THERE'S SOMETHING DIFFERENT As Slate's William Saletan notes, there's a difference between President Bush and Senator McCain. The difference is strikingly clear when you watch the two men tackle the issue of corporate corruption. "We can see from the text of the speech that McCain's proposals differ from Bush's. But what really sets the two men apart is their body language. Bush looked sad about corruption; McCain looks angry. Bush talked about corporate cheaters as though they were wayward members of his family; McCain talks about them as though they're thugs."

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTERS H, I AND V Three cheers for "Sesame Street," which has announced the introduction of an HIV-positive cast member to its South African programme, and possible plans to do the same in the U.S. And before the eye rolling begins about the "possible" plans here in the U.S., spin yourself positive: the HIV/AIDS epidemic in southern Africa is killing millions of people a year; education about the disease and methods of prevention are impossibly hard to deliver... There is a significant, a huge need for this sort of pro-active approach in Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe -- it's what turned the epidemic around in the U.S. in the 1980s.

TRUST US David Ignatius lives in two worlds, the financial world and the Middle East. Today, he delivers his take on how the irrational exuberance of the 1990s has so quickly turned into the irrational pessimism of... well, whatever this decade is called. When you look at the reasonably solid business fundamentals, and account for basic human nature, Ignatius says there's only one more significant reason why the markets are so shaky: trust. More specifically, trust in the present U.S. administration. "For some reason, the administration has behaved as if its purpose was to cause investors to lose faith in the dollar and the U.S. economy," he writes. Whether it was the daily terrorism warnings of the spring, or poorly delivered (and vague) pep rally speeches on those meanieheads running companies, the Bush Administration has done more to stretch this recesssion out than the previous administration did to create it. New Bush role model: Hoover.

THOSE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS Vermont Governor Howard Dean is taking the long, folksy path, hopeful that it will lead to the White House in '04. Dean, like all self-described wayward politicians (think Jim Jeffords, John McCain), doesn't stick to the strict Democratic party line. Which means he has an opportunity to sound refreshing when he's stumping against the other 37 hopefuls.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE A GEEK WHEN... I'm actually thinking about attending a local webloggers' meet-and-greet. I wonder if I should rush out and buy some Spock ears, or bring a dog-eared copy of a HTML 4.0 standards guide. And will anyone who weblogs in Richmond, Virginia, be daring enough to wear their trousers rolled?

THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD As university students rally in protest of the government's ban on rallies, and young women begin painting their toenails and showing a little ankle, senior cleric Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri has resigned his post in the city of Isfahan, calling the clerical government of Iran corrupt and repressive. The youth bubble is beginning to crest, and the religious leaders are beginning to question the results of their hard-won revolution... can change be far behind?

MY FAVORITE FELON You know, I can't help but worry that my 15-year infatuation with Richmond's Chuck Richardson is too much like that of a D.C. native blinded by the star-power of Marion Barry. Richardson: a City Council standout, flamboyantly arrogant glad-hander, felon, or shifty weasel? I'll tell you this much -- the man knew how to deliver for his constituents, whether it was getting a park for the white cracker rednecks in Oregon Hill or having new trees planted in the projects. And now he wants to shed his felony status and run for mayor.

HIV/AIDS CRISIS: JUST THE FACTS This concise statement by the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Africa Program director makes it simple, understandable and clear. Six reasons to be hopeful about the battle against HIV/AIDS: new leadership is emerging; results can be seen in countries like Brazil, Thailand and Uganda; an international consensus is developing; there is a global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB; new resources are being made available; and the U.S. is slowly getting back into the game. But in the minus column: the pandemic has expanded farther and faster than expected; 14 million children have lost at least one parent to AIDS; the global fund is a shaky experiment; new solutions are going to require new programs, never an easy path to forge.

WILL WE OR WON'T WE? Ah, the shifting sands of politics. As Slate's daily round-up of the headlines reports, USA Today is scooping everyone else with reports from State and the Pentagon that unless Saddam Hussein blows something up, the U.S. won't launch a full-scale invasion. Instead, the military will nibble around the edges, send in small groups to add food coloring to the oil wells... that sort of thing. Shades of Robert MacNamara.

SPEAKING OF WAR... YAWN... Michael Kinsley astutely points out in Slate that no one really cares if we go to war with Iraq, which some would call a lack of support. I'd just call it... well, a lack of caring. War? Whatever. The American public is so far removed from most of the issues surrounding the "war on terrorism [with footnotes and addendums]," that I'd be surprised to find a level of passion in either direction around the topic. And given the stellar job the media and the Congress have been doing at truly exploring the nuances... (er, there goes the sarcasm again...)ˇ

START WARCHALKING Been seeing odd, half-mmon shapes chalked onto sidewalks and walls around town? Yeah, well, I mean cities. It's warchalking, the newest way to let wireless wanderers know where public and private wireless networks are humming away. Need to update your Vindigo? Stand near the chalk symbol and upload for free on the open wireless network accidentally beaming carrier signals from the anonymous corporate office down the street.

OBSCURA Faculty set up a massive camera obscura on a campus in Baltimore last week, and somehow I stumbled across their website with reams and reams of information about this amazing device that preceded photography, revolutionized painting and transformed the way modern man viewed the world and images. The main site is a more comprehensive look at photography, art and the like.

WE ARE THE WORLD "We" naturally means Disney, Viacom, GE and a few others. Congressman Bernie Sanders, the only Independent on the Hill, sallies forth in the Philadelphia City Paper with this brief opinion piece about who owns the news and what that means for the rest of us. It's succinct, well-reasoned, and he's the closest we'll ever get to a congressional socialist. Which is a shame.

ASHCROFT'S AWKWARD ASCENT Philadelphia's City Paper comes through again with its cover story on John Ashcroft -- his personality, his politics, his pratfalls. Ashcroft is one of those rare politicians who is earnest, clumsy and powerful. I'm not sure this is ever a good combination; I certainly don't think so in the case of Ashcroft. But this well-written piece reminds me that while Ashcoft is someone to keep an eye on, he's also got a track record filled with ruts and collapses. Thank God.

TODAY'S AFRICAN SPIN Wash your hands after you read the headlines in Jana, Libya's online newspaper. But don't forget to chortle. Jana's take on yesterday's launch of the African Union is a riot. The Leader of the Revolution, in Jana's astute view, is the center of all universes, including this one, which was organized and driven by four southern African leaders. Unless you live in Libya, in which case: "It became a reality thanks to the intense efforts of the faithful son of Africa the universal leader, Colonel Muammar al Qathafi, with the help and support of his brothers, African leaders and presidents." Nice of him to let them support him. The kook.

THE IRONY TREE L.A. rock goddess Kate Sullivan is spending the summer in Minneapolis and rediscovering musical honesty as channeled through Weezer. She's got it right. Irony is the last refuge of the fearful. Most of the time. Sometimes it's just plain fun.

WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK Ah, pets. Damned for treating them like animals, damned for treating them like humans. No wonder they're schizophrenic little beasts. Here's a glimpse into the results of one loon (who happens to have a weekly newspaper column) as she peeks deep into the traumatized mind of her kitten.

MAPPING ROCK Ah, the seminal question: Who are the best bands in American history. We're discussing rock and roll, of course. The Hartford Advocate music critic and his colleagues in neighboring communities tackled the question. The result is a list of bands that elicits more checks than not when I peruse it.

GO CANADA! Canada is calling the U.S. out on its desire to take a chisel to the International Criminal Court by requesting that the U.N. Security Council hold an open debate on the issue. Not that a debate is likely to change the slightly paranoid, utterly insular U.S. view that the Court wants to imprison every American litterbug in Rome (or more likely, every U.S. serviceman who rapes a teenager in Okinawa).

THE MAGIC OF THE BAY You probably don't have to have spent much of your life on the Chesapeake Bay to fall in love with it. It's a magical place at its best, as this ongoing series in the Washington Post demonstrates. This first article is about pelicans on Spring Island.

GETTING CLOSE Peter Maass has a brief piece with good links about "War Photographer," which he calls "a documentary about Jim Nachtwey, whose life and ideas are no less stunning than the beautifully grim pictures that have made him famous in the world of news photography." It caught my eye with the lead quote from Robert Capa about photography: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

A HUE AND A CRY Ol' brickhead Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, got booed at the International AIDS Conference today. And when I say brickhead, I actually mean that his head is a bit square, though lumpy like a handmade brick. At any rate, outside of the obvious reasons people might have to boo someone from the Bush Administration when it comes to HIV/AIDS policy decisions, he is the first Secretary to go to the International AIDS Conference since Papa Bush sent on in the '80s.

THE ART OF JUGGLING This Post editorial has nothing to do with juggling, but as NPRs Daniel Schorr noted this weekend, the Bush Administration might want to win the war in Afghanistan before it starts a war with Iraq. Our commitment to Afghanistan's stability is shaky, at best, and uncoordinated at worst. The northern regions are becoming unsafe and unstable again; NGOs are reporting more outbreaks of violence, repression and robbery; political assassinations seem more likely; and the central government remains largely focused in Kabul. All of which leaves aside any issues related to U.S. military activity, whether it's to track down al Quaeda or support the Kabul government. It will be a shame if the largest return of refugees in recent memory turns back into an outbound flood.

AH, PEACEMAKERS As the Jamahiriya news agency in Libya reports, Louis Farrakhan has hit the sand, and is currently roaming through the Middle East seeking peace through divisive retoric. And here's a bit from Bagdhad as reported by United Press International, which notes the Iraqi News Agency as quoting Farrakhan as saying that "the Muslim American people are praying to the almighty God to grant victory to Iraq." It's almost amusing. But not quite.

BUFFY, SHE-NEMESIS OF BIOWARFARE My cymophanic friend Liz asked me today if someone at the Center for Strategic & International Studies had a sense of humor. Obviously, I'm not the only strategy-obsessed fool who sucks the straw of pop culture. Here's CSIS's Tony Cordesman on biowarfare and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer":

I, however, would like you to think about the biological threat in more mundane terms. I am going to suggest that you think about biological warfare in terms of a TV show called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” that you think about the world of biological weapons in terms of the “Buffy Paradigm,” and that you think about many of the problems in the proposed solutions as part of the “Buffy Syndrome.”

I realize that those of you who are workaholics or who are simply mature and without children or younger relatives may never have seen this show. It is, however, about a teenage vampire slayer who lives in a world of unpredictable threats where each series of crises only becomes predictable when it is over and is followed by a new and unfamiliar one.

The characters in Buffy constantly try to create unrealistic plans and models, and live in a world where they never really face the level of uncertainty they must deal with. They do not live in a world of total denial, but they do seek predictability and certainty to a degree that never corresponds to the problems they face.

Now, if this use of a TV series to describe biological threats and biological warfare seems somewhat unusual, I invite you to consider the more conventional alternatives. We can speculate on scenarios, delivery methods, and lethality, we can conduct studies and exercises, and we can write doctrine until hell freezes over, but our chances of really being much better than Buffy are simply not that great...

A STITCH IN TIME At the Smithsonian Folklife Festival this weekend I had an opportunity to meet some members of SEWA -- the Self-Employed Women's Association -- and to purchase some of their products. It's reassuring in an era where large events seize the headlines and our imaginations to discover that the smallest of seeds is having a rich impact on people's lives. SEWA quietly continues to transform the lives of the women it helps to support.

THE ROOTS OF THE MONEY DEBATE The Financial Times lays out (in amazingly simple language) the gist of the tension and debate between the IMF and World Bank (see the blurb just below this one). It truly is the sort of public fisticuffs long overdue between what could be best described as the bankers and the volunteer firemen of global economics.

A MONETARY BITCH SLAP the International Monetary Fund's Kenneth Rogoff has engaged in a rare, public wrestling match with economist Joseph Stiglitz guised (quite thinly) in a review of Stiglitz's scathing book, "Globalization and Its Discontents." Stiglitz and Rogoff stand in opposite corners of the same economic room -- both are quite brilliant, both are strongly academic, and yet both have staunchly different views about the role and influence of monetary policy at that odd convergence of economics, politics and social matters. The debate alone is worth the price of admission (a mouse click, in this case).

AFRICA'S DIGITAL DIVIDE Ghana is a prime example of what happens when technology meets reality. In this instance, the technology is the Internet, and reality is the lack of infrastructure to ensure good connectivity. The country has 240,000 phone lines serving a population of 20 million. The end result: "good computers and fast modems don't matter if you can't get a dial tone and the power keeps going out."

THE ROAD TO BAGDHAD The Observer lays out a few interesting tidbits about a pending war against Iraq -- specifically around timing and location. The report says that an American-led attack could begin as early as this fall, which lines up well with some military rotations I've been hearing about from friends, and that the road between Amman and Bagdhad is the perfect path to follow. Given Jordan's long ties with Iraq, especially the family ties to the former throne, this makes for some curious speculation.

SILK & SUN The Smithsonian Folklife Festival ends today, and my own visit this weekend was truly stellar. A dusty stretch of the national Mall in DC was crammed with cultural activities that threaded from China to Italy with a strong emphasis on the cultures of southwest and southcentral Asia. The Washington Post captured a huge amount of the two-week festival, including this marvellous collection of photography.