TOM MAGUIRE notes an anti-war coincidence.

IS THE GOLD MARKET topping out?

ADVICE TO MIKE HUCKABEE: Read your bible.

CAR DIAGNOSIS — and even emissions testing — with a $300 add-on.

HAPPY MONICAVERSARY! And Rogers Cadenhead has thoughts on Matt Drudge as “My generation’s Edward R. Murrow.”

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST on the tiny ASUS Eee PC, a reader notes this article from the Wall Street Journal, in which Walt Mossberg says it’s cool, but (1) it’s too small; and (2) he doesn’t like Linux. “Too small” is in the eye of the beholder, but it seems just big enough to work to me — as a reader said earlier, it’s big enough for surfing and doing email, which is what most people do. I’d call it a second or third computer for geeks, or an inexpensive computer for a kid, but not a main computer for most people. As for the Linux — the basic functions are easy enough to use, and most people won’t go beyond that. And you can install Windows XP if you want.

I just had one of our IT guys in my office, though, and he was immediately taken with it and said he was going to buy one posthaste. So did one of my colleagues. On the other hand, if you wait a bit they’re going to put out a Wimax-enabled version. And if you want some data on my experience with reliability, ruggedness, etc. over a longer term, well, stay tuned. But it does seem to work fine, and it’s cute as a bug’s ear. For $399 that’s not a bad start.

OLD MEDIA HACK ATTACKS BLOGOSPHERE, GETS PRAISE FROM OLD MEDIA: Janet Maslin offers a charitable review of Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine, but even she has to include this part:

The vindictiveness and disproportionate influence of the blogosphere is a particularly sore subject. Who is it that “rewrote history, made anonymous accusations, hired and elevated hacks and phonies, ruined reputations at will, and airbrushed suddenly unwanted associates out of documents and photographs”? Mr. Siegel’s immediate answer is Stalin. But he alleges that the new power players of the blogosphere have appropriated similar powers.

Mr. Siegel himself became a great big blog-attack casualty when, in what he wishfully calls “my rollicking misadventure in the online world,” he was caught pseudonymously praising himself on the Web site of The New Republic, where he had been a particularly savage and reckless blogger. One of the improbable virtues of “Against the Machine” is that it presents a rigorously sane, fair and illuminating incarnation of its more often hotheaded author.

If all bloggers had the low standards evidenced by Lee Siegel — and, more recently, The New Republic — maybe he’d have a point. But some people just weren’t made to blog, and they seem particularly angry at the blogosphere. Meanwhile, I guess we should brace ourselves for an onslaught of Andrew Keen-style young fogies.

FRED THOMPSON vs. everybody.

ABOUT TIME: A move toward free wi-fi at the Knoxville airport. Jack Lail likes the idea.

IN THE MAIL: Michael Shermer’s The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics. Looks quite interesting.

MORE ON the state of science education. It’s a cliche to say that if our schools thought science was as important as varsity sports, we’d be doing a lot better. But it’s a cliche because it’s true . . . .

THE WASHINGTON POST ENDORSES unilateral military action.

STILL MORE on The New York Times and the “murderous vet” canard. The NYT wouldn’t publish this sort of thing about other groups even if it were statistically supportable, for fear of promoting prejudice; in this case, however, they’re willing to run with it even when it isn’t statistically supported. Which tells us something about their priorities, I guess.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Bodenstedt emails:

Perhaps some enterprising young journalist will endeavor to tell the stories of young men and women whose lives were on the wrong track, joined the military, and can now rightly be considered among America’s finest. I’ll bet they’d find many, many more such stories out of the pool of Iraq/Afghanistan vets than the 121 “murderers.”

Interesting idea. Perhaps it might slip by an editor if they sell it as “charmingly retro.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

MORE: Ouch: “The article embraced the hoariest of overwrought clichés – the US combat vet as psychotic killer. But on what evidence? None at all. Indeed, it’s impossible to take issue with the statistics cited by reporters Deborah Sontag and Lisette Alvarez – because their article doesn’t have any.”

And another ouch, here.

IN BRITAIN, treating terrorists like pedophiles. Interesting approach.

WHAT’S UP, DOC? TREATING OSTEOPOROSIS with genetically engineered carrots.

PRACTICING WHAT THEY PREACH, I GUESS: “Anti-war Groups Retreat.”

THOUGH AT THE TIME IT WAS BLAMED ON TAX-CUTTING REAGANITES, the Minnesota bridge collapse turns out to have been the result of a design error. More on that, and on the plans to replace it, at the link.

A LOOK AT online reputation.

And some related thoughts from TigerHawk. Plus, I’ve had some more extensive thoughts here.

JOHN TIERNEY ON FEAR OF TERRORISM: The problem, of course, is that there’s no real way to establish what’s a “proper” or “rational” level of fear, because terrorism — unlike, say, hurricanes or cancer — isn’t the product of extraneous causes but of human agency. You can make a good case that some people fear it too much, or too little, but only at the extremes.

ACTOR (AND KNOXVILLIAN) BRAD RENFRO has died.