EdDriscoll.com

Posted 3/16/2002 05:44:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
TONY BLAIR MEETS ADAM AND EVE: "Group Captain Lionel Mandrake" says:

Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain, has taken his foot out of his mouth for just long enough to insert the other one. The Times of London (there can be only one)*said today: On Wednesday Dr Jenny Tonge, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, asked the Prime Minister whether he was happy for creationism to be taught in a state-funded school (she meant Emmanuel College in Gateshead) “alongside Darwinism”. Mr Blair's answer? “In the end, a more diverse school system will deliver better results for our children. If she looks at the school’s results, I think she will find that they are very good.” Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!! This man is the Prime Minister - was that really the best (un)answer he could come up with?

* Forgive him folks. Capt. Mandrake is very, very British, and can't help remarks like this.

Posted 3/16/2002 02:34:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOG HEAVEN: ESPN.com's "Page 2" section goes to Washington, with a variety of articles both amusing and serious on the Redskins, including this piece on the Skins' great offensive line of yore, the Hogs; an article by George Allen's daughter, Jennifer, on Richard Nixon's influence on her dad's playbook; and a terrific article by Thomas G. Smith, a history professor at Nichols College in Massachussetts, called "Civil Rights on the Gridiron", about how the Redskins, the last all-white team in the NFL, were finally integrated in the early 1960s. There's an astonishing quote by George Preston Marshall's, the Redskins' then owner, who once said, "We'll start signing Negroes, when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites." Of course, there's (at least) two enormous fallacies in that statement: 1. The Globetrotters were (and are) an exhibition team. Everybody expects them to beat the patsies who play against them. 2. The Redskins were getting creamed as an all-white team, and they had to play in the brutally competitive NFL, and were losing their seasons--badly. But it took the Kennedy administration, along with societal, and economic pressures, to finally force Marshall to make what should have been an easy decision. Anyhow, that article and the rest of the 'Skins pieces on Page Two make for great reading for any NFL fan enduring the painfully long off-season.

Posted 3/16/2002 01:00:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
BIG BLU: The Washington Times' Inside the Ring column is reporting that the Pentagon is rushing to produce a new and bigger bunker-buster bomb for use against hardened targets, like some of the underground hide-outs used by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Developed for the Air Force by Northrop Grumman Corp. and called Big BLU—for bomb live unit, the BLUs "are so big that it will take a B-2 bomber to carry one of them, we are told. Three Big BLUs have been ordered by the Air Force on an urgent basis."

Posted 3/16/2002 12:52:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
CUBA AFTER CASTRO: Armando Valladares, a writer who spent 22 years imprisoned in a Castro government gulag for opposing communism, says democracy will only return to Cuba when Fidel Castro disappears because there is no one in Cuba to replace him.

"It's not like in the old Soviet Union where one secretary of the (communist) party would succeed another one. The dictatorship in Cuba is like all Latin American dictatorships, once the leader disappears, the dictatorship disappears," he said.

I hope he's right--it can't happen soon enough. For more on the horrors of Cuba, check out Jeff Jacoby's ongoing, three part story of his recent visit there.

Posted 3/16/2002 12:41:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
RESTORING CLASSIC MOVIES: Interesting article on the incredible efforts going into restoring It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World by Robert Harris, who helped restore Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Vertigo and other classic Hollywood films.

For decades, the major studios had shelved their most valued possessions in makeshift vaults (many outdoors) and beneath and surrounding the studio's stages. One studio kept their treasures in a converted bowling alley with minimal temperature and humidity control. Some studios had no air conditioning or control whatsoever - a running joke being that they had full temperature and humidity control - that of the temperature and humidity outside the walls. One facility was found to have piles of rusting film cans on the floor with a tell-tale rust stain around them. Overhead was a hole in the roof through which water was allowed to seep. Then there is the horror story of one studio executive who felt that thousands of feet of the studio's most prized technicolor musical product was taking up far too much of the studio's storage space, and ordered all of the original film product to be dumped in the Pacific Ocean.

Posted 3/16/2002 01:30:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
ETERNAL VIGILANCE AND THE NEW NEW JOURNALISM: Yet another reference to my Spintech article--thanks! By the way, the Eternal Vigilance site looks pretty cool. I'll definitely check it out in detail later today.

Posted 3/16/2002 12:54:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
FIRST SGT. STRYKER, NOW GROUP CAPTAIN LIONEL MANDRAKE: My friend Steve Bail, an Englishman who has worked in Silicon Valley in the recent past, and no doubt will again, has started a blog, called A letter from the Olde Countrie, using the nom de blog of Wing Commander Lionel Mandrake, AFC, CBE, RAF, from Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. In one of his early posts, he mentions all the things we lowly colonists do wrong.

But, you know what? In all my travels (and I have travelled qute a bit of this planet), I have never found so much energy. In everything they do here, the attitude is "Can do, now!" It is sometimes said that Silicon Valley drives the US economy, which is not quite true. What is true is that they are trying things, thinking things, and doing things out here that much of the rest of the world will be doing when we've (I can say we - I work out here) finished ironing out the bugs.

Steve, whose knowledge of HTML is far greater than mine, has been a tremendous help in putting together my site, (and was instrumental in creating the little minibanner of mine that now adorns the Brothers Judd site), looks like he has a fun site started. Stop by there soon. Oh, and Sug, don't forget to say your prayers.

Posted 3/16/2002 12:11:42 AM by Edward Driscoll
TIME FOR THE LESBIAN LOVE GOATS? After getting the core components of this site uploaded last week, this has been a wonderful “grand opening” week for www.eddriscoll.com. We were mentioned by The Brothers Judd, Sgt. Stryker, Blithering Idiot, and the esteemed Instapundit. Catholic Exchange updated my bio to reflect this site. My essay on blogs was published this week by Spintech, complete with a nice reference back to this site. (All of which did wonders for my stats page—thanks folks!) Yesterday, we finally started showing up on Google and Yahoo’s radar screen as well. Because of the need to maintain taste and decorum at all times, I will resist using the efforts of Jonah Goldberg when he was writing his early G-File columns, and not use smut or material of prurient interest to boost my hits. Thus you won’t see me doing what an early G-File did to appear on the radar screens of more search engines:

So what can I write about that will get people in the door, as it were? Well, first, I can appeal to the biases of the search engines. I could cravenly include such things as FREE HOT, HOT, HOT, ALL GIRL-GIRL ACTION!!! TEEN LESBIANS GET IT ON IN STUDY HALL! FREE XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX XXX PORN. But that wouldn’t be right. I am a mature thinker, writer about affairs of state, and cultural conservative. To take advantage of the fact that people and search engines alike look for things like LIVE VIDEO OF LESBIAN LOVE GOATS wouldn’t be right. I should be writing about Chinese espionage and technology transfers. I should be dissecting the probe by House members Christopher Cox and Norman Dicks, which has exposed Asian spying. Hmmm. Cox, Dicks, members…Yes, that’s it; I should take the high road and write about Dicks and Cox and probing members exposing Asians.

Oops, I think I just did. Nevermind. Seriously, watch for more updates to this site in the coming weeks, as I finally get my FAQs and “About Me” pages uploaded, as well as hopefully get a few more of my otherwise unpublished essays and articles added to the content. And of course, lots more of daily blogging action, but probably very little in the way of actual lesbian love goat action.

Posted 3/15/2002 12:35:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
INSTAPUNDIT RETURNS FROM CALIFORNIA WITH HOT STORIES: Actually, I think Glenn either found them on the Web or had them emailed to him. But on his site today are links to two different California-oriented stories. The first is on Dianne Feinstein (DIANNE FEINSTEIN FELONY REVEALED!), who apparently had an aide illegally download a copy of Shrek from a peer-to-peer network (ala Napster or Morpheus) before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The second story is on "hungover liberal journalists" who are deserting Gov. Gray Davis' re-election campaign. Reynolds says his opponent, Bill Simon, "may turn out to be stronger than people think."

Posted 3/15/2002 10:30:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
ALL'S NOT WELLS WITH THE TIME MACHINE: John Derbyshire reviews The Time Machine on National Review Online--and Derb is a huge Wells fan:

I therefore approached this new production of The Time Machine with a sort of open-minded resignation. The most I hoped for was to be given some glimpses of Wells's original magic, and to be dazzled for a few minutes by some of those wonderful special effects movie-makers are capable of today. Alas, even these very modest expectations were left unfulfilled. The magic is almost entirely absent here, the special effects feeble. As little as there is of the atmosphere of Wells's creation, there is hardly any more of his story line. Grafted on to the front of the plot is a new motivation for the building of the time machine. The Time Traveler (he is given a name in the movie, but I have forgotten it) proposes to his sweetheart in New York's Central Park one snowy winter's night; but they are accosted by a robber, who shoots her dead. Inspired by grief, the Time Traveler builds his machine, and goes back the necessary few months to change the event. The intelligent viewer will wonder at this point how the Time Traveler avoids meeting himself... but his is not a movie for inquiring minds.

Posted 3/15/2002 12:01:40 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE POST-9/11 LEFT: I try (and usually fail) to not pick too many links off of Drudge, Instapundit and Andrew Sullivan. But Sullivan has a link to an essay in the upcoming issue of Dissent called "Can There Be a Decent Left?". It's long but powerful reading, including this except (and yes, I know these are the same paragraphs that Sullivan quotes, but they get to the heart of the subject: where the left goes after (or, to be more specific, in regards to) September 11 and its aftermath:

The world (and this includes the third world) is too full of hatred, cruelty, and corruption for any left, even the American left, to suspend its judgement about what’s going on. It’s not the case that because we are privileged, we should turn inward and focus our criticism only on ourselves. In fact, inwardness is one of our privileges; it is often a form of political self-indulgence. Yes, we are entitled to blame the others whenever they are blameworthy; in fact, it is only when we do that, when we denounce, say, the authoritarianism of third world governments, that we will find our true comrades--the local opponents of the maximal leaders and military juntas, who are often waiting for our recognition and support. If we value democracy, we have to be prepared to defend it, at home, of course, but not only there. I would once have said that we were well along: the American left has an honorable history, and we have certainly gotten some things right, above all, our opposition to domestic and global inequalities. But what the aftermath of September 11 suggests is that we have not advanced very far--and not always in the right direction. The left needs to begin again.

Read the whole thing for yourself.

Posted 3/14/2002 11:09:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
MIT AWARDED GRANT TO DESIGN HIGH-TECH BATTLE UNIFORM: According to Newsday.com, the school said Wednesday it has been awarded a five-year, $50 million dollar grant to develop the armor, which could detect threats and protect against projectiles and biological or chemical weapons.

All this would be achieved by developing particle-sized materials and devices -- called "nanotechnology" -- nestled into the uniform's fabric. Supercharged shoes could release energy when soldiers jump, propelling them over a 20-foot wall. Micoreactors could detect bleeding and apply pressure. Light-deflecting material could make the suit blend in with surroundings.

Thanks to Orrin Judd for submitting this link.

Posted 3/14/2002 09:30:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAX HEADROOM MEETS R2D2:Wired News has an article on the Robo-Scribe, a robot reporter. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but which direction would it lean when it reports?

Posted 3/14/2002 05:35:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEXT THING YOU'LL TELL ME IS THAT SHE'S NOT PSYCHIC...The Miami Herald says that "Miss Cleo, the Jamaican shaman and spokeswoman for a psychic hot line, was born in California, according to her birth certificate." I think somebody should investigate her hotline for a monoply status. Their ads are all over DirecTV, and lots of cable channels. And yes, they're silly as all get-out, and I'm sure innocent people believe in Miss Cleo's psychic powers. But Reason had a good article about Miss Cleo, which said:

The state attorney general's office has subpoenaed Miss Cleo's birth certificate and other records in an effort to show whom she works for and where she has lived. The idea seems to be that Miss Cleo-a.k.a. Youree Harris, a 39-year-old Broward County resident-cannot document her claims of psychic powers and hence is guilty of fraud. But that charge assumes Miss Cleo's customers really believe she's psychic. Surely at least some of them do not, viewing a Miss Cleo "reading" as no more than a lark. The state appears to be on more solid ground regarding the strong-arm collection tactics of Miss Cleo's firm, accused of harassing people who don't even owe it money. Such tactics are particularly effective against less educated, lower-income segments of society.

Posted 3/14/2002 05:07:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
LUMP IN THE THROAT SPEECH: Posted on the SteelNavy.Com Message Board is a speech from the captain to the crew of the USS John F. Kennedy, shortly before the new-on-station aircraft carrier launched its first strikes into Afghanistan on Sunday.

"For us this is a culminating point in space, a culminating point in time, and a culminating point in history. "Our enemy is a group of religious fanatics, who pervert the peace of Islam and twist its meaning to justify the murder of thousands of innocents at the Twin Towers of New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. "They hate us and attack us because they oppose all that is good about America. They hate us because we are prosperous. They hate us because we are tolerant. They hate us because we are happy. "Mostly, they hate us because we are free and because we will ‘pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.’ "Make no mistake - this is a fight for Western civilization. If these monsters are not destroyed, they will destroy us, and our children and our children’s children will live in fear forever.

Eventually, the captain said:

"Our namesake, John F. Kennedy, wrote, ‘a single person can make a difference, and every person should try.’ Tonight, WE can make a difference! "We represent America in all its power and diversity. We are men and women, rich and poor, black and white, and all colors of the human rainbow. "We are Christian, Jew, and yes, Muslim. WE ARE AMERICA. "This war will not be short, pleasant or easy. It has already required the sacrifice of our firefighters, our policemen, our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, and our Marines. More sacrifices will be made. In the end we will win, precisely because we are those things that the terrorists hate - prosperous, happy, tolerant and, most of all, free.

Read the whole thing. If (like I did), you cried at the end of Saving Private Ryan, have a Kleenex or two handy.

Posted 3/14/2002 04:50:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC COVERGIRL FOUND, LOOKS WORSE FOR WEAR. According the article, it says she’s about 30, but she looks much, much older. (By way of the Kerstiens' Cursings blog, by way of Sgt. Stryker. Speaking of whom…)

Posted 3/14/2002 04:45:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
SGT. STRYKER SAYS DRISCOLL “GOOD EGG”. Thanks! I originally interviewed the Sarge for my Spintech piece, because I thought his blog was a great example of how somebody with a unique slant can become his own publisher. Check out this story as a great example of something that’s probably not getting a whole lot of attention in the mainstream press, and probably should.

Posted 3/14/2002 04:43:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLOGGER IS BACK--Another day, another long Blogger outage. But it's back, and so are we...

Posted 3/14/2002 04:39:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SEVEN FAT YEARS: When I wrote the piece below about the tobacco settlements, I pasted a link to Jude Wanniski’s The Way The World Works, because it appears that The Seven Fat Years, a wonderful economics primer by Robert Bartley (the former editor of The Wall Street Journal) is out of print. It’s probably available via a used book site such as Bookfinder.com, or some of the resellers on the Amazon Shops list. In the meantime, here’s a link to Bartley being interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-Span’s Booknotes from 1992.

Posted 3/14/2002 03:51:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE LAFFER CURVE MEETS THE MARLBORO MAN: Excellent article in National Review Online’s financial section by Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Earlier this week, we mentioned the Laffer curve (go to link for description). Bartlett does a thorough job of explaining how it applies to the onerous taxes tacked on by the tobacco settlement:

The truth is that the states never actually wanted smoking to fall. They wanted the money far more than they wanted healthier citizens. That is why no serious consideration was ever given to banning cigarettes altogether. After all, we ban any number of drugs whose negative health effects are considerably less than those that cigarettes are said to cause. However, banned products yield no revenue to governments.

Bartlett adds:

Many states are now considering steep increases in tobacco taxes to close budget gaps. However, I believe that moderate rates will bring in more money. High rates encourage smuggling and reduce consumption too much, causing revenue to fall. Eventually, states will have to decide whether it is more important to reduce smoking or get more taxes to spend. When that time comes, some may actually cut their tax rates to raise revenue, as some European countries have already done.

Wow, lowering taxes increases revenues! Whoda thunkit!

Posted 3/14/2002 12:17:40 AM by Edward Driscoll
WIRED ON WIRELESS LANS:

The industry that provides wireless local area networks -- which give users wireless access to the Internet in public locations such as libraries, airports and coffee shops -- is becoming a crowded one. So many companies are putting up wireless LANs that a recent report by investment research firm ARCchart found that WLAN providers could pose a risk to the success of next-generation (3G) wireless operators. The research firm said WLANs could eat up as much as 64 percent of 3G revenues in the next four years.

I have a feeling wireless 802.11 LANs are going to be big, really big (sorry to get all Shatnerian on you there). Cable television began in the late 1940s, when the first cables were strung to provide television reception to people whose antennas were blocked by hills. Nobody imagined then that people with perfectly good broadcast TV reception would pay to have cable run into their homes so that they could watch a hundred channels of all news, all weather, all movies, and all music videos. Wireless today feels a bit like history repeating. Today, the first transmitters and repeaters that power wireless Internet and Ethernet networks are being strung up around a few cities, office campuses, and even high-tech residential neighborhoods. Hundreds of airports, hotels, and loads of Starbucks coffeehouses offer wireless Internet service to their customers. Even Amtrak has recently begun experimenting with wireless on a few trains. Wireless could change how people interact with the Internet potentially even more than cable modems and DSLs. I first purchased an 802.11 wireless PCMCIA card for my laptop because I wanted to be able to work around the house and not have to worry about plugging it into a LAN outlet. It was only after I purchased the card, that I discovered that I could also get broadband (for a fee) at all sorts of other locations. It was invaluable on my last trip to New York in February, as I could use it at the San Jose airport, the Dallas airport and JFK, as well as several Manhattan Starbucks. I suspect that five or ten years from now, some sort of wireless broadband connection will be available throughout most cities.

Posted 3/13/2002 05:02:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLITHERING IDIOT ANYTHING BUT--FILM AT 11. Nice words about this site from Bill Sulik, aka the "Blithering Idiot", although he sounds like anything but. Read his post on "the acceleration of the dissemination of information", during 9/11 for proof.

Posted 3/13/2002 02:18:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE NEW, NEW JOURNALISM: My Spintech essay on Blogging is up, which features quotes from interviews I conducted with Glenn Reynolds, Joanne Jacobs, Sgt. Stryker and Marshall McLuhan. Tracking down McLuhan, who's been dead for twenty years, and getting his thoughts on the recent phenomenon of Web logs, wasn't easy, but I managed to find him, and smoke out an interview. Nice guy--really love that clip-on tie! The other folks I interviewed were incredibly helpful (not to mention very much alive), and I can't thank them enough for their time.

Posted 3/13/2002 01:38:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
MOTORIST, DUMMY IN HOV-LANE ACCIDENT, according to this The Seattle Times article.

A woman with a full-size mannequin as a passenger drove into the car-pool lane on Interstate 405 in Renton yesterday morning, triggering a chain of collisions involving six cars and two buses, according to the State Patrol. The buses were carrying band members from Kennedy High School in Burien. Fifteen band members and one of the drivers suffered bumps and scrapes, but there were no serious injuries. What citations the woman will be given isn't clear, except for driving alone in the high- occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane. "Her passenger wasn't breathing, and that's one of our requirements," according to Monica Hunter, spokeswoman for the State Patrol.

I did a backpage "rant" for Sport Z magazine last year about how absurd commuter lanes are, and how they take a perfectly functional four-lane highway, and through misguided social engineering, turn it into a parking lot. Here is the Reader's Digest condensed version:

Ever since I moved to San Jose in 1997, there’s been something about commuter lanes that has driven me nuts. It’s not just that they can take a perfectly functional four lane highway and turn it into three lanes of congestion, or that they increase the risk of accidents (but they can), it’s also that they go against all that once made California fun. To the average person, “government” in the US means “elected officials”. But commuter lanes weren’t the result of elected officials. They were the result of faceless bureaucrats in Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation. As Joan Didion describes in her book The White Album, Caltrans introduced commuter lanes in the late 1970s to initially turn the 240,000 cars that traverse the Santa Monica freeway every day into 232,000. Naturally, after screwing that freeway, Caltrans spent an initial 42 million dollars of taxpayer money to begin the initial screwing of the rest of the state’s freeways. And for that money, what did we get? The main results from commuter lanes are to make the people driving in them feel oh so superior to the single drivers to their right; and to make the people driving alone feel like worthless worms, stuck in traffic thick with constipation, unable to move, while a handful of cars scream past them.

Posted 3/13/2002 01:08:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
AFRICA AND THE INTERNET: Interesting Reuters article titled Africa Struggles to Get Online.

A new innovation, the Internet has failed to take off in Africa for simple reasons. Two older inventions -- electricity and the phone -- are absent from large swathes of the continent. Even in capital cities such as Accra in Ghana, where the Internet is a handy way of by-passing the country's poor international phone service, power cuts hamper computer use.

Here's another fascinating snippet:

In Ivory Coast, one of the more affluent countries in West Africa a decent computer costs about $1,000, well above the annual per capita income. The minimum monthly wage is $40.

Chuck Berry is right--I'm so glad I'm living in the USA.

Posted 3/13/2002 12:06:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE: Orrin Judd emailed me a link to an excellent profile of Ira Stoll, who runs the Smartertimes Web site, which provides a daily fact checking and skewering of the New York Times.

Smartertimes' daily attacks on the Times over the past two years have proven that a small Web site can take on a venerable journalism institution. Indeed, with every passing morning, Stoll adds yet more of what he considers incontrovertible evidence to his case against the paper, claiming that "New York's dominant daily has grown complacent, slow and inaccurate." The publication's simple premise -- a point-by-point take-down of the Times each day -- has been executed remarkably well by Stoll on his cleanly designed Web site, which is devoid of any graphic or textual excess. Each day's edition is written in crisp, decorous, sometimes condescending prose; in fact, Smartertimes seems to lampoon what it sees as the Times' self-importance by using the paper's own authoritative tone against it. Stoll spent $1,200 to launch the Web site, which now receives between 1,000 and 1,200 visitors each day. The bulk of the publication's loyalists, however, are on the Smartertimes mailing list; over 5,500 subscribers now receive Stoll's free daily critique via e-mail.

Like Matt Drudge, Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan, Stoll demonstrates what one man with a modem can do to both keep an eye on traditional media (funny how they rarely seem to like coming under the same scrutiny that they themselves historically applied to say business, government, the military, etc.). And Stoll's efforts will really pay off in the coming months, as the New York Sun launches, which Stoll will be managing editor and vice president of. In the meantime...

Smartertimes may simply be one man's manifesto, read by a small group of like-minded Times detractors. But, if nothing else, it is further evidence that the balance of power has been tipped, however slightly, from the journalism institution to the reader. Stoll's Web site leads a burgeoning pack of similarly critical forums, devoted to evaluating everything from the San Francisco Chronicle to Dan Rather's performance behind the anchor desk. After all, letters to the editor and corrections tucked inside the next day's issue are often not enough: Independent online outlets like Smartertimes, motivated by perceived media injustice, offer the opportunity for critical information consumers like Stoll to express their inner ombudsmen, providing a public service even their targets can appreciate.

Posted 3/13/2002 12:16:58 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE RAIDERS HAVE A NEW HEAD COACH. The NFL's Oakland Raiders named Bill Callahan their new head coach Tuesday night. ESPN.com says:

In typical Raiders fashion, their big announcement was made quietly by fax and e-mail. The Raiders will introduce Callahan, a seven-year NFL assistant with no head coaching experience, during a news conference Wednesday at their Alameda training complex. There was little suspense in the Raiders' decision. Though the team said it conducted an extensive search for its new coach, apparently considering former Minnesota coach Dennis Green and Kansas City offensive coordinator Al Saunders, Callahan was the clear favorite to continue Gruden's successful tenure -- simply because he never left the building.

I'm sure it's a coincidence, but that deer-in-the-headlights/mug shot photograph of Callahan on the ESPN page doesn't bode well for replacing the maniacally intense John Gruden, or surviving a long tenure with Darth Raider Al Davis.

Posted 3/12/2002 05:15:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
I added Catholic Exchange to the links page earlier today (I was embarrassed to be told by their editor that there wasn't one already. In my defense, I did list all of the articles I've written for them to this date here. It's a nifty Web site, with a surprisingly wide range of material, from Alan Keyes to Michael Medved to (amazingly enough) from time to time, yours truly. There's even a section on food. Stop on by there soon, and tell 'em I sent you.

Posted 3/12/2002 04:57:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
GORBACHEV SAYS COMMUNISM A HOAX. Writing on The Corner on National Review Online Jonah Goldberg says "Mikhail Gorbachev finally admits Communism was a hoax," and teasingly adds, "Now could someone please call the guys at the Nation and let them know?" Oddly enough, when I first read Gorbachev's comments last night, I had a flashback to some of the recent material written by and about David Brock. Like Brock's recent writings, Gorbachev basically just called himself a liar and a hypocrite. In Gorbachev's case, for supporting a system that sent millions to their deaths. Well, at least he's finally figured it out.

Posted 3/12/2002 04:44:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
A DEAL TO BE REACHED IN THE BOSTON PRIEST ABUSE CASE? FindLaw Legal News is reporting:

The Archdiocese of Boston has reached a financial settlement with dozens of people who claimed they were sexually molested by defrocked priest John J. Geoghan, according to the plaintiffs' lawyer. "We've resolved all issues," attorney Mitchell Garabedian said Tuesday morning. Garabedian, who represents 70 alleged victims and 16 family members of alleged victims, would not say how much the settlement totaled, but it has been reported to be between $15 million and $30 million. Garabedian said the details of the settlement would be to announced later in the day.

Posted 3/12/2002 04:24:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
CRUISE TO CRUISE AGAIN: The Internet Movie Database is reporting that Tom Cruise will be remaking that hoary old Roger Corman 1970s exploitation flick, Death Race 2000. In a way, this sounds like a smart move by Cruise, returning to a racing film after Vanilla Sky got pounded by both the critics, and has yet to crack the magic $100 million mark at the the US box office. (And cost $68 million to make, so probably needed two or three times that amount to turn a profit, once advertising, promotion, etc. is factored into the equation) Back when Vanilla Sky came out, I wrote, on Stuart Robinson's terrific home theater Web site:

Vanilla Sky puts Tom Cruise firmly in Dark City, The Matrix, The Truman Show, etc., 'what is reality' land. And while I've enjoyed all of the above films, this film seemed like a mess, with awful dialog, a silly subplot involving plastic surgery, and pacing that makes Eyes Wide Shut (which I really liked incidentally, but then I've drunk gallons of Kubrick Kool-Aid in my college days) seem like Star Wars. One underlying theme of the film seems to be "choose your cultural references carefully"--Cruise's life seems to be endless cliches of pop culture icons. He owns a publishing company ala Jann Wenner, drives a boss Mustang ala Steve McQueen in Bullit, walks through scenes that look like Dylan-esque album covers, at one point, wears a mask that looks like the one he wore in Eyes Wide Shut, etc. Vanilla Sky is a remake of the Spanish/French film Abre los ojos ("Open Your Eyes"), which also starred Penélope Cruz--and on the plus side, Cruz and Cameron Diaz both helped to insure that the film *looks* wonderful--there's also some good songs on the background score, which isn't surprising, as the director was Cameron Crowe, whose last film was the wonderful Almost Famous. Too bad the writing, pacing, editing, and dialog didn't match the visuals and sound. Normally when a film leaves me this cold, I'm first inclined to question if I simply didn't get it, and give some benefit to the filmmakers for trying something experimental, swinging for the bleachers, and missing. (George Lucas' THX-1138 falls into that category. Incredible looking film, with a dull plot and pacing. Dynamite car chase at the end however, which foreshadows the X-Wing and TIE Fighter shootout that climaxes Star Wars).

...And whose car chase apparently foreshadows Cruise's next movie project!

Posted 3/12/2002 03:00:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLOGGER IS WORKING AGAIN. Sort of. For about three hours, I could post, but I couldn't get the pages to FTP to my Vario server. We're back. The stuff I wrote in the interim is posted below.

Posted 3/12/2002 02:57:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!! Err, not quite (sorry to steal Robert Plant's line). But I've just been mentioned by Glenn Reynolds, the man, the myth, the Instapundit. And Catholic Exchange recently updated my bio to reflect this site. Orrin, Glenn and Mark, thank you all.

Posted 3/12/2002 02:30:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARTHUR ANDERSEN, UP CPA CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE. FindLaw Legal News is reporting that "Facing possible obstruction of justice charges for its role in the Enron Corp. debacle, accounting firm Andersen is now looking at a Thursday deadline to agree to a guilty plea, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday." In related news, Nina Yablok, prominent Silicon Valley business attorney , and wife of the owner of the somewhat less prominent, but rapidly growing in popularity, eponymously named Web log EdDriscoll.com, sends this link to the UK Guardian, which says "Arthur Andersen is reportedly holding merger talks with rival Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu as the accountancy giant fights for survival after being tainted in the Enron scandal. And it seems like everyone but the US is aware of these merger talks. Digital Israel has a similar story.

Posted 3/12/2002 02:06:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEBUNKING DAVID MAMET. David Mamet made his name by writing edgy plays with crackling dialogue in the early 1980s, and then contributing that same ear for incredible dialogue to mainstream Hollywood films. Remember "That's the Chicago Way" from The Untouchables? Those wonderful riffs from "Wag the Dog"? Did you bother to watch "Ronin", a so-so action film, but with lines like "Have you ever killed anybody?" DeNiro:"I hurt somebody's feelings once." If so, that's Mamet. Flak Magazine recently put up an article by Matt Fisher (who's email is roger_thornhill@hotmail.com. Paging Dr. Hitchcock...) which argues that Mamet has been on cruise control for quite sometime. Because he's in demand, he no long has to try:

He has become drama's answer to George Lucas; automatic acclaim has shrunk the scope and scale of his efforts, because no matter what he turns out, hey, it's a David Mamet movie. But unlike George Lucas, his hip cachet prevents everyone from bursting his balloon with a long-overdue reality check.

Fisher argues that Mamet's Hollywood hip cache comes largely from Glengarry Glen Ross, a film Fisher seems to really admire. But from the point of view of somebody who worked, effectively, in sales for many years, Glengarry was such a depressingly overblown series of clichés about salesmen that were cliches when Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in the late 1940s, it was astonishing to see it so overhyped, so endlessly rerun on TNT, and to see it be the cornerstone of someone's career speaks volumes about Hollywood's tenuous collective connection to reality. Whoops, sorry for the rant there. It's just that I'm sure Hollywood believes that all people in sales are strictly in it for the commissions, or they're all 65 year old grizzled geezers who need that last sale before they go off to the great insurance agency in the sky. Or (especially in the case of Glengarry Glen Ross), they need outside help generating leads and referrals. Hell, at least Charlie Sheen in Oliver Stone's Wall Street had enough brains to prospect Gordon Gekko without being told to do so by his boss (The Pathmark Supermarket spokesman). OK, that's my mini-take on Mamet (and as Fisher notes, The Untouchables, Wag the Dog and Ronin are all enjoyable films). Read Thornhill's, err, Fisher's article for a more thorough look. ...Everybody needs the Internet. That's why they call it the Internet!

Posted 3/12/2002 10:52:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
THANKS BROS! The Brothers Judd, the hardest working book reviewers on the Internet, recently listed me as one of their “Most highly recommended” sites, and allowed me to put a minibanner ad on their site. I’m really, really honored guys. If you’re reading this, click over to their site early and often. And if you’ve just found this site via their mention of it, welcome onboard! For the past several years, most of my writing has been “on dead tree” (where I seem to have corned the market on home electronics, but I do write about other stuff--honest!), but beginning in the summer of last year, I began to establish more of a Web presence. I contributed to the start-up phase of National Review Online’s Financial section, and then eventually realized that I was the official last reader of both Instapundit and NRO to not have his own blog, so, sensing a need that wasn’t met by the squillion other blogs out there, I naturally decided to hop on the bandwagon (if only to give potential editors a place to find me on the Web!). If you missed my profile of the Bros, you can read the complete text of my original interview with Orrin, here. (Scroll down for text--it follows a reprint of my original article from Catholic Exchange.) Putting together this Blog has been a helluva learning experience. I’m a great believer in DIY and creative experimentation. Years ago, Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer:

The best education in film is to make one. I would advise any neophyte director to try to make a film by himself. A three-minute short will teach him a lot. I know that all the things I did at the beginning were, in microcosm, the things I'm doing now as a director and producer. There are a lot of noncreative aspects to filmmaking which have to be overcome, and you will experience them all when you make even the simplest film: business, organization, taxes, etc., etc. It is rare to be able to have an uncluttered, artistic environment when you make a film, and being able to accept this is essential.

Blogging is done on a much smaller, saner scale, but for someone like myself, who has little or no HTML knowledge, it can still be a tremendous learning experience. For example, putting together the minibanner for the Brothers Judd site, I spent a half an hour yesterday with Photoshop, and a friend who has a background in Web design, to quickly come up with an acceptable little banner. Working in that small scale, and making something that’s Web-friendly, was something I had never done before. As was putting together a site of this size. Fortunately, blogger is cheap and easy to use, and easy to manipulate. The point is (it’s here somewhere, honest!) that anybody can put up a news and opinion blog, and almost everybody probably should—and the quirkier the slant, the better. Unlike the stodgy, stuck in mainstream liberalism traditional media, blogs allow for all sorts of interesting biases: since anybody can do one, then any group has a shot at finding a blogger who’ll represent them. Gay Republican Trekkies? Lesbian Libertarian Keynesian professional wrestling fans? There’s a probably a Web log that fits your interests, and if there isn’t, that’s probably reason alone to start one. Like I recently did! Welcome onboard.

Posted 3/12/2002 09:49:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN ON THE WTC MEMORIAL SPOTLIGHTS:

The towers reach to heaven, they dominate the sky-line, they are full of light. “Seeing those huge monoliths, as seemingly timeless as the pyramids, vanish taught us something about our buildings, our institutions, and ourselves,” one of the designers, Gustavo Bonevarti, writes in Slate. “We learned how ephemeral life really is. Light is ephemeral, but it is also universal—that's what we wanted this project to be.” Whatever replaces this should never substitute it entirely. I hope that every September 11 from now on, those lights are re-lit. Every September 11 – a ritual and memorial of light.

For the next month (the lights come down--at least for a while--on April 13), New Yorkers will have a memorial that's almost like a Rorschach test--ethereal, somber, bright, spectral--there are many, many meanings that can be read into the twin spotlights. A friend who lives in a direct line with them (who thus had her view of the WTC ripped away from her on 9/11) was speculating how strange it's going to feel when these are turned off next month.

Posted 3/11/2002 05:45:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
STAR WARS GEEK ALERT: While my money is still on Condi Rice as a front runner for the Presidency in the 2008 election, Senator Palpatine has recently entered the race as a dark horse candidate, as a member of the newly formed Imperial Party.

Posted 3/11/2002 04:13:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHEN THE ECONOMY PICKS UP STEAM, WILL ANYONE BE LEFT TO REPORT ABOUT IT? Editorandpublisher.com, by way of Jim Romenesko's Media News says, "Permanent fixed-cost reductions" -- that's the catchphrase at newspapers these days. Pressured to improve their profit margins, a number of chains that slimmed down last year will continue to operate with fewer people -- even when the economy improves." Twenty years ago, Tom Wolfe told an interviewer, "I don't know how much corruption there is at the local level, but there's never been a better time in the century for there to be corruption in local government, because the press isn't going to report it." With the exception of Internet reporters such as Matt Drudge, and a few others, and despite the proliferation of 24 hour news channels, most mainstream newspaper and TV reporting has never been shallower. This sounds like a perfect opportunity for bloggers and enterprising freelancers to pick up the slack. It's possible that news agencies might use a combination of both to affordably diversify their reporting pool (see my article from last fall in CatholicExchange.com for some ideas on this subject), but who knows if that will happen. The fact that Drudge was absolutely loathed by most traditional reporters when he first appeared on the map doesn't bode well--but hopefully I'm just being cynical.

Posted 3/11/2002 03:19:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
DOW UPDATE: Matt Drudge has a link to an article which reports that today's Dow close was the highest since June of 2001. "The entire focus of the market has shifted away from what can go wrong to now a better balance between what could go wrong and what could go right," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView. "The economic news has been incredibly good." Like I said, couldn't happened on a better day.

Posted 3/11/2002 03:15:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
CABLE MODEM SUBSCRIBERS UP, according to this Reuters story. "The number of subscribers to high-speed Internet service via cable rose almost 13 percent to 7.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2001, a trade group said on Monday, days before federal regulators begin shaping the framework for what rules apply to the service."

Consumers have not signed up for high-speed service via traditional telephone lines, known as digital subscriber line (DSL), as quickly. The biggest provider, Verizon Communications , has 1.2 million subscribers while the biggest cable company, AT&T Broadband has 1.5 million cable-modem subscribers. At the same time, the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) is poised on Thursday to classify cable-modem service. Analysts have said they expect it will be deemed an information service, subjecting it to fewer regulations.

As anybody who's got it can tell you, the day they switched from dial-up to broadband is a day their lives transformed, especially if they're a telecommuter or self-employed. Can't wait to see how 802.11 wireless further transforms the Internet experience!

Posted 3/11/2002 03:08:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES BOWMAN ON THE 9/11 DOCUMENTARY:

I almost fell off my chair at the words of Jules Naudet, who with his brother Gedeon made the film called 9/11 that ran on CBS on Sunday, when with his video camera in hand he saw people on fire in the lobby of the World Trade Center. Jules can be heard on the tape saying: “No one should see this.” And we didn’t! He shut the camera off! I confess that for half a moment I was disappointed. So great is the lust for “reality” on TV, even when we are scarcely aware of it, that our first reaction (or at least my first reaction) to being denied an image is like that of a child being denied a sweet. But I want it! As Jules Naudet told a news conference last week, however, “This was an image that was quite horrible, and I thought immediately, ‘It's not something people should see.’

Posted 3/11/2002 01:36:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
GOOD WAY FOR THEM TO END THE DAY: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the NYSE Composite, and the S&P 500 all ended the day up. Only the Nasdaq had a very small loss. I can't think of a better day for most of the markets to be up. For the record: DJIA 10611.24 +38.75 NASDAQ 1929.49 -0.18 NYSE 604.22 +2.12 S&P 500 1168.26 +3.95

Posted 3/11/2002 01:29:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
UH, DOESN'T IT HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH ITS TIME? FindLaw Legal News is reporting that the "U.S. Justice Department will ask a federal judge to place tough new restrictions on the marketing, manufacture and sale of cigarettes, in the latest development in the government's 3-year law suit against the industry, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday."

Posted 3/11/2002 01:26:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
FORGET JOHNNIE COCHRAN, HIRE ORVILLE REDDENBACHER. The Columbus Dispatch has an article with a headline that reads "Judge sets bail for 2 accused of possessing stolen popcorn".

Posted 3/11/2002 12:50:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
VIRGINIA POSTREL, SIX MONTHS AFTER 9/11:

This is an existential struggle. It can't be ended by appeasement or altered Mideast policies. There are no bargains to be struck and no single entity, in truth, to bargain with even if we wanted to try that unwise tack. Military action is required—significant and sustained, yet unlike normal wars against nation states. For those of us with the privilege of civilian life, it is imperative to live normally and not give in to fear or (the pundit's curse) self-dramatization. If our civilization could survive the Cold War (or, as Freeman Dyson has said, the 1930s), we can survive anything. The struggle is a necessary evil. It is not a source of meaning or a reason to live. Those must come from the normal life which the struggle is fought to protect.

Postrel looked back on her Blog notes from 9/11 and described them as "banal or confused, although I can't say I'd take anything back." We were all confused that day, but Postrel did a helluva job cranking out news and opinions. When news sites were down, her Web site stayed up, and I clicked to it early and often. I know it's a cliche (another pundit's curse), but there's no doubt that the Blog Sphere really came of age on 9/11 and the days the followed.

Posted 3/11/2002 12:16:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
WE COMPARE, YOU DECIDE: The New York Post (found via Instapundit, naturally) is reporting about the election Alec Baldwin lost, back in 1979. They said:

In 1979, when Alec still went by his birth name Alex, the eldest Baldwin brother lost his campaign to be George Washington University's student association president by one vote. After he demanded a recount which only confirmed Baldwin's loss, he dropped out of GW and transferred to New York University. . . . The move made Baldwin the butt of jokes. In the March 8, 1979, edition of the GW Hatchet, National Law Center senator Dana Dembrow wrote: "Yes, it is possible for Alex Baldwin to not win a fair election. Alex Baldwin lost not because anyone cheated, but simply because his opponents were the choice of the voters."

When Mr. Burns lost an election on The Simpsons, he famously said:

"This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you."

On December of 1998, during the House impeachment proceedings, Baldwin went on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien and let loose with:

"If we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, [starts to shout] all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death!...We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children."

(Click here for a full transcript of Baldwin's rant, as well as a videoclip). Is there a secret Mr. Burns/Alec Baldwin connection? Perhaps they are both members of the top-secret Stonecutters organization. As I said, we compare, you decide.

Posted 3/11/2002 10:39:17 AM by Edward Driscoll
MORE ON CBS'S 9/11 DOCUMENTARY: Matt Drudge is reporting "CBS won Sunday night with its 9-11 terror special pulling a 24.0 rating/34 share in the national overnights -- and a 51 share in New York City." Drudge says that "9-11 will easily become the most-watched program of the week, if the number holds in later NIELSEN runs." And National Review Online has a symposium about the show. Hopefully it will be rerun and/or released on DVD. UPDATE: Drudge now links to washingtonpost.com article, which says 39 Million People Watched CBS' '9-11'.

Posted 3/11/2002 01:27:46 AM by Edward Driscoll
I MISSED THE CBS DOCUMENTARY ON 9/11 THAT RAN SUNDAY NIGHT. I was out, and stupidly forgot to set UltimateTV to record it. If you missed the documentary as well, read Andrew Sullivan's comments on it:

It is simply a good thing that we remember that we are still at war; that the enemy launched it with a callousness that should banish any doubts about the morality of our cause; and that, when resolve falters, we remember the people and civilization we’re fighting for and the thousands of victims who have already paid the price. In an odd way, having seen it all again, I feel less afraid of what lies ahead, and more eager to get on with it.

That's just a snippet--read the whole thing.

Posted 3/11/2002 12:54:23 AM by Edward Driscoll
TODAY IS THE SIXTH MONTH ANNIVERSARY OF SEPTEMBER 11. Glenn Reynolds has posted a link to what he wrote on his Instapundit.com site that awful day. "Note that things start off normally", he says, and then everything hits the fan. See also Virginia Postrel's Web log from that same day, which I remember reading many, many times as the day went on. Speaking of which, for what it's worth, here's what my wife and I did that day, as well as my interview with Alvin Toffler soon after, and my article on what was going through the minds of the financial markets the following Monday. UPDATE (Posted 9/11/02): While the above InstaPundit link is still active, within about 30 seconds of clicking on it, you'll be transported to Glenn Reynolds' new server. Here's the URL for that week's archives at his new Web address. Scroll down and look for the dotted line that marks the demarcation point at which point Glenn's posts reflect the fact that the world has just changed.

Posted 3/11/2002 12:52:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
COSMO GETS DOWN AND DIRTY. Jonah Goldberg's famous dog (and NRO mascot) Cosmo "is about to embark on what could be its most controversial venture to date," according to this article in the Guardian, which goes on to say that Cosmo is "certain to shock all but the most committed of Cosmo girls," and "The campaign is almost certain to attract complaints when it begins appearing in magazines and on billboards later this month." Oh wait, it's about the British version of Cosmopolitan magazine! Never mind...

Posted 3/10/2002 09:59:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOW WILL WE KNOW WHEN IT'S OVER? James Lileks (by way of Instapundit) has a whole list, including "When the French are subject to terror-bombings it will certainly be over, at least for the French; they’ll surrender and move to the moon." More seriously, he adds:

When the Iranian mullahs take their thumbs off their nation’s jugular, allow themselves to be voted out, and sit silent while a new generation of Iranians hungry to rejoin the world begin to secularize their once-great nation, it might be over. Once the deposed mullahs waging war from their Afghanistan base are defeated, of course.

Posted 3/10/2002 04:48:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
BROTHERS JUDD JUNKIES UNITE! And read the complete text of my original interview with Orrin, which he has posted on his Web site here. (Scroll down for text--it follows a reprint of my original article from Catholic Exchange.)

Posted 3/10/2002 03:45:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
REPUBLICANS SHOULD BACK RECORDING ARTISTS, CONSUMERS says Glenn Reynolds in his latest Fox News column. Here’s an excerpt:

Imagine this scenario: the Department of Justice investigates the record and motion picture industries for fraud, where artists are concerned, and price-fixing, where charges to consumers are concerned. (There wouldn’t be anything bogus about doing so: I mentioned the vulnerability of the record industry to racketeering charges a few months ago at an entertainment-law panel discussion that I was moderating, in the hopes of stirring up a hot dispute between lawyers who represent artists and those who represent record companies. But, strikingly, everyone there agreed that the record companies were vulnerable on this ground.)

He’s discovered a major area where the Democrats are vulnerable, but will Republicans be smart enough to pick up the ball and run with it?