See if you can spot the irony in this (seen at John Gushue ... Dot Dot Dot).

The Knitters, the alt-country incarnation of one of my favourite bands of all time, X, is playing in Toronto tonight.

You can read a piece on the Knitters (which includes Dave Alvin of the Blasters, another legendary band) here.

Djamshid Popal, the Afghan boy who came to Canada for a life-saving heart operation last year, isn't doing so well.

Now he wants to return to Canada permanently. If he stays where he is, he'll probably die.

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Krazy Tyrone is the last of a dying breed of in-house court jester in New York's Catskills known as a tummler.

Read about him. It's a fascinating story.

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Decide for yourself. (thanks, Kevin!)

Pete Clifton responds to some who think it's very unethical for the news media to use the photos and video being captured by technologically-enabled citizens without paying them.

Meanwhile, the Chartered Institute of Journalists in the UK has come out guns blazing against the practice of soliciting citizen witness photos, calling it a rights grab.

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Here's me (er, not exactly as illustrated):

Your Blogging Type is Logical and Principled

You like to voice your well thought out opinions on your blog. And if someone doesn't what you write, you really don't care! Serious and blunt, sometimes people take your blog the wrong way. But you're a true and loyal friend to those who truly get you.

Find out your blogging type (seen first at outoftheshadows.ca). Actually, for a four-question quiz, I thought it was an okay summary -- although I would give myself credit for occasional flashes of wit too. :)

And once you've found out what blogging type you are, there are links to a treasure trove of pop psych quizzes to allow you to truly know yourself in a way that only a brief, multiple-choice questionnaire can.

Afterthought

I once accompanied a friend of mine to a psychic fair many, many moons ago. I peed away some money on getting my aura photographed (kirlian photography was the technique, I believe).

I was amazed by all the outstanding qualities the aura revealed about me, so much so that I felt compelled to ask, "Does anyone's aura reveal them to be an obnoxious prick?" (don't know why that popped into my head).

"We find people aren't willing to pay money for that," was the amazingly frank response from the aura reader.

I would note the blog type quiz was totally free, so it must be right. :)

The International Chiefs of Police have some guidelines for when a suspect might be a potential suicide bomber. The criteria include (among other things): Nervousness, excessive sweating or an unwillingness to make eye contact.

Under the guidelines, if the police hold a reasonable belief that you're a bomber, that's good enough. The old standard of "imminent danger" is out the window.

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Here's some clickable stuff over yonder:

• American Bar Association debates supporting federal shield law for U.S. journos
• China charges HK-based reporter with spying for Taiwan
• CNN suspends Robert Novak
• Missing in the media: Anyone NOT young, white, pretty and female
• Another politician slams media bias, but this one should know better

Far from calming its inmates, Ringerike jail found yoga was making them more aggressive.

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London Mayor 'Red' Ken Livingstone offers a prescription for reducing the risk of terrorist attacks: Support the police, treat Muslims with respect and end the Iraq occupation.

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Check out this horrifying lede from a Guardian story: Girma Belay was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As he sat in a flat in Stockwell, south London, waiting for a friend to bake Ethiopian bread, he was seized at gunpoint by anti-terror police with laser-sighted weapons, forced to strip naked, punched, beaten and humiliated. With the red laser beam blinding him, he heard someone shout, "Take him out."

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The Guardian is reporting today that a British army special forces unit was involved in the tracking of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian-born man shot to death by London police when he was suspected of being a suicide bomber.

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Andrew Davidson, who blogs at DeepFriedGold, has an amusing post about trying to get face-time with Jay-Z and crew during Caribana.

The NYT's A.O. Scott says Hubert Sauper's documentary film Darwin's Nightmare is an ethical work of art about the costs of globalization to developing countries.

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This BBC story looks at the East African ties of the bombers who attacked London's transit system on July 21. I find it to be a weak piece of reporting.

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A new Technorati State of the Blogosphere report (part one) reports continued explosive growth in said sphere.

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The BBC is reporting the death of a U.S. freelancer -- Steven Vincent, in the southern Iraq city of Basra.

Update: Baghdad-based freelancer Tom Popyk has posted links to Vincent's blog and his last NYT piece over at Canadian Journalist.

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Robert Novak, the right-wing columnist who actually named CIA agent Valerie Plame, is hinting he got her name from Who's Who in America.

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The Toronto Star had a veritable festival of discussion on this topic this past Sunday -- namely, why would li'l old Canada be at risk of a terrorist attack?

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An Air France Airbus A340 aircraft has skidded off a runway at Toronto's Pearson International Airport and burst into flames -- but incredibly, no one died in the crash.

CTV has live coverage as I'm writing this (note: live national coverage on the main network is now over, same with CTV News Toronto). Here's the main CTV.ca story (lot's of video attached to it).

Update: Steve Shaw of the Greater Toronto Airport Authority told a news conference that ended about 6:11 p.m. EDT, said there were 14 injuries, but everyone lived out of about 297 passengers and 12 crew members on board. Air France confirms this.

There's one scene in The Battle of Algiers, a classic 1965 film by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo about the Algerian insurgency against the French, that really made me queasy.

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This was my best month ever for page views, but oddly, the stuff I posted in July wasn't getting clicked on very much. Observe:

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The Toronto Star's Olivia Ward reviews Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution, by Washington Post reporters Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

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Furious with the broadcast of an interview with Chechnya's top warlord, the head of Russia's military has declared ABC News to be "persona non grata."

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Jessica Simpson offers this thought du jour at a media session in T.O.:

Too skinny looks ... (furrows brow) ... bad?

That was from a woman who once asked for "yellow sauce" on a hot dog.

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You wouldn't think it would be a huge problem for the TTC to decide where its buses should stop while servicing a given route, but in the case of the Scarborough Town Centre-Kennedy Station shuttle, you would be very wrong.

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