THREE MOMENTS: Thrilling picture series. Report on the ongoing humanitarian efforts at Umm Qasr. Caution about returning veterans of a just war. First two links via Oxblog, last via Regions of Mind. Read more

WELOVETHEIRAQIINFORMATIONMINISTER.COM!!!!!! Via Oxblog. Read more

DICTATORSHIPS AND DISEASE. How the Chinese government’s hatred of Taiwan is helping spread SARS. Read more

I’M A TOTAL SHANK. Have been forgetting, for weeks and weeks, to tell you that Amy Welborn is back to regular blogging. She’s basically turned her site into a Catholic warblog. If you are interested in that, you probably know this already! –but just in case, I figured I’d slap a note here on the blog. Go, read! Read more

“Faith in ‘progress’–in the lower spheres of intelligence appears as ascending life; but this is self-deception; in the higher spheres of intelligence as descending life. “Description of the symptoms. “Unity of point of view: uncertainty about standards of value. “Fear of a general ‘in vain.’ “Nihilism.” —Will to Power OK, WTP is basically Nietzsche’s notes, so it’s often hard to tell precisely what he was getting at, and this snippet is no exception. But given the other things he’s been... Read more

JUSTICE, MERCY, AND THE FALL: Have been thinking a lot recently about justice and mercy, especially about the famous Adam Smith tagline, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” Here is a very much unformed thought about that, for you to handle as you wish. In a lot of ways, contemporary political debate caricatures the left as the party of mercy and the right as the party of justice. Leftists want to free prisoners, end war, give poor... Read more

BLOGFEST QUICKIE: The fest was fun. Greasy food was eaten, new bloggers were met, intriguing stuff was discussed. I’d like to blog sometime soon about a conversation/argument I had with Eugene Volokh about the legal/common-law vs. the philosophical approach, but I have neither the time nor the mental acuity for that right now. So instead I’ll just tell you who was there. It was a heavily legal gathering: Law types included Gary O’Connor of StatConBlog, the statutory construction blog; John... Read more

EVERYONE’S A CRITIC… but not everyone is as useful and charming a critic as Tepper, who points out that my most recent JWR column was… less than maximally coherent. He’s right. I tried to clarify in the comments box; this link, to an earlier post on a related topic, might help too. Or maybe not. Read more

DIVERSITY AND UNITY IN EDUCATION: This post from temporary Volokhonspirator (hmm, sounds too much like a dinosaur really) Eric Muller is right but not right enough. Muller notes, “[M]y own personal experience of teaching for four years at a racially homogeneous law school (the University of Wyoming) and now at a racially integrated one (UNC) tells me that racial diversity does in fact contribute importantly to full and rigorous discussion and debate in a law school classroom.” I expect in... Read more

FILM NOIR QUERY: Just finished The Noir Style, an excellent collection of telling shots from noir movies, with just enough commentary to be useful without being intrusive. I’m very, very interested in analyses of film noir (from narrative, motif/imagery, lighting, camera angle, character, really any perspectives at all), so if you have a favorite site or book, I’d greatly appreciate an email. Thanks! The only noir Net site I know of is “The Dark Room,” which is a lot of... Read more