Posted 4/24/2004 01:27:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE NFL DRAFT IS ON: Serious draftnicks will be glued to the wall-to-wall coverage on ESPN, but I'm content to see who's picking up who via the 'Net. As Larry Beil of Yahoo Sports writes:

We are now "on the clock" for the most-hyped, NON-event in sports history. It is officially known as the 69th Annual National Football League Player Selection Meeting, but you know it best as THE DRAFT. No pass will be thrown (unless Suzy Kolber runs into Joe Namath again), no tackle will be made, no touchdown will be scored, but somehow, someway, THE DRAFT will be one of the most watched NON-events on ESPN this year. Somewhere in this great land of ours are men who willingly sit through every second of this weekend's 17 televised hours of draft coverage. These guys are either single, soon-to-be single or incarcerated, and they eat up the draft like Gilbert Brown attacks hot dogs. The draft is the ultimate reality show, a strangely compelling marathon of mini-dramas. Like "Survivor" in pads. Fortunes rise, fortunes fall, fortunes vanish and it happens at the speed of a root canal. My question is simple: "Why does anybody watch it?" It's like a never-ending episode of "Battlestar Galactica" with Chris Berman starring as Lorne Green.

I dunno--I think Berman would be a lot more fun than Greene was. Lt. "Double Latte With Foam" Starbuck to your Viper!

Posted 4/24/2004 11:33:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
OVERLAP: More on Kerry's overlapping dates of service and dates of protest.

Posted 4/23/2004 03:38:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOUR TUITION DOLLARS AT WORK: Rutgers University publishes a viciously anti-Semitic cartoon for its student newspaper's "Holocaust Remembrance Week" issue. Yesterday, John Derbyshire of National Review asked if the elites of the future would ditch diversity for open racism. It looks like we're seeing it already on our campuses.

Posted 4/23/2004 02:20:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONLY IF YOU ASK NICELY: Protein Wisdom interviews Noam Chomsky. Arising from that social construct known as the English language, though weighed down by years of its tyranny and imperialistic oppression, laughter--and at times even mirth--does occur.

Posted 4/23/2004 01:35:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT'S A LITTLE KNOWN FACT, but John Kerry served in Vietnam. (Surprising, huh? He rarely mentions it in speeches.) But he's misreported at least two aspects of his service: when he took command of his swift boat, and that the date of his discharge. Kerry's discharge wasn't until 1978, according to Kerry's own Website. Which means that his Winter Soldier shenanigans occurred while Kerry was still in the Naval Reserves! Given how the press hounded President Bush over his National Guard duty, will they now report what Kerry was doing while still a part of the service?

Posted 4/23/2004 01:05:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOW DO YOU REACH AGE 81, producing a top rated television news show for most of your adult life, and, as Don Hewitt does in this interview, honestly try to claim that you don't have any political biases? UPDATE Maybe Hewitt should read The Dallas Morning News more often.

Posted 4/23/2004 12:53:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
PAT TILLMAN DIED YESTERDAY: The former Arizona Cardinals safety was killed in Afghanistan. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo's sports section writes:

Tillman isn't a hero for dying, but for living. For putting his morals where his mouth was and not just enlisting, but doing it in the most humble and honorable way. When he and his brother arrived at Georgia's Fort Benning to begin their training in July 2002 he "came in like everyone else, on a bus from a processing station," the base's public information officer said then. Tillman promptly turned down hundreds of requests for interviews and went about anonymously being a soldier. No press. No fanfare. No "look at me" publicity stunts. His move shocked professional sports, populated by so many of our most able-bodied Americans. Tillman was the only one to enlist from the NFL, which is fine – there is no shame in not enlisting. But it is difficult to cheer ever again for a knucklehead like [Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end] Simeon Rice, who went on Jim Rome's radio show and said about Tillman, "He really wasn't that good, not really. He was good enough to play in Arizona, [but] that's just like the XFL." After Rome stopped him, Rice finally relented. Sort of. "I think it's very admirable, actually," Rice said. "You've got to give kudos to a guy like that because he did it for his own reasons. Maybe it's the Rambo movies, maybe it's Sylvester Stallone, Rocky, whatever compels him." Or maybe it was just serving his country. Maybe it was being a part of a cause greater than his own self-interest. Maybe it was trying to help in a seemingly helpless situation. In actuality, what Tillman did was no different than what thousands of other American men and women have done. The country needs them and they answer the call. He may have been the only one staring at a $3.6 million contract, but that's money. This, obviously, is something more valuable than that. Tillman probably would cringe at the outpouring of attention and affection that his death will bring. He didn't get into this for that. But if his death can remind Americans about the sacrifices of our soldiers, rich and poor, famous and faceless, then maybe something positive can come of it. Our volunteer military has performed brilliantly overseas. They've served with great skill and made great sacrifices. Not just the NFL millionaire. All of them.

Amen.

Posted 4/23/2004 10:59:34 AM by Edward Driscoll
NORTH KOREAN TRAIN DISASTER: This Blog has lots and lots of information, including links and photos. (Via Instapundit.)

Posted 4/22/2004 03:58:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
SUPREME COURT BLOCKS CLARETT FROM ENTERING NFL DRAFT: More here.

Posted 4/22/2004 03:43:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
MILLIONAIRE ENTREPRENEUR OUTSOURCES JOBS: Americans that could have found work in Website design and server management will have to keep looking, as Michael Moore outsources those jobs to the country located to the north of his native Flint, Michigan. Roger Smith could not be reached for comment.

Posted 4/22/2004 02:57:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
INTERESTING REVIEW OF Schindler's List on The Digital Bits Website.

Posted 4/22/2004 11:33:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE CRACK-UP: Sioux Falls Argus Leader editor Randell Beck discovers Blogosphere, blows gasket. Found via Glenn Reynolds, who writes, "When I see some editor lose it this way, it doesn't fill me with confidence in traditional media". UPDATE: Scott W. Johnson of the Minnesota-based Power Line blog quips, "Funny, we don't look Yahooish". Begging To Differ adds:

What I find most interesting is this part of Beck's response:

But there’s a small group of people—and you know, some of them don’t live in South Dakota, not everybody out there knows that. You know there’s a couple of yahoos in Minneapolis and there’s a guy out in Denver, there’s people from outside the walls of South Dakota who are perpetuating this hate campaign.

So someone from South Dakota—South Dakota!—is calling some bloggers from Minnesota "yahoos"? And here I thought it was only people from around here in the Northeast who look down on people from other states ...

You just know Lileks is going to have lots of fun with this tonight. ANOTHER UPDATE: In other Daschle news, his lawyer is calling for ad that he doesn't like to be removed. I'd love to get Daschle's take on these three ads.

Posted 4/22/2004 11:09:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
TRAIN CRASH IN NORTH KOREA--UP TO 3000 KILLED, AP reports:

Two fuel trains collided and exploded in a North Korean train station near the Chinese border Thursday, according to South Korean media, which reported large numbers of casualties. One television station said 3,000 people were believed killed or injured. * * *In another sign of the accident's magnitude, the secretive North Korean government cut international phone lines to prevent news of the collision from leaking across its borders, [South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported], citing no sources.

(Emphasis mine.) Cut phone lines? And what sort of fuel explosion kills 3000 people? Given North Korea's nuclear weapons program, this sounds mighty suspicious.

Posted 4/21/2004 11:18:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
ALL I NEED IS THE AIR THAT I BREATHE: Scott W. Johnson of the Power Line Blog writes that the 2004 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators by Steven Hayward is now out. If you don't want to wade through the whole report, Johnson has a summary. Bottom line?

For the first time, the Index contains a special section comparing U.S. environmental trends with trends in European Union nations -- a feature of special importance in the Kerry era. This year's Indicators show that the environment continues to be America’s single greatest policy success. Environmental quality has improved so much, in fact, that it is nearly impossible to paint a grim, gloom-and-doom picture anymore.

That won't stop the doom and gloomers from believing that we're five minutes away from Silent Running or THX-1138, but at least there's a rebuttal.

Posted 4/21/2004 10:35:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
ED LEADS THE WAY TO THE KITCHENS OF TOMORROW! I got invited to attend a focus group last week--they actually called for my wife, who's done a few of these, but she was out, I answered the phone, the friendly fellow on the other end said "well, maybe you'd like to attend", and I said, sure. As a result, I spent the past two hours in a room with ten other people and the moderator, and I never saw people argue more passionately over refrigerator designs in my life. Forget the war in Iraq. Forget Israel and the Palestinians. Forget Bush and Kerry. The real burning issue of the day is the placement of the chilled water dispenser! Or so you would have thought with this group, and I felt more than a little in over my head once I got there. Me? I like having the freezer on the bottom so I don't have to stoop when getting a Diet Coke out. That's about the extent of my design preferences when it comes to fridges, so I just sat back and watch the opinions fly. It didn't help matters that one of the fellows (there were four guys including myself, the rest were women. Our ages varied from mid-30s to I guess mid-60s) looked like a tougher version of Ted Turner (good shock of white hair; pencil thin moustache) and sounded a little like Broderick Crawford. 35 years ago, I'll bet this guy was a helluva platoon leader in 'Nam. Ten years ago, I'll bet he kept San Jose streets safe as a hardnosed cop. Tonight, he's busy barking his opinions on every aspect of refrigerator/freezer design. And brother, did he have a lot of opinions! (He blew in, looked at the name cards on the counter and said, "Can I pick who I want to be? I want to be Carol. Can I be Carol?" Carol took a lot ribbing when she next showed up.) On the other hand, I once dated a woman who was a focus group moderator, and have sat a few times with the ad agency or product manufacturers on the other side of the two-way mirror. So I have a sense of what's involved in leading one of these things, and then writing a report based on the data collected. And I'll bet the woman who moderated tonight probably loved this guy egging everyone on and getting them talking about design elements. There's a second part of this tomorrow night, at a hotel instead of tonight's standard-issue focus group room with a two way mirror. It will be interesting to see how they get four hours of discussion out of fridge designs.

Posted 4/21/2004 06:29:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?! Wanda Baucus, wife of Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, is accused of assaulting a woman yesterday at a Northwest Washington DC garden center. "Mrs. Baucus was upset because another customer was getting help with mulch ahead of her":

Sources told News4's Pat Collins that Mrs. Baucus dropped a bag of mulch under the woman's car, then struck the woman in the body and face a number of times. Collins reported that Mrs. Baucus drove from the scene, and returned a while later with her husband. That is when she talked to police about the incident.

Gee, what a class act.

Posted 4/21/2004 05:04:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
RED McHEIFER DAYS: McDonald's introduces "Adult" Happy Meals. Reason's Nick Gillespie, and James Lileks each have some (properly disparaging) thoughts about them.

Posted 4/21/2004 04:41:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
HE'LL EVEN SPOT YOU THE T: You only get one guess, writes Stephen Green, about which word is missing from The Christian Science Monitor's gushing profile of Yasser Arafat.

Posted 4/21/2004 04:33:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
SHARPE DECISION: Tight end Shannon Sharpe, 35, will play for the Denver Broncos for at least one more season.

Posted 4/21/2004 02:44:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DOUBLE FLIP FLOP MANEUVER: Senator Kerry has released all his military records--or has he? Just don't question his patriotism!

Posted 4/21/2004 01:36:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
STRIKE OUT: Why is the Los Angeles Times distorting its coverage of the Ninth Circuit Court's three strikes decision?

Posted 4/21/2004 01:30:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE STEELERS' CLASS OF '74: With the NFL draft rapidly approaching, the benchmark is still the Pittsburgh Steelers' class of '74, the only year a team drafted four future hall of famers.

Posted 4/21/2004 01:00:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS: I guess that's the new motto of what was once (many decades ago) called "The Tiffany Network". According to this article, CBS plans to air photos of Princess Diana, dying in the aftermath of her horrific 1997 auto crash in Paris.

Posted 4/21/2004 12:12:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLAUDIA ROSETT has some thoughts on how the U.N. can begin paying its debt to Iraq's people.

Posted 4/21/2004 12:03:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE COLIN POWELL, as noticed by Anne Applebaum.

Posted 4/21/2004 11:39:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
WELCOME NATIONAL TOURING COMPANY OF THE WIZ AND SPINAL TAP! Err wait a second, that's not it; let's try that again! Welcome to everybody clicking over from Blogcritics (where I'm apparently "Blogcritic of the Day"--thanks Eric!) to visit my humble little abode here. Make yourselves comfortable, folks--there's plenty of food in the fridge, plenty of posts in the blog, and for more reading, click over to the essays page.

Posted 4/21/2004 12:15:05 AM by Edward Driscoll
NRA TV: Brilliant method by the NRA to circumvent idiotic--and in a sane world--unconstitutional--campaign finance reform laws. Glenn Reynolds writes:

What lets the NRA go into this business is technology -- setting up a nationwide TV network via the Web is a lot cheaper than relying on broadcasting or even cable, and with the growing penetration of high-speed internet services, NRA News may reach as many people as some cable channels.

Of course, getting more viewers than CNN is not all that hard to do these days. But the concept is terrific. As I wrote back in early 2002, about a different kind of self-publishing, Weblogs:

Today, the cost of putting a Web site up ranges from free to a hundred bucks or so a month (that’s simply the monthly fee for a server such as Verio, Hosting.com or Exodus. I’m not talking about graphic design, content, etc.) Compare that to the late 1980s. When Rush Limbaugh began his national radio show in 1988, Ed McLaughlin, his producer, had to go from station to station, to get them to buy his show. In comparison, ten years or so later, when Limbaugh put up a Web site, he was able to reach a national audience (heck, a planetary audience, although I don’t know how well El Rushbo translates in other countries) simultaneously, for the cost of his Web server.

As Glenn writes, "given that it's easy to enter the media, and that the law treats media organizations more favorably than non-media organizations, we're likely to see a lot more people following the NRA's lead".

Posted 4/20/2004 11:31:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY: Interesting tidbits about Republican and Democrat election patterns.

Posted 4/20/2004 09:33:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEH.

Posted 4/20/2004 08:44:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
OIL FOR FOOD CORRUPTION AT THE UN: Andrew Sullivan has some thoughts, adding, "We were so right to intervene [in Iraq]. The alternatives were far, far worse". UPDATE: Not surprisingly, Roger L. Simon links to the article, as he's owned this story for weeks now.

Posted 4/20/2004 08:39:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
POTTERY BARN IS MAD AT COLIN POWELL--or is it Bob Woodward, if he invented the quote? In any case this UPI article reads like something Scott Ott would write.

Posted 4/20/2004 08:21:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
LA SHAWN BARBER HAS HARSH WORDS FOR TOM BROKAW: "Sorry, Tom, but you and the rest of the Bush-bashers have been exposed. Your industry is just finding out what the rest of America already knows: The mainstream media is biased toward the left". Actually, I think Tom's merely a bit behind the curve. What's been fascinating for me to watch are all of the people in the media who have come forward in the past few years to admit that it's biased. And it's equally fun watching the folks who didn't get the memo still try to claim that there's no bias in the media. (The "conservative media bias" meme seems to have died a relatively quick and merciful death, thank God.)

Posted 4/20/2004 07:10:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLARETT GOES TO THE SUPREME COURT to try and enter the NFL draft. (See our previous links here.)

Posted 4/20/2004 05:43:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
SEATTLE NEWSPAPERS AREN'T ANTI-SEMITIC, writes Stefan Sharkansky: "old ladies with numbers on their arms get sympathy in Seattle. It's socially acceptable to honor victimized Jews and to remember the Holocaust. As long as they don't have the chutzpah to, say, actually defend themselves to prevent another one".

Posted 4/20/2004 05:19:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARLEN SPECTOR: With friends like these...

Posted 4/20/2004 05:16:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEED TO KILL AN HOUR OR TWO? This fellow has MP3s of dozens of classic television theme songs.

Posted 4/20/2004 04:50:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
FIVE SIMPLE WORDS: Phone sex in Saudi Arabia. Roger L. Simon calls it "An Idea Whose Time Has Come".

Posted 4/20/2004 04:44:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DARKEST OF THE DARK HORSE CANDIDATES: It's no surprise that President Bush and Senator Kerry are blowing the doors off of Ralph Nader when it comes to fundraising. What is surprising is who else is--and as of last month, he's has raised nearly ten times as much money as Nader!

Posted 4/20/2004 04:28:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLIP-FLOPS: NOT JUST A KERRY FASHION STATEMENT: Back in 1998, after reporters and journalists poured over husband's background and records, Hillary Clinton claimed to be the victim of "a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". Today though, she says "Newspapers Should Press Bush for Info". Chutzpah, thy name is Hillary.

Posted 4/20/2004 03:17:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONE SMALL STEP FOR ED, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND: Hot on the heels of my Saturn V post in Blogcritics this morning, I have an essay on Spacecraft Films' earlier DVD, on Apollo 11, in my newest Electronic House newsletter.

Posted 4/20/2004 02:44:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
VE HAVE VAYS OF MAKING YOU READ DIS: I rarely take exception with what James Lileks writes, and this is a pretty minor one, in the scope of things. But in Monday's "Bleat", he wrote:

Friday night I decided to dip into the Classic Movie Collection. I usually buy the DVDs of classic movies restored to original luster, just because you want to support that sort of thing. I took down "Dr. Zhivago." I lasted 35 minutes. It's lovely but it's dull and disjointed. It has that sodden pace of an Important Movie. The real deal-killer, though, was the inexplicable fact that everyone spoke with an English accent. Why not a Russian accent? Did they think that a movie about Russia would be somehow unauthentic if the characters sounded like, you know, Russians? I would have accepted French accents among the upper classes. But British? It certainly doesn't help suspend your disbelief. Especially when the first character you meet is Alec Guinness.

I have similar mixed emotions about Dr. Zhivago. It's far from the ripping adventure yarns that Bridge On The River Kwai or Lawrence of Arabia are, but it's actually aged rather nicely, considering how savaged it was by critics at the time of its release. It is a little too ponderous for me to want to watch as often as the two Lean films that came before it, but I own it on DVD. (And it was one of the first laser discs I bought, back in the dark ages of the late 1980s, when letterboxed movies were A Big Deal and few and far between. And you had to walk 50 miles to the few stores that sold laser discs to get 'em. And those 12-inch discs were heavy and hard to carry back. You kids today don't know how easy you have it with your new fangled five-inch DVDs, dagnamit!) As far as Zhivago's British accents, the reason for that might be that, other than Omar Sharif and Rod Steiger, everybody in the film is British, as is the director, screenwriter and most of the crew. And I tend to respect films set in non-English speaking countries that don't have people talking in fake accents more than those that do. (Liam Neeson's thick German accent in Schindler's List is the exception that proves the rule, I think.) Stanley Kubrick once gave an interview where he said that a critic complained that the soldiers in Paths of Glory should have been speaking with French accents. His response was simple--the entire film was set in France, the characters were supposed to be seen interacting with each other as they normally would, and fake French accents would have been distracting. (The one German character who appears at the end of the film--who would later become the future Mrs. Kubrick--only spoke in German.) I think the same is true for a film set Russia--if the entire cast were speaking in Russian accents, they'd risk starting to sound like Boris and Natasha awfully fast. Maybe The Hunt For Red October did it best--have the characters start speaking in Russian with subtitles, and then just when the audience thinks it's in for a lot of on-screen reading, zoom into a character's mouth and then zoom back out, and have everybody speaking in English. (Doesn't Zhivago have a similar shot early on, but with signage, to explain why all the writing in the film is in English?) Patrick Stewart once gave a speech to the National Press Club in Washington DC that was broadcast by C-Span. Afterwards, a reporter wanted to know if Star Trek's producers ever asked him to do Captain Picard with a French accent. Stewart said he tried it once or twice in early rehearsals, "but it came out sounding rather like Inspector Clouseau. So I quickly concluded that Captain Picard loved the English language so much, he decided to speak it in its native tongue". One thing I will agree with Lileks on is the dangers of increased taxation on petroleum distillates--and he does a thorough job of demolishing Andrew Sullivan's proposal to raise them, which ran in Time magazine no less.

Posted 4/20/2004 01:35:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
COALITION TROOPS MAY HAVE TO STAY TEN YEARS IN IRAQ TO KEEP ORDER: Heck that's nothing--we've had to stay for over 50 years here.

Posted 4/20/2004 01:30:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
DOLLAR BOOK FREUD: Between an essay on the differences between book and film people, and Freudian essays on writers and what made the Columbine killers tick, we've got your pop psychology quotient for the week right here, baby!

Posted 4/20/2004 01:14:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
BEST INTERNET ESSAYS OF 2004, as found by Bill Peschel.

Posted 4/20/2004 12:59:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
SOUND ADVICE: "Those who live in yesterday cannot build tomorrow", writes Ralph Peters:

The game of "this was mine and must be mine again," whether structured along religious lines or in terms of national identity, is as dangerous an enterprise as any in history. One great American strength has been our willingness to leave "the old country" behind, abandoning all claims to repossession. Wherever opposing factions claim the same land for their gods, conflicts are insoluble without extremes of bloodshed. When we insist on chaining God to any patch of earth, we make Him as small as us. Islamic terrorists will not reconquer Spain. But they may do colossal damage to their faith.

Posted 4/20/2004 11:56:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
DO WOODWARD AND CLARKE'S BOOKS HELP BUSH? Jonah Goldberg argues that they do cut off certain lines of attack against him. And they reinforce exactly what the key issues of the day are, which may explain these numbers. UPDATE: Scroll up past Jonah's post for some thoughts on the subject by his readers.

Posted 4/20/2004 11:51:31 AM by Edward Driscoll
LOADED FOR BEAR: There are too many great lines in Jay Nordlinger's latest "Impromptus" column today. So click on over and RTWT.

Posted 4/20/2004 11:36:41 AM by Edward Driscoll
PAYBACK: After being hammered by the press earlier this year over President Bush's military records, the GOP wants John Kerry to reciprocate. Watch the press relentlessly hound Kerry the same way they did President Bush. (I know, I know--I'm just kidding.) UPDATE: Via Instapundit, Joe Gandelman has some thoughts.

Posted 4/20/2004 11:14:11 AM by Edward Driscoll
WILL KURT WARNER BE CUT BY THE RAMS on June 1st to reduce their salary cap? Certainly makes sense.

Posted 4/20/2004 12:19:09 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE MIGHTY SATURN V: I have a review of Spacecraft Films' newest DVD, the companion to their Apollo 11 disc, up on Blogcritics.

Posted 4/19/2004 05:43:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
FROM WORST TO FIRST: Corey Dillon traded to the New England Patriots for a draft pick.

Posted 4/19/2004 05:06:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
JOURNALIST'S LOVE FOR CASTRO IGNORES OBVIOUS: We know the Washington Post leans to the left; that's a given. But don't they have editors smart enough to prevent embarrassing columns like this one from being published? Couldn't they forward such a column to the city's weekly alternative "underground" paper? As Ramesh Ponnuru jokingly writes, "Do you know what's wrong with Cuba? The one thing they need that would make life better? Affirmative action, that's what." And finally, enquiring minds want to know--what does Oliver Stone think about Cuba's affirmative action deficiencies?

Posted 4/19/2004 04:53:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK: Orrin Judd looks at the GOP's chances in New Jersey. Could Steve Forbes run for governor in 2005? UPDATE: And (keeping our strained but fun vintage Springsteen theme going), in a "Meeting Across The River" in New York, "Rudolph Giuliani is a clear front-runner for governor in 2006".

Posted 4/19/2004 04:26:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
DESTROYING THE CAMPUS NEWSPAPER: It's tactic by leftwingers on both coasts that's growing in popularity, when they don't like what the paper says. The Dartmouth Review has a novel solution, however.

Posted 4/19/2004 03:23:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAURICE CLARETT UPDATE: A federal appeals court has barred the Ohio State running back from entering the NFL draft as a sophmore. Skip Bayless had some thoughts on the issue, back when it looked like Clarett would be able to enter the draft.

Posted 4/19/2004 01:09:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
GIVE ME LIBERTY OR...NEVERMIND: Citizen Smash compares Zapata and Zapatero. As Glenn Reynolds writes, "Socialism ain't what it used to be".

Posted 4/19/2004 12:36:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEE-WHIZ VERSUS BIG BATTALIONS: Peter Robinson prints an email from a US Army Officer, which compares our occupations of post-Nazi Germany and post-Saddam Iraq, and concludes, "Hi-tech may be a gee-whiz way to win wars rapidly but when it comes to occupation, God still favors the big battalions".

Posted 4/19/2004 12:12:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
WILLIAM HAMAS HARRISON: James Taranto has some thoughts on Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who served for month as leader of the Hamas, "the most vicious of the Palestinian Arab terrorist groups, after his predecessor, Ahmed Yassin, bit the dust last month. Like William Henry Harrison, Rantisi took office in March and died the following month, though Harrison actually was in office for a full month". UPDATE: In a related story, USA Today is reporting, "Administration says it wants Hamas 'put out of business'". 'Bout time.

Posted 4/19/2004 12:54:28 AM by Edward Driscoll
"FAUX MITZVAHS" are becoming all the rage amongst non-Jewish kids, writes Joanne Jacobs. And of course, there are now Bark Mitzvahs, as well...

Posted 4/18/2004 09:50:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
WOW: I hope that all is well at Bleat HQ. We do get the odd earthquake in the Bay Area, however, we tend to take the weather for granted (Virginia Postrel wrote a fantastic essay a few years ago on how weather and earthquakes influence east coast/west coast thinking). But I remember numerous severe storms when I lived in New Jersey. Hopefully Lileks and family will ride this one out without incident. UPDATE: James is fine. I'll post a couple of comments about his latest Bleat later today.

Posted 4/18/2004 07:25:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE LEFT SEIZES THE ALAMO, and Don Feder watches it, so you don't have to.

Posted 4/18/2004 07:02:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPAM QUESTION: Lately, I've gotten what seems like 57,321 spam emails that start off with the supposition that "A friend has set you up on a blind date". Who's doing it? All my friends know I'm happily married, right? If you're a friend reading this, dude--save the dates for the guys who need 'em, OK? Thanks. (Does anybody fall for this spam approach? I'll bet this fellow would know.)

Posted 4/18/2004 06:55:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET DVDs: The early James Bond films are being remastered using an ultra-HD technology. The New York Times describes it as "600 Macs, 4,000 Lines, One Giant Leap for DVD's".

Posted 4/18/2004 03:44:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
GRAHAM ON GORELICK: Michael Graham writes that if Jamie Gorelick "does not testify, then the entire 9/11 Commission's report can be rightfully ignored. For such a direct, glaring oversight will show that the Commission's agenda is something other than a complete and thorough investigation of all parties involved. If Gorelick doesn't quit, then the rest of the Commissioners should."

Posted 4/18/2004 02:32:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS KERRY USING THE ZAGAT GUIDE to foreign policy? Of course, one question still remains: when he goes to the Four Seasons, is he a Grill Room man or Pool Room man? (These are the important issues you ponder after just coming back from brunch at Max's.) UPDATE: Kerry also flip-flopped, as well as hemmed, hawed and squirmed on Meet The Press today over his Winter Soldier activities. But don't question his patriotism! ANOTHER DINING RELATED UPDATE: Check, please! LAST DINING RELATED UPDATE: The service at the Milpitas Sushi Lovers is usually pretty poor, but tonight seemed particularly bad. Sneering waitress, no goodbye or thank you on the way out, and as usual, our order for drinks and appetizers gets taken after we've had several pieces of sushi from the boats--and this on a night when the place was half-empty. And no recognition from the staff that we typically eat there three or more times a week. But now it's in Google...

Posted 4/18/2004 11:11:07 AM by Edward Driscoll
ON THURSDAY, Greyhawk posted an obituary of the co-pilot of the B-29 that dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, which effectively ended WWII without requiring an invasion of Japan that could have killed over a million men. He asked, "Could America drop a nuclear weapon, if it would actually save lives, today?" The Wall Street Journal today makes the case for new low-yield nukes, designed to combat terrorism with a pinpoint response, or to hit targets buried deep underground, rather than the Cold War objective of obliterating whole cities.

Posted 4/18/2004 10:46:32 AM by Edward Driscoll
AMERICAN CHRISTIANS DON'T THREATEN JEWS: In the Wall Street Journal, Rabbi Aryeh Spero writes:

And herein lies one of the most disheartening but salient observations one is forced to make, post-"Passion," about many in the Jewish community: They still don't get it. Even after more than two charmed centuries in America, they confuse contemporary America with medieval and postmedieval Europe, still not realizing how America and American Christians are a category wholly different from those of other nations, other religions and other strains of Christianity. * * * To be sure, there were justifiable reasons for apprehension given some elements in and circumstances surrounding the film. Aside from the understandable worry that Jews were for the first time being depicted on widely distributed American celluloid as eager for Jesus' death, there was the devilish ugliness in which they were physically portrayed, something not found in the New Testament. The graphic ugliness, blood and gore was thought to be potentially more scorching than the Gospel text. What's more, Mr. Gibson's father is a notorious Holocaust denier. Surmising that perhaps branch follows root, some suspected that the producer-director's intent was to portray Jews as the focal point of evil in the crucifixion episode, to return us to the pre-Vatican II days of Jews as official "Christ-killers." Mr. Gibson declined to distance himself from his father's remarks about Jews, whether because he agreed or simply out of filial loyalty. Added to this mix was the combustible ingredient of Mr. Gibson's subscription to a fundamentalist brand of Catholicism critical of Vatican II. Yet for all this, acts against Jews never materialized. The reason is that anti-Semitism flowers not so much in the seed as in the soil, and the American soil--the disposition of its people--has proved over two centuries to be remarkably resistant to strains of anti-Semitism.

Read the whole thing. (Via the Brothers Judd.)

Posted 4/18/2004 01:11:44 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE WILHELM SCREAM: If you're more of a die-hard Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Tarantino fan than I am, this may be old hat to you, but I hadn't read about it until tonight. Common to many, many films is a sound effect called "The Wilhelm Scream". It's a stock sound effect that dates back to early 1950s Warner Brothers films, but it was given new life by Lucas's sound effects man, Ben Burtt, who calls it his personal signature. Whenever a Nazi or Imperial stormtrooper gets it in one of Lucas's films, chances are, you're hearing...the Wilhelm Scream. According to the Internet Movie Database, it's heard in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs when Steve Buscemi's "Mr. Pink" character "pushes a pedestrian on the sidewalk while being pursued by cops during his escape from the failed jewel heist". I wonder if over time, the Wilhelm Scream will be supplanted as a sound effect by this one. I've already downloaded it and used as a Keith Moon-like scream for a drumbreak in a song I recorded back in February, and these folks have also made good use of it as well.