And on the spot where they watched their blog,

The grasses they will never grow…

A completely random assortment of topics today. Manic-Depressive Jukebox time.

Hit & Run: Good sharp post pointing out that in the “Golden Age of immigrant assimilation,” there were all kinds of people who didn’t want immigrants to assimilate, and prevented assimilation through e.g. restrictive housing covenants and, you know, bigotry. Necessary corrective to people who argue that the US can’t handle 1900-sized immigration waves anymore because of multiculturalism and resistance to assimilation.

Juan Cole: Whoa, an actual professor of Middle Eastern history. Isn’t it a rule of blogging that you’re not supposed to know what you’re talking about? Via Matthew Yglesias.

Matthew Yglesias: Where to get good bagels in D.C.?

Oxblog: Scroll around for a “how are things going in Iraq” round-up from David Adesnik. (And a basic, but disheartening, Patrick Belton post on getting more troops to Iraq.) I have written almost nothing about this subject, because I don’t feel like I know what’s going on (and I doubt many other people do, either). I’ve read a lot of blogs that focus relentlessly on the negative, with absolutely no sense of whether things are, overall, better than they were before the invasion; I’ve also read a lot of blogs that tell us that in a few months’ time Iraq will look like reconstructed Europe, and the rest of the Middle East will be swept with a wave of liberal reform. So far, to me, the most striking point Adesnik makes is that there has been very little negative reaction in other countries–certainly a lot less than, say, Gene Healy’s (very persuasive) antiwar essay here would lead one to expect. But ’tis not a year or two shows us an occupation. It’s pretty early for anyone to be bustin’ out the “I told you so”s.

Which is all the more obvious if you are reading Riverbend Blog. I’m about to add her to the blogroll. Iraqi woman blogging from Baghdad.

Sean Collins: Good point about Blankets; more on manga (small point in favor of Collins’s marketing argument: I stopped in at Books-a-Million, a cheapo chain store, the other day. Manga and a few manga-format-but-not-manga-art-style comics were nestled randomly on a display table among trashy teen novels. You had to take a second glance to even guess which books would have comics inside. The place was heavily manga-laden in general, too); and a moving, must-read post on eating disorders and, you know, love.

And: Signs of the Apocalypse, The Game: My father agrees with Rod Dreher, David Morrison, and the Right-Wing Film Geek! I will probably go see this movie.