The arrest of a doctor in at the Gold Coast Hospital near Brisbane, accused of being connected to the failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow, brings international terrorism a lot closer to home than it has ever been before for me. Of course, it’s front page news, and the fact that most of the (alleged) participants in these attacks were doctors is pretty disturbing. Not surprisingly, the hospital’s switchboard was jammed with calls.

Still, my impression is that most people here are taking it in their stride. The risk of being caught up in a terror attack is part of the background of modern life, along with other largely random risks like hit-and-run drivers and street thugs, to name just two. At a policy level (and arguably in terms of moral response, though I think they are all fairly similar cases) these problems are different, and require different responses. But as far as day to day life is concerned, it’s mainly a matter of getting on with it.

Update “Alleged” turns out to be the operative word. The case against the Brisbane doctor apparently turns on the fact that when police tried to interview him about his links to one of the British accused, they found him at the airport with a one-way ticket to India. But it appears he was going there to join his wife who had gone home a week or so earlier after having a baby.

Glen Greenwald took a few bites out the latest NYTimes transcription, by White House stenographer Michael Gordon, of Administration/military talking points in the campaign for war against Iran, made by Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, now US military spokesman in Iraq and previously, (not reported) Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq. So somebody at the Gray Lady apparently decided that the piece might be improved by a mininal amount of actual reporting, such as the fact that the claims in question have been repeatedly denied by the Iranian government (with backing, although this is not mentioned, from a large number of independent analysts).

What’s interesting to me is that these changes are not noted. But if the journal of record had attributed the remarks to the wrong general or mis-stated the spokesman’s position, the error would surely have been noted with a correction. A blogger who made a change like this in response to justified criticism would get accused, rightly, of a stealth correction. Shouldn’t the New York Times be held to at least as high a standard?

“Brad De Long”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/07/jeff-lomonaco-p.html posts an op-ed that my mate Jeff Lomonaco tried and failed to get published in the L.A. Times two weeks ago. [click to continue…]

“Tyler Cowen”:http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/07/is-economic-ine.html points to a very interesting new paper by Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues (PDF – it was “here”:http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/download_pdf.php?id=1510 this morning, but this link isn’t working for me any more; see “here”:http://www.isop.ucla.edu/cms/files/acemoglu_bautista_querubin_robinson.pdf for a slightly earlier version) on the relationship between political and economic inequality. Tyler’s gloss is that this provides general insights into the “meme” of whether economic inequality is bad for growth, and concludes that “at least from that data set, the real problem seems to be rent-seeking behavior through the political process.” Thus, unless I misunderstand him (which is possible; he may just be blogging in shorthand), he is saying that this paper provides significant evidence suggesting that economic inequality isn’t the cause of slower economic growth; instead, political inequality and rent-seeking are at fault. [click to continue…]

The link in my previous post is thanks to a new blog: No Caption Needed. It is both a book and a blog by my colleague Bob Hariman at Northwestern and his collaborator John Louis Lucaites at Indiana. This undertaking is “dedicated to discussion of the role that photojournalism and other visual practices play in a vital democratic society. No caption needed, but many are provided. . . .” The blog just started recently, but already offers all sorts of interesting images and commentary.

Wow.

Try it here.

I should probably add this:

(This isn’t breaking news so we may have covered it earlier, but I don’t recall seeing it here.)

This morning, “Orin Kerr noted”:http://volokh.com/posts/1183395435.shtml that a three-judge panel had declined delay jail time for Scooter Libby. In an early “comment”:http://volokh.com/posts/1183395435.shtml#237628 on the thread, I said:

bq. Now we’ll see whether Libby has enough leverage to get a pardon before he goes to jail, or whether he’ll have to wait. Seeing as Bush’s ratings are permanently in the toilet, and he probably doesn’t think Libby didn’t anything wrong anyway, a pardon might well be forthcoming.

And as things turned out this afternoon, “it certainly didn’t take long to come forth.”:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-CIA-Leak-Trial.html?hp Bush commuted Libby’s sentence. (Not a pardon, so we still get to call him a convicted criminal — at least till January 2009, when I imagine a full pardon will be dispensed. But the bottom line is, no jail time for Scooter.) Well done good and faithful servant, I suppose.

So checking the post today I found a letter addressed to my son, inviting him to apply for a Citibank Platinum Select Mastercard. Up to 40,000 American Airlines airmiles included! I’ve had a chat with the little guy about it (I still call him the little guy — corny, I know, but other Dads will understand), and he won’t be signing up, partly because it’s a bad deal (18.24 percent variable rate, annual fee after the first year), but mostly because he is six and a half weeks old.

Maps don’t always give you the best known route to a destination. Now you can tell Google Maps what alternate route you want to take simply by dragging the blue line that indicates directions to another road. Here’s my rerouting of an Evanston-Chicago route that maps always tell you to do by going out to the highway, which is not necessarily the most efficient. (Of course, in that case, you could also just click on the “Avoid highways” button in the upper-left corner, but that still doesn’t give you the best route.) Another change seems to be that clicking on “Link to this page” now gives you a highlighted link right below it ready to be copied.

I understand that some other maps may have already had this feature. But I don’t think other maps are nearly as user-friendly as Google Maps so this is good news. Also, for those not following developments in this realm, the service also has My Maps now, which means that you can create maps with various markers, save them, and share them with others. This is very useful when numerous people ask you for touristy suggestions about the same place over and over again. You have to have a Google Account to use My Maps. Just click on the My Maps tab right below the Google Maps logo.

[thanks]

I was able to pick up an iPhone early through a local contact at Apple, and I have to say it’s really something. No of course I wasn’t able to do that — who do you think I am? Besides, I already have a phone on a relatively new contract. But I was in the Campus Bookstore here at the U of A and, while briefly down in the computer section, I heard store employees field two calls from people asking whether it would be possible to buy an iPhone there tomorrow, and whether there would be an educational discount on them. The guy in the store replied with more than a trace of sadness that they weren’t carrying the phone because it was only available at Apple Stores and AT&T outlets. He didn’t know about the educational discount. I was only there for about five minutes and clearly these weren’t the first two calls they’d had about this today.

I won’t be buying one anytime soon but, like I “said before”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/06/04/iphone/, it seems to me that the iPhone is going to be a success for Apple, and will probably provide a large kick in the ass to other cellphone manufacturers in the process. Criticism of the iPhone — and general backlash against the widespred interest amongst consumers — has been brewing for some time now. “John Gruber”:http://daringfireball.net/ has been keeping track of “some”:http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/straws_grasping “examples.”:http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/iphone_high_water_mark

Having read a bunch of the iPhone Naysayers, I’m struck by how much they miss the point of what Apple is trying to do with the device (in addition, I find myself wondering what the qualifications for becoming an IT Industry Analyst are, exactly).

[click to continue…]

I should really have blogged the outcome of the Treaty negotiations before this, but haven’t had time to comb through the fine print of the agreement. Three points though that are pretty clear. First, as discussed in my earlier post, the presumption of the member states that this can and should be shoved through on a nod and a wink is both unwarranted and likely to do long term damage to the EU’s legitimacy if it succeeds. See further “Glyn Morgan”:http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2701067.ece on why the UK in particular should have a referendum:

The ethical rationale for an EU referendum is even more important than the political rationale. It is not healthy in a democracy for people to believe – as they will, if there is no referendum – that the political classes are a rule unto themselves, heedless of public opinion, and eager to remove from the political agenda fundamental constitutional issues. It doesn’t matter that the current proposals change little, and much of what they do change is in Britain’s interest. It matters that people, rightly or wrongly, believe that the EU has gone too far, too fast and without their proper consultation. For that reason alone, Britain needs a referendum.

[click to continue…]

I don’t seem to be doing too well playing rock, paper, scissors over on Facebook so I’ve decided to focus my energies on taking care of my adopted turtle Turquoise. It’s good prepartion for when I’ll get a real turtle likely in the near future (unlike some turtle plagiarists, it’s a plan I’ve had for a while).

Unfortunately, you can only earn munny to feed your pet by having your pet pet by someone else or petting other people’s pets. (That’s not as hard to say three times fast as it may seem at first read…) And it turns out that despite having over 150 friends on Facebook, only three of them have (fluff)Friends, one because I asked him this morning. So this is a request that if we are linked on Facebook (or should be since we know each other) then can you please come over and show Turquoise some affection? Thanks!

Anyone wondering why I would spend time on Facebook has to understand that it is imperative for the legitimacy of my research to familiarize myself with these services. It’s a sacrifice, but all in the name of science.

I should add that I have been thinking about a more substantive post concerning Facebook and hope to get around to it one of these days. Lots going on there, it is spreading like wildfire way past college students, and there are some understandable reasons for that. More later. It’s time to check in on Turquoise now.

Liberal Fascism, the forthcoming opus by Jonah Goldberg, has undergone a subtitle change, as perhaps you have heard. Formerly it warned of “The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton.” Said temptation will now run “…From Hegel to Whole Foods.”

The delays in publication must have been necessary given the burdens of fresh scholarship demanded by this broadening of scope.

The pub date at Amazon is December 26, which is not the part of the season when trade publishers bring out books they are going to push very hard. Somebody at Doubleday probably had the same thought recently expressed elsewhere:

I assume Frederick Kagan, Bradley Schlotzman, and Jonah’s mom are already getting complementary copies; Dinesh von Souza will probably do his patriotic duty; which leaves – ? A mule train a half-mile long will have to be rounded up to ship the remainder of the edition to the respectively vice-presidential and presidential libraries of Dan Quayle and George W Bush, where they will serve to fill out the echoing bookshelves and glut the hungry silverfish.

Hint to Goldberg: Make it a little more “campaign friendly.” That’s where dropping Hillary from the subtitle is probably going to hurt you some. How about “The Totalitarian Temptation from Dialectics to the Democratic Candidates”? Plus you’d get that extra alliteration — a real bonus, catchiness-wise.

At Minor Tweaks, Tom Bartlett runs through a list of “Things you don’t want to hear from the Apple tech guy”:

— “Can you hold please? I need to ask my supervisor a question.”

— “Huh. That usually works.”

— “Did you back everything up?”

— “Wow. Hmm.”

— “Can you hold again for me?”

— “See, right now, your computer doesn’t know it has a hard drive.”

— “Ai-yi-yi.”

Somewhere in Scandinavia, the computer simulation of an IKEA saleswoman is giggling.