MOST OF THE BLOGOSPHERE has been taking it rather easy this weekend, but the folks at RedState have been pretty active. So has Tom Maguire, who’s blogging on everything from Brazilian beef to Social Security reform. [MMmmm. Brazilian beef. Churrascaria rocks! — Ed. Stop that. You’re making me hungry.]

SEAN O’KEEFE WILL RESIGN as NASA Administrator. Reportedly, at the top of the replacement list: “Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who retired in September after three years as the director of the United States’ effort to develop a system to shield the country and its troops from a missile attack. The other four men under consideration are former Congressman Robert Walker and former shuttle astronauts Ron Sega, Charles Bolden and Robert Crippen.”

UPDATE: Rand Simberg has more.

COUNT OLAF HAS A BLOG! The Insta-Daughter has been consumed with reading Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, but it wasn’t until I got this email from reader Daniela Dixon that I knew about the blog:

I am a librarian, and am familiar with the popularity of the “Series of Unfortunate Events” books; kids check them out voraciously; they are never on the shelf. The movie is coming out and all the kids are psyched. I was looking at the website and was very amused. You should check out Count Olaf’s blog.

My mom is a children’s librarian, and she reports the same phenomenon.

THE KERIK NANNY SCANDAL UNVEILED!

MICKEY KAUS: “If you paid real money for the L.A. Times, we have a word for you: ‘Sucker’!”

I HAVEN’T READ MICHAEL CRICHTON’S NEW BOOK, State of Fear, but Steven Antler has a copy and he’s blogging about it. And scroll for more. They’re also Crichton-blogging over at The Corner. And though I haven’t read Crichton’s book, it sounds vaguely reminiscent of the Niven, Pournelle & Flynn novel, Fallen Angels, though I don’t know if it features the same plot twist. In Fallen Angels, global warming due to greenhouse gases turns out to be real, all right — but when the emissions controls go into effect, we learn that it’s been masking an underlying ice age that swiftly descends, an angle that I found satisfyingly perverse.

UPDATE: Reader Jeremy Bowers points out that you can download Fallen Angels for free in multiple formats from the Baen Books Free Library.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a review of Crichton’s book, by Ron Bailey.

FOR THE RECORD, the “SonicWall Content Filter” used by Panera Bread on its wi-fi sucks like a bilge pump. I just tried to check an article in Arms Control Today and the journal is blocked because it has to do with “weapons.” Jeez. Who runs SonicWall?

UPDATE: More on SonicWall here. Sheesh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Interestingly, SonicWall doesn’t block the definitely not-safe-for-work Good Shit site.

I don’t want to be too hard on Panera, whose reluctance to have customers sitting around looking at porn on widescreen laptops is understandable. And after all, they’re making the service available for free, so who can complain? But SonicWall just seems to be a lousy product. I’m not impressed to see that libraries are using it.

MORE: Blake Hiatt emails: “We run a SonicWall at work, and they are configureable. More than likely, the person who manages the network has the settings on the SonicWall very tight, or, doesn’t know how to configure it correctly.” Somebody call the Panera IT department!

DARFUR UPDATE: There will be a candlelight vigil in New York tomorrow night. A reader says he’ll send pictures. I’m not sure a candlelight vigil is the best way to get the U.N.’s attention, though . . . .

NO, I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK, though I can see why you might think so. Anybody know if it’s any good?

THE TIP OF THE WEDGE: A look at the European blogosphere.

THE CBS ATRIOS SMEAR that I mentioned earlier puzzled some people, including me: Why is CBS going out of its way to slam a left-wing blog?

But actually, on reflection, I think it makes sense. If you assume — based on, you know, the unrelenting nature of their coverage — that CBS is a left-leaning, Democrat-boosting network, and if you think (as a lot of people do) that the demographic for such is shrinking even as the number of outlets is growing in the blogosphere, then it makes sense. Who’s a bigger rival for Dan Rather’s audience: Atrios or Power Line? Daily Kos or Hugh Hewitt? (Fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune will remember the scene where Paul Atreides eats off his neighbor’s plate as an illustration of this phenomenon.)

On the underlying issue of bloggers’ codes of ethics and the like, well, I kind of feel that my thinking is pretty well covered at considerable length elsewhere. But I do think that bloggers should disclose payments and support (at least beyond de minimis levels) from candidates and campaigns, and that the Daschle v. Thune guys should have disclosed the support they were getting. I don’t think it would have mattered — it’s not as if there was any doubt which horse they were backing — and it’s only fair. (This, by the way, is the good thing about blogads, since it’s pretty transparent where they come from. Thus I don’t have to disclose the money I got from George Soros separately, since it came in the form of ad buys. Thanks again, George! It was much appreciated.)

I’m still waiting, of course, for CBS to turn ethical scrutiny on its constant pimping of Viacom projects attacking the Bush Administration. But then, I’m still waiting for CBS’s RatherGate report, now well past its promised-by date.

UPDATE: Jim Lindgren has more thoughts on the missing RatherGate report.

WILL WAL-MART TAKE OVER THE WORLD? They’re reportedly looking at buying a big shipping line.

I don’t care. I’m still shopping at Samuel’s, with Hebrew Nationals and free wi-fi. Oh, wait. . . .

PERHAPS THE MIDDLE EAST WILL BECOME PART OF RED AMERICA:

Two months into my stay, the issue of pro-Bush Syrians suddenly re-emerged when I began teaching English classes to several dozen students. The students were, almost without exception, from the upper echelons of Damascene society: well educated, financially comfortable, with many hailing from important Syrian families involved in high-level economic and governmental decision-making.

One afternoon I was explaining the passive tense of verbs, and I used an example that came to mind from American culture. I asked them if they knew who was nominated by the two main parties to run for president. “John Kerry was nominated by the Democratic Party, and George Bush was nominated by the Republicans,” replied one of the brightest in the class, a veiled Muslim engineering student named Rahaf. “Very good,” I said. “Now, who do you think will be elected?” “Bush,” cried several of the students at once, smiling. Abandoning my lesson plan for the moment, but curious at this sudden display of interest in the election, I ventured: “Who do you want to win?” “Bush,” said Rahaf, while a number of others nodded in solid agreement. I pressed them further for a few minutes, asking individual students why they liked Bush. The same ideas came up again and again: he is a strong leader, an honest man, and, most of all, a believer. Like the winning margin of American voters this year, these Middle Easterners related to Bush’s sense of religious conviction and his confident steering of a nation and culture they admired.

“But doesn’t he scare you?” I asked finally, unable to contain my personal feelings and throwing the lesson plan out the window. “Because of Bush’s ideas many people in my country think that all of you are terrorists.” Rahaf and most of the others just shrugged. Maybe that was all true, they said, but he was still a good president.

I found these same sentiments expressed almost word for word in my two other classes.

Well, he did say he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider. (Via Clayton Cramer).

THE WASHINGTON POST EXPLAINS how to make it big as a blogger.

DAN GILLMOR is leaving the Mercury News to start a citizens’ journalism project. Rumor has it that he’s got venture capital behind him.

DON’T MISS THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES: — and check out Cookin’ with Google!

INTERNET KILLS L.A. Times national edition.

ED DRISCOLL: I TOLD YOU SO! Okay, really it’s more like “I told CNN so,” but still . . . .

UKRAINE UPDATE:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) – Dioxin poisoning caused the mysterious illness of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, a doctor said Saturday, adding that the poison could have been put in his soup.

“There is no doubt about the fact that Mr. Yushchenko’s disease has been caused by a case of poisoning by dioxin,” said Dr. Michael Zimpfer, director of Vienna’s private Rudolfinerhaus clinic.

Zimpfer said Yushchenko’s blood and tissue registered concentrations of dioxin – one of the most toxic chemicals – that were 1,000 times above normal levels.

“It would be quite easy to administer this amount in a soup,” Zimpfer said, adding that tests showed the dioxin was taken orally. “There is suspicion of third party involvement.”

Tests run over the past 24 hours provided conclusive evidence of the poisoning, Zimpfer said.

Curiouser and curiouser. Something of an embarrassment for those who prematurely endorsed the “bad sushi” line, I would think.

UPDATE: Lots more Ukraine news, mostly in a similar vein, at Postmodern Clog. And here’s an Orange Revolution timeline from the Kyiv Post. (Via TulipGirl).

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

If someone wanted him dead, they picked a very poor poison to do it. Dioxin is not fatal – in spite of all the eco-terrorist mutterings, there has never been a recorded death from dioxin.

I work for Dow Chemical (please don’t use my name or I might lose my job, since we can’t comment on these types of issues without going through Public Relations), so I know a bit of what I speak. Dioxin is tremendously overhyped. In fact, there are more dioxins created every day from people burning firewood in their fireplaces, charcoal in their barbeque grills, and household trash in their rural backyards than there is generated in a year by the chemical industry. But that isn’t what the ecoterrorists of Greenpeace and ELF and company want to hear, and the media assumes that big industry is greedy, corrupt, evil, and guilty even when proven otherwise.

No, if someone had wanted Yushchenko dead, they would have used something with more efficacy. Probably lead, and high velocity. Dioxin is meant to inconvenience and terrorize, not kill. The only known, proven long-term effects are chloracne, which means he’ll have the facial and body acne off and on for the rest of his life. He won’t glow in the dark, and his kids won’t be born with 2 heads. Just cosmetically disfiguring, physically uncomfortable and somewhat painful, and a constant reminder of his vulnerability. Probably what was intended all along.

Maybe. Though it’s left Putin looking worse — heavyhanded, but inept. And I think he’ll be reminded of that for a long time, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A physician-reader emails:

I agree with the person from Dow Chemical up to a point: that description applies to people who got relatively light doses (a chemical plant explosion) or those who got low-dose, long-term exposure, ie decades.

To my knowledge, there haven’t been cases of a deliberate and [presumably] massive overdose until this one. I don’t see any basis to assume this was intended as a toxic warning. Many of Yushenko’s symptoms I haven’t seen in my books.

I don’t know, but people do seem to think that this was deliberate, and it’s hard to see how it could be accidental.

MORE THOUGHTS ON INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY in higher education, from Elizabeth Anderson at Left2Right.

IRAQI BLOGGERS MEET PRESIDENT BUSH: If things were going better around here, I’d have traveled to D.C. to meet them, but unfortunately I had to decline the invitation. But read this account from Jeff Jarvis.

UPDATE: Read this report, too.

RATHERGATE UPDATE: RatherBiased.com reports:

There is a battle royale within CBS over whether or not to release the full text of the upcoming Memogate report, RatherBiased.com can reveal. Many higher-ups within the network do not want it released to the public in its entirety.

Jim Geraghty notes both that some people are now saying that the report won’t be out until January, and that Andrew Heyward promised back in September that it would be out in “weeks, not months.” This is leading me to speculate that the news is very, very bad for CBS. Perhaps they will release it at halftime during the Super Bowl.

WEBLOGS PASS THE 5 MILLION MARK on Technorati. That’s rather a lot, really.

CAMERA STUFF: Ed Cone emails: “thnx for the digital camera post, somehow a blog entry is more accessible than a mag article — my wife is a serious amateur photog, shopping for a digital cam for xmas, she got a lot from your piece.” I’m glad. It’s not as if I’m a photography columnist, but maybe that makes my stuff more accessible.

Peter Ingemi emails: “Have you considered a side link specifically for the camera advice stuff or am I just trying to make more work for you?” The latter — though entering “camera” in the search window will collect them all, I think.

Meanwhile, Peter August wants what he calls post-photo advice: “Any advice on what software to use to help manage the picture, I hear Adobe has a good product, or any advice on any of the photo quality printers available.”

My main color printer is an Epson Stylus Photo 900, which does an excellent job, though it occasionally has trouble rendering almost-black regions faithfully. I bought it because it prints directly on CDs and DVDs.

I’d like to own this Canon i9900, which is getting rave reviews and which prints up to 13″ x 19″ prints. But I’ve used the Exposure Manager site to make prints up to 20X30, at very reasonable rates, and with excellent quality.

James Lileks has this cheaper Canon and seems to like it except for some stylistic elements. (“The printer has the regrettable retro-70s styling – looks like a computer for a Cylon child – but since it’s on a shelf under the desk, I don’t care.”)

For software, well — most of what you see posted here is done via PhotoShop Elements — though I’m still using 2.0 and haven’t upgraded to 3.0. For quick-and-dirty stuff I often use MicroGrafx Picture Publisher 7, an ancient program that is still available for, basically, free. I can open a picture, edit it, and save it, in the time it takes PhotoShop to open. (JASC Paint Shop Pro, which came bundled with my Dell laptop, seems to be an updated version, but honestly I prefer the older one.)

A kind reader sent me a copy of PhotoShop CS a while back, and it’s certainly far more capable when major image surgery is called for. For most people — and especially where your main interest is in putting images on the Web — it’s massive overkill, though.

There’s also GIMP, a freeware package that will run on OS X, Windows XP, and Unix. I haven’t used it, but it’s supposed to be good. And it’s free.

Meanwhile, I’m not the only one camera-blogging. Megan McArdle has a post on the subject, too (featuring a rare self-portrait), and Jim Miller has further thoughts. Apparently, this is a popular topic all around. Bear in mind that there’s lots of good stuff — written by people who know more than me — over at the Steve’s Digicams and DPreview sites listed on the right.

OKAY, THIS SEEMS LIKE serious overkill to me. Eight seasons?