EdDriscoll.com

Posted 5/4/2002 02:24:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
LET'S SEE DOMINO'S TRY THIS. Asparagirl says:

Over at PizzaIDF.com, you can, via the Internet and a credit card, donate a (kosher) pizza and a large bottle of Pepsi to be delivered to an Israeli Defense Forces patrol, section, or platoon. $17 (delivery is included) buys five soldiers lunch and a nice show of support. You can even arrange to donate monthly.

She also has some interesting ad slogans. Maybe PizzaIDF.com should talk to Dan Synder about borrowing his video screens.

Posted 5/4/2002 01:59:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
SYNDER AND SPURRIER SPUR NEW AD SALES: Washington Redskins owner Dan Synder has added computerized graphics to the backdrop behind head coach Steve Spurrier for his Monday press conferences. The result? More ad revenues for the Skins:

"Let's say the Redskins win a championship,'' Migala said. "Budweiser could put up a message saying, 'Bud Light congrats the NFC champion Washington Redskins.' Then go across to the AFC team, say the Baltimore Ravens, and they've got a static banner that doesn't have the personalization.'' Although the banners have only been around a few years, they are big business, especially now that ESPN regularly broadcasts many coaches' news conferences live on Mondays during the season. According to Team Marketing Report research, NFL teams on average generate about $500,000 in ad revenue from the backdrops.

The NFL is very much a copycat league, so watch for other teams to adopt this advertising for their coaches' press conferences. Jerry Jones is probably planning his version even as we speak.

Posted 5/4/2002 01:51:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONE LAST ATTACK FOR THE SILVER AND BLACK? ESPN's Len Pasquarelli believes that all of the off-season moves by the Oakland Raiders point to a team desperately trying to make one last run at the Super Bowl. Pasquarelli also believes (scroll down for it) that Ryan Leaf is the odd man out in Dallas, and I tend to agree. Leaf was signed when the Cowboys were desperate for offense this past season. Barring injury to one of their other QBs, It's tough to picture him being on their roster when the regular season starts. On the other side of the ball, Pro Football Weekly believes that the Cowboys have assembled a pretty good defense this year.

Posted 5/4/2002 01:19:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHE GUEVARA: RACIST? That's what this article from Reason says. Bet it won't affect his standing much with the loony anti-globalists who still worship him.

Posted 5/4/2002 01:14:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
GRAY OUT? Joanne Jacobs checks in with the latest Gray Davis scandals. But Orrin Judd says (unfortunately) they won't matter come November.

Posted 5/4/2002 01:08:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
I DON'T ENVY ARI FLEICHER'S JOB: Check out this exchange between Fleischer and ABC reporter Terry Moran. Of course, he is from the same network that brings you Peter Jennings.

Posted 5/4/2002 01:03:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MIDDLE EAST GETS SILLY: This week, in the bloggosphere, we've seen the Stan Lee/Incredible Hulk solution to the Middle East, God's solution to the problem, and at least one spotting of Monty Python's "I'm not dead yet--I'm getting better!" routine.

Posted 5/4/2002 12:57:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE COAST GUARD GETS STEROIDS: Well, at least in Group Captain Lionel Mandrake's vision, complete with a bitchin' photo of one seriously bad mutha (Shut your mouth! Hey, just talkin' about the Coast Guard. Then we can dig it.) of a ship, they do.

Posted 5/3/2002 10:02:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
A GRATEFUL NATION SAYS THANKS: Lewis Lapham, demonstrating unintentional irony:

"Now, monopolies are going to be fine," Lapham said. Even though individual journalists working for the large media companies may have different views, "you don't see a lot of people like myself or (Gore) Vidal or (Noam) Chomsky on the Sunday morning news shows."

Posted 5/3/2002 01:44:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEEEEEEEEEEERE'S BUBBA!! Jonah Goldberg thinks Bill Clinton could make a great TV host. Of course, he adds:

I could be wrong. He might be terrible at it. He might get bogged down trying to make housewives understand that the Blue Light Special at K-Mart is really the culmination of the globalization process set forth by his administration. He might become obsessed with defending his presidency as a bulwark against Newt Gingrich's hordes, while most of the people in the audience are saying "Newt who?" And if that happens, there's plenty of upside there. First, he'll be canceled. But, even better, such a debacle will underscore the true lesson of his presidency: that it was all about him. So let him have his "Me-Watch." It might even be worth tuning in to.

Posted 5/3/2002 12:03:57 PM by Edward Driscoll
VEGAN AGAIN: Found on The Corner on National Review Online: Kathryn Jean Lopez says that the couple arrested for nearly killing their daughter, by keeping her on a radical vegan diet is expecting, and plan to do the same with the next kid. Way to go, you two.

Posted 5/2/2002 07:25:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
LACK OF POSTING: Today was very much a gathering information for upcoming articles day, so I apologize for the dearth of new posts. However, he's a quick update as to some of the places I'll be appearing on dead tree this month: Nuts & Volts has my latest bi-monthly "Micro Memories" column. This month's edition is on the history of Radio Shack's TRS-80, a computer that lots of us (including myself) cut our teeth on in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Home Automation magazine has an article of mine on integrating X-10 lighting control into a home theater. Electronic House has my "Man of the House" backpage column on 802.11 and "broadband withdrawal" when travelling. And next month, Railfan magazine has my article on my Plimpton-esque attempts at operating a 230,000 pound diesel locomotive at the Portola California Railroad Museum. More on this story when the issue appears. (In the meantime, see photos of me in action at the bottom of this page). To the best of my knowledge, none of these articles are on the Web, so run out and buy lots of copies of each magazine!

Posted 5/2/2002 07:10:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE RETURN OF THE COWBOYS? Love 'em or hate 'em, look for the Dallas Cowboys to be back in a big way on TV this summer and fall. AP says that this year's version of HBO's Hard Knocks mini-series will feature the Cowboys. (Last year Hard Knocks featured the Baltimore Ravens.) AP is also reporting that Troy Aikman, Jerry Jones' first draft pick, who retired last year from quarterbacking the Cowboys, will be headlining Fox's number one NFL announcing team, along with fellow ex-jock Cris Collinsworth and baseball announcer Joe Buck. Aikman and crew replace the popular duo of John Madden and Pat Summerall. Summerall was forced into retirement by Fox, leaving Madden of course, free to pursue Monday Night Football on ABC.

Posted 5/2/2002 11:22:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
ON THE ROAD: This entry, as well as the previous Lindbergh update, is coming (via my laptop) from the Prolific Oven, a bakery and coffeehouse in Palo Alto, filled with students who are not making Stanford proud. But I'm testing the multiple-block wide 802.11 wireless network that's recently been installed by WiFi Metro. So far, it's working extremely well!

Posted 5/1/2002 09:15:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
LINDBERGH CROSSES THE ATLANTIC TONIGHT: To commemorate what would have been Charles Lindbergh's 100th birthday this week, Erik Lindbergh is recreating his grandfather's non-stop, solo flight across the Atlantic. Also flying solo, Erik has lifted off from Republic Airport in Farmingdale, NY, and is flying non-stop across the Atlantic in a single-engine, composite Lancair Columbia 300, to the same destination as his grandfather, Le Bourget Airport, outside Paris. Unlike his grandfather's flight, you can track his progress in real time, via the Internet. UPDATE: Just like his grandfather, he's landed safely. (Decorum prevents me from saying, "Good thing he didn't land on May Day, or the Le Pen and anti-globo protestors might have trashed his plane"--so I shan't.)

Posted 5/1/2002 11:08:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
CUE ZARATHUSTRA: Found via Shiloh Butcher's Dropscan Digest Weblog: Tweezers and nail clippers are apparently no longer verboten airplane carry ons. But Norman Mineta still doesn't trust the folks who fly a 400,000 pound machine which can be hijacked and crashed into buildings with firearms, despite the fact that both the pilots and their passengers would rather see them armed.

Posted 5/1/2002 10:52:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
TEN YEARS GONE: Excellent essay by Scott Ganz on his wonderfully titled "Captain' Scott's Electric Love Bunker" Weblog, on the tenth anniversary of the Rodney King-inspired L.A. Riots. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

The 1965 Watts riots, ignited by frustration over civil rights, were targeted not at segregators but at Jewish merchants in the area. This caused an abandonment by Jewish shop owners of the neighborhood, which was promptly repopulated not only by local African Americans, but by Koreans. To this day, the area surrounding my place of worship, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, is Koreatown. Just like 1965, largely Black and Hispanic (technically Latino) rioters attacked what they perceived to be alien merchants in their neighborhoods... cruelly turning their legitimate frustrations at racial injustice into hypocrisy. Tensions between Blacks and Koreans (including an earlier incident in which a Korean shop owner shot and killed a Black customer after they argued) erupted that day, creating a disorganized pogrom against Korean businesses. One thing that struck me even then was that Rodney King was a horrible reason to turn the city on its ear. He was, after all, a drug-addled moron who ran from the police, driving at top speed and endangering the lives of his friends in the car as well as a host of other motorists and pedestrians. And while he may not have been a worthy martyr, his attackers were certainly villains. They represented the worst of what happens to police officers. Cops have a host of problems dealing with people on and off the job. Eventually, all men become suspects, and all women either victims or prostitutes. You get lied to so often as a police officer that you start to abandon trust altogether. You get so traumatized by the constant danger that you lash out at anyone who puts you at risk at all. Then, add excitement from a high-speed chase and a hefty dose of bigotry, and you get an explosion of irrational violence that can't be excused, contributing factors be damned.

Posted 5/1/2002 10:00:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
SHOOT THE MESSENGER: Tim Cavanaugh, in Reason magazine, has had enough of Hollywood's "message movies":

After all, if it hadn�t been for the mid-�80s TV apocalypse The Day After, people would still believe nuclear wars are way cool and should be waged as often as possible.

Posted 4/30/2002 11:07:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
OPENING UP THE ORGAN MARKET: Jonah Goldberg makes the case for a free market solution to organ transplants. He writes:

The ethics committee of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons endorsed a pilot program that will permit the families of deceased donors to receive some small compensation for an organ donation. The move was made reluctantly, in the face of a longstanding organ shortage in the United States. As of this February, 79,523 people were on the waiting list for major organs, which is worse than this time last year. Meanwhile, only 22,593 organs were transplanted in 2001. A decade ago, there were only roughly 20,000 people on the waiting list. Meanwhile, experts agree that in the future, the demand for transplantable organs will only increase. In other words, it's a bad problem that promises only to get worse unless things change dramatically.

Posted 4/30/2002 06:47:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF CLASSICAL MUSIC: I can't say I'm a dyed-in-the-wool classical music fan--there are numerous pieces that I like, and I admire immensely its harmonic development over the last three or four hundred years. But I'm definitely a "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" kind of guy. Which is why jazz is much more my forte, as its best stuff combines the harmonic and melodic complexity of classical, with much more interesting (not to mention swinging) rhythms. (Miles Davis' best material from the late 1950s and early 60s comes immediately to mind, especially the albums he recorded with Gil Evans arranging.) But it's a bit painful, if not at all surprising, to read pieces such as James Bowman's article on NPR's "greatest hits" approach to programming its classical music, and Libertarian Samizdata's post about how classical advertising had become much more umm...babelicious in the last few years. On the other hand, that Hilary Hahn that Samizdata refers to is a real cutie. Too bad Stravinsky, Philip Glass, and Mahler never bothered with image consultants--imagine where their careers would be today if they had!

Posted 4/30/2002 01:31:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
AXIS OF EVIL, EASTERN BRANCH: AP is reporting that on the eve of President Bush's meeting with China's vice president and expected future leader, Hu Jintao, in Washington tomorrow, the Chinese police have detained Boston-based pro-democracy Chinese activist Yang Jianli, on his first visit back to China in 13 years.

Posted 4/30/2002 12:37:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
LIVE FROM NEW YORK...IT'S THE CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER MONKEYS! Jonah Goldberg, (who probably did more to establish that Simpsons bon mot on the Internet than any other writer), posts in National Review's The Corner Weblog, a link to a hilarious Saturday Night Live parody commercial about France. It's online, and if you have broadband, you owe it to yourself to check it out. SNL came on in the mid-1970s, when I was 10 or 11, and I was a fairly faithful viewer until the mid-1990s, when all of the members of the Hartman/Carvey/Miller/Lovitz team that Lorne Michaels assembled in the late-1980s finally left. But seeing that commercial makes me believe that there may be hope for the old show yet.

Posted 4/30/2002 12:04:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHERE TO SEE STAR WARS EPISODE II IN DIGITAL: The Internet Movie Database is reporting in its Movie & TV News section that "despite George Lucas's best efforts to push digital projection, only 19 theaters will be showing his Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones using digital projectors when it opens on May 16":

The 19 are: Harkins Arrowhead Cinemas 18 (Peoria, AZ); AMC Media Center 6 (Burbank, CA); Edwards Irvine Spectrum 21 Megaplex (Irvine, CA); El Capitan Theatre (Los Angeles, CA); Loews Century Plaza (Los Angeles, CA); AMC Mission Valley 20 (San Diego, CA); AMC 1000 Van Ness (San Francisco, CA); AMC Pleasure Island 24 (Lake Buena Vista, FL); AMC South Barrington 30 (South Barrington, IL); AMC Studio 30 (Olathe, KS); General Cinema Framingham 16 (Framingham, MA); Show Case Cinemas Randolph (Randolph, MA); Edgewater Multiplex Cinemas (Edgewater, NJ); AMC Empire 25 Theatres (New York); Clearview Ziegfeld Theatre (New York); Loews Cineplex E-Walk (New York); Cinemark at Valley View (Valley View, OH); Showcase Cinemas Springdale (Springdale, OH); Cinemark at Legacy (Plano, TX). Lucas has said that no theater will be allowed to show Episode III unless it is equipped with digital projectors.

I suspect I'll see it first at a local "analog" theater, but I wouldn't mind checking out the version at AMC 1000 Van Ness in San Francisco as a comparison. As I said a couple of days ago, I'm currently experimenting with digital recording (on Cakewalk's Sonar XL 2.0 system). I'd say one of these days I should branch out to digital video, but I'm afraid my efforts would make The Blair Witch Project look like...Star Wars!

Posted 4/30/2002 11:53:01 AM by Edward Driscoll
EVERYONCE IN A WHILE...a local government gets it right. Stephen Green links to an AP report, and says that a New York couple who had their baby girl on a strict vegetarian diet have been charged with child endangerment. The 16-month-old girl weighed only ten pounds. Green adds:

I have to go on a very old rant of mine now. Forget that god fellow and his orders that we lord it over the animals. Please. Theological debate is a lot like masturbation -- fun but useless. Instead, let's look at the basic design of the human animal. Our eyes are both in the front of our head, giving us stereoscopic vision. This is a feature found in predators -- animals who hunt and kill. Vegetarians, like cows, have eyes on the sides of their heads to give them a wider view, in order to better spot creatures like us coming.

The AP article says:

Authorities were alerted to the situation by an anonymous call in November, said Maris Campbell, a spokeswoman for the district attorney. She said the baby was "in grave risk of death." "She weighed only 10 pounds, less than half the weight of an average 16-month-old female child, and appeared to be the size of a 2- to 3-month-old baby," District Attorney Richard Brown said Monday.

The child has been in foster care since November, and now 20 months old and doctors said she now weighs 20 pounds, still about the normal weight of a 10- to 12-month old baby. Campbell said the girl faces major developmental problems. Why do I get the feeling Law & Order will do an episode on this?

Posted 4/30/2002 10:52:16 AM by Edward Driscoll
WOODSON SIGNS WITH RAIDERS: AP is reporting that Hall of Fame bound safety Rod Woodson has signed with the Oakland Raiders. While he's 37, he's had some very good years (not to mention a Super Bowl ring) recently with the Baltimore Ravens, and could continue to be a force with the Silver and Black. I don't know what their coaching will be like, it sounds like ol' Al is assembling a pretty good roster this year.

Posted 4/30/2002 10:44:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
"IT ALL COMES DOWN TO RESSENTIMENT". Andrew Sullivan:

it all comes to down to ressentiment. It's true in the Middle East as well. How must those failed Arab polities feel when they look at tiny little Israel, a country that started from scratch, is minuscule in comparison in population and land-mass, and yet has left all its Arab neighbors in the dust. Talk about humiliating. And what more familiar panacea for humiliation than envy and violence? It was ever thus, and ever will be. But it doesn't make it any more defensible. Or any less pathetic.

Posted 4/30/2002 10:33:20 AM by Edward Driscoll
INSTAPUNDIT HAVING FLASHBACKS: Apparently, someone has an archive of Glenn Reynolds' early stuff, in the Weblogs template he was then using (I had forgotten that he's changed designs). In August of 2001, he linked to my National Review article on Mountain View's Computer History Museum, which is where I found him, via a vanity search on Google (I think NRO had also listed him as their cool site of the day around this same time). But as I said in my Spintech article, like a lot of folks, it was only after 9/11 that I became a regular reader.

Posted 4/30/2002 10:13:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
ONLY 127 SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS! When I'm in New York, I've shopped occasionally at Thomas Pink & Co., an English shirtmaker with a couple of Manhattan storefronts (I'm wearing one of their shirts in the photo that's accompanied several of my articles). So I can't call any emails I've received from them spam. But it's very, very strange to receive an email in April, for chrissakes, that reads:

If you are stuck for gift ideas this year, then visit our new "12 Gifts of Christmas" feature at www.thomaspink.co.uk and what is more, you can have any purchases gift wrapped for free in our signature pink and black boxes.

As a kid, I usually waited until school began to start collating my Christmas list--I guess, clearly, I was a procrastinator.

Posted 4/29/2002 09:30:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
HERE COMES THE SPIDER-MAAAAAAN!!!! James Lileks has a sneak preview of what to expect from Spider-Man, The Movie, and a flashback to growing up in the Marvel universe. I was more of a DC kind of guy (Batman was my hero), but I'll definitely be looking forward to "Spider-man". However, I agree with Lileks when he says:

The movie looks good in previews. But: the idea that Spidey shoots webs out of his veins, rather than mechanical devices he built himself, is stupid and wrong. Peter Parker was a science geek. He was smart. Sure, he had a variety of arachnid-based powers, but without his own inventive skill, he would have been nothing. His ability to shoot webs and swing from parapet to flagpole was dependent on his intellectual prowess, and without that invention he would have had nothing more than the ability to know when the pizza guy was here before he rang the doorbell. My Spidey-sense tells me that Domino�s is here! Also, the barking dog, and the fact that it�s been 30 minutes.

I was going to say, I hate it when movies change things simply for the sake of changing them--even if it is "just a comic book", but Lileks mentions why, for kids, they're rarely just a comic book.

Posted 4/29/2002 03:38:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
SOCIAL SECURITY: Donald Lambro of The Washington Times says that President Bush's plan to save Social Security by shifting to a new system of private investment retirement accounts is likely to be the hot political issue in this fall's congressional elections.

Posted 4/29/2002 01:28:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
DIABETICS AND MOSH PITS: Roger Clegg has an article in National Review Online about a recent lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice's civil-rights division against Clear Channel Entertainment, because, as Clegg writes, "it prohibits anyone from taking a syringe into a rock concert. Huh? Well, the problem is that this policy makes no exception for insulin-using diabetics. In the Justice Department's view, this violates the Americans with Disabilities Act." Clegg continues:

There are two bad guys here. The major villain is Congress, which drafted an incredibly broad and vague statute begging to be abused, and which has turned a blind eye � so to speak � to the problems it has created. On Crossfire, former U.S. Representative and ADA sponsor Tony Coelho said of the law, "It was deliberately written vaguely." Now, as a consequence, everyone has his favorite story of a silly claim made under the ADA. We can add one more to the list, but don't hold your breath waiting for Congress to clean up its mess.

Posted 4/29/2002 10:39:09 AM by Edward Driscoll
JUNK SCIENCE: InstaPundit.Com disses Scientific America for becoming a lousy magazine (which still praises Paul Ehrlich, the original junk scientist, while damning Bjorn Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist), while CBS finds a scientist who says global warming will lead to global cooling!

Posted 4/29/2002 10:28:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY, from the Internet Movie Database's home page:

"I could eat a can of Kodak and puke a better movie." From The Mirror Crack'd (1980)

Something to keep in mind this summer...

Posted 4/29/2002 10:16:50 AM by Edward Driscoll
HUMILIATING TO WHOM? Saw this in an AP article about the U.S. regaining our Human Rights Seat at the the U.N..

The United States suffered a humiliating defeat last May when it lost the seat it had held since the commission was established in 1947. The ouster exacerbated U.S.-U.N. relations, caused an outcry in Washington and led to intensive behind-the-scenes lobbying by the Bush administration to get back on the panel.

That wasn't humiliating to the U.S. (And I suspect more and more Americans are beginning to realize what a joke the U.N. has become), it was humiliating to the United Nations, who took us off for nations that think human rights is a contradiction in terms.

Posted 4/28/2002 11:15:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
ABBEY ROAD IN A BOX: One of the traits I share with Glenn Reynolds (the masterful InstaPundit, who just added me to his links list�thank you sir!) is an interest in making and recording my own music. On Thursday, I attended a seminar for Cakewalk�s Sonar XL 2.0, a program designed to turn a personal computer into a miniature version of Abbey Road studios. There were at least 35 guys (no women that I saw) crammed into a back room at the San Jose Guitar Center�an interesting mix of teenagers through at least forty year olds, if not older�some longhairs, but also several folks with short hair, polo shirts, and khakis (like me). Evidently a lot of people want to record their own music! It�s just astonishing the amount of personal power a PC can provide. If you�re reading this, there�s a very good chance that you also have a blog, or do some other sort of self-publishing on the Web. Home offices, personal investing, personal tax preparation, and much are made possible by the PC we often take for granted. If you had told me in the early 1980s that for a few hundred dollars, I�d be able to record music on my PC, with more power than many commercial recording studios for under $500, I�d have laughed in your face. I�d like to think that in a few years the kids who have access to this technology will be producing some amazing music. Unfortunately, I�ve largely given up on what�s on today�s radio. I fear that I�ve become my father, stuck listening to the music of my youth over and over again. Or maybe the stuff on the radio really does stink. The poor ratings of the recent Grammy Awards may lend some credence to that. Of course, the nice thing is, if you don�t like today�s music, you can always make your own!

Posted 4/28/2002 08:33:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
"IT'S A B MURDER". Found on The Corner on National Review Online:

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS: [Rod Dreher] The Times' Alex Kuczynski turns in a deliciously sour piece about how the trashy Robert Blake murder case doesn't interest jaded Hollywood. It features an ice-cold noir quote from a Hollywood lawyer, who dismissed the killing of the low-rent Bonny Lee Bakley thus: "It's a B murder." God, I love that dirty town.

Posted 4/28/2002 08:28:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
"BUSH ADMINISTRATION ISSUES STERN WARNING AS CNN REOCCUPIES WEST BANK" After a month long hiatus (hopefully spent telling Kofi Anan how to better run the UN--God knows he needs help), Uthant is back!

Posted 4/28/2002 06:19:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE VETO PEN IS READY: The Washington Times says that President Bush has a veto pen, and he's not afraid to use it--and I hope they're right. They quote him as saying:

"We must not repeat the mistake in the 1960s, when increased spending required by war was not balanced by slower spending in the rest of government," the president declared, adding, "I've got a tool, and that's called a veto." That reason is simple enough. After he inherited a military that the previous administration had underfunded for years, Mr. Bush's job as commander in chief was further compounded less than eight months later by the September 11 terrorist attack. The inventory of the laser- and satellite-guided smart weapons barely lasted through the relatively low-level military response in Afghanistan. The depleted inventory of smart weapons isn't expected to be replenished before September, if by then. That would make any military decision involving Saddam Hussein or other member of the axis of evil essentially mute before then, irrespective of any further provocation. In itself that is a sad commentary on the military means of the world's only superpower.

Posted 4/28/2002 01:53:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
CALIFORNIA AND SLAVE REPARATIONS: David Horowitz has an article called Gray Davis Joins the Race-Baiting Left:

California was a free territory and entered the Union as a free state in 1850, eleven years before the war on slavery. In this war Californians of course were on the side of freedom. Yet the governor of California now wants to punish California consumers for being on the right side of a battle against slavery that was won over 100 years ago. What is going on?

Read Horowitz's article to find out.

Posted 4/28/2002 01:39:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
ISRAEL BANS UN MISSION: AP is reporting that "Israel's Cabinet decided Sunday not to allow a U.N. fact-finding team to come to the region to look into the battle in the Jenin refugee camp, a Cabinet minister said." I can't say I blame them at all, if what Charles Krauthammer wrote is true:

Three people have been chosen by the United Nations to judge Israel's actions in Jenin. Two are sons of Europe, and one of those is Cornelio Sommaruga. As former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Sommaruga spent 12 years ensuring that the only nation on earth to be refused admission to the International Red Cross is Israel. The problem, he said, was its symbol: "If we're going to have the Shield of David, why would we not have to accept the swastika?"

Posted 4/28/2002 01:15:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEN ONLY UPDATE: Found on The Corner on National Review Online, Andrew Stuttaford has a suggestion for Prince Abdullah's flight back home tomorrow to Saudi Arabia:

Is there any chance that the male air traffic controllers in charge of his route could call in sick, leaving their female colleagues solely responsible for the job? If the Saudi despot doesn't think that women are up to this sort of work, he could always drive out of the country.