The DoD kicked out a press release today about Iraq’s oil. About what you’d expect no matter what you believe: promises to preserve the oil for Iraq, warnings that Saddam may intend to destroy the oil, ecological warnings, etc. I found this quote interesting, though: “Oil is a natural resource of Iraq that provides commerce, income for education and other needs, and infrastructure. The department considers destruction of that resource as an act of terrorism.” ...

The Smoking Gun has the police report about that guy who was arrested for wearing a peace T-shirt and refusing to leave the mall he was in. The police report implies that Mr. Downs was causing a disturbance. As the right wing rushes to link to the police report, I just thought I’d point out that it’s not actually very conclusive. The first statement is from a store detective got a complaint about a verbal dispute; the complaint didn’t include any details about who started it. The store detective didn’t investigate. He just went back and called mall security to warn them about the dangerous T-shirt wearers. Yeah, that’s a balanced response. ...

Man, this is why I love sports. Battie just blocked a shot which saved the game for the Celtics. You can’t really tell from the picture, but he’s pogoing up and down here, arms tight to his side, looking just like this. Cutest damned thing I’ve seen in a while. How can you not love this team?

So I wonder. I’m on some mailing lists which get a fair amount of noise mixed in with the signal. But it’s hard to tell whether a given piece of mail is gonna be signal or noise before I open it. You can’t tell by person — most people say something intelligent at least some of the time. Besides, I really hate categorically killfileing anyone. I wonder if you couldn’t use spamprobe as an effective mailing list filter? ...

Another one of those “hey, look who’s anti-war” bits here. I find ‘em interesting and in many cases telling. It’s important not to let the right paint all protesters as stupid hippies, much as it’s important to remember that the right isn’t comprised purely of Neanderthals. Anyhow, Warren Langley is getting involved in planning anti-war civil disobedience designed to shut down San Francisco’s Financial District. This is interesting, since Langley used to be president of the Pacific Exchange. More recently, he was almost named CEO of a Nasdaq/Liffe venture (original), although apparently they couldn’t come to terms on a contract. Langley also served in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy. ...

It’s been a busy few days in the Iraq debate. Let’s summarize — no, is not enough! Let’s predict! Turkey declined the opportunity to help out with the war over the weekend, but now the Turkish military is pushing for a revote (original). Remember, in Turkey, the military is a political force unto itself. Now, there’s no chance that Abdullah Gul, the current Prime Minister, is going to call that vote this week. Gul has no leverage to push for a revote; he’s a lame duck. There’s a by-election coming on Sunday, in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan will undoubtedly gain a parliamentary seat. As leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party, he’ll be elected Prime Minister immediately. (Up until quite recently, he was banned from running for Parliament, largely because of — wait for it — the Turkish military. Now you know why the government has been in favor of aiding the US; the JDP needs to keep on the military’s good side.) ...

Edward Tufte has collected some interesting links regarding information design and the presentation of information regarding the Columbia disaster. I recommend in general his Ask E.T. board, which has tons of well-written thoughtful commentary on design matters.

Kevin Drum comments on an excellent post by Eugene Volokh on college sports. The core question: “Why should we be demanding that athletes who are getting an education in athletics pass muster under academic standards, or for that matter engage in academics at all?” I feel obliged to observe that in many cases, we aren’t. Let’s look at the four major North American professional sports. Neither the NHL or MLB really care much about college educations. Not coincidentally, both of them have very good minor league systems, in which hockey or baseball players respectively can get fine educations in their sport. The NBA doesn’t have much of a farm league, and angsts a fair bit about kids coming straight to the NBA. Since there’s no way for a team to keep the rights to a player while sending him to the minor leagues to mature, this is no big surprise. The NFL is in the same boat. ...

I’ve sort of been putting off writing about Battle Royale on account of “Damn, I have no idea what to make of that.” But faint heart never won Oscar, or some such, so let’s see if we can make some sense out of the uber-controversial high school Series 7. First off, the brief summary: a class of Japanese high school students are brought to an island, given random weapons, and they don’t get to leave till only one is left alive. If they don’t get to that point within a few days, they all die. This is theoretically part of a program to deal with juvenile delinquency. Carnage ensues. ...

The Turkish Parliament voted today on the motion to allow the US to base troops in Turkey for the war on Iraq. Initially, the motion appeared to pass by a thin margin of 264-251, with 19 abstentions. However, Speaker Bulent Arinc quickly announced that the motion failed because it failed to gain a majority of yes votes. I.e., the abstentions had it. Bulent Arinc is a member of the majority Justice and Development Party, whose leader publicly backed the motion. The narrow margin along with his actions has to represent a fairly sizable division within the party, which is no surprise, but I’m sure Recep Tayyip Erdogan was hoping that it wouldn’t be quite this painful. ...