Frontline ran an excellent piece on North Korea tonight. As usual, they stuck all the good stuff up on their Web site. Gotta love it. And, since (as we all know) PBS is hopelessly liberal and biased, they made sure to include an interview with the highest ranking North Korean ever to defect in which he praises Bush to the skies. Cunning, those liberals. My cynicism aside, I particularly liked the Ashton Carter interview. He has lots of good insights, and he takes a pretty rational appearing line on the implications of a war on the Korean peninsula. Also, he has the quote of the entire piece: ...

My brother’s tres hip internationally acclaimed (really!) design group, Release1 (warning: Flash site, but it’s cool, and it’s my family, so don’t complain), opened the McDonald’s Project tonight. I just got back. Awesome opening — the place was packed, quite literally. There was a line of people outside waiting for people to leave, cause the gallery was over capacity. It’s down at the Berwick Research Project, in Boston, and runs through next weekend. It’ll be in New York in August. ...

There’s wide-spread looting in Iraq today. Not very surprisingly, the social structure of the country is in chaos. Hospitals are being looted; suspected looters are being killed in the street. On the BBC this morning, a reporter talked about seeing a man beat to death in front of him. The killers said “He wasn’t from this neighborhood.” Was he a looter? Maybe, maybe not. But man, it’s getting rough out there. ...

I watched a couple of episodes of CSI over the weekend. Wow. Now, that’s what I call a cop show for the new millenium. It’s really one of the most overinflated things I’ve ever seen on television. Every single image is saturated with color, usually blues; the cast is shot so as to be both gritty and polished at the same time. It is, in fact, a pretty good embodiment of Vegas. The show doesn’t take place on the strip, but the design ethos is still very Vegasesque. ...

Philippe de Croy of the Volokh Conspiracy provides guidelines for conservative commentators who want to talk about Iraq’s chemical weapons. It’s a nice public service, really. (Or anyhow, I assume that’s what he means when he says “Talk a lot about things that ‘aren’t clear’ or that ‘remain to be seen.’ These sorts of assertions are good because they are hard to falsify.”) Sauce for the goose…

Kurdish forces have occupied Kirkuk; according to NPR this morning, there are about 20,000 Kurdish soldiers in the city along with a fairly token US presence. This is supposedly a trigger point for a Turkish invasion, so we’ll soon see if Turkey and/or the US are bluffing or not. Abdullah Gul, the Turkish Foreign Minister, said Colin Powell agreed to allow Turkish military observers to go to Kirkuk (original), and that US forces would arrive “within a few hours” to take control of the situation.

Alas, but it’s true: Nick Urfe’s “…inexplicably fancy trash” has shut its doors. Well, not shut, precisely. More that the store at which one found those interesting little intellectually pornographic tidbits has stopped getting in new stock. You can still browse the old stuff, and it’s still entirely worthwhile to do so. I stumbled across the place early in what I might laughably call my blogging career, and it is still the touchstone I return to when I really badly need to remind myself that there’s more to write about beyond the war and politics. It offered, in cupped hands, the possibility of litrachur in this new mode of expression. Mindbending stuff. ...

That CBS Baghdad webcam is currently showing footage of a tank and a slew of Iraqi citizens trying to tear down a big statue of Saddam. Just in case anyone wants to watch. (Addendum: here’s a rough screenshot.)

Still no chemical weapons. Maybe some will turn up tomorrow. On February 5th, Colin Powell talked about Iraqi chemical weapons. And we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them. He wouldn’t be passing out the orders if he didn’t have the weapons or the intent to use them. Iraqi field commanders have been willing to commit war crimes. We’ve seen suicide bombers. We’ve seen Iraqi troops dressed in civilian clothing. We’ve seen false surrenders. The US has made no secret of its intent to prosecute these as war crimes. Yet… none of these field commanders, who Powell said were authorized to use chemical weapons, have done so. Why not? Why would they commit the crimes they committed, but no others? ...

Rules of Attraction rocked; thought you’d like to know. Nah, really. It’s glossy and terribly calculated, but it’s also stark and unflinching, and I like that in a movie. The plot isn’t exactly much but you wouldn’t complain if it was a romance with this little plot. Think of this as the anti-romance. Come to think of it, pair it off with The Talented Mr. Ripley and maybe Igby Goes Down and you’ve got yourself a nice thematic trilogy. ...