Oscar Jr. Was Here

News from Iraq

On OpinionJournal, Robert L. Pollock reports (free registration required) from Baghdad. Much of what he finds was either new to me or woefully underreported. Excerpts:

Among the thousands of friends and relatives who have come to this mass grave near Hilla to find their loved ones, there is surprisingly little bitterness against the U.S. for encouraging and then abandoning that rebellion. Some even express hope that Iraq could become an American state. "Saddam, Saddam," one man mutters in disbelief, staring at the bodies. "Television only show Iraq Ali Baba [Iraqis as thieves]," complains another of the foreign media's fixation with looting, "not show this."

Not surprisingly, none of these people thinks that finding weapons of mass destruction is critical to the case for war. The old regime did most of its dirty work the old-fashioned way, with a pistol to the head. Nor are they alarmed, like so many distant pundits, that Iraq has traded tyranny for anarchy. Even a messy freedom is something to savor.

and

One of the Baghdadis eager to tell his story is a former agent of Iraq's intelligence service, or Mukhabarat. He has effectively turned himself in to Mr. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. He says that Saddam used money from illegal oil sales to buy off a U.N. weapons inspector, and names a well-known figure. He also offers details of plans to bribe two U.S. congressmen, though he is not sure that the money ever changed hands. He has no documents to back up his allegations, but his identity checks out. He tells me he worked in Iraq's U.S. embassy prior to the first Gulf War, where he found "Islam without Muslims." "Americans don't lie, they smile honestly," he elaborates. "I wasn't brave enough to say this a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes I wish I hadn't seen the U.S. The uneducated are not depressed."

Could he be referring to these two U.S. congressmen?

Furthermore,

Of all the preconceptions I had before my visit, the idea that Iraqis would demand a provisional government of their own at the earliest possible date was most wrong.

and

The new conventional wisdom seems to be that Iraq itself is destined for chaos. This is equally off base. To visit Iraq is to see a land of opportunity, rich in resources and educated people who are, most importantly, well-disposed to our presence. But to take advantage of the opportunity to remake a country and perhaps a region, the U.S. will have to become at once a more dedicated and more nimble occupier. This could mean a competent American-led administration for the foreseeable future--most Iraqis certainly would not object.

I very much recommend reading the whole thing.

BlogSpot Exodus Continues

Today, it's Jim (Puce) Treacher's turn to move. Will A. Beam be next?

Also, I see, via Professor Volokh, that Empower America now has a blog. Should be interesting.

Speaking of institutional sites, what ever happened to The New Criterion's weblog? Apparently, it's running late. Hurry-up already...

Keeping Up with the Volokhs

In the five minutes of daily leisure-time bloggery I'm allowed (until this weekend when things should be returning to "normal"), I seem to be posting mostly address changes. I now see that the Volokh gang has moved here.

And, in case I wasn't the last person in the world to be reminded of it, InstaPundit has an InstaBackup. By the way, does anyone know why only the good blog sites were affected by the Hosting Matters fire? Do you suppose they sacrificed InstaPundit et al. to save my little site?

Last One Out, Please...

Wow, offline for a couple of days, I return to see that Messrs. Blair, Penny and Verdon have all relocated to fancier, non-BlogSpotty digs. Time to update the massive blogroll.

Double Hmph!

Posting may be light for at least a few days. No, I'm not going on one of those trendy hiatuses, but I may not be able to post for awhile. I'll be back soon with an update to the Blogs around the World post and more.

Thanks for visiting.

Hmph!

I see that Page has joined the Belligerent Bunny in taking a blog-hiatus. Two of my favorite reads, and two of the first blogs to link to my humble site -- I hope this is not a portent.

I also hope they return soon, tanned and rested.

Quantifying the Blogosphere: The Value of a Link?

In an earlier post, I provided some evidence that the number of outgoing links on a site is correlated with the number of incoming links. What, then, is the value of an incoming link?

To attempt to answer this question, I gathered data on the number of average daily visits for 91 sites on my blogroll which have publicly-available Sitemeter statistics. For these 91, I also obtained the number of incoming links from the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem (for sites that do not participate in TTLBBE, I obtained data from Technorati).

The answer, for this sample of blogs, is that an incoming link is correlated with an average of 11 additional visits per day (this result is highly statistically significant). There you have it.

Back in February, CGHill looked at Blogstreet data and formulated a metric he called Blog Overachievement Factor calculated for a given site as Blogstreet's Blog Rank divided by its Blog Importance Quotient. Dr. Weevil recently posted on the same metric, calling sites that are linked by relatively more important bloggers "bloggers' bloggers". (I think they might better be called "'important' bloggers' bloggers".)

However, stealing Dr. W's terminology, these new data may allow one to better identify "bloggers' bloggers" and "readers' bloggers".

Of the readers' bloggers, the foremost is famed puppy blender and freak of bloggy nature Glenn Reynolds who receives about 57,000 more daily visits than would be predicted by the number of links to his site.

Other sites with much greater readership than might be expected given the number of incoming links include: The Volokh Conspiracy, Daniel W. Drezner, Rachel Lucas, ScrappleFace, Dave Barry's Blog, L.T. Smash and The Command Post.

On the other hand, the bloggers' bloggers, with relatively high link-to-readership ratios, include: Silflay Hraka, Sine Qua Non Pundit, Eject! Eject! Eject!, Ken Layne, a small victory, Amish Tech Support and VodkaPundit.

(For what it's worth, this site receives about 23 fewer daily visits than would be predicted given the number of incoming links.)

If anyone else sends me their stats, I'll gladly add them to the analysis.

Update: Professor Volokh kindly and gently points out that my careless choice of words implied causation not in evidence:

Interesting correllation, but which way does the causation go? You say "The answer, for this sample of blogs, is that an incoming link is worth an average of 11 addition[]al visits per day (this result is highly statistically significant)," and the "worth" suggests that incoming links cause the visits. But perhaps the visits cause the links -- the more people visit a site, the more likely they are to link to it. Or maybe a third cause (e.g., how attractive the site is to people) causes both incoming links and visits, no?

(New Poll Shows Correlation Is Causation.)

Hence, I've replaced "worth" in the third paragraph with "correlated with". Testing causation is a project for another day.

Neat Building

The Touraine in Philadelphia:

Blogs around the World Update V

I've added three new sites to the Blogs around the World post:

Two more Czech Republic-based blogs, Arellanes.com, via Ken Layne;
and the PragueBlog;
and the Netherlands-based Dilacerator.

Again, I'm still eagerly seeking suggested additions.

Happy reading.

Occasional Photograph

Sunny California!

On the Road Again

Yep, I'm leaving town for a few more days. Back Tuesday, or Monday, or Wednesday.

Apologies for the lack of posts of late. I expect things will return to relative normalcy pretty soon.

In the meantime, the sites on my blogroll are all better than mine, anyway.

And I'm still hoping for submissions for the Blogs around the World project. I've added a few, but have a long way to go. If everyone who stumbled into this place via a Google search for "Saddam Hussein" or "Andrew Stuttaford" (almost equally popular for some reason) also submitted a non-U.S. blog for inclusion, I'd be done in no time.

Thanks.

Meet Biswanath Halder

LGF has the scoop on the Case Western Reserve shooter, Not in Our Name signer, Indymedia poster and International A.N.S.W.E.R. statement-signer. Interesting stuff.

Update: Drat! No "hat tip" for the ANSWER bit.

Don't Hit that Blogger!

The lies continue:

Glenn Reynolds is a puppy blending, Satan worshipping, hobo murdering, robot dancing Communist spy who punched your beloved Frank J.

In addition to being allegedly punched by Glenn Reynolds, Frank J. gets into a brawl with a duck-billed platypus:

Anyway, first I had to provoke the platypus, and that's pretty easy to do because you know this freak of nature must be pretty insecure. So I yelled, "Hey, you walking freak show, I'm going to make sure they no longer classify you as a mammal, because I'll be damned if I have a weirdo like you share the same Class as me." This enraged the platypus, and he waddled right for me. First I step on his duckbill and started punching him, just like I assumed a sloth would. I was beating the hell out of the stupid thing, but then it got me with its toxin, and goddamn that hurt! I was rolling on the ground in pain, and then the platypus began to nibble me to death with its duckbill. Luckily some zookeepers dragged me out of there.

Stop the violence!

Auto-Poesy

Since I've always jumped off bridges on the recommendation of the popular kids, here's a bit of Oscar Jr.-generated poetry:

Link Zombyboy: at the
resemblance goes away. from one a monkey Update: Ping! show comments » «
hide comments 0 | April 27,
28 2003 Weasel News DEBKA reports
on the recognition does not a
few straightforward rules. To an
IMAOlanche!
Wow, an
act, nor do your lack of the blogging 4. Start blog.

I don't know why, but I like it!

I'm Still Working on a Family-Friendly Title

Here's a hot, hot, hot IPO:

Investors embraced shares in the sex industry group The Daily Planet Ltd today, with the brothel more than doubling its value on its stock market debut.

Ahem.

Title suggestions, anyone? Mr. Hill?

Weasel "News"

DEBKA reports on a "treasure trove" of intelligence gathered in Iraq. Excerpt:

The Americans are sitting tight on the extremely valuable Iraqi intelligence archives discovered at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad and at sub-departments of Saddam’s clandestine machine never before known to exist. The only data released are a few leaks to the British media calculated to help prime minister Tony Blair stand up to anti-war campaigners at home and around Europe.

From this treasure trove, America has distributed to its war allies some materials relevant to their national security. But no decision has been taken as to the disposition of documents attesting to the clandestine ties of collaboration maintained with the Saddam regime by a whole range of foreign government and public office-holders, academics, media figures, financiers and industrialists the world over, many deeply involved in sanctions-busting. By and large, Washington is not inclined to bare these secrets or make use of them at the moment, except in some notable cases. One is French president Jacques Chirac; another is the head of the International Atomic Energy Commission in Vienna, Dr. Mohammed ElBaradai, who led the nuclear weapons inspection in Iraq before the war.

(Emphasis added.)

If true, this could get very interesting.

Returned from the Undisclosed Location

Tap...tap...tap...

Is this thing still on?

It was a strange week away from the blogosphere -- no blog reading, some withdrawal symptoms, and no thinking about potential posts (not that I do much of that, anyway).

In any event, I'm back, er, in front of the 'puter, but posting may be light for awhile.

Blogs around the World Update IV

I've added five more new sites to the Blogs around the World post:

Another promising Iran-based blog, Lady Sun, suggested, again, by Jay Solo;
Ireland-based Slugger O'Toole suggested by Broom of Anger proprietress Ma Bear (also added);
the Ukraine-based Peace Corps||Ukraine;
and the Peru-focused Peruvian Graffiti.

Again, I'm still eagerly seeking suggested additions.

Happy reading.