The outspoken Moscow papers' editorials are openly suspicious than of the Russian government's explanations of the submarine crisis, and particularly of the submarine's purpose in being in such waters. Mainstream American papers' articles are more cautious with their reported accusations.

A Moscow Times editorial praises the decision to quickly accept Western help in rescuing the soldiers, but notes disagreement with the paper's position:

The remarkable rescue of the Priz and its crew has not stopped a prominent retired admiral, Eduard Baltin, from harshly criticizing the naval command for inviting Westerners to assist and thus compromising security. The AS-28 is a rescue mini-submarine and does not contain any important secrets, which may explain the prompt decision to call for help. When a Russian nuclear sub is in trouble again, will the Navy be so eager to ask for Western help?

And just as in the past, the Russian Navy was again telling conflicting stories about how much air the crew had and what was actually trapping it on the seafloor. It has not been explained why the mini-submarine was sent on a mission in such dangerous waters. Baltin believes the Priz was inspecting an underwater antenna -- and got trapped in its cables -- while seeing if the Americans had planted bugs on it. A rescue mini-submarine is clearly not designed for such missions.

A commentary in MosNews also asks what the submarine was doing in that area:

Still, the journalists doubted the version from the start. First of all, sailors from the region said that there had never been any fishing in the Berezovaya Bay. Official sources immediately implicated illegal poachers, and closed the issue. But then the Kommersant daily, citing its sources in the navy, reported that propellers of the submarine have special mechanisms protecting them from such incidents. Moreover, the newspaper named specifically the kind of research the submarine was conducting: they were to replace a part of a hydro acoustical apparatus installed with the aim of fighting nuclear submarines from the United States. The mysterious “60-tonn anchor” was really a part of that system, just as a large number of various cables and wires. In light of this, it becomes clear why military officials categorically refused to blow up the object which the submarine had gotten entangled in. This can also explain the statements made by former commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin, who, just as the rescue operation was in full swing, spoke out against sending foreign aid to the area.

Still, the current commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Viktor Fyodorov did not listen to his former colleague. He said that “the most important is to save to people.” Moreover, the Admiral clarified that according to current treaties, Russian underwater ships are analogous to foreign ones, while international inspectors are active on Russian territory just as they are on American territory. Moreover, the bathyscaphe is located beyond Russia’s territorial waters, so according to international law our country cannot limit traffic in the area.

The NYT reports that American and British military rescue officials do not cite any reasons reminiscient of the Cold War for the submarine's predicament:

In the end, the American and British officials said, the main culprit was a discarded fishing net, which was wrapped so tightly around the submarine's propeller and hull that the layers of stretched nylon appeared to be as thick as a one-and-one-half-inch cable.

Russian officials said the vessel, which was described as being on a training mission, also might have been caught on cables connected to an undersea surveillance system, a vestige of the cold war cat-and-mouse espionage that took place beneath the seas.

The WaPo cites an antenna, but with no mention of why an antenna might exist underseas:

The knife-edge drama was uncertain to the end. The British vessel had all but freed the mini-sub Sunday after it cut away two hoses and a steel cable, but it then malfunctioned and had to surface with some netting still entangling the mini-sub, called an AS-28 Priz. Officials said the Priz was caught on an underwater antenna system at a depth of around 600 feet, beyond the reach of Russian equipment.

In light of all of the complaining about Dulles airport over at Victor's blogand the comments of John and Belle's (where Jacob Levy maintains that De Gaulle is even worse), I should report on my own flight out of Dulles on Sunday.

Because the Supershuttle was early, I arrived about two hours early for my flight. I used curbside check-in (because this allows you to check a bag that is 35 pounds overweight without paying anything more than a tip to the skycap) and then went to security. The entire process took less than ten minutes, because the airport was deserted.

Really deserted. The Starbucks was running a skeleton crew, many of the other stores and shops were closed, and while there were occasional glimpses of people who might have worked there, there was basically nobody demanding their attention. My flight filled up in the end, but while I was there (past 1 in the afternoon) the airport never did. Indeed, between that, the molding carpet and decaying building, the place looked exactly like my memory of visiting the Warsaw Airport when I was 7. Maybe it is packed and crowded on days other than Sunday, or maybe it was imitate-a-newly-emerging-post-communist-nation day.

Anyway, as Douglas Adams says, it can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, "as pretty as an airport".

Have any of our readers ever successfully bargained down the stated price on a year-long rental apartment in a large apartment complex? The place we are considering is in the DC metro area, but outside of the city, along the road to the Baltimore; I suspect the market is somewhat less hot than Eastern Market or Adams-Morgan. The amenities are great, but the monthly rent just slightly over budget.

When we toured the apartment, the representative from the leasing office mentioned that the management would sometimes, at its whim, lease such apartments as we were looking at for $300/month less than the advertised price.

Comments are open below.

8:05 – Grasping a copy of the Financial Times tightly in my fingers, I find myself grinning manically at La Bergamote’s delicious looking chocolate and almond croissants. I order one of both.

8:10 – the Croissants are as good as I remember them from my last visit to the city – crunchy and buttery and flaky. Triumphantly, I notice that since I complained about their sandwiches being wrapped in plastic on my last visit, they’re now displayed in paper. The Waddling Kitchen gets results! Or maybe, rather more likely, they came to that sensible realization on their own.

8:20 – I realize that I should have been grinning at the cute and French woman behind the counter, rather than at the croissants. But croissants are also good, I decide. Very good indeed.

9:00 – I arrive at the Union Square Market. They have little heirloom tomatoes, saved from genetic death by enterprising farmers! I buy a punnet to munch on while I wander.

10:00 – The Strand bookstore has been redone. It’s even air-conditioned! I pick up two more food books, and clean out their stock of Sotheby’s auction catalogues for oriental rugs, to send off to my rug dealer uncles in Paris. Maybe this will persuade them to enter some of their rarer stock in an auction.

10:45 - a man handing out leaflets for a stripper takes one look at me and specifically doesn't give me one. I wonder why.

11:30 – Starving, I find myself at reader recommended Joe’s Shangai, renowned for their soup noodles. They are rightly renowned, I decide. The crab and pork mixture hidden within is succulent and flavorful. The dumplings are thin, delicate pouches housing deep tasting, boiling hot soup. I decide that the soup must get into the dumplings by turning a stock made with plenty of bone into a gelatin, adding to the dumpling, and then counting on it to liquefy while steaming. I don’t quite follow what one is to do with the sour vinegar provided with the dumplings, though.

I also eat a crisp deep fried quail, and then specifically order the bland cold sesame noodles in order to give myself something to do while I watch people who know what they’re doing eat the soup dumplings. It turns out that everyone has their own method, but the most effective seems to be putting the dumpling in the soup spoon, biting open a small opening, slurping out the soup, and then attacking the meat and noodle with chop sticks. But what is gained by dunking the things into the vinegar?

12:30 – I spend a few hours shopping around for men’s suits. The employees of the more expensive shops I visit seem to sense that I am impecunious, because they leave me entirely alone. No one seems to have the brown and white striped shirt with brown knit tie that I liked so much after seeing it on a sharply dressed European professor at school. Alas.

2:30 – a short visit to the New York public library to read the New York Times, and particularly the food section. I apparently look like a dubious visitor to the guards, who don’t correctly answer my question about the main reading room. I find it anyway.

4:30 – back to my hotel to pick up my bags. I start my long walk from 122 E. 31 Street to Penn Station, but via Bleecker Street. It’s hot. But I’m told there is the prospect of cheese and cakes at the end of the walk. Almost any walk can be justified by either cheese or cakes. I’ll hike twice as far for both .

5:00 - strange man calls me a bigotted name for our gay friends because he thinks my being on the other side of the sidewalk keeps him from moving along in a straight line. I wonder if he's been talking to the stripper leaflet guy I mention above, but I keep walking, luggage in tow. It's very hot.

5:25 – I arrive at Murray’s Cheese, rather worse for wear. I ask for a cheese “that can be inoffensively eaten on a train”. The cheesemonger laughingly notes that I should just get a strong cheese and let people learn – surely it’s not my problem that they can’t identify tasty cheese. But I figure keeping tension down on Amtrak is worth a slight decrease in pleasure, and end up with a very sharp and creamy version of Dutch Gouda.

5:45 – Way at the end of Bleecker, I find my long searched for Magnolia Bakery, also reader recommended. It’s small, and steamy, and kind of disorganized – all rather good things in my view. I down a yellow cupcake and a tall, cold, glass of their signature milk (all excellent), and then add a towering slice of German Chocolate cake for the ride home. I decide not to walk the rest of the way to Penn station, and jump in the subway instead.

3:00 am – thank God for the size of that cake. The train’s been delayed since 10pm, and I’m starving. Maybe outrageous portions aren’t actually the problem I think they are.

For the court-watcher, Becoming Justice Blackmun, by Linda Greenhouse, is a treat. The book is long on internal memoranda, bench notes, and Blackmun's legal pads, without getting into too much depth about the actual legal theories involved and without wandering off the deep end like Ed Lazarus's Closed Chambers. My only real complaint is that the book would have been better with a few foot- or end- notes. When Blackmun passed Scalia a note apologizing for how rough the 1996 term's decisions had been on Scalia, or when Burger passed Blackmun an exaggerated note during March 4, 1974, oral arguments, I found myself making marginal notes to find out what the full story was. I guess what I really would have preferred would be a book like "Linda Greenhouse's guide to the Blackmun Papers", which would probably have an audience of about 8.

[50 Books]

Today's Chicago Tribune runs a story about how authors fear that used-book sales will cut into their statistics and royalties on new books. Michael Powell, used-bookstore-majordomo, contests the analysis by pointing out that sometimes books act to whet one's appetite for even more books. This is a good point, so far as it goes, but he might have done well to also point out that a great number of people who buy lots of used books simply wouldn't have bought the books at all at a much higher price. This is probably particularly true of say, low-income students like me who buy lots of used books, but who would otherwise be getting them not from Borders, but from the library.

But the even better analysis came from Hal Varian last month in the New York times. Not only does he point out that most used-book-sales do not replace new-book-sales but rather no-book-sales, but he also points out that there is now evidence that the resale market for a book affects people's willingness to buy it in the first place. Dropping more than twenty dollars for a new hardcover or $100 for a textbook seems like a more reasonable investment when one knows one can get half of it back after using the book gingerly for a year. Nobody doubts this to be true of houses and cars, for example.

UPDATE ONE: I should emphasize that it is theoretically quite possible that books could be different than houses and cars-- houses and cars are obviously more expensive and thus people might be expected to invest more time and energy in the purchase. Books, on the other hand, might be more likely to be impulse purchases, and that is why the critics were so mad at Amazon for putting the "buy it used" link right next to the "new" link. On the other hand, the current evidence does seem to suggest that used books just don't cut into new book sales that much.

UPDATE TWO: Relatedly, I should note for all Bloomington-area readers that local used-bookmongery Caveat Emptor is having a quite rare 30% off sale this week. I acquired books by Margaret Atwood, Pablo Neruda, Raoul Berger, Paul Freund, Charles Black, and Robert Heinlein, and I would not have bought any of them new at a higher price.

In light of my two posts (1, 2) and Professor Strahilevitz's posts (1, 2) about banishing sex offfenders, Friend of Crescat Steve Sachs sends along this wire story-- St. Petersburg, Florida, is not going to let sex offenders use public hurricane shelters. They will, however, be permitted to weather the storm in prisons (as visitors, not inmates).

When I left Washington D.C. last weekend I also left it with about a hundred books. Some of them were acquired gratis from Book Thing, others were picked up here and there or shipped from New Haven. At any rate, as a book addict, I have become a regular habitue of the U.S. Post Office's book rate (media mail), as a way to move these albatrosses from place to place.

So, imagine my surprise to learn that Federal Express ground shipping is cheaper than USPS media mail, at least for any weight and dimensions that I was shipping from Washington D.C. to New Haven or to Bloomington. And of course, not only is it cheaper but faster, easier, (no need to laboriously label the boxes yourself), but it's also insured and they won't toss my boxes off the side of the truck for laughs (which I suspect happens to the occasional media mail box. Oh, and of course, they don't have to be books.

I realize it should not shock me over much that the private market can provide cheaper and higher-quality service than the federal government does, but I had just assumed that I was benefitting from some nefarious book-subsidy snuck into the rate sheets long ago by a cabal of librarians. If so, they would have done better at market rates. Apparently some folks have received bad service (and I will be sure to complain endlessly in this space if my boxes disappear), but it is hard to imagine worse treatment than an urban post office.

(Shipping two 30-pount boxes of books from Chicago to Ann Arbor via media mail: $21.68

Shipping same boxes to the same place in one day via FedEx Ground: $21.30.

A fighting chance of not losing your Little Green Book: Priceless.)