Morning Major Sources

So, already taking a few suggestions into account, I'll try to separate the content into smaller chunks, for easier digestion. Here's some of my morning reads, newspapers and MSM stuff that's worth your time. It'll change daily. NYTimes & WashPost one day, ChicagoTrib and CNN the next. Maybe I'll do one newspaper, one of CNN or MSNBC, and one French? I dunno. I kind of worry that this will end up too much like Slate's Today's Papers.

NYTimes:

• First off, al-Sadr is calling on Iraqis (mostly Shi'ites) to band together to fight American troops in Diwaniya. Remember when I said it was only a matter of time before the Mahdi Army and the Shi'ite community explodes? Well, al-Sadr is pretty cranky, and he's trying to re-assert control over his followers... but I'm not totally sure it'll work. As almost every major leader with a finger in the Iraq pie (pirhana tank?) right now is learning, nothing in this country is as simple as it seems.
  
• Civility on the web? The idea of blog ethics is still nebulous and with the freedom available on the web, any code would be so easily broken as to be non-existent. Internet sages Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales seem to be pushing for some sort of general ettiquette, but that kind of removes much of the appeal of the internet. More commentary in my IDS column from last week. Also, if you have extra time, Reason Magazine did a nice overview of the general problem here.
  
• Sol LeWitt died, at age 78. A quite virtuostic conceptual artist, proving that Modern Art doesn't have to just be thumbing its nose and winking all the damn time. See some of his work here.

WashPost:

• Speaking of Internet ethics, this gets the award for best headline all day: "Mexican Drug Cartels Leave a Bloody Trail on YouTube". That's some creative use of YouTube for sure... intimidating rival drug gangs. An almost surreal article... could you imagine reading this five years ago?
• You know, the cost of cutting CO2 emissions may be pretty damn high. I mean, the Kyoto Protocol, well, that's goofy because it'll never work. The biggest hurdle in the "cap-and-trade" CO2 emissions model is companies that don't like being capped, like utilities, who are charging all of the CO2 allowances to the consumer, rather than the marginal cost they were themselves charged. So, much as Al Gore is jumping up and down saying that we have to do something... it appears that doing something may have profound effects on industry, labor, and global competition. Especially since no one in the developing world will be taking any of these steps. Doing lots of things may be less important than doing the right thing.
  
• Oh, and AMERICAN SUMO!!!! Enjoy. Best line: "They carry heaping piles of noodles, very popular, as they strut-waddle around in their bathrobes like Tony Soprano going down the driveway to get his morning paper." I lawled pretty good at that one.

Finally, a rundown of other stuff I found interesting in the papers:

• LATimes has a piece on "wage insurance," a kind of stopgap to prevent people from having to receive unemployment insurance. I am skeptical, but it seems like a reasonable free-market solution to unemployment in America. Still, it seems to be shuttling people towards low-wage, low-skill jobs, when at least some of these guys must have mental faculty for something more interesting, given proper training.
• For any French readers, the French presidential campaign is officially off to the races! At 0h01 last night, everybody's designated TV time, posters, etc. began. Two weeks left, first round, Sunday, April 22. Here's an AP piece in English. Despite the fact that only 29% of people say they'll vote for Sarko, 59% (!!) think he will be the winner. Yikes.
  
• A dissenting voice on climate change from Richard Lindzen in Newsweek.
• IU costs rise again.
• Zimbabwe in crisis. BBC's got the bishops warning of uprising (as does AP), but Mugabe could seriously be losing his grip. Still, it might be worth pause. None of his replacements look much better. The New Republic has a good overview of Mugabe's situation here (subscription required).