Posted 4/20/2002 05:56:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
JIMI HENDRIX'S FATHER DIED. Although he died on Wednesday, I just stumbled across news of Al Hendrix's death today on a web site devoted to Les Paul electric guitars. I played guitar extensively in my late teens and early 20s, and ocassionally pick it up again from time to time. This past week has been one of those times I've played a bit more than usual (I have no idea why), but I'm sorry see to Jimi's father pass away.

Posted 4/20/2002 10:30:28 AM by Edward Driscoll
NFL DRAFT: Today's the big day, and ESPN is tracking round one. As expected, the expansion Houston Texans took QB David Carr as the first choice in the draft. Already, his jersey is for sale. Yahoo is also tracking the draft, here.

Posted 4/20/2002 01:34:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
MICHAEL JACKSON UPDATE: Steve Den Beste has his take on how the gloved one went from The King of Pop to The King of Pain.

Posted 4/19/2002 04:07:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MYSTERY IS FINALLY SOLVED: Orrin Judd has discovered just who the heck General Tso really was. And he really does make Colonel Sanders sound like a wimp! (Of course, I think the good colonel did better in the franchising department...)

Posted 4/19/2002 03:59:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
SANCTIONS AGAINST ARAFAT:

Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have introduced the bill, which would deny U.S. travel visas to Arafat and other senior PLO officials. It would also downgrade the status of the PLO's representative office in Washington and restrict the travel of the senior PLO official at the United Nations. It would seize any United States assets of the PLO, the PA and Arafat and require the Bush administration to report to Congress on any acts of terrorism committed by the PLO or its "constituent elements." "This act seeks to create conditions more conducive to stopping the senseless violence and flow of innocent blood in the Middle East," McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Posted 4/19/2002 03:53:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
WAXMAN TRIES TO NIX PIX :

California Democratic Congresssman Henry Waxman tried unsuccessfully Thursday to have an accredited TV news photographer thrown out of a House subcommittee hearing. The hearing focused on whether to limit liability lawsuits against gun makers and Waxman, who favors gun control, insisted the cameraman was videotaping on behalf of the National Rifle Association.

Posted 4/19/2002 02:23:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
GENDER BLACKMAIL AT THE WORLD BANK: Wendy McElroy says that the UN and the World Bank are engaged in "gender blackmail":

Two years ago, at the Beijing 5 U.N. Women 2000 Conference, European development agencies threatened to withhold funds from Nicaragua because Max Padilla, head of the Nicaraguan Ministry for the Family, insisted on defining gender by its common meaning of "male and female." The European agencies defined "gender" as a social construct that included gays and the transgendered. Desperately poor and unable to risk losing foreign aid, Nicaragua fired Padilla. This was not the first time world agencies had attempted to impose a politically correct gender agenda on a resisting nation, nor was it the last. Recent pronouncements by the World Bank — which lends over $17 billion annually to developing nations — suggest that the U.N.-aligned agency is currently engaged in gender blackmail: The World Bank has declared that "gender mainstreaming" (the demand for socio-economic and political equality between the genders), is key to "poverty reduction."

Posted 4/19/2002 01:42:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
ZIPPY THE WONDER SERGEANT: Sgt. Stryker says he's got a whole trunk full of zip-ties, some of which have your name on them! (Hopefully I'm still on his good side...)

Posted 4/19/2002 09:50:43 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE SALIERI STORY: Flak Magazine's take on the recent rerelease of Amadeus.

Posted 4/19/2002 09:08:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE MICHAEL JACKSON WATCH WATCH: Fox News has an article on Michael Jackson's apparently grim finances these days. How bad is it for the gloved one?:

Last year he was forced to put up a $2 million diamond watch in order to borrow money from a bank. This revelation comes at a crucial time in Jackson's roller-coaster career. It's already been acknowledged that he's used the Beatles song catalog to borrow $200 million from Sony Music. At the same time, Jackson is struggling with poor sales of his latest album, Invincible, and Internet rumors that Sony is ignoring the album in order to force Jackson's hand in turning over the catalog. This column reported several weeks ago that Jackson was in constant touch with Richard Rowe, head of Sony Music Publishing, who wants to negotiate a settlement on the loan and take possession of the Beatles catalog. Sony issued a strangely worded denial at the time, saying it did not seek "to buy" ATV Music Publishing from Jackson. But, as a Sony business insider confirmed for me, "foreclose" would have been the appropriate word since Sony technically already owns the songs. Now the news that Jackson, who lives on borrowed money, needed to pawn a diamond watch.

Posted 4/19/2002 01:14:01 AM by Edward Driscoll
U.N.=MAFIA: Read Jonah Goldberg's essay on the United Nations as to why.

Posted 4/18/2002 08:06:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE HONORABLE REVEREND DOCTOR AL SHARPTON?? Jay Nordlinger, in his Impromptus column on National Review Online mentioned that Al Sharpton has taken to having himself introduced on his radio show, as “The Honorable Reverend Doctor Al Sharpton.” That’s quite a mouthful! So how did this happen? Nordlinger says:

Well, we got the explanation from Sharpton’s spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger (yes, you heard that right, Rachel Noerdlinger, and that makes for a fascinating story, which I may explore and relate sometime). Sharpton picked up the “Doctor” when he received an honorary degree from the A. P. Clay Bible College in Baton Rouge. He calls himself “the Honorable” because he is boss of the “National Action Network,” which, according to Miss Noerdlinger, is “a position of honor to people in the community.” (What community would that be?) And “the Reverend”? Who the hell knows? Anyway, I feel I can’t do better than Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live, who said, “No matter how many titles he piles up before his name, if the last two words you hear are ‘Al Sharpton,’ he’s not fooling anybody.”

Posted 4/18/2002 03:08:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEORGE WILL ON HAMBURGERS, CARS AND DEMOCRACIES: Sounding remarkably like my wife's post yesterday on hamburgers and freedom, George Will (by way of Stephen Green's VodkaPundit site) says:

Some Americans (let us avoid the term "liberals") hate fun, such as cheeseburgers, talk radio, guns, Las Vegas and cars that are larger than roller skates and that look more interesting than shoeboxes. They hated 1950s cars that looked -- as a sniffy critic said -- like jukeboxes on wheels. Such people love guilt, and want people to feel guilty about cars because cars have made possible suburbs, Wal-Mart, McDonald's and emancipation from public transportation.

Want a great example of liberal automobile guilt in action? Check out the thoughts of James Cromwell (aka Zefram Cochrane in "Star Trek: First Contact"), who played an 19th century automobile inventor in the anything-but-magnificent recent A&E remake of Orson Welles' legendary 1942 film of "The Magnificent Ambersons":

A&E: In your view, then, this story is as much about how America was changing as it is about a single family. JC: I think it was the real end of innocence. The sense of being overwhelmed by technology; the automobile, of course, is one of the central images. The automobile, in some way, defines America and is a perfect example of what America is. I have an Alfa Romeo, so I love automobiles. '67, really nice ... they're gorgeous to look at, they're fun to drive, and they get you from one place to another. They also take something out of the earth that is irreplaceable and they spit poison into the air. They ultimately don't bring people together; they tend to isolate us, as Faulkner once said. We drive around in, like, Beetles, trapped in these shells. Ultimately, we will be living in that kind of shell. If you've ever been to Los Angeles, you can notice people on their computers have breakfast, fixing their hair and talking on the telephone while driving on the freeway. It's an interesting existence. Well, again, I think it's very Shakespearean. It comes out of misplaced enthusiasm for the material things.

Wow, I don't know about you--but I can feel the guilt, the handwringing, the Bobo sense of "yes, I want my expensive vintage Italian sportscar, but dammit, I just gotta feel guilty about it! It wouldn't be right for me to enjoy the fruits of my labor! I moved to Hollywood, and had a decent career as a character actor and I make more than the average person, and I love the money and what it buys me, but I'd better not show it, or people will think me calm and unfashionably sane!"

Posted 4/18/2002 01:11:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
OH AND SUG--DON'T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS: I mentioned Dr. Strangelove recently to one of my editors, and she wondered why men love it so much, and that it did nothing for her. She thought “it must be a gender thing”. Good question! It does nothing for my wife, either, and yet, I don’t know a guy who doesn’t like Dr. Strangelove. Why is that? Well, there are a host of reasons: Guys spent their childhoods playing GI Joe, blowing things up, breaking things, fighting with each other, and generally expelling lots of energy, sweat and (later) testosterone. And in many respects, Kubrick’s American actors: Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott, and Keenan Wynn, are all playing variations on those childhood GI Joe/Sgt Rock/John Wayne images. As Patton once said (and Patton is probably as popular a guy film as Dr. Strangelove—it doesn’t hurt that both star George C. Scott in his two best roles):

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bulls***. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser.

From everything I’ve read, nuclear combat, and the possibility of it escalating into world destruction properly terrified Stanley Kubrick, yet he was no pacifist or kneejerk left-winger. He understood war, and its importance to civilization. Which is why the most realistically photographed scenes in Dr. Strangelove are those on the B-52 and the fighting at Burpleson Air Force Base. Kubrick began his film career as a documentarian, and he brings this same approach to photographing these scenes. He and Ken Adam, his production designer, built their B-52 interior with no cooperation from the US military, and only a single photograph of the cockpit from an aviation magazine to guide them. And yet, it feel absolutely authentic. And that authenticity is the base that allows the film’s Swiftian satire to succeed. Any other director, handed the script for Dr. Strangelove, would have thrown realism out the window, and shot the film on wild psychedelic sets, such as those in 1960s camp such as Casino Royale or the Adam West Batman series. Speaking of the script, as I said in March, when I watched Strangelove with 'Group Capt. Mandrake', I said to him, "I don't know if this is the best script ever written, but it's right up there. This is incredible writing." Peter George, an ex-RAF officer had the original concept of a nuclear thriller. Kubrick had the key idea of turning it into an over-the-top Swiftian satire of the Cold War. And Terry Southern and Peter Sellers helped to gin up the humor. (Between the two of us, The Group Captain and I have every line in the film memorized. What the freaks who saw Rocky Horror over and over again did to it in the late 1970s, we can do Strangelove. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Then of course, all the phallic and psychosexual references in the film, beginning with the opening “erotic” airborne refueling of a B-52, with “Try a Little Tenderness” playing in the background, probably add to why guys love Strangelove and women are turned off by it. (Insert obvious Tim Allen “cars are just an extension of your penis” routine here) And then there’s the nuclear explosion as the ultimate orgasm reference. Of course, one reason why my wife doesn’t like Strangelove, is that it reminds her of the ultimate fear of nuclear war hanging over our heads, and the bad old days of the Cold War: “duck and cover” drills, air raid shelters, civil defense nightmares, and of course, the destruction of the planet. From my point of view, this is the awesome power of Strangelove: it allows us to see those fears, confront them, laugh at them, and therefore ease them. But I think for many people (and I suspect a big chunk of women), those fears are impossible to overcome—or merely dredging them to the surface is so painful, it’s not worth it. Better to keep them locked up in the subconscious than expose them to the light of day. Without opening up a feminist can of worms, I think it’s reasonable to say that historically, men have had to wrestle with more demons--or at a minimum, very different demons--growing up than women—fear of failure, fear of losing one’s manhood, fear of death or dismemberment on the battlefield or on the job (which is frequently used as a Freudian symbol of castration in the movies—Barry Lyndon losing his leg, Luke Skywalker losing a hand, etc.—there’s those phallic references again!), fear of getting loved ones or family killed as a result of error or incompetence, etc., etc., These are ancient, primal fears, that have been with men since The Dawn of Man (oh wait, that’s from a different Stanley Kubrick movie—never mind). And overcoming those fears, or at least controlling them, is essential to functioning as a man. And Dr. Strangelove is all about all of those fears--and more. All of which are my take, off the top of my head, as to a few of the reasons why Dr. Strangelove is one of the great guy films of all time.

Posted 4/18/2002 11:02:45 AM by Edward Driscoll
IDI AMIN TO HEAD U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION: Given the recent insanity of the UN, my brain took a second or two longer than usual to process the fact that Happy Fun Pundit was tweaking my lower extremity. Because with the UN, anything is possible.

Posted 4/18/2002 10:20:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
GEORGE HAS MORE ON GORE IN OH-FOUR: Robert A. George on Al Gore & Democrats on National Review Online:

The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity." That was one of the memorable lines in Al Gore's "comeback" speech last weekend at the Florida Democrats' state convention. The statement was made after Gore had unleashed a laundry list of particular Bush-administration offenses. It is an excerpt from Yeats's poem, "The Second Coming." Yeats, of course, was referring to the Messiah. Guess we have an idea of how Gore sees himself. Some hardworking speechwriter gets points for selecting that one.

George thinks that Gore has more of a shot than Patrick Ruffini does--in fact--he views him as both the "best" and the "worst" candidate the Democrats can muster up for 2004:

This is why Gore can also be the "worst" 2004 candidate. What do the "accomplishments" of the Clinton-Gore administration mean when it's clear that the nation was vulnerable to a horrific terrorist attack? The war on terror was barely mentioned by Al Gore last weekend. It was a rhetorical omission that ironically matched the Clinton administration's lack of focus on bin Laden: The attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, U.S. military barracks in 1996, American embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. Links to al Qaeda were evident in all these cases. Yet, Clinton only launched missiles when his political career seemed to be at stake. This information — in the post-9/11 world — is now part of the known record. The "peace and prosperity" argument which Gore could have run on in 2000 is now longer operative. Instead, Gore could be in the position of answering for the failure to disrupt Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. This time Gore would have to defend Clinton-era policies — not scandals.

Posted 4/18/2002 12:10:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHIZZER WHITE, JFK AND RFK: Bill Sulik says that most papers got it wrong in their descriptions of Byron "Whizzer" White, the recently deceased football star and Supreme Court judge:

You will see notes like this one in the AP: "Appointed by President Kennedy in 1962, White soon became a dissenter from many of the court's liberal rulings of the 1960s." Actually, I think the AP has it wrong. Byron White was the mirror image of Robert F. Kennedy: he was strongly pro-labor and as equally opposed to corruption and organized crime within the unions and without. See, for example, RFK's service on the McClellan Committee in the late 1950's. What else will they say about Byron White -- he was one of two dissenters in Roe v. Wade. Guess what? Bobby Kennedy (and especially his wife, Ethel) was opposed to abortion on demand. White was anti-communist. RFK started out working for Sen. Joe McCarthy, although was opposed to McCarthy's tactics (but not his anti-communist, pro-America stance) and resigned and wrote a tough critique of McCarthy's methods and conclusions. White was pro-civil rights, especially in the areas of voting rights and education rights, as was RFK with his move to desegregate Ole Miss. Yet, White, like RFK and others of that generation, most notably Hubert H. Humphrey, were strongly opposed to the evolution of affirmative action into goals, quotas, and reverse discrimination. As you might have guessed, I have long admired Byron White. Nevertheless, I think he made his share of mistakes. For example, while he was not a doctrinaire absolutist (siding with the state) in the church-state cases, he dissented in the Widmer v. Vincent case which held that religious speech was entitled to the same rights as non-religious speech. Justice White, former football star, attorney, Judge; you had a good run. May you rest in peace.

Jonah Goldberg wrote a column a few years ago about the fact that Hubert Humphrey, known as "Mr. Liberal" back in the 1960s, assured his colleagues during debate on the 1964 Civil Rights Act that nothing in the bill could lead to quotas. Humphrey said:

“Title VII does not require an employer to achieve any sort of racial balance in his work force by giving preferential treatment to any individual or group.” He then said that if anyone could find language in the legislation that suggested an endorsement of racial preferences, “I will start eating the pages, one after the other, because it is not in there.” Well, today, because of that legislation, we live in the hot water of racial quotas - even though even Hubert Humphrey thought we shouldn’t. And yet. Anyone today who argues that we should simply go back to Hubert Humphrey’s vision is immediately called a radical right-winger. Isn’t that odd? If, in 1935, I said Social Security will turn into the biggest entitlement in American history, absorbing massive fractions of the total U.S. budget, I would have been a laughingstock. But more to the point, if I could have convinced them I was right, nobody would have supported Social Security in the first place -- not even the Communists, because they hated democratic-socialist half-measures that alleviated the appeal of real Communism.

Amazing how far to the left an ideology has gotten in the past 30 years that three of its biggest stars of the 1960s, JFK, RFK, and Humphrey, would probably be considered moderates these days. Heck, I remember when Rush Limbaugh made JFK an honorary Dittohead.

Posted 4/17/2002 11:52:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
MOTOROLA'S SEMICONDUCTOR BUSINESS IN BIG TROUBLE, says Steven Den Beste:

Motorola's processor business, in particular, is a major disaster. They have two primary sets of customers: embedded and Apple. In the embedded business they're being eaten alive by ARM, and Apple is not a big enough customer to support the PPC architecture on its own. One way or another Motorola is going to have to substantially change their semiconductor business, and that's probably going to involve actual shutdowns of entire business sectors. These losses happened after Motorola's fabled mass layoff. In the last two years, they've laid off one third of the total staff of the company, and by doing so seem to have made most of their businesses viable. But even though it sustained a disproportionate percentage of the layoffs, the semiconductor business is still the corporate problem and is still bleeding cash like a firehose. They can't go on like this, and with the new accounting rules they can no longer disguise where in the company the money is going. Motorola's stockholders are going to start asking very pointed questions, like "Why are we in this business at all? Wouldn't we save more money in the long run by biting the bullet and shutting the f***er down?"

Read the whole piece--other than the occasional R-rated word, this is terrific business reporting and analysis, as good as in any traditional media.

Posted 4/17/2002 10:04:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
TESTING HOV NEGATIVE: You've read my commuter lanes rant. Insight runs the numbers that back it up.

Posted 4/17/2002 08:12:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEMOCRACY THROUGH HAMBURGERS: My wife was so inspired by our dinner tonight, that she wanted to write a guest commentary on my Web log. Who am I to argue, especially when it's on the subject of freedom, democracy, capitalism, and really tasty hamburgers:

I went out for dinner with my husband. We had limited time and were passing a hamburger joint that a friend had recommended, so we decided to stop there. Since trying to lose weight, we haven’t been eating too many hamburgers. Sitting in front of a fantastic juicy medium rare cheese burger with grilled onions and catsup oozing out from under the roll, I thought about Group Captain Lionel Mandrake and his desire to live in the US (in spite of dissing us every chance he gets). I thought, with hamburgers like this, no wonder everyone wants to live here. When you order a hamburger at a real hamburger joint (not a mass produced fast food emporium) what are the first two things you are asked? “What do you want with that?” and “how do you want it cooked?” See - the hamburger epitomizes freedom of choice. You can have your burger rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, well done - and everywhere in between. Then you have your choice of cheeses - Swiss, American, cheddar. Do you want grilled onions, mushrooms, bacon - all of them? Once you get your burger you go to the condiment table - with catsup, mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, peppers, relish, onions, BBQ sauce, pickles. What other country has a national food that has so much variety. In France I’m sure they argue over the exact RIGHT way to make escargot, a coq au vin. In England there’s tea, which is just a drink, but there’s a “proper” tea which means it’s done right. But in the US - there just isn’t a right way to have a hamburger other than exactly and precisely how you want it. God that was a great hamburger!!!

I'd also add to Nina's comments the obvious link between pockets of America that eschew the chewing of the hamburger for tofu, brussel sprouts, and other Vegan silliness to anti-freedom, anti-capitalist and totalitarian ideas (Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and lots of other college towns come immediately to mind).

Posted 4/17/2002 07:52:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
CONSERVATIVES MORE SUPPORTIVE OF ISRAEL THAN LIBERALS: Christopher Cross links to a Gallup Poll that says "Republicans, Conservatives More Supportive of Israelis than Democrats, Liberals"--and as Cross says, "To repeat: Pat Buchanan is neither Republican nor Conservative." This poll (a) isn't very surprising and (b) sort of reminds me of an article that ran a couple a years ago in National Review Online about how, despite the definitions implied in their names, liberalism has become a blocking force--seeking to do little more than consolidate and maintain the status quo of the New Deal and Great Society. Meanwhile conservatism has become much more dynamic and open to new ideas (like...protecting fellow democracies!). It's been fascinating reading about the anti-Israel bias in the New York Times. My wife, whose mother lives in Manhattan and has the microchip implanted in her that makes her believe everything she reads in the Times (and the New Yorker) has told me that her mother occasionally regurgitates that stuff. Which is even more ironic considering her late husband knew David 'Mickey' Marcus when he was helping to found Israel.

Posted 4/17/2002 03:18:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
DEFLATING THE EMPIRE: Salon has an article called "Galactic gasbag", which says "Beneath all the pseudo-mythic Joseph Campbell hogwash, the roots of George Lucas' empire lie not in "The Odyssey" but in classic and pulp 20th century sci-fi." I've also read that Lucas came up with "Star Wars" after he couldn't get the rights to do a remake of "Flash Gordon". But I do take exception to one thing in the Salon article:

why is Lucas' non-"Star Wars" résumé so dismal? Apart from conceiving the "Indiana Jones" films, which owe their box-office impact to the kinetic genius of director Steven Spielberg, Lucas has produced an unbroken series of flops. Anyone here remember "Howard the Duck"? Or "Tucker: The Man and His Dream"? "Radioland Murders," anybody? And let us not forget "Willow," which is a virtual textbook of Campbell's mix 'n' match approach to mythology.

I loved "Tucker". It's a wonderful movie about do-it-yourself inventiveness, and the exuberance of post-war America. And it's arguably Francis Ford Coppola's best post-"Apocalypse Now" movie.

Posted 4/17/2002 01:44:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
SIMON SAYS CUT THE PORK. Bill Simon on Gray Davis:

it’s such a tragedy what Gray Davis has done. When you talk about letting the government grow by 37% in three years, at the same time as our population grew by 5% and inflation grew by 7%, so you’re talking about an underlying rate of growth of 12%—that should sustain some rate of growth in the government. But he grew expenses by 37%. I don’t know any households, any business, any charity, any entity, that could grow their expenses three times faster than their revenue. Do you? So if that’s the case, at some point, you’ve got to pay the piper. If you’ve allowed your government to grow that quickly, you can be sure that there are plenty of areas of fluff, plenty of areas you can honestly do without, plenty of areas of mismanagement and waste.

Posted 4/17/2002 11:49:46 AM by Edward Driscoll
MURDEROUS CAPTOED THUG JOURNALISM: Stephen Green, aka the VodkaPundit, has a footwear analysis of leading journalists, as well as movers, and/or shakers of the right wing/libertarian variety:

NOTE: Bill Kristol has never, as far as I know, worn jack boots. Hence the "wing-tip thug" comment. Pat Buchanan is also a wing-tip thug, but he pretends he's wearing construction boots. I hope to Whomever that I stop doing Footwear Political Analysis. Soon. UPDATE: I'm still catching up on all I missed last week, so let me say it now: Virginia, I somehow knew you'd be wearing three-inch heels. That's all I'm going to say -- just in case Melissa is reading this.

In the efforts of lugubriously full disclosure, I do have a pair of black New & Lingwood captoes, which I bought at their Jermyn Street shop when I was in London in May of 2000, after Tom Wolfe rhapsodized so eloquently about them in Bonfire of the Vanities. I also have a pair of $800 Alan Flusser brown English-made captoes, and a pair of his suede wingtip slipons, which were each on sale for $150 at Saks in New York in February (I'm wearing the Flusser captoes in the Segway photos, on Litewheels' Web site, by the way. Flusser is apparently, hopefully temporarily, giving up the tailoring business and concentrating on his book writing, hence Saks was dumping his shoes in their President's day sale.) Of course, on Monday, I bought a pair of $34.95 Florsheim deck shoes at the Milpitas Great Mall. What my footwear choices say about me, I'll leave to Green, Tom Wolfe, and Dr. Freud. And they can probably also explain why on earth I'm telling you all this (not the least of which was the kick I got out of Green's post.)

Posted 4/17/2002 11:07:28 AM by Edward Driscoll
DRUDGE HEADLINE (complete with Matt's patented flashing police gumball light):

ABC LEANING TOWARDS GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS AS SOLO ANCHOR FOR 'THIS WEEK'

Media bias? Don't be silly! Of course, I suppose it could be worse--they could have brought back Leonardo DiCaprio. Say, I wonder if if Stephenopoulos will have Uthant on?

Posted 4/17/2002 10:25:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS ARAFAT SENILE? Congressman John Cooksey, a practicing ophthalmologist, says yes. Cooksey is a Louisiana Republican who is hoping to win the Senate seat of incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu. Lloyd Grove's Reliable Source column in the Washington Post also quotes Cooksey as saying: "If I see someone come in that's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over." Maybe if Cooksey looses his Senate race, Bush ought to nominate him to replace Norman Mineta. Cooksey sounds like he has the requisite common sense for the job of Transportation Secretary that Mineta lacks.

Posted 4/17/2002 10:12:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
WOBBLY WATCH: Found on NRO's The Corner Weblog:

BUSH OFF HIS GAME [Jonah Goldberg] The Wall Street Journal nails it this morning. UNLESS... [Jonah Goldberg] Michael Kelly is right.

UPDATE: NRO's official position is clearly in the former camp. They describe Bush's current policy as "disastrous".

Posted 4/17/2002 10:07:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
MORE MCLUHAN ON WEBLOGS: "Weblogs make it possible to present instant recaps of ongoing events a sort of "story so far" that used to sit above serial publications. As in football instant replays, the recap or recorso draws attention to processes rather than product or even goal. The audience is involved in the game in a totally new way a way that changes the game itself. -- 1964" (From: "Essential McLuhan") Like I did in my essay on Web logs, I just substituted "Weblogs" for "Xerox" and it's amazing how precient ol' McLuhan sounds!

Posted 4/17/2002 09:34:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
ORRIN JUDD ON CITIES: "It remains unclear to me why we should expect that cities even have a future. With the demise of manufacturing, does anyone still have a job that they couldn't just as easily do out of their home with a computer and video-conferencing?" Orrin was referring to my piece yesterday in Tech Central Station on the Segway and urban planning. And while I appreciate the link, I'm not sure if I entirely agree with him (and believe me, I know it's dangerous to disagree with anybody who is as well-read as Judd is). As much as my wife and I both love telecommuting, it's hard for me to imagine cities dispersing anytime in the next century or so. I think there's always going to be a need for centralized locations of commerce, financial markets, meeting and shopping places, etc., if only for symbolic purposes. Of course, what cities are used for, could be change radically. In one of my favorite McLuhan quotes (from Tom Wolfe's magazine profile of him, reprinted in "The Pump House Gang"), McLuhan said, "Of course, a city like New York is obsolete. People will no longer concentrate in great urban centers for the purpose of work. New York will become a Disneyland, a pleasure dome..." But that was almost 40 years ago, and yet while in many cases, New York is a pleasure zone (if not yet domed), its primary business (sorry Cal) is still business. And will probably remain so for at least the foreseeable future. It's also possible that suburbs could become more urban as well, but I tend to doubt it. In the late 1990s, Reason magazine and Virginia Postrel's The Scene Web log frequently covered a trend among urban planners called "The New Urbanism", an attempt to increase the density of suburbs to more city-like conditions. Why this would make sense, any more than Curbusier's Radiant City concepts that banished sidewalks and put buildings in otherwise unpopulated greenbelts, is arguable (at best), but it does show that there are lots of forces working hard to keep the concept of cities alive, even as telecommuting becomes more and more viable and popular. There's no doubt that telecommuting is a powerful trend, one that's been growing even before Alvin Toffler referred to it in "The Third Wave" 22 years ago, but my own feeling is that cities are going to be with us for a very long time to come. Of course, as Kubrick and Spielberg's "A.I" showed with their image of Manhattan, circa 3000, who or what is going to live there is still up for grabs.

Posted 4/16/2002 11:06:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
GORE IN '04: Patrick Ruffini says that Gore has got a lock on the Democratic nomination for president. Ruffini also has lots of thoughts as to what that means for Bush.

Posted 4/16/2002 10:18:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
WE'RE BACK! Had a glorious weekend in Napa and Sonoma--including visits to the Coppola Winery (so-so wine, lots of Francis Ford Coppola memorabilia), the brilliantly designed Hess Gallery, and the Napa Valley Wine Train. We'll be back with more news and links tomorrow.

Posted 4/16/2002 10:12:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SEGWAY MEETS THE RADIANT CITY: My essay on the city planning efforts of the builders of the Segway is up at Tech Central Station. It's a nifty piece (if I do say so myself), comparing their urban planning concepts with those of the french architect Le Corbusier in the 1930s.