Progress continues:

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday in separate attacks on their military convoys in Iraq, according to the U.S. military.
Two soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed Sunday when their convoy came under attack by small-arms fire in the northern town of Mosul, according to a U.S. Army spokesman.
Witnesses told CNN the soldiers were shot and wounded while riding in a civilian vehicle. Men then cut the soldiers’ throats while they were still in the vehicle and a crowd of Iraqis, including children, stripped their bodies of personal effects and weapons, the witnesses said.

Lovely.
In these troubled times, we’re fortunate enough to have leaders with keen foresight:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.

The welcomed response is becoming overwhelming.

Buyer beware:

What CBS 2 found that some of the most famous stores in our area are doing is not only disgusting, it’s dangerous. Selling used lingerie. Shame On You went undercover and what we found is shocking.
. . .
[W]e bought thong underwear at two Victoria’s Secret stores, and at Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s. We took them home, cut off the sales tags to suggest they’d been worn then marked each pair with two tiny black dots on the labels.
Every store took back our thongs without the tags, never asking if they’d been worn. Next our hidden camera caught the sales clerk at a Victoria’s Secret attaching a new price tag on our returned thong, hanging it up and then putting it back on the floor for sale. We know it’s the same thong because our two dots were on the label. Unbelievably, it�s not illegal in the tri-state area to sell used underwear, but “It could get someone sick.”
Microbiologist Dr. Lori Daane says dangerous bacteria like yeast and ecoli can survive for weeks on lingerie and can be easily transferred. “Given the fact that you can get these organisms on this clothing, especially thong underwear, it’s pretty likely you�re going to get some fecal contamination.”
. . .
We also found our returned thongs back on the sales floor at another Victoria’s Secret, at Saks Fifth Avenue and at Macy’s.
. . .
Interestingly, in New York it’s illegal to sell hats that have been returned but not thong underwear.
Some stores do refuse to take back underwear, a policy that should be posted. But the best protection for consumers is to wash, wash, wash your underwear before putting it on.

Just one more reason to buy inexpensive, packaged underwear.
Via King of Fools.

Recently, CNN’s “ Anderson Cooper 360�” had a segment on bizarre sleep behavior which some of you may have seen. Here’s more of the same from a WJLA report (via Wrong Side of Happiness):

FRANTIC, UNCONTROLLED EATING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, WHILE YOUR STILL SLEEPING.
IT’S CALLED SLEEP EATING …
Susan Smith: “Then I’d get up and see all the food in the kitchen that was gone. You know that I’d eaten.”
IT’S A BIZARRE SLEEP DISORDER THAT BOTH SUSAN SMITH AND NANCY JORDAN HAVE SUFFERED WITH FOR DECADES.
Nancy Jordan: “This is chicken breast. I had them whole, frozen.”
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS SLEEP EAT. A PERSON CAN HAVE SEVERAL EPISODES IN ONE NIGHT AND NOT REMEMBER A THING.
Susan: “Ice cream, bread cake … you know you don’t get up and eat apples.”
DOCTORS SAY “SLEEP EATING” USUALLY AFFECTS WOMEN AND IT USUALLY DEVELOPS IN THEIR TEENS. AND SOME PEOPLE DON’T JUST EAT FOOD – BUT WILL ACTUALLY EAT THINGS LIKE CIGARETTES OR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS.
. . .
Lea Montgomery, nurse: “I’m not talking about making a plate, sitting at a table, having a nice meal in your sleep. I’m talking about frenzied, chaotic, disorganized and primitive eating.”

We tend to view such phenomena through the lens of our own experience. For me this behavior is difficult to imagine. I’m told that when I was a young kid I got up during my sleep a few times and wandered around the house. But that was many years ago, and it’s a far cry from eating frozen food and cigarettes.
The human brain can do some funny things.

I see that Resonance recently evolved from a Slithering Reptile to a Flappy Bird in the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem (Current Rank: #983).
I’m not exactly sure how this index is calculated. Looking back at the historical statistics, I see there are abrupt swings up and down in the number of inbound links.

After observing that C.S. Lewis died the same day as President Kennedy (a fact I similarly was unaware of), James Joyner notes how the amount of media coverage an event garners is contingent on whether or not other events overshadow it:

What’s particularly fascinating to me is how much this illustrates the power of the news cycle. Comparatively minor events a congressman’s affair with an employee, the murder of a child beauty queen) can become huge news stories if they take place during slow news periods. Conversely, rather major stories can get buried if they coincide with a hot story.
One wonders, for example, what happened on September 11, 2001 and the week or so thereafter that virtually no one knows about. Newspapers come out every day, regardless of whether there is anything exciting to put in them. Ditto nightly newscasts and the 24 hour news channels. The airtime gets filled with something every day.

This works both ways, of course. Often public figures deliberately release unfavorable announcements at a low point in the news cycle (e.g., Friday night) to minimize the public splash it makes.