredictable, and it probably is, then I’d say we’re already into the singularity. (For more singularity-related stuff, check out our podcast interview with Vernor Vinge.)

AL QAEDA ON THE RUN: Keep ’em running. And dying.

IS THAT A PIPE BOMB IN YOUR TRUNK, OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME? Dan Riehl has more on the Goose Creek arrests.

TODD ZYWICKI LOOKS AT taxes and the increase in families going bankrupt: “[Since 1973] taxes increase in the example by $13,086. By contrast, annual mortgage obligations increased by only $3690 and automobile obligations by $2860 and health insurance $620. Those increases are not trivial, but they are swamped by the increase in tax obligations. To put this in perspective, the increase in tax obligations is over three times as large as the increase in the mortgage (the supposed driver of the ‘two income trap’) and about double the increase in the combined obligations of mortgage and automobile payments. . . . Overall, the typical family in the 2000s pays substantially more in taxes than in their mortgage, automobile expenses, and health insurance costs combined. And the growth in the tax obligation between the two periods is substantially greater the growth in mortgage, automobile expenses, and health insurance costs combined.”

THE DOW IS UP, and Larry Kudlow is happy. Me, I think we’ve seen the top of the market for a while. But take comfort in the fact that I’m usually wrong about this stuff. . . .

BECAUSE THE THOUGHT OF A BLOGGERS’ STRIKE MAKES “THE MAN” TREMBLE: Forming a bloggers’ union?

THOUGHTS ON PIRATES AND ANARCHY, over at Cato Unbound. “Notably, the anarchic environment that maritime bandits operated in did not lead them to simply throw up their hands and abandon the idea of their criminal enterprise. On the contrary, the prospect of mutual gains from organizing this enterprise provided pirates with the incentive to find private ways of securing cooperation and order.”

I THINK I’VE MENTIONED IT BEFORE, but Kevin Weeks’ Seriously Good food blog is worth your attention if you like food- and recipeblogging. He’s a pretty well-known local chef, and when I saw him at Panera a while back he was getting a lot of attention from a couple of very attractive women. Cooking: It’s better than a Porsche that way!

THE TRUTH ABOUT mothers and nannies.

YEARLYKOS: A “sea of middle-aged white males.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

MICHAEL YON WRITES ABOUT IRAQ in the New York Daily News:

I, like everyone else, will have to wait for September’s report from Gen. Petraeus before making more definitive judgments. But I know for certain that three things are different in Iraq now from any other time I’ve seen it.

1. Iraqis are uniting across sectarian lines to drive Al Qaeda in all its disguises out of Iraq, and they are empowered by the success they are having, each one creating a ripple effect of active citizenship.

2. The Iraqi Army is much more capable now than it was in 2005. It is not ready to go it alone, but if we keep working, that day will come.

3. Gen. Petraeus is running the show. Petraeus may well prove to be to counterinsurgency warfare what Patton was to tank battles with Rommel, or what Churchill was to the Nazis.

And yes, in case there is any room for question, Al Qaeda still is a serious problem in Iraq, one that can be defeated. Until we do, real and lasting security will elude both the Iraqis and us.

Read the whole thing. And send it to your Senators.

THE JOYS OF working with the public.

I REALLY DO LOVE the way that all sorts of old stuff is now easy to get. I just noticed that there’s a DVD collection of Droopy cartoons from Tex Avery. Droopy was one of the more appealing minor cartoon characters — I remember how his cameo in Roger Rabbit elicited a surprisingly strong crowd reaction, mostly from people who probably hadn’t given him a moment’s thought in years. But there he was — like seeing an old friend show up in a movie. So that’s what he’s doing now — good for him!