START PLANNING YOUR SPACE VACATION at Galactic Suites.

IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER ASK DR. HELEN column!

J.D. JOHANNES notes a surge in the media battlespace.

IN THE MAIL: David Evans’ and Richard Schmalensee’s Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies. It’s got cover blurbs by all sorts of bigshots, including Bill Gates and Peter Lynch.

UPDATE: Bill Hobbs emails that there’s a website, and a blog for the book, too.

RYAN SAGER: When I’m wrong, I’m wrong. If only more people in the press were equally willing to admit error.

JACK BALKIN AND EUGENE VOLOKH talk about the First and Second Amendments, on Bloggingheads.tv.

THIS IS INTERESTING:

Five reporters must reveal their government sources for stories they wrote about Steven J. Hatfill and investigators’ suspicions that the former Army scientist was behind the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton is yet another blow to the news industry as it seeks to shield anonymous sources who provide critical information — especially on the secret inner workings of government.

There’s no constitutional reason for these sources to be protected, and no other good reason that I can see. The press’s abuse of anonymous sources is in the process of generating considerable blowback, and rightly so. (Via Michelle Malkin).

IS OUR UNIVERSE SOMEONE ELSE’S HOBBY?

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This would explain a lot. Debug, please . . . .

Thoughts on how to survive inside a computer simulation can be found here.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Beldar.

THE PATRIOT ACT: Now protecting America from cockfighting.

I told you so.

THOUGHTS ON STRENGTH, and relief from obligations.

UPDATE: Somehow, that post made me think of this from Neal Stephenson.

I SUPPOSE WE CAN’T CREDIT GLOBAL WARMING: “It occurred to me today that for all the running around town I’ve done this summer, I’ve yet to get a single mosquito bite. How is that possible?”

Come to think of it, I haven’t been bitten once this summer either.

NIDRA POLLER: Hot dogs and hamburgers in Kennebunkport. I hope the hot dogs were Hebrew National.

EVEN LOBBYISTS think the new Congressional ethics bill is a joke.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS, UNPLUGGED: I think the Edwards campaign would do better if people heard from her less.

BRENDAN LOY on seasonal hurricane forecasts, and the politics thereof.

HEY, WAIT: When did Bush invade Syria?

TERRORISTS AND CELL PHONES in Algeria.

PRESENT AT THE BIRTH.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: “With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama’s football stadium.”

DER SPIEGEL: “The U.S. military in Iraq is more successful than anyone wants to believe.”

Well, for certain values of the word “anyone,” anyway. At German blog Medienkritik, the reaction is this:

As a long-time observer of the publication, my first reaction to reading this on SPIEGEL ONLINE was: Are they on drugs?! – this directly contradicts everything they’ve reported for the past four years! My second reaction was: Have they finally gotten off the drugs?! Maybe reality is finally starting to sink in!

Keep in mind that less than a year ago, Der SPIEGEL published a magazine cover (depicted below) declaring Iraq a “Lost War”.

There seems to be a lot of turnabout going on, all of a sudden.

ANOTHER REPORT FROM BAQUBAH: Thanks to Michael Yon who emailed the link; he adds: “Alexandra Zavis is an excellent correspondent. She gets around Iraq and I always find her stories consistent with what I am seeing on the ground. Her recent story on Baqubah adds more context to my own dispatches, and I believe the inverse is also true.”

A LOOK AT REP. MIKE HONDA’S new nanotechnology bill: Sounds interesting.

PAKISTAN: “In Pakistan, the last month has produced nearly 400 deaths from Islamic radical violence. However, most Pakistanis are more concerned about upcoming elections, and the end of military rule, than they are of tribal support for the Taliban and al Qaeda. This year, most of the Islamic radical violence has been in the tribal areas. The Islamic radicals tried to assert themselves in the urban areas, and failed. This was a major blow to the Islamic radicals, who had convinced themselves that they had major support all over the country. They don’t.”

JOHN LEO ON MODERN JOURNALISM:

If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas about his magazine’s dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case — “The narrative was right but the facts were wrong” — is destined to become a popular exhibit, right up there with “we had to destroy the village to save it.”

What Mr. Thomas seems to mean is that the newsroom view of the lacrosse players as privileged, sexist, and arrogant white male jocks was the correct angle on the story. It wasn’t. . . .

We now live in a docudrama world in which techniques of fiction and nonfiction are starting to blur. Many reporters think objectivity is a myth. They see journalism as inherently a subjective exercise in which the feelings and the will of the journalist function to reveal the truth of what has occurred. Two results are the emotional commitment to powerful but untrue story lines, and a further loss of credibility for the press.

Indeed.

UPDATE: “And we wonder why our approval ratings are in the crapper?”

THERE’S A NEW Blawg Review up!