Wait, there are counter-insurgency experts?

In my email, I see this headline: "Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort." It talks about the circle of people with military and academic backgrounds, assisting in the counter-insurgency planning. One of the guys, the Aussie anthropologist, and others were talked about at length in a great New Yorker article, which I missed a couple weeks ago.

The WaPo article is an OK rehashing, but the New Yorker article in particular is the only non-miserable, non-repetitive, non-partisan, constructive, slightly optimistic (though admittedly resigned) piece about the Iraq war I've read in a long time. Figured I'd link to them. The gist - that a military effort should be a tiny portion of the GWOT, that we're getting crushed in the media/information/i'd-say-'marketing' side of the war.

Jake and I can take Serena and Conan

Last night devolved into Wii playing, which was a lot of fun. A LOT of tennis was played. Jake and I became dominant players. So when I saw one of the YouTube most viewed vids was Conan O'Brian vs Serena Williams at Wii Tennis, I had to watch. Stupid NBC pulled it off of YouTube though, which is fine, but they don't offer the video among their videos online (I'd link to them, if they had it). So, after searching a lot, I finally found it:


Via: VideoSift

If they pull that, try here.

Bostonians are my favorite stupid people

So Boston was recently freaked out by a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, thinking it was terrorism. I know. That is being covered elsewhere, by people more skilled than me. I just wanted to point out, you can buy "I survived 1/31/07" t-shirts.

I wanted to say to Chris, a huge ATHF fan who recently moved to Boston - that must hurt a little.

Update: from an IM with Chris:
honestly Im too embarassed about how the city handled it to talk about it much :)
I was donating blood at mass general hospital when this broke and I was like 'Whats Err doing on the news'

I also wanted to embed this video:

People Love Gavin Newsom

Someone (maybe Colin?) recently told me they thought Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Fran, was electable on a broader scale than one hippie city, whose name is used to add serious disdain to the already hated word 'liberal'.

He's loved by Streetsblog, and bothers Bush, so he's a winner in my eyes. But dammit, it just came out, he cheated on his wife - with his campaign manager's wife! Talk about a bad boss. Now, while I'm sure no true liberal can start hating Newsom, I'm sure a lot of people will agree with this, from the article:

If it were a matter of Newsom having an affair with a single woman, that would be one thing, but to go behind a trusted aide's back and have an affair with that person's spouse, certainly makes Newsom seem unprincipled," one person wrote. "It's not a matter of sexual prudishness; it's a matter of trustworthiness. Newsom failed this one badly. I supported him until now, but he's lost a lot of my respect.

Update: Admission video - Bill Clinton's lesson was learned by someone.