Other researchers have determined that mirrors can subtly affect human behavior, often in surprisingly positive ways. Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in nonmirrored settings. Reporting in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, C. Neil Macrae, Galen V. Bodenhausen and Alan B. Milne found that people in a room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion.

?When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they are doing,? Dr. Bodenhausen said. ?A byproduct of that awareness may be a shift away from acting on autopilot toward more desirable ways of behaving.? Physical self-reflection, in other words, encourages philosophical self-reflection, a crash course in the Socratic notion that you cannot know or appreciate others until you know yourself.

After a couple of days worth of chaotic retreat, the right wing seems to have settled on a fallback position, namely that it's only possible to now contemplate withdrawing from Iraq because things have gotten so much better and all improvements in conditions -- including things that happened before the surge began -- are due to the surge. Thus, despite Obama apparently having shown good judgment on the question of invading Iraq and seeming to have the best policy moving forward, "really" McCain is vindicated.

In addition to the somewhat magical thinking in which things like the "awakening," the Sadrist cease fire, and the natural reduction in violence that comes with a completed process of ethnic cleansing become consequences of the surge, this misses the larger point of the surge debate. Surge opponents said the surge was pointless -- a tactical smokescreen to obscure the fact that hawks have an unworkable strategy. And now, over 18 months after the 2006 midterms showed that the voters want an end to this war, the hawks still can't explain what's been accomplished in exchange for the hundreds of dead and hundreds of billions spent over what, say, following the Baker-Hamilton recommendations would have cost us. The basic shape of the Middle East is the same, our posture in Iraq is still unsustainable, we're still getting nowhere with Iran, and things are worse than ever in Afghanistan. Probably, but not certainly, the surge has helped save some Iraqi lives. But fundamentally, we're still going to have to leave Iraq and it's still the case -- just as it was before the war -- that Iraq might muddle along okay or might turn into a disaster all depending on what choices Iraqi leaders make.

Journalism, by nature, is not difficult. It really isn't. Most of the key attributes for solid reporting and editing come naturally to most people; fairness, hard work, and -- most important -- common sense.

News judgment, for instance, consists mostly of editors and producers using common sense to determine, based on the limited resources at hand, which breaking events and stories should be covered, and which ones can be set aside as less important...

...the Beltway press corps has become so borderline dysfunctional that even the simplest tasks, such as selecting which stories to cover -- such as using common sense -- now escape most of the major players at the mainstream news organizations.

Two events in recent days reaffirmed that sad conclusion, when entire news organizations opted to throw all sorts of time and attention at what was essentially a pointless campaign-related sideshow, while simultaneously displaying blanket indifference to what should have been the campaign story of the week, if not the month or possibly the entire summer.

Last week, after being hyped by Matt Drudge and Fox News, the Beltway press unanimously decided that Rev. Jesse Jackson's whispered comments, picked up on a live television set mic, in which he expressed anger with Sen. Barack Obama and used some crude language to convey his sentiments (i.e. he wanted to cut off Obama's "nuts"), represented a hugely important event. It was the most-covered campaign story of the week.

By contrast, McCain said at a campaign appearance in Denver on July 7 that the Social Security system as structured in America, in which younger people pay taxes to support the benefits of retirees, is an "absolute disgrace" -- but his proclamation was mostly passed over as being irrelevant. The disconnect between the coverage was astounding.

As of Sunday morning, only 17 major metropolitan newspapers in America had reported on McCain's "disgraceful" remark, in a total of 20 articles and columns, according to search of Nexis.

By contrast, more than 50 major U.S. dailies published a total of 126 articles and columns about the Jackson story. Several influential newspapers went back to the story ad nauseam. Combined, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles Times published 39 different articles and columns that referenced the Jackson-Obama controversy.

An Australian woman has been saved by a pet dog which leapt to her aid after she was attacked by a large kangaroo, her son has said.

The marsupial assaulted Rosemary Neal, 65, at her farm near Mudgee in New South Wales, 265km (160 miles) north-west of Sydney, her son, Darren, said.

"The kangaroo just jumped up and launched straight at her," he said.

A kangaroo met an unlikely death after it bounded into the surf in southern Australia and was mauled by a shark, according to eyewitnesses.

Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because — if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”

The very first Sunday after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney descended like a cloud on "Meet the Press" to outline the Bush administration's response. "We'll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies -- if we are going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in. And, uh, so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objectives."

Around the nation, one presumes, numbed heads were nodding in approval. Whatever it takes to get those bastards. The true nature of our Faustian bargain would not become clear until later, and maybe it needed a journalist as steely and tenacious as Jane Mayer to give us the full picture. "The Dark Side" is about how the war on terror became "a war on American ideals," and Mayer gives this story all the weight and sorrow it deserves. Many books get tagged with the word "essential"; hers actually is...

And so we must ask ourselves at last if terror is the best answer to terror. Mayer has her doubts. "Torture works in several ways," she summarizes. "It can intimidate enemies, it can elicit false confessions, and it can produce true confessions. Setting aside the moral issues, the problem is recognizing what's true." Mohammed "confessed" to planning the assassinations of Presidents Clinton and Carter, as well as Pope John Paul II. Zubayda, under assault, spun outlandish tales of "plots to blow up American banks, supermarkets, malls, the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, and nuclear power plants," sending law-enforcement officials scurrying down any number of blind alleys.

The greatest damage came from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. Chief of an al-Qaida training camp, he was captured by Pakistanis shortly after 9/11 and handed over to Egyptian interrogators, who pressed him for damaging information on Saddam Hussein. Al-Libi didn't even understand what "biological weapons" were, and at first he was so confused by the line of questioning he couldn't come up with a story. Soon enough, he figured out what his interrogators wanted, and the tale he fabricated -- WMD flowing in an unbroken line from Saddam to al-Qaida -- became a decisive factor in the decision to go to war. When asked later why he had lied, al-Libi had a simple explanation: "They were killing me. I had to tell them something."

Much as I hate to repeat one of Rush Limbaugh's flat, stale and unprofitable applause lines, that's the only conclusion I can draw after witnessing the left-wing blogosphere's bizarre reaction to the New Yorker cover depicting Barack Obama in the Oval Office as a dishdasha-clad Muslim terrorist, exchanging a "terrorist fist jab" with Michelle Obama, who is dressed like a latter-day Angela Davis with huge 'fro, combat boots, assault rifle and bandolier of bullets -- while Osama bin Laden looks approvingly on from a picture frame and an American flag burns merrily in the presidential fireplace. To judge from the reaction of much of the left, you'd think that New Yorker editor David Remnick had morphed into some kind of hideous hybrid of Roger Ailes and Roland Barthes and was waging an insidious Semiotic War against Obama.

Although every critic of the New Yorker understood the simple satire of the cover, the most fretful of them worried that the illustration would be misread by the ignorant masses who don't subscribe to the magazine. Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Malcolm wrote, "That's the problem with satire. A lot of people won't get the joke. Or won't want to. And will use it for non-humorous purposes, which isn't the New Yorker's fault." Malcolm continues in this vein, calling it a "problem" that "there's no caption on the cover to ensure that everyone" will understand the punch line.

Here's ABC News' Jake Tapper singing the harmony line:

Intent factors into these matters, of course, but no Upper East Side liberal—no matter how superior they feel their intellect is—should assume that just because they're mocking such ridiculousness, the illustration won't feed into the same beast in emails and other media. It's a recruitment poster for the right-wing.

Calling on the press to protect the common man from the potential corruptions of satire is a strange, paternalistic assignment for any journalist to give his peers, but that appears to be what The New Yorker's detractors desire. I don't know whether to be crushed by that realization or elated by the notion that one of the most elite journals in the land has faith that Joe Sixpack can figure out a damned picture for himself...

Only weak thinkers fear strong images. The publication that convenes itself as a polite dinner party, serving only strained polenta and pureed peas, need not invite me to sup.