Has the Fat Lady Sung? - My affair with Opera may be coming to an end. I'm trying out the public beta of Mozilla Firebird, which aims to be fast, light and extensible. It does feel subjectively faster. It runs Shockwave games, which I never could get Opera to do. No adware. The tabbed browsing works at least as well as Opera's. It comes set to suppress popups by default, which you need a third-party add-on to do in Internet Explorer. I never liked Netscape or Mozilla much, but I'm liking this.

What it doesn't have: mail and news. If you went for Opera's M2 mail client, you won't want to switch. (The Firebird people are working on Project Thunderbird, a redesign of Mozilla's mail client. It's not as far along as Firebird.) I never switched to M2 for various reasons - it struck me as worth seriously considering in future versions, but there haven't been any. (Opera client development has slowed way down, too.)

On the extensible front, two words: Google Toolbar! Plus BlogThis and more. (Things They Left Out looks like a good extension for those who want to get into serious customization or have important security concerns.)

If you're a Windows user, I recommend downloading the version with the unofficial installer module. It auto-configures many plug-ins and MIME types, and avoids an unfortunate Flash bug that can crop up with manual installs.

This is not a definitive endorsement, more "if nothing awful happens, I'm sticking with it." I'm trying it as my default browser until such time as I reject it utterly.

The Callous Policy of an Evil Government Cont. - From a Washington Post article on changing US counter-insurgency tactics:

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later.

The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.

If you can read that and not flinch, you've emigrated.

Folks, anti-interventionists have argued that among the problems with "preemptive" "defense" and "benevolent hegemony" is that you can only successfully pursue these policies by immoral means. Past a certain point, apologists can shout "Moral equivalence!" all they want - moral equivalence becomes simple fact. US troops

picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in."

Collective responsibility is the notion in play here.

picked up the wife and daughter

War annhilates the concepts of individual rights and responsibilities. The question changes from "What did you do, or not do?" to What use can we make of you?

If you want your family released, turn yourself in.

Stamp it on our coins. Include it in the prayers that open Congress. Add it to the instruction block of all triplicate government forms. Use it as the description line for your warblog.

. . . and to the Republic for which it stands, One Nation, Under God, Indivisible. If you want your family released, turn yourself in.

Atrios has the relevant quote from the Geneva Conventions, Protocol I. It turns out that the taking of hostages is not only an abomination, it's against the laws of war. Who knew?

By the way. I never want to hear another word about the alleged iniquities of Justin Raimondo, ANSWER, Robert Fisk, Patrick Buchanan, Lew Rockwell or even, god help us, the French. Not one more fucking word.

Standing Athwart Adventurism Yelling Stop - Stephen Chapman of the Chicago Sun on Liberian folly:

But as we've learned in Iraq, the best-laid plans often go astray. How, then, can we be so confident that getting out of Liberia, a place we know much less about, will be as easy as getting in? The assumption is that because of our historic ties to the country, founded in the 19th century as a refuge for freed American slaves, we'd be greeted as liberators, and that we could impose peace because everyone is tired of fighting.

But intervening on that assumption doesn't require a mere leap of faith. It's more like a pole vault.

Chapman notes that certain quarters denounce any reluctance to commit troops to Liberia as stemming from racism. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the enthusiasm for this type of adventure is often driven by racism - by a blithe conviction that these swarthy little foreigners with their tribes and factions and weapons cannot possibly be serious about their own goals, and that it will be a simple matter for the Great White Fathers and Mothers to put them in Time Out and then get them to behave. Don't go there.

Swing Low - The Matron of All Offerings went into the hospital this weekend for some tests. Nothing too scary, thanks, but her hospital roommate is dying - some kind of heart condition. She looks like an old woman about to die, like a leaf bag that's lost half its leaves. I haven't seen her move in two visits. This afternoon, I listened across the curtain: first, her grown granddaughter reading to her from the Bible in Pilipino and English, voice breaking as she made her way through the Lord's Prayer, then the granddaughter and, near as I can tell, two daughters began to sing to her. Spirituals of a kind, though contemporary sounding. They had a book they referred to, the granddaughter's soft, clear soprano was joined hesitantly by the daughters' soft clear sopranos in a ragged but deeply felt alternation of solo and chorus. They managed to get some laughs out of their occasional false starts or wrong notes, laughs for which they must have been grateful. I wondered, not for the first time, what it feels like to invoke Heaven and mean it, to speak of God and be sure you're referring to more than an overlapping set of ideas. But mostly I thought that, when it comes my time to lie in such a bed, if three such voices should willingly gather to sing me through the ordeal, that will surely have been a good life, and those singers will surely have singers of their own one day, stored up in heaven or karma.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - Figures unchanged from last week. Well, you're supposed to ease off those last few pounds, right? Like the old Lunar Landing BASIC game!

They Say you should change up your workout regimen every 4-8 weeks. Keeps you interested, keeps you from developing lazy habits, works your muscles in different ways or works different muscles. At bottom, you're still lifting weights and doing cardio workouts, but do them differently. That's why I switched weight-training protocols to the Body-for-Life program a couple weeks ago. I only did one session before it was aerobic week again, but I'm back to weights this week. It takes a lot longer to complete a session than SuperSlow takes, but it lets me avoid buying more dumbbells for awhile. It's six sets per exercise versus one, and faster reps (though still not fast).

On the cardio front, I "ran" again today. "Running" is alternating intervals of running and walking, over a 3.2 mile course (through the park to Kemp Mill Shopping Center and back). On the way out, I walked one minute and rested one, then repeated. On the way back I ran only a third as much as I walked. Completed the circuit in 37 minutes.

I also did more walking without weights this week, about 6 miles, as "off day" activity, and just three sessions of Heavyhands.

I'm trying to ramp up the intensity of my workouts because Halloween is only three months away, dammit, and if I'm going to carry off the Spiderman costume (or whatever), merely decent shape won't cut it. I have my dreams, ridiculous though they may be.

Recovery Tip of the Week: I asked my orthopedist why my quads hurt so badly after weight workouts, and so much worse and longer than the rest of me. His answer: Hello! They're the biggest muscles in your body! He said 20 minutes of ice right after the session will do wonders, so I'm going to try that.

Heavyhands Tip of the Week: Interval cycles. This is for indoor, in-place workouts. You alternate brief cycles of work and rest, e.g. 6 seconds on, six seconds off; 10 seconds on, 5 seconds off; whatever enables you to handle the workload you're after. The few seconds allow more recovery than you might think, which lets you work for longer at high workloads. It's perfect for TV time - I did a half hour the other night at a 20/10 second pace with 8-pound weights for 20 minutes, then 2-pounders for a much faster-paced ten minutes. I couldn't walk five minutes throwing 8-pounders around, but with the interval cycles, I managed to work them for 2/3 x 20 = 13 minutes. With the two-pounders, I did lots of shadow-boxing, jumps and double ski-poling.

Double ski-poling is a back-oriented move, but it also works your legs and buttockals (glutamates). The in-place version works like this:

1. Start with your arms outstretched over your head. Use lighter weights than you usually do Heavyhands with.
2. Sweep the weights down in an arc while squatting and bending forward on the count of 1.
3. Sweep the weights past your knees and up behind you on the count of two, finishing with your trunk horizontal leaning forward and your arms horizontal behind you.
4. Sweep the weights back past your knees on count three while beginning to straighten.
5. Finish on count four with your body upright, knees straight and arms stretched over your head again, just like you started.

It doesn't take much of this to get you breathing pretty hard.

For on-the-move DSP, substitute steps for counts. One entire circuit is four steps. Only do about a minute of these at a time at first. You may even want to do them without weights in the beginning.

Diet fun: Lycos has an article on "dangerous diets." The intro focuses mainly on diets with low calcium intake from food. (Atkins, Sugar Busters, Body for Life and Suzanne Sommers' diet make the list.) Fair enough. It's important for women to know they need to either take a calcium supplement or switch diets. Then come " five signs of a dangerous diet," including

Lists "good" and "bad" foods

Okay, no one should tell you that sugar is "bad" or fiber is "good." 'Kay. Then, whiplash:

A recent study from the Nutrition Institute at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville that was published in the Journal of Nutrition concluded that low-fat dairy products may help control body fat. Lead researcher Michael Zemel says that a diet rich in low-fat dairy foods will change the way the body's fat cells do their job. "A diet high in low-fat dairy causes fat cells to make less fat and turns on the machinery to break down fat, which translates into a significantly lower risk of obesity," he explained in a news release announcing the study results. In other words, dairy foods burn fat.

So low-fat dairy products are a . . . good . . . food. Man, my neck hurts.

In other fitness blog news:

Jessica Grieves advocates food journals. She makes a strong case that some people may really need them. I may yet need one.

Missy likes the fitness items. That's another one!

Avram Grumer in the land of the weight machines.

Finally, Ellen Goodman simpers about corporations and America's waistline. Companies giving you more for your money gets recast as conspiring to increase portion sizes. People from poor countries eating more when they get to a rich one is recast as people from thin cultures who move here get fatter.

Ellen, it's real simple. America does not want to be all that thin all that much. If it did, it would become so. America likes to eat. When that changes, America can get doggy bags and tote half of those large portions home. Or just buy less. (You can still get a regular hamburger, small fries and a small coke at McDonalds. Just try it. The small fries come in a bag no bigger than the ones they had when you were a kid. Better yet, you can get a hamburger, small fries and a cup of ice water. Mrs. Offering speaks highly of the premium salads too.)

I do, by the way, think it's reasonable for schools to remove junk food vending machines from their grounds if they choose.

The Whole Hideous Inverted Childhood - Derek Lowe offers an appropriately inconclusive meditation on what Ritalin might have done for the aging Philip Larkin. One thing that struck me about Larkin's letters and, despite author Andrew Motion's best efforts to obscure the pattern, his biography: Legendarily Morose Larkin arose only after Larkin's body began breaking down in the early 1970s - the health problems came first and the melancholia second. (The other factor was the death of his mother.) Before the illnesses set in, he had what we can only call a decent time juggling his two girlfriends, working his jobs, writing poems, living the life of the mind with his buddies (Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest chiefly) and caring for his collection of spanking magazines. Early Larkin is acerbic, sure, and cynical, but a different order of curmudgeon from late Larkin. Chronic physical pain seems to have had a lot to do with that. (Link via Instapundit.)

A Fanboy's Media Notes Saw the next two episodes of Spider-man on MTV tonight. In general, they lacked the odd false notes of last week's episodes. The CGI method is still alternately intriguing and disconcerting - in noncombat situations, they often have people moving so slowly you expect Submariner to come swimming into the frame. Then they crank the speed for the action sequences. That said, the cartoon now gets the Unqualified Offerings seal of approval, and I recommend you devote an hour of your week to it, unless you skip all the Fanboy's Notes items. First run of new episodes is Friday at 10 and 10:30PM. You can see all air dates/times at the MTV schedule page.

Speaking of comics and media, Dirk Deppey has updated his Marvel Movie Doomsday theory to incorporate the modified flop of the Hulk movie. I don't know the financials the way Dirk does, but my question is: absent the debt load and the Chapter 11 proceedings, hasn't Marvel simply become DC? Meaning, didn't DC Comics pioneer living off licensing starting in the 1960s. For almost twenty years between the late sixties and mid-eighties, their books sold relatively poorly, and Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman sold incredibly poorly. But Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman underoos and keychains were everywhere. There was a Wonder Woman TV show and several Superman movies and various Saturday morning cartoons. I have to believe that, until Teen Titans came along, DC's major revenue stream was licensing too.

So on the one hand, I'd argue that even if the movie deals dry up, Marvel needn't kiss its merchandising stream goodbye - and I mean general-public merchandising here, not Direct Market sculpture deals. T-shirts, PJs, Halloween costumes, gum wrappers, cereals and so on. They've finally succeeded in planting a handful of their characters as firmly in the mass mind as DC's Big Three. On the other hand, a diminution in actual movie deal revenue would surely still devastate. On any spare hand, though, just how permanent need this sudden aversion to superhero licenses be in Hollywood. Spiderman 2 will get made, as will Punisher. (I will be amazed if the Punisher movie has much success. Call me a cynic.) It's not mentioned in the article Dirk quotes, but surely the third X-Men movie has or will get the nod too, no? X2 made big big bucks. Hulk will probably still earn out once video and foreign revenues come in. And if two of the next three movies (Spidey, Punisher and X3) succeed, changeable Hollywood opens its checkbook again.

On the fourth and final hand, DC in its ebb tide phase ended up in the deep pockets of Warner Brothers, which is about as far from being in bankruptcy court as you can get, so the two situations aren't exactly commensurate.

Hey, it could all happen the way Dirk says it could happen.

Where Are They Now? the brigades of your army. StrategyPage has a table with explanatory text:

The rule of thumb is it takes three divisions to support one in the field:

o One division training/deploying,
o One division in the field, and
o One returning/recovering.

If the Army is to sustain is current deployment level, it needs 15 Divisions, just to maintain the status quo in Iraq.

In addition, the Army has at least a brigade in Afghanistan (requiring another division to sustain), 1 or 2 in the Balkans, requiring 3 – 6, and the 2nd Division in Korea, generating a force requirement for 20 – 24 divisions.

The Army has 10 active divisions, 8 Army National Guard Divisions for a total of 18 Divisions and there is a shortfall of 2 – 6 divisions. Separate brigades (the active army has 5 [3 of which are deployed] and the Army National Guard has 18) can certainly be used to make up the difference. This would require a large-scale mobilization of the ARNG and Army Reserve and would damage the ability of these units to support the Homeland Security Mission.

Thanks to friend, poet, novelist and UO reader Michael Schaffner for the link.

Fvck Yov poems, an entire anthology edited by Mr. Establishment: David Lehman. Some are just bitchy. Some are too reflexive, of the "This is my fuck you poem, a poem about . . . " variety. But some are quite enjoyable. Link courtesy of Michael Croft.

Habeas Corpses - Fallout from the deaths of Uday and Qusai. Salam says reports of Iraqi doubts are real and the American occupation authorities "have fucked up again by first making the decision to kill the idiots and then not give us clear proof of their death."

Some people remarked that the pictures of the bodies didn't look much like U & Q. That part doesn't surprise me. As I learned the one time I had to identify a body, a photograph of a dead person looks nothing like the same person, alive. (But I got a poem out of it.) But reports of pretty standard postmortem reconstruction surgery (prettying up the corpse, basically) are only going to hurt. Though you'd think reports of Fedayeen vowing revenge for the brothers' deaths would have to count in any local "Are they really dead" arguments.

The question of killing rather than capturing comes into play here, but we'll come back to it.

Pass Out the Cigars - Though once a relatively popular blogger, I only ever had one official blogchild, which made me feel sort of wistful when I thought about it. But I'm proud to announce an unofficial blogchild and commend - no, command - it to your attention: the Homerically-named Polytropos: A Blog of Twists and Turns.

Proprietor Nate Bruinooge is my friend and gaming buddy and, like Odysseus, a man of twists and turns himself. How many ABDs in American Lit do you know of who were once the top-ranked Middle Earth collectible card game player in the United States? Nate is a terrific writer. He expects to cover culture more than politics, and he's well-suited to it. He writes superbly, and he already has some excellent material on his site. As a fellow admirer of A.S. Byatt, I thought his dismantling of Byatt's imprecation against the Harry Potter books struck just the right tone, and benefitted from his unique perspective:

But I will give her Quidditch. Never liked it much myself, mainly because, compared to the many other magical analogues to things in the Muggle world, this one seemed sloppy. And 150 freakin' points for catching the Quaffle -- come on! With that much at stake, a smart team would forget about scoring goals and devote all their energy to supporting their Seeker. But I digress.

His item on Liberia, whose political conclusions I disagree with, benefits from the personal perspective - he used to live there.

Think of it as a liberal God of the Machine or Two Blowhards. A heterosexual geekboy Fresh Bilge - whatever. But get in on the Polytropos action now.

A Fanboy's PSA - Trends are clear. It's officially time to add Eve Tushnet to all the "semi-comics blogger" lists out there. Linking to SequentialTart, rhapsodizing about Alias and today, panning the Hulk movie at length, and that's a few days output.

Also, as Dirk Deppey notes, UO O.G. Justin Slotman has a bunch of interesting comics-related items tucked among all his basketball pieces. How come I missed them? Probably still punishing him for taking off from blogging the entire summer of 2002 without any #@%&#($# announcement or anything! Anyway, one of his items takes up a throwaway line of mine about Daredevil. He uses it to praise the Ann Nocenti-John Romita Jr. era of the book. I missed it first time around, but synergistic Marvel reissued a collection to tacitly tie in with the reappearance of Nocenti-era villain Typhoid Mary in the current book's storyline. I started reading it in Borders the other week. I'll try it again, bolstered by Justin's praise. But it seemed to me that Nocenti couldn't write for shit.

UPDATE: It is the official opinion of this website that Typhoid Mary looks hotter in Alex Maleev's Jamie Lee Curtis-based rendition.

Indian Wars - Here in DC, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly "said yesterday she is moving to resolve a long-running dispute over whether the team name and logo for the Washington Redskins are insulting to Native Americans, a ruling that could affect millions of dollars in sales of Redskins paraphernalia," according to the Washington Post. The suit pits a group of seven Native American activists against the team owners. In 1999, the patent office ruled, at the activists' request, that the team's trademark violated "a 1946 federal law that prohibits the government from registering a trademark that disparages any race, religion or other group."

I'm on the team's side here. One argument I hear, mostly from white liberal columnists and radio personalities, is "Do you think it would be okay if someone named their team the [N-Word]s? What about the [K-Word]s?" The argument is meant to shock you to your senses, but the shock value cuts against the critics of the Redskins name (and by extension other Indian names).

If anyone ever has named a team "the [N-Word]s" it hasn't come up in the years of debate I've seen about team names, hasn't shown up in sports histories I've read or watched. I confess that I'm not sure how to structure a Google search that would answer the question without drowning the results window in filth. Nor do I know of any teams named the Sambos, J;g@boos, Spooks, Darkies or Colored.

Well, why not? Because those names are insulting, and this country has had a long, baleful history of racism in which white people, who tend to be the people who own sports franchises, didn't much like black people. If you named a team the [see bad word list in previous paragraph] you would, if you were a racist, be naming your team for something you despise; if you were not a racist, you would be insulting your own sensibilities, and the people (non-racists) you'd instinctively want supporting your team. Either way, you'd be applying a sobriquet to your team with strongly negative associations.

And people just don't do that. People choose team for their admirable associations. Nobody names their teams the Doofuses, the Rejects or the Grifters either. That no one names teams after slang terms for African-Americans, and many people have given teams familiar names for America's tribal peoples, tells us a number of things all by itself:

o White America's historical anti-black racism has been deeper than its anti-Indian racism
o The tropes white Americans bind up in Native American names are "long ago and far away" tropes - "Redskins" and "Chiefs" have no more to do with contemporary Indian life than "Vikings" with the ethos of present-day Scandinavia.
o Those tropes are also clearly positive, chiefly bravery and hardihood. Even the violent associations occur in a context, sports, where a certain level of violence is valorized (hence Raiders, Buccaneers etc.).

Now volumes could and have been written about the ethics of admiring another people after you've safely dispossessed them. And the (to me obvious) fact that Redskins and other names are not intended to denigrate doesn't lessen the various degrees of offense that are and are not taken by different actual Native Americans. Nor does it speak to the alienation the name can cause among some liberals of whatever race.

But the trademark law, as described by the Post, focuses on the intent side of the insulting-aggrieved relationship. "Disparage" is an active verb that requires a subject. The only plausible subjects here clearly can not intend disparagement - that would be bad for business.

Asides: 1. Redskin team founder George Preston Marshall was either an anti-black racist or a cynical racial opportunist. He marketed the Redskins as "the team of the South" in the days before the Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins, let alone the Carolina Panthers and Tennessee Titans - the white South. Marshall was the last modern-era NFL owner to sign a black player. Finally he got sick of losing and traded for Bobby Mitchell. Mitchell recalls an early training camp supper where the whole team broke into a post-prandial rendition of "Dixie." George Preston Marshall avoided every possible association between his team and all things African-American for as long as possible. That was good, sad to say, for business. That such a clear-eyed racial calculator cleaved to Native American names (the Redskins started life as the Boston Braves) says everything there is to say about the disparagement value of such names.

2. Maasai. Zulu. Kikuyu. These would be good team names. Now. I suspect we're not actually far off from the day when the right sort of owner figures the hip-hop spelling "Niggaz" will give his franchise just the street cred edge he needs for merchandising purposes.

3. Even some activists have suggested that they could accept replacing the "generic" Indian names (Chiefs, Braves, Redskins et al) with tribal names. That can work for people in Cheyenne or Apache country. I don't see the Washington Pamunkey throwing much fear into people. The Washington Powhatans (POW-ha-TANS) has its stresses in all the wrong places. That plosive kicks off the name nicely, but the semivowels at the turn of the first syllable let all the vigor out of the name. Shawnee might not be bad. It's a tribe people have heard of. The Washington Piscataways has promise - opponents spend their time figuring out who the Piscataway were instead of studying film.

Timing Problems - I need to get back to blogging in the mornings. I had a few things I wanted to write about when I got up. Damned if I can remember what they are now.

Fat Suits - Kevin O'Reilly, who says he likes Unqualified Offerings "in spite of the fitness items" is following the pathetic class action suits against the fast food industry, which I, um, covered weeks ago in a couple of fitness items. Hey, his coverage is still excellent, and his blog has a nice design. Go here and here. Sharp responses to lousy reasoning.

More Exceptions to the John Donne Principle - Looks like one of these "we really think we got him/thems" panned out. Uday and Qusai Hussein have bought it, diminishething no one.

"We're certain that Uday and Qusay were killed," Sanchez said. "We've used multiple sources to identify the individuals."

as quoted by Walter Pincus and Dana Priest in the Washington Post. See? I told you it was worth leaving enough body to identify.

The White House took a break from issuing an unending stream of nonsense to toss in a true statement:

Over the period of many years, these two individuals were responsible for countless atrocities committed against the Iraqi people and they can no longer cast a shadow of hate on Iraq.

Matt Hogan e-mails me that "I guess there's always a silver lining on the dark cloud of wacko ideological war." Tacitus is beside himself with glee not just at the deaths of the Terrible Two, but at reports of Iraqi celebrations. But I'd keep in mind this Peter David musing from earlier this morning, in which he explains what a trip he took to Romania has to do with the situation in Iraq:

Wherever we would go, guides would say, "And this was a palace Ceausescu was building before we overthrew him." "And this was where Ceausescu's favorites were housed before we overthrew him." The fact that they had taken charge of their lives and tossed out a parasite--a parasite the U.S. had supported until the mid 1980s, by the way--was a source of great national pride.

The Iraqis have no national pride. They're the United States' bitch. To seize control of your destiny engenders pride. To have someone do it for you and then not leave causes frustration, self-loathing, and anger directed at your intended liberators.

Which I predict will remain true, when the excitement dies down.

A Fanboy's Blogwatch - Via Franklin Harris, this article about all the exclusive deals DC Comics is signing with A-list creators. Interesting. I realized a few weeks ago that, despite my longstanding antipathy toward Marvel Comics, which dates from the piratical 1980s, that they've had the edge in quality over DC when it comes to superhero comics lately. I haven't read a DC book as good as Daredevil or New X-men, though I confess to not looking all that hard. I'm not buying every title each month and doing a comprehensive comparison. However. It looks like DC has locked up most of Marvel's best writers except for Brian Michael Bendis. I'm unlikely to keep buying Wolverine after Greg Rucka leaves, or New X-men in the absence of Morrison. I can't stand X-books generally - I had to buy them for the jobs these creators were doing.

Eve Tushnet praises Alias.

Dirk Deppey of Journalista is back from San Diego Comicon and blogging at normal length. Interesting find in today's links: the Miami Herald on comics writers who made the jump to television. Actually a couple of the writers discussed started in television and then added comics work. The article generously theorizes that "comics and filmed entertainment require dynamic storytelling and scripters who think -- and write -- visually" and not comics and film both value hacks whose major talent is dancing to the tune of their insane bosses.

On the sheerly exciting if more than a week old news front, Dark Horse Comics officially announced that they will "publish a quarterly comic anthology called "Michael Chabon Presents…The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist." Comic Book Resources has a detailed report.. The quarterly issues will be 80 pages long and debut in December.

Bill Sherman has a review of the new Spider-man animated series from MTV that I pretty much wholly endorse, in general and in detail. Generally a good series with puzzling lapses, at least in the episodes that Bill and I saw. Frex, on viewing the Lizard's - aka Professor Connors, Peter's boss and mentor - apparent demise, Spiderman tosses off a quip that seemed thuddingly wrong in tone, given that he knows who the Lizard is and apparently has some affection for him.

Reading Around - Feeling . . . so . . . lazy . . . still. And they're still not running the country the way I want. Bastards. Anyway, stuff to read . . .

God of the Machine - Aaron Haspel is on a blogger inside baseball kick, with notes toward a Devil's Dictionary and an entry on the ethics and politics of the blogroll. Also, Snitches: why do we think they suck?

The Light of Reason - Arthur Silber explains why patriotic Americans of good will might not "hope for a successful occupation of Iraq." He takes off from an aspect of a recent Tacitus post that I left aside when citing the post as a whole. Arthur has been writing a lot about what he calls, after Rand, the "New Fascism." Before anyone dismisses the "political F-bomb" as crazy talk, note the word "New" and ask how likely it was that an ideology that suffered such famous reverses in the middle of the last century would not evolve into a more survivable form? Also, pretty much the last word on the "I-word" too.

Counterspin - Hesiod goes way beyond masturbation in a grand summary of the surprising news about your health. Not as gruesome as it sounds.

Body and Soul - any number of cracklin' items this week so far, including a pithy item about what we might call "tabloid intelligence."

UPDATE: Eve Tushnet - has had another of her miraculous outbursts of post production. Just start at the top and keep reading.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 168 pounds, "waist" 34.5" let out. Losin' weight without weed, eating sunflower seed. Mind you, I gained weight without weed too - drugs bulk large in my political life, but not at all in my personal life. Ate a lot of sunflower seeds last week, though.

Never did quite go back on Atkins induction, but I stuck with fruit over vegetables for half the week. Enough food talk.

Exercise: I "ran" this morning with no weights at all, partly, like Magneto making the nonmagnetic spaceship, just to prove I could do it. It was actually about 1/3 running, 2/3 walking over a 2.6 mile course at about a 12-minute mile pace. Running is hard! but it still felt like a bit of a waste, doing nothing with your hands except holding the leash of Unqualified Dog. Changed up weight-training protocols this week and got a bit off-schedule. I'm trying the two-sessions a week thing, one upper body and one lower body. Didn't get around to the arm session until last night, which is the rest of the reason I ran with no weights this morning.

Consumer Reports this month helpfully defines your waist as falling exactly halfway between your bottom rib and the top of your hip. If it's good enough for Consumer Reports it's good enough for me. The article, available online only for subscribers, talked about health risks from abdominal fat, as opposed to less dangerous thigh and behind fat. There is current thinking that waist size is a better indicator than Body Mass Index of risk for heart disease, diabetes and breast cancer. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute says risk increases for women with waists of 35" and men with waists of 40". The obesity research center at Columbia University says risk actually starts to go up (more slowly) at 33" female and 35" male waistlines. I haven't inspected the studies and probably wouldn't be qualified to pass judgment on them if I had, so file under FWIW.

In other fitness blog news, Jeremy Scharlack tries to make his own low-carb chocolate. He's had a slight uptick in weight but shouldn't worry. Happens to all of us.

Avram Grumer has switched to the Body-for-Life exercise program. It's becoming something of a trend. Reading his recent items has grudgingly increased my respect for gyms. It was clear that he was maxing out what his 21-pound sportblocks could do for him. Not everyone, though, can either afford the next size up in Powerblocks - I sure can't - or has room to litter their place with every set of dumbbells they might need. Gyms may be particularly good for people in the city: Avram noted last week that it had gotten too hot to do Heavyhands outside. I do mine before work along a leafy course, but I don't live in Manhattan. Even working out indoors can be a problem if you live in an apartment. In the mid-80s when I tried Heavyhanding during the middle of the day, the people downstairs kept complaining to the property manager. I ended up working out on the balcony a lot.

So, Gyms: maybe not completely pointless, is my new official conclusion.

Note: if you run fitness items and you're kind of cheesed that I only ever link to Avram and Jeremy, I probably just haven't discovered you - even if you've linked to me, my referrer stats aren't that great on this host. So drop me a line.

Fantastic Grow the Evening Gowns - The weather is so nice I just can't, as the Brits say, get arsed about the state of the world. It's been a newsy couple of days, too - those nonexistent weapons of whatever that don't matter may have encouraged the British government to start killing British citizens (I believe the standard theory holds that people form governments to protect themselves from being killed - note to self: maybe this doesn't work so good?), while here in America it appears that high officials of the federal government have either committed the felony of revealing the name of a US intelligence officer or perpetrated a tortious smear against a woman for the crime of being married to an inconvenient critic. But understand the nuances here: "felony" and "tortious smear" apply only if it's you or me doing these things, loyal reader. In case you've forgotten, there's one set of rules for us and another set for them.

But rather than write about this all weekend, I've been watching cartoons and movies and exercising - cultivating my quadriceps if not my garden. See important items on the Plame case by Mark Kleiman (here and here) and Kevin Drum.

Also, when I signed onto MSNBC this morning, I saw the headline "Two More US Troops Killed in Iraq," but such headlines are such a constant now that I'm never sure when it's new soldiers being killed and when it's just been held over from the previous day.

Yes There is a God - Unqualified Offerings is your ultimate good news blog, men! (Link via Perverse Access Memory.) And yes, this is a big load. Off. My. Mind. As it were.

You Heard It Here First that Salam Pax was maturing into a serious writer. Hey, that part's done now. For the time being, he's one of the planet's indispensible reporters. Now here's the stupid thing: Where is Raed's readership is way down. I realize that a lot of his March/April traffic was curiousity seekers, and the whole, you know, war thing meant that new material was rare for awhile. And a lot of people will be catching him through his Guardian column. But not everything in the blog appears in the Guardian. Anyone who reads weblogs at all and has any interest in politics at all - needs - to - read - this man. The latest: through the miracle of modern technology, Salam publishes an e-mail from a fellow Iraqi forwarded to him by an American reader. Also, he's translating for Ishtar, a new female blogger from Basra.

What's all the latest add up to? Pick your poison. Baghdad . . .

In Baghdad that gun would be pointing either at the car right behind the military vehicle or at the sidewalk, scanning the buildings. But the British guy wasn't pointing at anything, he was just looking around with the gun turned in, at an angle that would have shot him in the foot if it had gone off by accident. You appreciate this only after you have been driving behind an American Humvee and praying that your car doesn't backfire or make strange noises, because the US soldier has that gun pointing right at you.

The Brits are more laid back in Basra, even after the al-Majar al-Kabir riot. Salam closes the Guardian column with a tongue-in-cheek plea to the British to bargain harder in weregeld negotiations. But the lighter British hand has costs of its own. Ishtar goes shopping:

Because the things I need are so many it got to the point where it started negatively affecting my mood, and that didn't need another thing bothering it, I finally decided to go to the market. Ignoring, although only superficially, the danger and trouble of going out without veil specially to a place like the market. I wore for the first time a very wide and long skirt….really wide. And a shirt which was as wide and loose fitting as the skirt, it also had long, loose sleeves so the effect was like wearing a long jubah. And I had to put a Hijab on my head although it was so hot my head was almost exploding. But that might have been because I was feeling annoyed with myself for giving in to some else's wishes and maybe also because I believe that by doing as they wish I am helping in propagating their wishes. Anyway this is better than getting harassed by someone and as I have been told this harassment might take the form of a small knife or a razor-sharp tongue.

A Fanboy's Happy Notes - Whee! It's Daredevil week at the comic store! Whee!

I just love this book. This month, somewhat unusually, an issue-long fight between Daredevil and Bullseye. But the good news is, nobody shuts up for very long, so it's still an issue full of Brian Michael Bendis dialogue. Here is how good Bendis is: I, a hardcore libertarian, who could at various times quote you chapters worth of federal malfeasance in law enforcement, have fallen completely in love with FBI agent Driver, a recent cast addition. I love the guy! I would happily arrange marriage for him with my three-year old daughter (in 25 years! she has to complete her postdoctoral work first) if he stepped out of the pages and asked.

Yeah, Bendis is still dining out on the whole Kingpin-Bullseye meal that Frank Miller laid out twenty-five years ago and that a generation of Daredevil writers has been living off ever since. Bendis isn't going to create a whole new cast of supervillains. (Probably because work-for-hire gives him no incentive, right Dirk? And I mean that.) Like most superhero writers, he's all about reusing what's in the fridge. It's a heavenly hash, though.

A Non-Fangirl's Notes - Eve Tushnet goes to a comics store. Buys less than she expected. Reacts to what she buys. ("Also, Emma Frost needs to stop dressing like a skank, or at the very least she needs to be drawn as a somewhat more realistic skank.") Recommended.

I promise more comics-related items this week, before all the comics bloggers drop me from their links lists.

UPDATE: Eve, for good dialogue try anything by Brian Michael Bendis. He's not such a strong plotter, but he sure can put words in people's mouths. I recommend the collected Daredevil storylines starting with Underboss (Wake Up is optional), and Powers (where the plots are especially nominal).

Revealed at Last - "Bush = Clinton" observes Franklin Harris. And Bush = Clinton again, observes Gene Healy.

Not quite fair though - I don't think Clinton promulgated any protectionist measures as appalling as the new catfish tariffs. Radley Balko is all over that one. Hey, how about a Washington Catfish Party where we take a bunch of catfish and throw them . . . into the . . . ah hell. They'd like that.

I had catfish for dinner last night. Just mentioning.

Brain Teaser - At work yesterday we somehow got on the topic of what we might call "mystery riddles" of the "A man walking down the sidewalk sees that a restaurant serves albatross. He enters and orders some. After taking a single bite, he exits the restaurant and shoots himself. Why?" variety. We spent hours on that one as a kid, and the one where the guy dead in the middle of the field turns out to have been wearing a parachute that didn't open, and the guy "running home" was in a baseball game, and two or three that involve corpses and melting ice. To think of all the yes-no questions we asked and answered!

Anyway, now and then I've wondered about one riddle in particular:

A man and his son are in a car accident. The man dies instantly; the boy is critically wounded. The ambulance rushes him to the emergency room and the attendants wheel him quickly into the operating theater, on the slim chance he can be saved. The surgeon enters, takes one look at the boy and says, "I can't operate on this child. He's my son.

How can that be?

I figured that between the 1970s, when my cohort first puzzled out this one, and now, society had changed to such an extent that this one wouldn't throw anybody for even a minute. So I was surprised when I tossed it out and a young female colleague, whom we'll call Young Female Colleague, immediately dug herself into insolvability - she paraphrased it for coworkers as, "The doctor says he can't operate on the boy because he's his son."

The automatic identification of "doctor" and "male" was what I thought would not stymie "the youth of today" the way it stymied the youth of thirty years ago. Wow, I wondered. Residual sexism? Something specific to Young Female Coworker's traditionalist religious upbringing?

YFC had her own theory, once I flipped all the cards and gave the answer. (Hey, we had to work.)

"There are nothing but males in the setup," she said, and that gets your mind in a male-assuming groove.

And that seemed plausible yesterday. I wonder, as a test, try the obverse version on someone:

A woman and her daughter are in a car accident. The woman dies instantly; the girl is critically wounded. The ambulance rushes her to the emergency room and the attendants wheel her quickly into the operating theater, on the slim chance she can be saved. The surgeon enters, takes one look at the girl and says, "I can't operate on this child. She's my daughter.

How can that be?

I'm inclined to doubt this would confuse anyone for very long. But it would make an interesting empirical test. Hey, I'm not sure what I think because it's not about the war!

Pick on Max Sawicky Day - Brother Max has an item on the California government's fiscal crisis that contains the following stunner:

The responsibility in making a state budget, of course, is to match up revenues and expenditures over the business cycle. This the state failed to do.

Given its spending ambitions, the main reason is the failure to bank sufficient revenue. For most of the decade, spending was roughly 98 percent of revenues. Too much. In the state government's defense, it was prey to the same giddiness that seized millions of investors in the stock market.

A defense like that is actually a prosecution. Let us roll the words around on our tongues a little:

prey to the same giddiness that seized millions of investors in the stock market

The implicit argument here is that the government was no worse than those excitable ninnies in the private sector. But the justification for the regulatory state is that the government is wiser than the private sector - cooler of head, longer of perspective, able and needed to check private sector folly.

Guess not.

Now, we know that some governments sometimes engage in accounting chicanery just like some corporations do. And we know that some governments sometimes run short of money just like corporations do. The difference between a failing company and a failing government is that the government can solve its money problems by forcing you to give it more money, on pain of imprisonment or death.

Since we're picking on Max, which I'm only doing because he's not physically present, because he's big and could kick my ass, it's worth noting his unsatisfactory item granting the US permission to invade Liberia. There are two big problems with this piece. He tackles the right wing criticism of leftists as preferring to use force only when US national interests are not at stake head on, writing "There is a very good reason to be skeptical of interventions that involve what Krauthammer describes as 'in the national interest' since they typically involve conflicts of interest. The least likely cases for conflict of interest are those where humanitarian goals are the sole object." But surely there can be considerable disagreement about what the "humanitarian" course is in any given instant. I've argued at length that to attempt "help" that you should rationally realize you cannot successfully give is immoral and the opposite of humanitarian. Hence Max's problem number two, his injunction that we should " jump in there and see if you can do some good."

That seems rather cavalier. Anyone who thinks we can't make things worse than they already are is naive - of course we can. Anyone who imagines that the force levels presently contemplated - around a thousand troops - will "stabilize" the situation by cowing the local warring parties into submission has another problem, which starts with "r." (Answer in this early Offering!) You say that and you've essentially said that the leaders and followers of the various warring factions are not fundamentally serious people, that they lack any real commitment to their apparent goals (raw power, in many cases) or any gumption to stick to their guns in when presented with a comparative handful of American faces. Max doesn't argue that a thousand troops are all it will take, so I explicitly declare I'm not calling him racist, but others are asserting that a relative handful of Americans can tidy the place right up, and they do have a problem.

Now, time to give Max his due - a forthright and completely accurate declaration that "HOWARD DEAN IS NOT A PEACE CANDIDATE."

Radio is a Sound Salvation - Also on Hit & Run, Jesse "I Am Mr. Radio" Walker has two pieces on radio spectrum. One is on "software-based radio," which would enable a degree of spectrum-sharing as to obliterate the "scarcity rationale" for the current regulatory regime. The other covers a scientific channel to the "third channel adjacency requirement - -- in essence, a rule demanding enormous buffers between stations to prevent them from interfering with each other." The nonprofit MITRE Corporation, retained by the FCC to study the technical feasibility of urban micro-radio, called the buffers unnecessary.

Me, I figure that if the federal government had not locked in a "scarcity" based on 1920s technology at that time, we'd have had solutions to the problem long since - "squirting" transmissions, variable wavelength transmissions etc. If spectrum "owners" were genuine owners of a property they could subdivide, they'd have had a reason to do so, receiver and transmission technologists would have had an incentive to design commercial narrowcasting equipment and we'd all have more to listen to. (The Nation, of course, would decry the "fragmentation" of the public sphere, but that beats decrying "media consolidation.")

Will anything come of the new developments? As Jesse notes, "The relevant regulators do not have a strong history of adjusting their rules in response to technological change."

Free Minds, Free Markets, Free Muslims? - Via Hit & Run, the Minaret of Freedom Institute, a by god classical liberal muslim think tank. Just really dipping into the site, but here's an interesting condemnation of female genital mutilation from an Islamic perspective, a "We Russians invented baseball" type paper on similarities between medieval Islamic thought and Austrian economics and a game attempt to distinguish halal interest from haram Riba. I'm not qualified to judge the doctrinal soundness of the Institute's arguments, but I sure am glad to see them trying. To the extent there's a "them." Reading between the lines, the Minaret of Freedom Institute looks like the next thing to a one-man operation. But as the poet said, "justice will take us millions of intricate moves."

Liberty, Independence, Sovereignty - Via Tacitus, who makes an interesting brief for Paul Bremer, this Associated Press article on the new Iraqi governing council. It's the sort of thing that, in principle, could work. I'd argue that the way we'll know it's worked for real is when the Iraqi governing council can tell the Americans to go to hell on something and make it stick. Heck, if Paul Bremer is as smart as Tacitus suspects, he ought to subtly arrange for this to happen. Otherwise, the deadly P-word ("puppet") will be on everyone's lips.

That, and the fact the council was selected rather than elected, led to criticism at an Arab League meeting in Cairo, where Secretary-General Amr Moussa showed little eagerness to embrace the new Iraqi political body.

If the new council had been elected, Moussa said in a statement released Sunday night, ``it would have gained much power and credibility.''

That's a bit rich, considering the source.

I should note that Tacitus reads one section of the founding document rather differently than I do. The relevant section:

Policy authorities: The coalition will be required to consult with the Governing Council on all major decisions and questions of policy. The Governing Council shall have the right to set policies and take decisions in cooperation with the coalition in any area of national policy, including financial and economic reform, education, electoral law, health.

Tacitus glosses thusly:

There you have it: an unlimited mandate for the council, plus a formal restriction on coalition power. This is looking less like a mere rubber stamp with each new piece of information.

Whether because Tacitus is a pollyanna, or I'm a gloomy gus, or whatever, it seems to me that he has it backward. The coalition has to "consult with," which is not remotely the same thing as get the approval of. Meanwhile the Council can do tangible stuff "in cooperation with the coalition," and, on my reading, can do squadoosh without coalition approval. That looks like a formal restriction on the Council's power, and a pro forma restriction on the occupation authority. Like I said, one way you'll know there is "a free, democratic and independent Iraq" is when or if that's no longer true.

I should grant that the question of how essential national sovereignty is to personal liberty is a vexed question for libertarians. The latter is what matters; the former is, like anything else government does, only of value to the extent it enables the latter. Clearly it often does not - any given sovereign government may be the enemy of its subjects' liberty rather than its guardian. This is why many who value personal liberty supported the overthrow of Hussein - he certainly wasn't doing much for the liberty of Iraqis. I'm pretty sure these folks made the wrong choice - that national sovereignty is, on balance, necessary but not sufficient for any hope of personal liberty. But the proof of the proposition is too long to fit in the margins of this notebook.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - Back home and back on the scale. Weight 170, maybe a hair over but my scale doesn't do partial pounds or even precision really. Waist 33" sucked in, 35" let out.

I can't believe I got off so lightly. After 169 two weeks ago, I added a couple pounds back and fought them back down to 170 the day before vacation. On vacation I ate like a pathetic pig, including all manner of junk food. What I learned: if it's available, and my routine is off, I'll eat it, and then eat more of it. I'm going back to a more severe Atkins phase for a couple of weeks to clean out my system. I'm also going to jigger with my exercise program. I've got two months, basically, to get in Halloween costume shape, which is 5-10 pounds from where I am now.

Exercise notes: our part of Deep Creek Lake is full of hills! That provided extra intensity for Mrs. O and I, who worked out together to an extent, which was nice. At home, one of us has to watch the kids while the other hits the paths. Since I pump weights while walking and she doesn't, and since I include intervals of running and she doesn't, and since she therefore walks for twice as long as I do, we were only together part of the time except for Thursday. Thursday I left the weights at home and walked/ran her entire route. It turns out to be much easier to run when you're not swinging five-pound dumbbells at the same time. Who knew? Felt strange, though, like I was wasting half my body.

Was momentarily puzzled about the state of my Heavyhands program. I'm doing the same interval routine with the same five-pound dumbbells, but it hasn't been getting any easier - meaning, it's still all I can do to finish two complete cycles. My arms, especially, are like lead when I'm done. Today it hit me. "Dummy!" it said, "progressive resistance training, remember?" and it was right. I haven't mixed in any intervals with heavier dumbbells, and therefore haven't stimulated significant new muscle growth.

I apologize for the lack of a general interest section this week, which is supposed to be the usual reward for persevering through the mememe stuff. I'm investigating the South Beach Diet as an alternative to Atkins - it seems like a "Mediterranean" Atkins. If it checks out, it will be more sophisticated than previous low-carb or low-fat diets and more in tune with current science. But I don't know enough to offer even my usual half-cocked evaluation yet. I'm also looking into back strengthening options, because I really don't want any more of the muscle pulls I had last month, but here again have nothing to report yet.

Scharlack is halfway to his goal weight. Congrats, man! The heat and life have impeded Avram Grumer's program and he's rethinking his approach.

Tanned, Rested and Ready and I was tanned, rested and ready last night too, but a thunderstorm ate my return post when it was in mostly-composed form. You would've liked it. Damn. Back from vacation. Whee.

Didn't I Hear Something before the war about how invading Iraq could lead to military confrontations with Turkey in the north? Just about there, per Bloomberg.com.

Cats, Mice - Interesting article in Newsday on counter-ambush tactics the US Army is adopting in Iraq.

In Working Weblogs - Arthur Silber has completed his brief against interventionists of an otherwise libertarian bent. Well, "brief" is not the word, but worthwhile is.

Chris Bertram announces the launch of a new group blog, Crooked Timber, whose membership comprises some of the blogosphere's brighter liberals. Surely many straight things will be made therein. though I doubt I'll agree with much of it.

Most blogs, including my own, tend to error out on this connection, whether because of some page size issue or an undiscovered net nanny.

In vacation news, I caught four perch and a chain pickeral off the dock last night at dusk. Only one of the perch was of any size to speak of. Chain pickeral are basically pipsqueak pike, running to about 18 inches or so. Caught them on worms and a Rebel Crawfish. My brother-in-law and I drove down to the North Branch tonight to fish for trout, but the North Branch was big and muddy, looking more like April water than July. (I was hoping for May.) We've been getting heavy overnight thunderstorms every night since we got here. It obligingly clears up by late morning no matter what, so boating and swimming and such are perfectly viable, as is lake fishing. River fishing, however, is just not on.

Can You Spare a Dime (or More?) - Old friend Bruce Fleming points out that singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, a favorite of both of us, has taken seriously ill. Escovedo has had one of those careers that can be called both "storied" and unprofitable. He's never sold as many records as he would have in a better world, but he has kept doggedly touring and recording excellent material year in and year out. This of course means he has no health insurance, mounting medical bills and no income while he convalesces. There are some benefit concerts in the works, and there's a support fund you can contribute to if you're minded. Do it for the live cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" on More Miles Than Money. Do it for the piano intro to "Paradise," the song that begins the Gravity CD. If you haven't heard Escovedo before, Amazon's free downloads are here. If charity is not your thing, but fine Americana music is, buy some CDs. In the fullness of time, royalties might come to the performer/author, like wisdom.

Slow News Days - Not much changes when you're on vacation. Sun comes up, sun goes down, thunderstorms at night and Troop morale in Iraq hits 'rock bottom' - at least, we have to hope it has:

Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated. "Most soldiers would empty their bank accounts just for a plane ticket home," said one recent Congressional letter written by an Army soldier now based in Iraq. The soldier requested anonymity.

In some units, there has been an increase in letters from the Red Cross stating soldiers are needed at home, as well as daily instances of female troops being sent home due to pregnancy.

"Make no mistake, the level of morale for most soldiers that I've seen has hit rock bottom," said another soldier, an officer from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.

You know where those guys ought to be deployed? Here at Deep Creek Lake. The humidity dropped a lot since early morning, sun's out and boat traffic is light. Heck, I wouldn't mind if they wanted to tool around on jet skis for awhile - they've earned it. And there's one more quality this area has that makes it appropriate for American soldiers:

It's in the United States.

The Monitor article quoted above goes into the structural details beyond the whole "A bunch of geniuses led us into war and all I got was this crummy drive-by problem" syndrome:

The rethink about troop levels comes as senior military leaders voice concern that multiple deployments around the world are already taxing the endurance of US forces, the Army in particular. Some 370,000 soldiers are now deployed overseas from an Army active-duty, guard, and reserve force of just over 1 million people, according to Army figures.

Experts warn that long, frequent deployments could lead to a rash of departures from the military. "Hordes of active-duty troops and reservists may soon leave the service rather than subject themselves to a life continually on the road," writes Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution here.

So naturally we're thinking about packing another thousand or more soldiers off to Liberia.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - There is way too much food in this house! And way too much of it is junk. And I'm taking it easy on exercise for a few days because of a back muscle pull I got during not mine but Mrs. Offering's workout the other night.

No scale in this house, so no numbers. Bought 32" regular-fit jeans last night and slipped into them easily, but god knows if that will be true by the end of the week. Until next Sunday, eat right and get plenty of exercise, Loyal Readers! Assuming you can even see this. I don't know if it's an ISP-specific thing or what, but while I can get into Movable Type from here, all attempts to view the weblog itself come up with a File Not Found.

Fishing But Not Gone Exactly - Greetings, Loyal Readers, from high atop the Alleghenies! La Familia Offering, including even Unqualified Dog, have installed ourselves in a vacation house on the shores of Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, MD, with my sisters family, their two dogs, and the Matron of All Offerings. Nice enough place, though Deep Creek Lake sucks on the weekends - too much pleasure boat traffic, even after dark. The house has a net connection, but it's - gasp! - dialup, so blogging may be light. (Also, the keyboard is not ergonomic, and thus hard to get used to.)

FWIW - According to the SelectSmart questionnaire, my top 5 2004 candidates are

1. Libertarian Candidate   (100%)  Click here for info
2. Bush, George W. - US President   (69%)  Click here for info
3. Buchanan, Patrick J. – Reform/Republican   (67%)  Click here for info
4. Green Party Candidate   (62%)  Click here for info
5. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat   (61%)  Click here for info

No, I don't know how Dubya got that high on the list unless SelectSmart mistakes his rhetorical flourishes for actual policies. I didn't vote for the man, but I had hopes for awhile. Alas, he's no Bob Ehrlich.

(Link via Eve Tushnet.)

Happy Birthday to You - Last year I averred that "it strikes Unqualified Offerings that blog entries are an apt way to honor the holiday." That remains true, but I'm not sure I have much to add to what I said then. So I'll just link to some old items:

We Hold These Truths - Excerpt: "The fourth tendency holds that the Declaration is not just a founding document of the Unitied States, but the founding document - that the Constitution, indeed the nation itself, has purpose and legitimacy only insofar as it faciltates and furthers realizing the principles inherent in the Declaration. This is the view that Unqualified Offerings holds, in company with Madison and Lincoln. (About this vexing figure for libertarians, more later.) It is dangerous for people to hold this view, both for the country and for themselves. (I would argue that each approach the Declaration listed above has its moral hazards.) To hold it is as much as to say "My loyalty is not a given, and could be withdrawn." The risks to the State here are obvious. The risks to the individual are almost as obvious . . . "

South Nashville Blues - written during the height of the pseudocontroversy over Steve Earle's then unreleased song, "John Walker's Blues." Because today is Independence Day.

Shanksville and Shanksville - Prose and verse responses, respectively, to the crash of UAL93. Tributes to the unorganized militia.

Independence - a poem about fireworks and such.

Lit'ry Corner - Aaron Haspel has a hugely entertaining and insightful meditation on "cult critics," marred only slightly by the end, where he insists on drinking the Yvor Winters Kool Ade right in front of us.

My own thought: I wonder if Winters and Leavis are a fair test of true critical cultism. Oh, they certainly are in the sense in which Aaron uses the term, don't get me wrong. But the true test of a classic, stereotypical cult - the People's Temple, the Communist Party of the USA - is whether the members loyally follow wild gyrations in doctrine. A cult leader worthy of the name, like Jim Jones or Stalin (what, you were thinking some American led the CPUSA?), proves his cult leader status by tacking wildly or even reversing course, and having his followers swallow the new line because the leader said it. War against Germany would play into the hands of the capitalists! [Germany invades Soviet Union.] War against Germany is the progressive duty of all mankind! That kind of thing.

Now, leaving aside the question of whether "cults" as such even exist, and I'm not sure they do, I'm not sure Yvor Winters and F.R. Leavis provide an ideal test. Winters certainly and Leavis apparently remained remarkably consistent in their theories and doctrines over their lifetimes. Winters never announced that the Romantics didn't suck after all; Leavis never turned savagely against the novels of D.H. Lawrence etc. Oh for T.S. Eliot to have announced late in life that poetry was actually the embrace of personality! What would Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren have done then? Alas that thought experiments must remain thought experiments! (I wonder if the art critic, Clement Greenberg, might count here, though it's been years since I gave the matter any thought and remember little beyond "ineluctable flatness.")

But that's me taking Aaron's idea for a spin and returning it with a few nicks, not any trip he set out to make. His item stands on its own and is well worth the time of anyone with even a faint interest in critiicism.

We've Been Waiting for You - Michael Kinsley catches up with the latest libertarian thinking as of - I don't know, twenty years ago? Thirty? Can any historians of libertarianism help me out here?

Anyway, I agree with him. Of course.

404 - This is cute. (Link via Arthur Silber.)

Easy for You to Say - The WSJ flub quoted below was funny but inadvertant. President Bush doesn't have that excuse:

"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush told reporters at the White House. "My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

Bring them on. I'm sure the grunts stuck in Baghdad appreciate the behind-the-lines bravado.

Unfortunate Choice of Words - Why does the Wall Street Journal hate America? or, Adventures in Vague Pronoun Reference:

This is the reason GIs continue to die, and it means the U.S. will have to make a much more forceful, systematic effort to kill and punish them if stability is going to be restored.

As if our troops didn't have enough trouble! And yes, given the full paragraph, you can figure out what the Journal writers were trying to say, but where's the fun in that?

Casualties of War - War skeptics have made much of the "one dead soldier a day" phenomenon when discussing the ex-war. For a time, it dropped back to one dead soldier every other day before, it appears, rising again. But the deaths don't begin to tell the whole story. For every death there are several injuries. For every injury there are several attacks that miss their targets. It's hard to kill people, even in war. Apparently one of the ways historians and human rights investigators determine whether a contested incident was a massacre or a true battle is to calculate the ratio of dead to wounded - the bigger that ratio gets, the more likely you have a massacre rather than combat.

So, nobody killed today, but six US soldiers wounded in Baghdad and an Iraqi interpreter dead in the attacks. Beyond the pain of the soldiers themselves - "wounded" can mean "maimed" - and the loss for the interpreter and any family he may have had, the effect of all this on all our other troops in Iraq. The deaths plus the woundings plus the misses all add to the sense of danger for the grunt in the street. Add in the psychological effect of the deaths and injuries of interpreters and minor officials on the Iraqis, and mutual distrust ramifies. That distrust, rather than the death and injury of the enemy itself, is the first aim of any guerrilla campaign. (Even if officials won't call it that.)

French Domination over American conservative mindshare must cease! Write your French representative today and demand that they stop forcing our right wing politicians and pundits to obsess over them. Look what they've done to John Cole, for instance! It's summer. He should be able to think about other things. But non! Those frog bastards with their evil rays have made him their ressentiment beyotch! Glenn Reynolds has actually fled the United States in hopes of clearing his mind of Francomania. Mon dieu, man - we have to stop them now. What if the Democrats take advantage of conservative distraction to, oh, increase federal spending or something? Huh? Oh.

Could it Be - Remember the incident with the smuggler's convoy that didn't contain any Husseins last week? Jeff Taylor in Reason Express has some speculation:

Continued weapons sweeps in central Iraq have already taken on a parallel to Vietnam's perpetual search-and-destroy missions, although on a much smaller scale. The unknown at this point is whether there are a finite number of weapons to be found, or -- in what would be another ominous parallel -- whether weapons are being sent into the country.

The possibility that arms are being shipped in could help explain why the U.S. was so fired up to chase down a convoy heading into Syria. The idea that U.S. commanders had information that they had Saddam in their sights is a bit of stretch, whereas strict orders to seal the Syrian border without admitting that such orders exist makes a lot of sense.

Makes a lot of sense, presumably, as an explanation of what was going on, if not as an excuse for it. Again, it's speculation, though intriguing speculation. As for how it might change one's moral calculus if it turned out to be true that smugglers are bringing weapons across the Syrian border, that remains an academic exercise so long as the Pentagon continues its preemptive war on an informed citizenry.

Thanks to Avram Grumer and Jean Lansford for quick responses to my LiveJournal query. Jean notes that Unqualified Offerings has not one but two LiveJournal feeds - here and here. For whatever reason, the latter is one entry more current than the former.

Jean also informs me that "there's a searchable database of feeds announced in the syndication promotion journal."

Baghdad Blogging continues to grow. Via Salam Pax, the first known Iraqi woman blogger, Zainab. And G. in Baghdad has started a photoblog.

Proposition: we'll really be getting somewhere when we start seeing Iraqi bloggers who don't live in Baghdad.