Friday, October 20, 2006

Recommended Reading

Recently, the British medical journal Lancet issued a study that said that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. "liberation" efforts. The reaction to that figure has been all too predictable: Those who are against the war are sure the study is correct. Those who aren't insist it's a pack of lies. I've read a few articles on both sides and I'm unconvinced that any of their authors even looked at the study, except maybe as necessary to glean data they could use in making their cases. This is how it works in Partisan America: No new revelations are valid except those that support what you already believed.

This article by Fred Kaplan is the first one I've read that breaks that trend. Kaplan is against the war but he believes the study is flawed. On the other hand, as he notes, even if the true number is a third or a fifth of the estimate, it's still a shocking number of dead human beings.

• Posted at 8:15 PM · LINK

Recommended Listening

Mitchell Anthony has a very popular series of podcast interviews called "Creating Success." In each, he chats with someone about their career...and I guess the idea is that these are successful people and we can all learn from them. In fact, I'm sure that's the premise here. I was just confused for a second because he sometimes talks to me. But then I remembered that our latest chat is about the late, great Jack Kirby...and it ran so long, Mitchell cut it into two parts. You can listen to Part One and then you can listen to Part Two.

• Posted at 6:24 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

I've long been a big fan of singer-impressionist Fred Travalena. Here's a short video — less than two minutes — of him doing just about the toughest thing a mimic can do: Do someone right in front of them. As you'll see, he rose to the challenge...

• Posted at 12:12 AM · LINK