Oh heck, blogback doesn’t seem to be working either. I just looked back over a week of entries here and there has not been a single comment. I’m excising the code; click on the comment icon [ ] beneath any post to send me an email comment on that post.

By the way, the other icon [ ] — which is supposed to be a pencil — is not there for you. It’s just for me to “remotely” edit my posts, i.e. edit them from my browser window without surfing over to blogger.com. If Blogger’s remote editing weren’t broken, as it appears to have been for months, you wouldn’t even see that icon unless you had permission to edit remotely, i.e. unless you were me. I leave it there for its enormous convenience to me, even though it has been confusing to some readers (who, for instance, have clicked on it to post a comment to me and found, to their consternation, that they were presented with some obscure login prompt).

But I’m curious — I never see any remote-editing links when I read any other Blogger-based weblogs. Does that mean that people have gotten remote editing to work properly, so the links are invisible to readers like me? Or does no one else use the remote editing mechanism at all? If you’re a Blogger-based blogger who’s gotten it to work properly, please write back and, if you please, share the relevant code. I’d love to make that icon go away and clean up the interface further while maintaining my functionality. TIA.

Mental gymnastics increase biceps strength — ‘It is a couch potato’s dream – just imagining yourself exercising can increase the strength of even your large muscles. The discovery could help patients too weak to exercise to start recuperating from stroke or other injury. And if the technique works in older people, they might use it to help maintain their strength.’ New Scientist

The Hotline World Extra, daily from The Atlantic, is an interesting collection of source news related to the war and connected issues. Here are todays’ four lead items, f’rinstance:

Forget anthrax. Bin Laden scientists working on way to disseminate cyanide via weather balloon.

The “Who’s Next” Watch:

Somalia seen as more likely than Iraq.

Trust But Verified?

India says U.S. patrolled their nuke site.

A Novel Idea!

Saudi prince’s proposal calls for holding actual elections in the country.

Jennifer Homans on Dance: Dancing in the Dark — “Osama bin laden may have destroyed the World Trade Center, but he has saved American dance. I know this sounds a little grotesque; but so you would suppose, to hear the pronouncements of leading figures in the New York dance world.” The New Republic

Routes of Least Surveillance — ‘It’s not the journey or the destination; it’s the getting there unseen that counts.

Or so goes the thinking behind a new mapping utility created by civil libertarians to guide New Yorkers through Manhattan along routes with the fewest surveillance cameras.’ Wired

Bad Memory — why Afghans take revenge: ‘Then my driver squatted down next to the prisoner and said, “Fuck off, Osama. Osama’s the husband of your mother. I hate you. Why did you bring Pakistan and the Arabs here to destroy our country? You killed our great Ahmed Shah Massoud. If I’d captured you, I would have killed you. But now we’re telling these soldiers not to hit you because we are kind.” ‘ The New Republic