Noted Here and There ...

At American Heritage, Ellen Feldman has a fascinating article on the history of cosmetic surgery. First performed, perhaps, 2500 years ago in south Asia, cosmetic surgery in the West matured during World War I as trench warfare left many facial wounds. Its mis-steps and malpractice have sometimes been more disfiguring than the malfeatures it sought to correct.

At No Loss for Words, Danny Loss draws a interesting Darwinian analogy: natural selection is to human selectivity as popular remembered history is to academic history. Read it and let him know what you think about the argument.

I was stunned by a television report the other night that by the end of the year there may be as many as 1,000,000 victims of the turmoil in The Sudan's Darfur. Unlike the struggles in the south of Sudan, the parties to this conflict are all Muslims. Authorities debate whether the term"genocide" is appropriately used there, but it is clearly an effort by Arab Muslims to destroy the African Muslim communities of the western Sudan. Here is the net's best source of information on the immediate stuggle. The historical background to it can be found here. Darfur was an independent sultanate until 1917, when the British incorporated it into the Egyptian Sudan: one of those legacies of British colonialism that Niall Ferguson likes to celebrate.

David Brooks's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, Upper Left points out that John Kerry continues to frame his message in moral terms that appeal to American religious communities.
Update: Hugo Schwyzer's blog is Google's #1 site for both"Christians for Kerry" and"men are dogs". No comment.

Vice President Cheney teaches public speech to the children of America.