Minor point for those obsessing about Robert Novak’s outing of Valerie Wilson (née Plame): Why, in his initial column that outed her, did Novak use her maiden name? See discussion of the issue by Kevin Drum (Plame vs. Wilson) and Joshua Micah Marshall (There’s a rather…).

What did we do for fun before we had the Bulwer-Lytton contest? Fortunately, we don’t have to answer that: 2005 results.

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

No time to obsess properly over this, so just a quick one to mention some noteworthy photography-themed links I’ve been staring at lately:

* I am very much in love with BAGnewsNotes.

* ymatt took one look at more bouncy balls and declared it an obvious piece of Photoshop fakery. At first I agreed. Then I looked closer, and decided no, it was real. ymatt seemed to agree, then did some more fiddling, and said no, he was leaning fake. I’m still leaning real. What do you think?

* You’ve seen me link before to daily dose of imagery. Recently, valued Lies.com contributor Sven sent me this link from photojunkie profiling the amateur photographer behind the site: Sam Javanrouh : Serving up your Daily Dose.

P.S. It’s Sven’s birthday today. Happy birthday, dude.

Here’s a page-one story from today’s Washington Post with nasty details about an Iraqi general who apparently was wrapped inside a sleeping bag and beaten to death by US Army interrogators at Abu Ghraib: Documents tell of brutal improvisation by GIs.

This was in November, 2003, the time when new-and-improved interrogation techniques were being imported from Guantanamo so we could shut down the Iraqi insurgency once and for all.

Whew. I’m sure glad we had the balls to do what was needed back then. Otherwise, we might still be fighting the insurgency today.

Oh, wait.

P.S. Sorry for the long posting hiatus. I’m back now.