Judith Miller, the former NYT reporter who "left the paper" a year ago in the wake of her Plamegate and Iraq WMD debacles, has decried government secrecy and the willingness of bloggers to accept assertions as fact without considering evidence to the contrary.

Make your own joke here. (h/t to Jim Elve).

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From the NYT:

CHANCES are that in the last week someone has irritated you by standing too close, talking too loud or making eye contact for too long. They have offended you with the high-pitched shrill emanating from the earphones of their iPod or by spreading their legs unnecessarily wide on a packed subway car.

But what makes you feel hostile toward “close talkers,” as the show “Seinfeld” dubbed people who get within necking distance of you when they speak? Or toward strangers who stand very near to you on line? Or toward people who take the bathroom stall next to yours when every other one is available?

Communications scholars began studying personal space and people’s perception of it decades ago, in a field known as proxemics. But with the population in the United States climbing above 300 million, urban corridors becoming denser and people with wealth searching for new ways to separate themselves from the masses, interest in the issue of personal space — that invisible force field around your body — is intensifying.

IPods playing too loud, eh? Which reminds me of this TTC meltdown.

This NYT article offers some good tips to those who might not know much about website design and who want to make their websites more useful to visitors.

For the Russian plutocrat in a hurry, there's nothing like a faux motorcade with flashing blue lights to make the hoi polloi get out of your way.

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Here's a feature I did for CTV.ca on Rona Ambrose's pronouncements both before she went to the UN climate change conference in Nairobi and her speech there.

Other stuff:

A BBC story on how negotiations are going to the wire.

A Reuters story from the NYT: Rich, poor nations wrangle on global warming