Posted 8/30/2002 11:02:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
LABOR DAY RERUN: This is a devastating Lileks Bleat from late last year, at the height of the Johnny Walker Taliban controversy. But it's a great retort to a pattern seen everyday in the news:

As I’ve said before: replace “Taliban” with “Aryan Nation,” and much of the support would melt away. It’s OK to be a babbling fanatic for a religion as long as it’s not Christianity, because Christianity = the West. To a certain breed of Deep Thinker, the West is the font of all evil in the world; all other evils have arisen solely in reaction to the existence of the West. If John Walker had strapped TNT to his chest and blown up St. Peter’s, these people would dutifully note that the Pope refused to ordain women, and well, intolerance breeds intolerance, and the Crusades did anger a lot of people, so let’s call it a draw - and clap ol’ John on the back for standing up for something.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Matt Drudge links to this article with an update on Taliban John.

Posted 8/30/2002 10:44:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
IRANIAN-A-RAMA: Glenn Frazier has several links to Iranian topics to chose from on his blog. Which is a good thing--it's all too easy to forget Iran, as we gear up (or not) to defeat Iraq.

Posted 8/30/2002 09:45:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE VESPER: We've written about this drink before. It's surely the best thing to come from Ian Fleming's imagination since James Bond. And it's the Wired Cocktail Drink of the Week. ...It probably goes well with VodkaPundit's Salt Steak recipe, come to think of it.

Posted 8/30/2002 08:52:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
JACKIE MASON UPDATE: You've probably already seen this post, since the ubiquitous, omnipresent, all-knowing, all-seeing InstaPundit linked to it earlier today. But just to update our Jackie Mason post from yesterday, Stefan Sharkansky has some very apropos comments on his Shark Blog.

Posted 8/30/2002 08:39:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
FORD PRUNES CAR LINE: Last week, Eric Peters had an article in National Review Online on how Ford was eliminating the large Excursion SUV from its roster, for politically correct reasons. Maybe to balance things out, Ford is also disconnecting the "Think" electric car division from its line-up.

Posted 8/30/2002 02:59:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMING SOON TO A RADIO NEAR YOU: Merle Haggard wants a radio talk show. Ken Layne has the details, including quotes by Haggard that are somewhere between circular and Mobius loop. As Layne says, "That would be some kind of talk show"! I'm still holding out for the Jim Traficant Hour. If Mumia Abu Jamal can give commencement speeches from jail, why can't Trafficant have a radio show from there? Or maybe TV. It's got to do better than Donahue. UPDATE: Orrin Judd emails that "Merle was on Imus in the Morning a couple years ago and he had his hat off. An engineer was walking buy a tossed a few coins in it for the poor bum"!

Posted 8/30/2002 01:41:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
BURTON'S LIST: Joel Mowbray says that Rep. Dan Burton (R., Ind.) is in Riyadh armed with a list of 14 names, as the head of a bipartisan delegation attempting to do something the State Department has neglected to for nearly two decades: Rescue kidnapped American children (some are now adults) trapped Saudi Arabia.

Posted 8/30/2002 01:37:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MAGIC OF OVERDUBBING. Media Research Center has a video clip of a July John Stossel special which showed how cable music channel VH1 turned booing of Senator Hillary Clinton into cheering:

Senator Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, as ABC's John Stossel illustrated in a July 20/20 special on media distortions, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event.

I've long known that rock stars replace their flubs on live albums through judicious overdubbing. I didn't know that politicians did as well. Somewhere, George Orwell is chuckling, softly.

Posted 8/30/2002 01:28:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
BATMAN: THE MUSICAL? We here at EdDriscoll.com have long been fans of Batman, and consider him the definitive comic book superhero. So we were naturally taken aback to read that a Broadway version of the legendary Dark Knight is coming to (the real) Gotham City, according to the Internet Movie Database's Movie & TV News section, which reports:

Tim Burton, who directed the original Batman movie in 1989 and the sequel, Batman Returns, in 1992, has agreed to direct Batman: The Musical! on Broadway, the New York Post reported today (Friday), citing theater sources. Jim Steinman, who composed the music for the show, told the newspaper: "We're thrilled he's going to do it. David [Ives, who wrote the libretto] and I floundered around for a year trying to figure out how to musicalize Batman. Then we looked at Tim's original movie and thought, that's it." The Post quoted sources as saying that the music will cost at least $15 million to mount. Plans are to open it out of town in 2004 and on Broadway the following year."

While my first response was fear and terror in all its rawest forms, I did remember having similar thoughts when Michael Keaton was announced as Batman. After a decade of Batman movies, and two other actors having portrayed the Caped Crusader, Keaton in retrospect stands as the best of the bunch. So hopefully Burton won't blow it this time around, either. (But say, if Burton wanted to make a musical, why not do Planet of the Apes?)

Posted 8/30/2002 11:22:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE SEARCH FOR INTELLIGENT LIFE: Much to his astonishment, Los Angeles police officer "Jack Dunphy" finds it in an L.A. jury room.

Posted 8/30/2002 10:56:01 AM by Edward Driscoll
UPSIDE DOWN FLAG UPDATE: Orrin Judd emailed me today with the suggestion that perhaps the upside down flags I saw yesterday were a sign that America was in distress after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 rather than protest. The motorist I saw yesterday, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to, as he had no other bumper stickers that I could see. The folks I saw on Wednesday had the rear of their car festooned with the usual Bay Area silliness--Free the Whales, Free Mumia, Free Billy Mumy, etc. Something tells me they wouldn't be all that concerned if this nation really was in distress. And the fact that it's a year later, and we're doing something about terrorism would be cause, one would think, to reverse those upside down flags, lest anyone get the wrong impression.

Posted 8/30/2002 10:40:46 AM by Edward Driscoll
HAT TRICK: As someone who has worn hats (Fedoras, Trilbies, and Panama Optimos, not baseball caps with Caterpillar Tractor logos on them) off and on for several years now, I've long taken the "JFK killed the hat industry" myth at its word. However, Snopes' Urban Legends does its usual thorough job of debunking that myth. However, who killed the morning coat? I have a feeling Kennedy was the last president to be inaugurated in one--which is too bad: it certainly looks sharp on him in Snopes' photo. Link found on NRO's The Corner, where Jonah Goldberg has been riffing on haberdashery and hirsute males for the past few days, debating the merits of mullets, hats, goatees, and other forms of manly style--or lack thereof. (Please God, don't tell me that GQ has merged with National Review. The horror....the horror.)

Posted 8/30/2002 03:04:45 AM by Edward Driscoll
NASDAQ'S SUPERMONTAGE FINALLY CLEARED TO OPERATE. Eileen Colkin of InformationWeek says:

There's nothing like spending $100 million on an IT initiative designed to revolutionize your business only to see it held up for months by politics and bureaucracy. But Wednesday, the Nasdaq Stock Market finally secured approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission ( news - web sites) to officially launch its electronic trading platform, SuperMontage, as early as Sept. 17 and no later than Oct. 11. The platform will let investors see five price levels of stocks, rather than the currently accessible best price. Beyond giving traders more information on which to base transaction decisions, Nasdaq hopes the move will make transactions faster and more efficient by consolidating trades through a single architecture.

Posted 8/30/2002 02:54:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
BACK TO THE 'HOOD: Well, it's not really my old neighborhood, but I grew up about twenty minutes away from it. Reason looks at Philadelphia, and dubs it the "City of Brotherly Slums". For me, this article is loaded with flashbacks, especially with all the names that it links to. And I certainly got a kick out of whom they blame the most for "driving out more Philadelphians than any other single factor"!

Posted 8/30/2002 12:02:41 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE AMERICAN LEFT HAS LOST ITS WAY AND ITS VOICE, according to Camille Paglia in the London Times Online. Good article, written by someone who should know. (Found via Andrew Sullivan, for whom Paglia has been sitting in, Joan Rivers-style all month. Joey Bishop takes over each Monday in September.) UPDATE: InstaPundit links to a couple of articles along similar lines.

Posted 8/29/2002 11:23:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
MIXERMAN UPDATE: Back at the beginning of the month, I posted a link to a series of posts by "Mixerman", an engineer stuck in a Labrea Tarpit of a major-label rock and roll recording project. It's now up on Blogcritics as "A Hard Knocks-style Look at The Recording Industry", complete with a link to several more updates from Mixerman, who's now kicking it Weblog-style.

Posted 8/29/2002 10:28:44 PM by Edward Driscoll
SIDE NOTE: Scroll down to the "Side Note" in the latest Bleat from James Lileks. It's dead-on.

Posted 8/29/2002 10:09:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
WATCHING THE NUTS: A big chunk of my business and wife's is done via telecommuting. But sometimes you just have to be out in the field. Both yesterday and today, I spent a good hour or more trudging up and down the freeways of San Jose. And both yesterday and today, I saw two different cars with upside down American flags. Bastards. In lighter Bay Area nut news, my wife had to be in Oakland this morning for a legal hearing. She passed by the Oakland Coliseum (Ground Zero for the Raider Nation) around 10:30, and noticed several cars in the parking lot with people starting their tailgating party activities for tonight's Raiders game. At 10:30 in the morning. With the Raiders playing pitiful Arizona. In the friggin' preseason, for Christsakes!! These are officially crazed football fans, folks. They're nuts. But not as nuts as the upside-down flag folks, and far more benign.

Posted 8/29/2002 10:00:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAKING THE NUT: Whenever I look at a film on the Internet Movie Database, I always look at its "Box Office and Business" page, wondering if it's made it's nut--if it's at least broken even, or made a profit. Otherwise the film is generally considered a failure by Hollywood standards, no matter how much of an artistic success it is. But that may be changing. The Digital Bits links to a recent New York Times article on DVD, which includes this interesting tidbit:

Some recent hit films, like The Fast and the Furious and Training Day, have earned more money from their DVD releases than from their first-run theater engagements. And for the first time, DVD sales have surpassed those of videocassettes, even though DVD players are in only about a third of American households, compared with a saturation of more than 90 percent for videocassette players.

Which makes perfect sense. Where would you rather a watch a film? Snug in your climate-controlled, atmosphere controlled home theater, with only your family, or people you've invited? Or in a crowded movie theater with screaming kids, cellphones ringing, talking audience members, and other minor horrors of modern day civilization in full display? (There's a whole other post about the decline and fall of Western Civilization here, but I'll save that for another day--or another blogger.)

Posted 8/29/2002 09:41:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER: Screw that Duotronics stuff on Star Trek. Steven Den Beste has one kick-ass new PC!

Posted 8/29/2002 09:24:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE AWARD-WINNING GREENPEACE: Odds are, you've seen this InstaPundit post. But if you haven't, and if you read this blog regularly, you'll probably enjoy the coverage of Greenpeace's latest award.

Posted 8/29/2002 09:19:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
TWO TYPES OF RAINMAKERS: The Washington Times says that if Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening warns of bone-dry conditions and declares a drought warning, plan on bringing along an umbrella:

Three times this year the governor's announcements or plans for regional drought restrictions have been accompanied by heavy rains.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post says that President Bush Breaks Fund-Raising Record.

Posted 8/29/2002 04:34:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
CAN YOU SAY BIASED? Check out the anti-US spin given the Japanese submarine discovered in Hawaii story (which we reported early this morning) in this Independent News article. It almost implies that America was responsible for Pearl Harbor! This is either bad journalism, or bad journalism with an agenda. Take your pick. On the other hand, they do get the type of ship which sunk the attacking sub right. Maybe they read it on Group Captain Mandrake's blog...

Posted 8/29/2002 11:39:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
CAR TALK ROUND-UP: Jay Nordlinger and James Lileks break the popular NPR call-in hosts' dirty little secrets. InstaPundit calls it "a huge scandel", on par with finding out "Martha Stewart serves her guests Hot Pockets"!

Posted 8/29/2002 10:57:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
PICKING DATES OUT OF A HAT: the head of Russia's parliamentary defense committee suggested on Wednesday that US could attack Iraq on September 11. Meanwhile, according to The World Tribune, a U.S. general tells Israelis the war will start by late November. (Personally, I like the 9/11 date myself. And I'll bet a lot of Americans feel the same way. Its rapid approach certainly has Saddam worried, doesn't it?) In any case, Strategy Page has some thoughts on what could happen once "the phoney war" is over.

Posted 8/29/2002 10:26:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
JACKIE MASON IN HOT WATER AGAIN? Mason, whose career was derailed for years by a rumor that he gave Ed Sullivan an on-air one-fingered salute, is now in the middle of controversy for not wanting to have as an opening act a Palestinian-born comedian. Eugene Volokh has the details (scroll up for more). Check out this New York Post "Page Six" article for more details.

Posted 8/29/2002 12:47:06 AM by Edward Driscoll
JAPANESE MINI-SUB DISCOVERED OFF THE COAST OF HAWAII: 60 years later, by the University of Hawaii. It was sunk by a US Navy destroyer just hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Group Captain Mandrake has the details, including a typo that has him in knots. (Pun not intended--honest!)

Posted 8/28/2002 09:48:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
"SMELLS LIKE DESPERATION" Stephen Green weighs in on the recent collapse of Phil Donahue's ratings, and MSNBC's as a whole. See his comments section for a few of mine.

Posted 8/28/2002 09:36:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT THE LEGAL SYSTEM WAS INVENTED FOR: Angry Anna Kournikovafans sue Penthouse for $8.99.

Posted 8/28/2002 08:57:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
PROFESSIONAL PARIAH Terry Glenn, will, with a little luck, make his debut with the Green Bay Packers on Friday night. We're certainly keeping our fingers crossed.

Posted 8/28/2002 08:55:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAULED BY REALITY: If, as the old saying goes, a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality, what does that make an animal rights activist when he's mauled by a grizzly bear?

Posted 8/28/2002 08:43:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
THEY'RE ALL GONNA MEET AT THE CADILLAC RANCH: James Lileks, Orrin Judd, and those hip swinging cats, Albert Jay Nock and the Remnants, all served up in one tasty post on the Brothers Judd Blog. (Be sure to read Lileks' screed, which the Brothers Judd link to. It's a classic.)

Posted 8/28/2002 04:05:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU CAN HAVE MY RIFLE WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD, KUNG FU GRIP! Reason's Daily Brickbat column says:

Airport security at LAX seized a 2-inch toy rifle carried by a young boy's G.I. Joe action figure. "They examined the toy as if it was going to shoot them, said the boy's grandmother. "Then they asked me if there were toy grenades as well. I thought they were joking, but they weren't smiling-they were deadly serious." Security officials say they have orders to confiscate any weapons or replicas of weapons.

Meanwhile, digital camera armed citizens are capturing photos of their tax dollars hard at work making American airports safer.

Posted 8/28/2002 01:57:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
ALL HAIL SENATOR GRONK! Funny how you never see him and Sen. David Banner (R-Marvel) in the same room together.

Posted 8/27/2002 03:34:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
PLAYING DUMB WITH UNCLE JOE: Cathy Young of Reason focuses on Stalin and his continuing admirers, in her review of British novelist Martin Amis' new book Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million. She ends with this quote, but be sure to read the rest of the article, to see how she gets there:

Today, the issues raised in Koba the Dread could be seen as purely academic; but they are not. The left's reluctance to acknowledge that Communism wasn't just a failure but an evil is due to more than stubbornness. Such an acknowledgment would amount to (1) validating a view of the West, Communism's Cold War adversary, as good (albeit imperfect), and (2) admitting that the left spent much of the 20th century cozying up to mass murderers and therefore has precious little moral authority to criticize the West today. And that's very relevant to present-day global conflicts.

Posted 8/27/2002 01:12:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
I LOVE THIS QUOTE: "If I can fight KGB back in Russia, I can fight this." Meryl Yourish looks at the lone Jewish student being railroaded by SFSU after the University's infamous (at least in the Blogosphere) riot that broke out during a Pro-Israel rally in early May.

Posted 8/27/2002 12:00:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MAN CAN'T BURST OUR KIND OF EDITOR! Jonah Goldberg, National Review's resident hipster meets South Dakota's resident equivalent of Jack Webb. The predictable droll, Dragnet-like hilarity ensues.

Posted 8/27/2002 11:48:54 AM by Edward Driscoll
"A SAFE CREW ON TIME". That's what it says on the sides of the Amtrak AEM-7 electric locomotives that run up and down the Northeast Corridor, but this crew took the "on time" part just a little too far:

A man suffered a heart attack on an Amtrak-run commuter train and had to wait about 20 minutes for medical attention while the train made its regular stops. After being alerted to the emergency, the train's crew radioed ahead for an ambulance to meet them at Back Bay station, but continued to make stops before reaching that station. "What I want to know is, what the hell were they thinking?" asks a Massachusetts transportation official. "Somebody's potentially having a heart attack, and they're conducting business as usual?" The stricken man died in the emergency room at Boston Medical Center.

Posted 8/26/2002 11:47:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHO WANTS TO BLOCK A NON-POLLUTING WIND-BASED ELECTRICAL GENERATOR. Found via "Lynxx Pherrett's" Web log.

Posted 8/26/2002 11:38:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
TWO DISTINCT FUTURES: Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless has a post indicating two possible futures for the EU: modern day France or Weimar Germany. As to the former, check out this comment from one of Den Beste's readers:

I know of a dotcom which decided to expand to Europe, and sent an MBA to set things up. Merely the process of company formation was pretty clear: In France, the process cost $5,000, and took 5 weeks. In the UK, it cost roughly $100, was done in 45 minutes over the phone, and the package even included a company stamp. So they based their operations in London. (Ever wonder why there were so few french dotcoms?) Later, the bank refused access to funds in the French bank account until the tax authorities confirmed that no bills were outstanding.

The bureaucrats of the French and the EU really need to be locked in a room and forced to read, and re-read Jude Wanniski's The Way The World Works, or Robert Bartley's The Seven Fat Years over and over, until the understand how bureaucracies and taxation can kill an economy. Or better yet, let them try to start businesses of their own, and experience the red tape of the EU themselves.

Posted 8/26/2002 08:50:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUST CATCHING UP with a typically great James Lileks post about the "German invasion of Iraq". It's a classic. Stop by The Bleat if you haven't seen it yet, either. (Found via Patrick Ruffini.)

Posted 8/26/2002 06:36:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLOGCRITICS: My latest review is there. I look at a new self-published CD by jazz guitarist and bandleader Nick Kepics.

Posted 8/26/2002 04:25:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
FULL FRONTAL FISKING of Reuters by Meryl Yourish, at her appropriately eponoymously named blog, Yourish.com. It's quite impressive, not to mention, quite deserved.

Posted 8/26/2002 03:47:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
CYNTHIA McKINNEY UPDATE: Here's how Peter Jennings spun the campaign contributions received by McKinney and her opponent. Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg questions McKinney's patriotism--or extreme lack thereof. And don't count her out just yet...

Posted 8/26/2002 03:03:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
OVERSEAS STEREOTYPES REDUX. Posted by a guest blogger on Sgt. Stryker's site is this:

So there was this nice German women we met in the campground in Burgos, just as the build-up to Desert Storm was getting started, and of course that was the topic du jour, until she said, patronizingly: "Americans just don't understand about what war really means." And I smiled politely and said, "I've got a great-uncle dead in France in the first war, and an uncle there, from the second. I think we've kind of gotten the point." She changed the subject, real abruptly. (Corporal William Hayden, on the Somme in 1916 Sgt James Menaul, over Schweinfurt in 1943)

Posted 8/26/2002 02:36:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
SILLY SEASON IN SOUTH AFRICA: Ronald Bailey looks at this week's "World Summit on Sustainable Development" in Johannesburg. I love this excerpt:

A hardy band of anti-globalization activists are denouncing the WSSD as a part of the "corporate global agenda." On Saturday, South African police, using tear gas and stun grenades, broke up an unsanctioned demonstration by a hodge podge of the more extreme activist groups. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Diamini-Zuma made it clear at a press conference that illegal demonstrations will not be allowed. "In South Africa, there is no anarchy, there is law," she said. And there is something pathetically amusing, or maybe just pathetic, about a bunch of anarchists demanding stronger, more centralized and more intrusive global governance. Kropotkin must be spinning in his grave.

Not to mention Nicola Sacco.

Posted 8/26/2002 11:25:43 AM by Edward Driscoll
DIVERSITY? YOU WON'T FIND IT ON CAMPUS, according to Cella's Review. (Link via InstaPundit.)

Posted 8/26/2002 10:49:09 AM by Edward Driscoll
LILEKS IS RIGHT ON THE MONEY: Stop on by his daily Bleat for the reasons why having on-air sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral is both not a bright idea and has nothing to do with protecting or exercising the First Amendment. It also serves as a good explanation for anyone who's wondering why I try to keep this blog reasonably free of those seven words that a long, long time ago, in an only slightly more innocent age, George Carlin said you couldn't say on TV. And I think the photo up at the top is a screen capture from The Last Days of Patton, that dreadful mid-1980s TV movie rehash of George C. Scott's brilliant portrayal of Ol' Blood and Guts from 1970.

Posted 8/25/2002 02:13:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT HEADLINE ALERT. Spotted on the Brothers Judd Blog: "They're Like Gigantic Chickens on Crack".

Posted 8/25/2002 12:17:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
RECYCLING: As a writer, I understand the importance of recycling articles and interviews. For example, my Les Paul profile has appeared in a couple of places (and my interview with him has yielded a third article, to be published on dead tree in a month or so--watch this space). My test ride of a Segway was the grist for two articles (and counting). But this kind of recycling of material is just a bit too far.

Posted 8/25/2002 12:09:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
OVERSEAS STEREOTYPES: Steven Den Beste takes on a UK reader who thinks all Americans are dumb cow pokes. It's a very amusing post, but this one really stuck out:

Something that might help more would be if all the American tourists wore T-shirts that said things like "I live in New York City and I have a masters degree" (or whatever) but that's not likely to happen in part because we don't want to make foreigners feel bad because most of us are more educated than most of them are. Doing that in their own countries wouldn't be polite.

Actually, when Nina and I visited London in May of 2000, almost everyone we met was exceptionally polite with us. Even Chewbacca, whom we met at a Star Wars exhibition at the Barbizon Art Gallery in London. Of course, I did let him win at chess.