YOU DON'T PULL ON THE MASK OF THE OL' LONE RANGER--but he's entitled to remove it himself. Sgt. Stryker reveals his secret identity--and has lots more good stuff on his site since I last linked to it, but you probably knew that already.

Now, did you ever notice you never see Bruce Wayne and Superman together in the same room. Or Peter Parker and the Incredible Hulk. Hmmmm.....

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, CONSERVATIVE? That's Orrin Judd's take, in this post from The Brothers Judd Web log.

SAY THE SECRET WORD....Found on NRO's The Corner Web log today, this post by Andrew Stuttaford:

Nice comment from Putin earlier this week, while studying the names of delegates at a conference he was addressing on Monday:
"I see the name of a Mr. Engels from Germany on the list. Thank God he came without Marx."

SUCCESS GOES TO SPIDER-MAN'S HEAD, not to mention the rest of his body, according to Group Captain Mandrake. (Parents, don't let your kids look at the photos that accompany the good Group Captain's item. Trust me.)

Darn--I was really counting on Spidey to protect me from the various super-villains prowling Manhattan. I'm sorry to see that he's taken to spending his merchandising royalties and film percentage points on many, many visits to the Four Seasons and 21.

SANITY IN CALIFORNIA? The California Assembly rejects a ban on U.S. Indian Team Names. Good move, guys.

BAD DAY FOR JOURNALISTS, especially of the newspaper kind. Very funny item on the Fox News Web site, found via Chronwatch:

These are not good days for journalists. When people would rather plow their pickups into your building than share with you the medical records of their sub-human companions, it is time for a little soul-searching, and perhaps even a little image-mending.

As to what that means, go check out the article--it's quite amusing.

CHRONWATCH: Found via InstaPundit, there's a Web site devoted to monitoring the San Francisco Chronicle, or as I've heard it described from time to time, "the Comical". If you're in the Bay Area, stop by Chronwatch sometime.

LIVE FROM NEW YORK, ITTTTTTTTTTT'S EDDRISCOLL.COM! After visiting my parents in New Jersey, I'm back online in Manhattan via my hotel room's DSL connection. (And yes, riding Amtrak into the city, I had my usual "there's something missing from the skyline" twinge after we passed the Newark station. Manhattan desperately needs a replacement for the World Trade Center. The skyline just doesn't look right without it.)

ABSENT FROM KEYBOARD: I'll be travelling to the East Coast on Tuesday, and may be away from a computer for a few days. In the meantime, click on the links page at the left for lots of good content.

Be back soon!

SPEAKING OF HISTORY: Here's a history of Outrageous TV Commercials, complete with Real Video files.

And now we finally know what killed off our hominid forefathers...

HISTORY, THE BIG MYSTERY: Suzanne Fields says our children don't know much about American history:

It certainly doesn't help the situation that more than half the teachers teaching history to junior and senior high school students didn't major or minor in history in college. That is crucial because, as smart as they might be, they haven't a conceptual foundation in the subject and probably teach more from someone else's lesson plans than from deep knowledge - or even from shallow knowledge.

The "Nation's Report Card" was issued just as a 125-page paperback, "9-11," by the leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky, became a surprise best-seller, selling over 160,000 copies in the first few weeks. If anyone takes advantage of historical ignorance in interpreting American history, Chomsky does, but lots of people are buying his book. A lot of them would probably have flunked the history test, too.

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION: This is a classic, found on Joanne Jacobs' Weblog:

So that's how it happens
Palestinian gunmen sent to Italy in the Church of the Nativity deal are threatening to explode, Al Bawaba reports. They can't take the humiliation of being watched by the Italian police.

The three Palestinians granted exile in Italy after the Israeli army siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity risk cracking under the strain of being so closely monitored, one of them told La Reppublica on Monday.

"When we arrived in Italy I asked the head of the Italian security service responsible for us not to track us too closely. I told him, “at least give us some personal space and autonomy or we could just explode”, Khaled Abu Nejmeh told the daily. -- 5/27

If they're ever freed from their exile, these guys have a great future as potential drummers for Spinal Tap.

THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR FILLINGS:
Dental Fillings Targeted in Multiple Lawsuits.

First cigarettes, then fatty foods, then fillings. Fortunately, as the article states, unlike the tobacco industry, the ADA is fighting back.

BIG BROTHER DOMINATES AIRSTRIP ONE: Ingsoc has taken over the country formally known as England. Group Captain Mandrake reports that his children are forced to watch broadcasts of Big Brother for up to 18 hours a day on their telescreens, for party indoctrination and propaganda purposes. Writing from his office in the Ministry of Information, Mandrake says:

They are all hooked on Big Brother. We have cable service here, so we get the e4 channel. That means Big Brother can be on the tv as much as 18 hours a day. Even some of the soap operas (hanging my head in shame at this further admission of failure) are forgotten if they interfere with Big Brother (as Emmerdale does, I am told).

Ooops, upon further research, I've discovered that apparently, this Big Brother isn't the head of a tyrannical socialist regime making permanent war with Eastasia, but an English game show.

But I do think fluoridation in the water might behind both forms of Big Brother...

CULTURE HAS CONSEQUENCES: Mona Charen on the ultimate consequences of America's fetish for "nonjudgementalism" and why it hamstrung the FBI when it discovered that numerous young Arab males were taking flight training lessons at American schools:

When your greatest source of pride is nonjudgmentalism, you will pretend not to see even what is patently obvious. In reality, it was perfectly legitimate and understandable for Americans to suppose, however briefly, that the perpetrators of Oklahoma City were Arab terrorists. Arabs had bombed the World Trade Center (the first time) only months before, and had attacked American officials in the Sudan, Lebanon and Egypt. They had brought down a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killed 241 American soldiers in their barracks in Lebanon. Truck bombs were a Middle East specialty.

Culture has consequences. Before 9-11, our culture had elevated nonjudgmentalism to the level of civic religion. We've been told that "everything has changed" since then.

But not everything has. Some continue to worship the old civic religion. The Department of Transportation under Norm Mineta (the lone Democrat in the Bush Cabinet) has declined to examine young Arab-looking males more carefully than other airline passengers and has refused to permit pilots to carry guns. Both decisions defy common sense.

Read the whole thing--it's quite good (as usual for Charen).

JAPAN THEN, ISLAM NOW: Orrin Judd compares our current struggle with Islamic extremists with our view of Japan in the 1980s and early '90s:

In many ways, the current hysteria over our confrontation with Islam resembles the Japanophobia of the 1980s. Then, as now, the emotionally labile, those who live in the moment, took a current situation (things like the Japanese buying Radio City Music Hall) and projected it forward in a straight line, never pausing to consider the catastrophic internal weaknesses of the culture they perceived as a threat. Today, without our having done a thing, Japan is a nation on the verge of collapse. The problems that the rest of the West shares with Japan are a far greater threat than Islamic extremism.

BUT WHAT DOES ADAM CLYMER THINK OF THIS? Bush Ridicules NBC Reporter.

WAR & POPCORN: Looking for something to rent from Blockbusters? Several National Review Online writers pick the best war films of all time. I'd add "Full Metal Jacket", and "Apocalypse Now" to the list, and maybe "Black Hawk Down". But I think I need to see "Black Hawk" a couple of more times on DVD to make up my mind on it.

THE SKIN TRADE: How much does the porn industry really make a year? Emmanuelle Richard runs the numbers, in an article called The Naked Untruth.

TARGETING A MYTH: InstaPundit links to this article, which discusses gun control in England . "The evidence suggests that gun control has not made England a safer, fairer society," its subhead reads.

No kidding--but as InstaPundit notes, this is a real breakthrough, being printed in the often very liberal Boston Globe, the same paper that banned Jeff Jacoby for several weeks for writing a pro-fourth of July column last year.

"MR. YAMAHA DIES": Group Captain Mandrake links to this CNN.com story, which reports that Genichi Kawakami, who took over his father's business and made Japan's Yamaha into a household name around the world through a combination of musical instruments and motorbikes, died on Saturday at the age of 90.

Having had my share of Yamaha musical equipment in the mid-1980s during my rock and roll days, I can attest to their high quality. And their synthesizer, the DX-7, was the sound of pop music during that period. it was heard on virtually every pop record, and its spin-offs are still popular to this day.

DEFENSE SPENDING COMPARED: Steve Den Beste compares American and European defense spending and technology, and finds Europe sorely lacking. He's also going on vacation this week at the Luxor in Vegas (good for him--he'll have lots of fun there) and asks us to "please not start World War III" until he gets back.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: After a previous Bleat full of vitriol, James Lileks has
a whole lotta love to give the world, including his love of the series finale of the new Star Trek spin-off, Enterprise:

I love the fact that the main villain was also the simpering shoe salesman in the ZZTop video, “She’s Got Legs.” I like the fact that the Captain has a dog. I like the fact that show has figured out very quickly who the good characters are, and shunted the lesser ones off the stage. I liked the fact that the EU Council de Science - sorry, the Vulcan Science Council - had decided that time travel was impossible, when we all know that the Federation figured out otherwise a few years later that it wasn’t. (Of course, the Vulcan Science Council knows better, but they keep things from the simplisme Earthlings.) I liked the special effects because I am, at heart, 12 years old, and a dork drawing Enterprise pictures in my notebook unaware of the KICK ME sign on my butt.

I thought it was pretty good as well, although our local UPN affiliate ran it with a "viewer's choice" episode (apparently determined via Internet vote), which was just dreadful--a group of renegade Vulcans trying to get in touch with their inner emotions. Long, droning and very painful, it made "the space hippies" episode of the original Trek look good in comparison.

Still, the first season of Enterprise has had fewer cringe-inducing moments for a first season of Trek than any series since the first one. And after the pedantic Voyager, I never thought I'd be saying that.

WE DON'T. WE JUST FEAR YOU: AP headline: Castro to Americans: Don't Fear Cuba.

SMART TV & SOUND: I have two articles in this quarter's Smart TV & Sound magazine. They're both online, which of course, should only wet your appetite to run out and buy truckloads of copies of the actual issue.

Heck, buy boxcar loads--they slice, they dice, they make Julian French fries, and they make great gifts!

NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE: I've long wondered what transformed Richard Nixon from a staunch cold-warrior in the 1950s to a paranoid, liberal big government president in the 1970s. Virginia Postrel, on her Weblog, The Scene may have found the answer:

Is it just me, or is this very odd? From the NYT announcement that Rick Berke is the new Washington editor: "[A]s editor of the high school newspaper, he and a co-author wrote an article disclosing that in 1959, Richard M. Nixon, then vice president, was exposed to microwave radiation beamed at the United States Embassy in Moscow when he was staying there for the 'kitchen debates' with Nikita S. Khrushchev." And the point of that high school article was what exactly? (NYT piece via Andrew Sullivan.)

See kids, mom was right--never run the microwave with the door open...

The anti-smoking zealots (God how it's tempting to type Nazis) visit the offices of National Review, in this William F. Buckley Jr. essay.

PROUD FRIEND OF ISRAEL Blog found via Group Captain Mandrake. Stop by and check it out.

ROBOTS, DUDE, REDUX: More on the Evolution Robotics robots that we posted about yesterday. Here's an update, from Reuters.

THE HISTORICAL MYTHS OF THE INTELLECTUALS is the subject of this essay currently online at the homepage of JamesBowman.net.

NFL SAFETY TO LEAVE FOOTBALL FOR THE ARMY: Read who and why here.

THE END OF ARAFAT? That's what Steve Den Beste says is coming soon.

KESHER TALK: Howard Fienberg's excellent Kesher Talk blog has a new URL:

http://www.hfienberg.com/kesher/ Adjust your favorites folder accordingly.

Like this blog, he's still using Blogger's software, but is no longer on their server. Smart move, given all of their downtime. At least when Blogger's input mechanism goes down, by being on an independent server, the data already posted is still readable.

STRANGE HEADLINES PART II. Found on the Sacramento Bee: "Inmate has no right to mail sperm from prison, court rules".

I have no problem with the ruling--I just think it's an astonishing headline, very much indicative of what a strange, Helter Skelter, Koyaanisqatsi, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control world we live in.

Stop me before I start sounding like Dennis Miller. Oops--too late.

ROBOTS, DUDE! I spent much of the week finishing an article on Evolution Robotics for Nuts & Volts magazine. It's an interesting company, with the goal of creating a standardized robotics OS just like Windows and the Mac operating systems standarized and transformed the PC industry from a hobbyist market to a platform where applications could do some serious work.

To help promote their efforts, and the idea of robotics in general, they've released two small robots to the general public. At the moment, you can see them here. I wonder if Aibo will take to having the robotic company on the floor.

I'll let you know when the article streets. (And yes the above headline was inspired by this Wired cover. No, I didn't have the nerve to use it as the title of my actual article.)

AS OPPOSED TO WHAT HE'S BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS? The BBC has an article titled "Bono makes a grab for US purse strings", complete with a photo of Mr. Vox and US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in nightshirts borrowed from the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup".

And why is a US treasury secretary touring Africa with a rock star? And if he must tour with a rock star, why not Britney Spears? Jennifer Lopez? Somebody both American and babelicious?

And finally, what does The Edge think of all this? He's Irish. He's in U2. He goes by only one name (unless he counts "The" as his first name--I'll ask to see his driver's license next I see him). Why doesn't he get to discuss third world debt relief with treasury secretaries who should know better??

UPDATE: Drudge links to a larger view of the photo of Bono and and O'Neill as Groucho and Chico.

DEEP IN THE MULLET BELT: Day Two of Sgt. Stryker on the road.

THE NAME GAME: Virginia Postrel analysizes why you got the first name you have--and why you gave the name you did to your son or daughter.

PUTTING THE FUN BACK IN FUNDRAISING: Happy Fun Pundit gets an invitation to a White House fundraiser. Guess which magazine they rented the subscription list to? (Hint, it's not National Review or The American Spectator...)

(Found via Virginia Postrel's Weblog)

STRANGE HEADLINE: Why does this AP article have a headline that says "Deal With Iraq, Bush Tells Europe", making it sound like it's exclusively Europe's job to take out actually Saddam, when he's trying to get them to buy into helping us?

SAY IT AIN'T SO! The Onion discovers Factual Error Found On Internet! Someone should tell Pierre Salinger.

HOME THEATER ARCHEOLOGY PART ONE: On the Digital Bits site, how your den/media room/home theater got the way it is, by someone who should know, Robert Harris, who has restored numerous movies (Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Vertigo and many, many more) for theaters and home viewing.

DEAR MOM: Richard Reid, the accused "Shoe Bomber" writes home to mom, and may have further incriminated himself in the process, according to this FOXNews.com article.

PIZZAIDF.COM UPDATE: Back at the beginning of the month, a number of Web logs, including ours, mentioned that it was possible to buy a Kosher pizza online and a large bottle of Pepsi to be delivered to an Israeli Defense Forces patrol, section, or platoon.

Apparently this week however, military commanders decided to bar soldiers from accepting pizzas they did not order, "due to concern that hostile elements may exploit the pizza deliveries to soldiers,'' the army said in a statement.

Group Captain Lionel Mandrake checked with the London Israeli Embassy for confirmation. It's true--read their reply here.

(By the way, great digging and reporting, Group Captain!)

THE SOLUTION TO HIJACKING: There will never be another plane hijacked ever again, if Fritz Hollings' solution is implemented. Click here--I don't want to spoil it for you.

TIME MANAGEMENT IN SCHOOL: I don't often post education topics, because people like Joanne Jacobs specialize in their analysis. But after the last two posts (err, not including the plug for Group Captain Mandrake, whom I have provided a certain amount of education on how this country--not to mention this state works. Oh and how sushi works), I found this post on how much of a student's time in school is typically spent not learning.

It's from a Weblog written by a gentleman who calls himself the Cranky Professor, and found via the omnipresent, and exceedingly stylish InstaPundit.

MANDRAKE, DO YOU KNOW WHY I DRINK ONLY PURE GRAIN ALCOHOL? VodkaPundit has discovered the Weblog of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. America may never be the same.

MEANWHILE...a ten year old home schooled boy from Washington state just become the youngest ever winner of the National Geographic Spelling Bee.

UNEDUCATED=POOR. Joanne Jacobs says that the Public Policy Institute of California is, like Claude Reigns in Casablanca, shocked, shocked! to discover that less education on average, leads to less income! She writes, on her Readjacobs Weblog:

Stop the presses! Or the electrons, or whatever. Mexican-American households earn 40 percent less than non-Hispanic whites because they're less educated, says a Public Policy Institute of California report. What's interesting is that more education leads to more earnings for second-generation Mexican-Americans, but not for the third generation, which has even more access to schooling.

Immigration experts and community groups say Mexican-American children often must attend schools that lack up-to-date textbooks, credentialed teachers and access to computers, hampering the group from improving its lot as quickly as previous waves of immigrants.

Did the second generation get better schools than the third? I don't think so. Something else is going on here that has more to do with culture than number of computers in school.

As to what, stop by her site, where Joanne does a great job of exposing what's keeping kids from succeeding.

RYAN LEAF UPDATE: On Monday, we reported that Ryan Leaf had been cut from his third gig as an NFL quarterback--a backup in Dallas. He's getting shot number four, this time competing as a backup in Seattle, whose head coach and GM Mike Holmgren seems to like him.

LED ZEPPELIN DEBATES ANTI-CORPORATE FARMING SPOKESWOMAN AT CAPTAIN SCOTT'S ELECTRIC LOVE BUNKER!

(You won't see headlines like that at the New York Times, will you??)

YOU'RE EITHER WITH US OR... PART II: Roger Clegg, on The Corner on National Review Online says that there's progress in Florida:

An Associated Press story this morning reports that Jeb Bush and his cabinet have decided to end a particularly ugly state policy. In order to get into a public school’s “gifted and talented” program, you had to pass an IQ test—but the passing grade was lower if you were black than if you were white. Rather insulting, wouldn’t you say, even if done for the greater good of “diversity”? The change in policy was prompted, it seems safe to say, by a lawsuit filed with the backing of Ward Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute and an aggressive series of letters sent this year by ACRI and the Center for Equal Opportunity to a number of Florida school districts. The letter—now posted on CEO’s website, www.ceousa.org—informed the school districts of the lawsuit and their districts’ legal vulnerability if they didn’t stop discriminating.

THE BIG THREE, 50 YEARS LATER: Check out this cartoon on VodkaPundit.

BOYCOTT McDONALDS: If a National Review Online author calls for it, that means it's a campaign that's not just for anti-global leftists anymore!

Actually, the article is about Arab boycotts of American products--that's just the lead. And the author, James S. Robbins, makes an excellent point:

Arab consumers may not be willing to make this kind of sacrifice. They may forgo Western goods where there are Arab alternatives, but not give up consumption altogether. And in the final analysis, does it really make a difference from a globalization standpoint if the pizza being consumed in Doha has an American or a Qatari name? It is still pizza. A burger is a burger, whether or not it is a Saudi Burger. The Arab reactionaries cannot stop the westernizing of their culture simply by switching to domestic knockoffs of Western goods; in fact, that tactic marks their surrender to it.

DRUDGE HEADLINE: "D.C. Police: Remains found may be Chandra."

Here's the story.

UPDATE: The Washington Post says it's her.

CAPT. KIRK'S CHAIR IS UP FOR AUCTION, according to Wired News, which has an article titled Trekkies Bid on the Holy Grail.

Naturally, Jonah Goldberg wants it for National Review. But what's the chain of command? Bill Buckley, then Rich Lowry, then Jonah? Or Buckley then Jonah then Rich? And when all three are down on the planet surface, will Cosmo have the conn?

THE SWINGIN' DAVE BARRY: The predictable hilarity definitely ensues.

But in defiance of his usually focused and controlled libertarian leanings, the complex and dangerous environment that Barry finds himself in somehow forces him to call for strict Federal Thong Control.

THE DICK CHENEY/SEGWAY CONNECTION revealed here.

NO SUCH THING AS NATURAL, according to Jonah Goldberg in his syndicated column.

I wonder what Francis Fukuyama thinks of that.

COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS STILL DOMINATED BY LIBERALS, according to CNS.com.

The truly great thing about America's college campuses, is their emphasis on diversity. Exploring all sides of an issue. Letting kids think for themselves. And clearly, that commitment is reflected in the diverse ideologies of the speakers chosen for college commencements.

Way to go guys.

ARMED PILOTS UPDATE: Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee accused major American air carriers Tuesday of pressuring the Bush administration into keeping pilots unarmed during flights. Read the whole thing here, including a special surprise guest appearance by Fritz Hollings (D-Disney).

SGT. STRYKER HITS THE ROAD...and ends the day with an honorary Ph.D. in veterinary medicine.

Is the Sarge's adventure this summer's answer to Jonah Goldberg's infamous cross-country road trip? And what do Black Cat and Calico think of Cosmo?

LINKED TO BY VODKAPUNDIT! We may disagree on our elixir of choice, but I've been a big fan of Stephen Green's VodkaPundit site ever since I found it via InstaPundit (and I suspect a lot of other people are too).

Now I'm a member of the "Hair o' the Dog" club. Thanks, Stephen!

REBUILD IT BIG: Ronald Bailey has the right idea!

UTHANT UPDATE: A while back, the mysterious Uthant wrote a very funny piece called "Bush to Florida: You're Either With Us..."

Bush's Justice Department must have taken it to heart, according to this AP story.

I had more respect for the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, whose Gordon Bunshaft designed Lever House and the Union Carbide building in New York in the 1950s--both above-average examples of mid-century modernism (not to mention above average Mies van der Rohe knockoffs), until I read the quote that VodkaPundit found.

UPDATE: I just added my comments to the story on the VodkaPundit site.

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE, 21ST CENTURY STYLE: Joanne Jacobs have several items on the culture war of the 21st century, on her readjacobs.com site.

IT MUST BE THE DAY FOR THE US TO BE LIMITING OUR DEFENSES, if this report is true.

BLOG CRASHES: Because my blog is on a separate Web server, we appear to be fine. But a number of blogs hosted by Blogspot appear to be down, due to a hiccup on their server, or a software glitch, or a disruption in the space/time continuum or who's know what. It looks like all the data's there, but they need to be republished by their users. Stacy Tabb, the designer of the new, improved InstaPundit site (which is also now on a different server), explains just how to do that.

CRIS CARTER RETIRES, JOINS HBO SPORTS. The ex-Minnesota Viking is calling it a career.

BROOKLYN BRIDGE, STATUE OF LIBERTY ON TERROR ALERT, according to this FOXNews.com report (via Drudge).

THE SGT. STRYKER/HILLARY CONNECTION: Revealed here.

ATTACK OF THE DRONES: The history of drone warfare, found via VodkaPundit.

SCARY JUXTAPOSITION OF AP HEADLINES on my "My Yahoo" home page:

Rumsfeld: Terrorists Will Get Nukes U.S. Won't Allow Guns in Cockpits Am I missing something here??

NOT SERIOUS. Andrew Stuttaford's take on the administration's refusal to arm pilots:

Is the administration serious about counterterrorism in the skies? It would seem not. Speaking to the Senate today, Under-secretary of commerce John Magaw has testified that the White House will continue to oppose arming pilots. Add this stance to the continued presence of Norm Mineta in government, and air travelers have every reason to be concerned that the White House's attitude to their safety is a combination of the frivolous, the foolish and the feeble. When it comes to flight security, the Bush administration seems to put PC over protection and bureaucracy over imagination. What a disgrace.

I can understand the Bush administration's fear of giving a Second Amendment issue to their opponents (especially when read hysterical quips like the one at the top of this page). But Stuffaford is right.

THE GOOD THINGS: Asparagirl takes time to appreciate them.

I LOVE THIS PHOTO. There's something really hilarious about seeing Star Wars Stormtroopers stroll past New York's finest.

I have the utmost respect for the New York police. But my first thought when staring at this photo was "But is there a Duncan Donuts in the Empire"?

INSTAPUNDIT UPDATE: As InstaPundit.Com is in the process of propagating to a new Web host, its former URL at Blogspot seems to be down. Here's where to find it.

UPDATE: The old URL is up at the moment. But at least you have the numeric version of the new one in case Blogspot sputters again.

TEDDY KENNEDY HOSTS HEARINGS ON OBESITY: No, we're not making that up. But over at VodkaPundit, they're having lots of fun with the concept....

NO KIDDING: Well, last week it was Star Wars. Today it seems to be England. So in keeping with our Verrrrry English Theme today, found via NRO's The Corner Weblog, here's an article that says that the hotelier that Fawlty Towers was based on was pretty bonkers himself, according to his former waitress.

But what does Manuel think?

NIGHT TO REMEMBER AUTHOR DIES: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake says that Walter Lord has died. Lord wrote the book that A Night To Remember was based on.

If I ever get into digital video editing, I'd be tempted to take the first 3/4 of that film and the last 1/4 of the more recent Titanic and splice them together. You'd then have a Titanic story with solid drama and acting, followed by blow-'em-out-of-the-water (err, maybe not the best analogy for film about the Titanic!) special effects.

US WON'T ALLOW GUNS IN COCKPITS: I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of this issue.

AP HEADLINE: Kashmir Dispute Flares Anew. Geez, can't Led Zeppelin fans ever make up their minds about which version of "Kashmir" they like? Personally, I like the Unledded orchestral version. But I can see where many fans would prefer the original on Physical Graffiti.

Grab the Danelectro--this could be war!

FORCED SILENCE: Reason's Daily Brickbat column says:

In Bournemouth, Great Britain, unsavory speech is dealt with strictly. Ask street preacher Harry Hammond. After denouncing homosexuality from his curbside pulpit, a crowd gathered around him and began to pelt him with dirt and water. He was then fined £300 for “trying to incite people to attack homosexuals.” Finally, the magistrates ordered that his placard -- “Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality” -- be destroyed.

Why do I get the feeling that this sounds more like Portmeirion than Bournemouth?

"MAYBE THEY'LL BAN MARKERS": Sony's CD anti-piracy scheme can apparently be cracked with a black magic marker. I had a flashback to about ten years ago, when the rumor was that tracing a green magic marker around the edge would improve playability. Hey, they were write. Err, right!

WOW! The new look InstaPundit.Com site is active--it preserves the red and white color scheme of the old site (which in terms of design, if not color scheme, looked a lot like this site. I can't believe how shamelessly Reynolds copied my design on his old site. He even started blogging a good eight months before I did, just to cover his tracks!) Like NRO's redesign, it's going to take me a little while to get used to his site's new look, but it really does stand out (hence the "Wow!" headline). Nice logo, too.

Perhaps most importantly, the InstaPundit site finally has a search engine--no more having to do advanced Google searches to find something on Glenn's site. Way to go!

IT WASN'T ME--I'M NOT IN JERSEY ANYMORE! CNS.com says that a columnist for "the Pulitzer prize-winning Newark Star-Ledger", New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, last week "used a number of fabricated quotes from a parody published five weeks earlier by Cybercast News Service in authoring his May 17 column on 'politically correct' university research."

Oops!

NAME A PRESIDENT WHO DIDN'T. Here's another amazing Washington Post headline: "Bush Turns More Partisan With Coming of Elections".

THIS SHOULD HELP DELAY ANY OF HIS PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS: A Washington Post headline says, "Lieberman Urges Congress to Delay Future Tax Cuts."

BUSH VS. CASTRO: The AP headline Sunday on my "My Yahoo" homepage read "Bush Won't Ease Hard-Line Vs. Cuba" In National Review Online, Joel Mowbray gives much more detailed reasoning behind Bush's stance in Cuba. He writes:

Without lifting the travel ban or trade embargo, Bush is attempting to infiltrate Castro's island prison with humanitarian assistance and democratic values in an approach dubbed by a senior State Department official as a "frontal assault against Castro."

The basic thrust is that the U.S. will attempt to make an end-run around Castro to both engage the Cuban people and sow the seeds of democracy.

If Bush plays his cards right, he could have the most effective foreign policy since Reagan. The Gipper brought down the Soviet Union. Assuming Dubya gets reelected, by the end of his second term he may very well have not only reshaped the Middle East, but liberated Cuba from its tyrannical dictator.

Not too shabby, if he pulls it off--and if he does, what an astonishing first decade of a new millennium this will be for this nation.

UPDATE: Speaking of geopolitics, the Times of London says "On the eve of his six-day trip to Russia and Western Europe, the White House said that he would use his visit to Berlin, where he is due to make a keynote address to the Reichstag, to urge backing for the removal of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons of mass destruction."

COMING SOON ON DVD: In their Rumor Mill section, the Digital Bits has very tentative dates for when a number of very big budget films will be out on DVD (several of which aren't even out yet in theaters!)

Which films? Think webs, clones, scorpions, Reese's Pieces-eating aliens and time travelling DeLoreans, among others...

LEAF LEAVES: The Dallas Cowboys say "Seeeee ya!" to Ryan Leaf, the former number two pick in the 1998 draft, who will be a quarterback with his fourth team in a year and a half if anybody signs him.

WORKIN': I have several articles that need to get out the door in fairly short order--so don't expect much content until this evening at least.

STRAIGHT MAN: Terrific article by Howard Kurtz on Ari Fleischer, the White House's press secretary. It's a good look at not only Fleischer's style, but Bush's, with an emphasis on both of their abilities to minimize leaks, unlike the previous administration.

Oh, and Bush's nickname for Ari is "Ari-Bob", making a nice Jewish boy from the affluent Westchester County town of Pound Ridge, N.Y., an honorary Southern good old boy.

THE PHANTOM MENACE: Incidentally, the Drudge Archives were found in this excellent essay by James Taranto on the 20/20 hindsight of Bush's recent Monday morning quarterbacks. Scroll down Taranto's column for some dead-on comments from a reader of the "Little Green Footballs" Weblog.

DRUDGE REPORT ARCHIVES: Found via the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" column, there is an archive of Matt Drudge articles.

I have no idea if this is run by Drudge, or someone independent of him, but it's a pretty slick collection of the stories that Drudge has broken over the years.

BUSH PET NICKNAME FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN IS 'POOTIE-POOT': Nothing like fumbling out of bed on a Sunday morning, turning on your PC's monitor and finding that as Matt Drudge's headline of the day, in what looks like 30 point Helvetica Bold type all in caps.

As Newt Gingrich once said, the president has his hand on the nuclear button, so we're entitled to know as much about him as possible. But I didn't need to know that.

Here's the story the headline links to.

Pootie-Poot. 'Scuse me while I try and get that phrase out of my head. Where's my sledgehammer?

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: It's not just for American students anymore!

UPDATE: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has more on this, including some of my comments and links to articles on American flag-phobia. Click here to read it.

ANTI-SEMITISM MUCH NASTIER IN EUROPE THAN AT SFSU, according to Howard Fienberg's Kesher Talk blog.

Which is really saying something, when you read this.

WHERE WERE TEACHERS LIKE THIS WHEN I WENT TO SCHOOL?? Matt Drudge links to an astonishing article about a 29 year old band instructor who is accused of showing pornographic videos to students in her home and at a hotel, and has been cited with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor. More grist for the Tom Wolfe education novel, which could probably write itself.

A band instructor at Beyer High School in Modesto could face felony charges on allegations that she showed pornographic videos to students in her home and at a hotel, the Modesto Police Department said Thursday.

Deidra Ann Brauns, 29, already has been cited with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, department spokeswoman Gina McWilliam said.

Those charges, both misdemeanors, were made Tuesday. The Stanislaus County district attorney's office will decide whether to pursue felony charges on providing pornography to a minor.

There have been no reports of sexual activity between the teacher and her students, but Brauns provided students with alcohol and pornographic videos in her home on several occasions, McWilliam said.

Meanwhile, in other Bay Area news, Happy Fun Pundit has news of a 13 year old child who could go up the river for eight years for an errant spitball....

NEWSPAPER WARS: InstaPundit has been touting an alternative to the L.A. Times headed up by professional journalists and frequent bloggers Matt Welch and Ken Layne and backed by former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan. Earlier today, he linked with an article by Joel Kotkin, which appears in The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles. Kotkin does a great job of explaining just how of touch newspapers have gotten with the bulk of their readers, and why the combination of the Web, cable TV and the Internet (especially blogs: The New York Sun (content not yet online) grew out of Ira Stoll's SmarterTimes.com psuedo-blog) may help to right the balance (pun definitely intended). Kotkin says:

In the dark days of the early 1990s the Times’ increasingly reflexive pro-Third World, racially obsessed and often almost hysterically pro-labor politics colored its coverage of local events. A generally "progressive" tilt became so entrenched as to not even be noticeable to editors and reporters themselves. The paper’s perceived tilt against Israel may have its roots in these attitudes, as leftist opinion has turned against the Jewish state.

Since the recent takeover of the Times by the Chicago-based Tribune Co., the political bias seems to have somewhat eased, and at least a patina of professionalism has made something of a welcome comeback. Yet, the paper all too often seems still inhabited by the spirit of Coffeyism — pandering to various constituencies made up of presumed "victims" of color, while often seemingly contemptuous of the values of middle-class suburbanites, who make up the bulk of the readers.

Added to this problem are those brought on by having a great newspaper now owned by out-of-state interests and run by editors with often little firsthand knowledge of the admittedly complex, often difficult to fathom, megalopolis of Los Angeles.

I remember in the late '80s and early '90s, watching the Philadelphia Daily News make a similar transformation from a decent tabloid-sized newspaper to the exact style of pandering that Kotkin describes. I don't mind a moderately left-leaning newspaper, but reading rococo Marxist bias more at home in a typical Village Voice-wannabe alternative newsweekly masquerading as objective news isn't my idea of a good time--or objective news, for that matter. (Oh wait, objectivity is largely jettisoned by postmodernism and political correctness. Sorry, I've got to get with the program here!)

THE IMPERIAL NETWORK: Mat Honan has created a one stop shopping list of Star Wars Episode II blog reviews. (Found via Capt. Scott's Electric Love Bunker. Which gives me an excuse to say a cool phrase like...Capt. Scott's Electric Love Bunker.)

Meanwhile, over on NRO's The Corner, they've found an essay which probably would have been titled "An Empire, Not a Rebellion", had Obi-Wan Buchanan written it.

IN 1997, TOM CORRIGAN, SFSU'S PRESIDENT, SAID "San Francisco State is considered the most anti-Semitic campus in the nation".

Doesn't look like they've improved their reputation any. (Quote via InstaPundit.)

OUTER SPACE: I wasn't planning to turn this into all Star Wars day here on the ol' blog. But Jonah Goldberg makes a pretty convincing case that Cynthia McKinney's brain is off somewhere in a galaxy far, far away....

THAT'S IT, IT'S RUINED: Well, not really. The Star Wars films have always had huge plot holes in them if you thought about them for a second. My current favorite is, in the first (1977) one, the Rebel Base is on a moon orbiting a gas giant--a planet, like Jupiter, made up largely of hydrogen. The Death Star can blow up planets. Just blow up the friggin' gas giant, and you'll take out the Rebel Base! (But of course, that would have eliminated the need for the bitchin' X-Wings and Tie Fighters battle in the Death Star trench, arguably the single coolest scene in the film--and certainly the best edited.)

Daniel Frank, an LA comedian whose nom de blog is (ala the great Groucho), Captain Spaulding, has found another.

(found via VodkaPundit)

COMPARE AND CONTRAST BUSH before and after 9/11. Jonah Goldberg does in his The Washington Times column, and yearns for the pre-9/11 version:

Much of the country has grown to love President Bush since Sept. 11, giving him the highest and most sustained approval ratings of any president since polling began. Good for him. Me, I liked the pre-9/11 Bush better.

Read his column to find out why.

MORE STAR WARS: The Digital Bits has news on when to expect both Attack of the Clones and the original trilogy on DVD. (The Phantom Menace has of course been out for some time.)

NYU, POST 9/11: Jeffrey Sackmann, a recent graduate of NYU on his way to obtaining a Ph.D in English Literature at UW-Madison has started a blog to focus on education and social issues ("but the blog may drift far afield") called The Confidence Man. In one of his first posts, he looks at the state of patrotism on NYU, which sounds much better than it does at several Bay Area colleges. Sackmann says:

9/11 didn't change my values or ambitions, but mine weren't typical of a college senior to begin with. It has been entertaining chatting with friends who would be better fits for Berkeley: after 9/11, they found themselves in a disapproved minority. They did not handle it well, though they eventually receded into a smug, shrill corner.

Well, I saw Star Wars: Episode II: The Attack of the Clones today (and there’s a very good chance you have as well. This review is mostly for the three people in my audience who haven’t seen it yet.)

Here’s my verdict: It’s a technical knockout. But…

The original 1977-1983 Star Wars trilogy, as well as lots of other science fiction films made since, tend to feature great special effects combined with reasonably conventional set pieces. The result is that it’s obvious when the big orgiastic mind-expanding special effects blowout scenes arrive, we’re knocked out because they work in contrast to the set pieces. (Spider-Man, one of only a handful of Hollywood blockbusters since the original Star Wars to emerge with its humanity intact, is a good example of that principle in action.)

Part of the problem with both Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace is that they’re so bursting with amazing images, impossible camera angles and compositions filled to bursting with movement, those images become a bit old hat. You can only be knocked out so many times that your brain stops thinking of them as amazing effects, and you start thinking “OK, this is how this corner of the universe works. This is what it looks like. This is how its technology works.” We get that it looks amazing. (By the way, I’m really going to try to see the film digitally projected. The digital photography certainly looked impressive translated into 35mm film, however. I doubt most people are even aware when watching this that it wasn’t “filmed on film”.) So get on with the story.

And Episode II does a better job of getting on with the story than The Phantom Menace. The pacing is much tighter, the humor is held much more in check, Jar-Jar is onscreen for a relatively bearable amount of time—less than five minutes. (He does prove why everybody hated him though: he’s so naive and gullible, he unwittingly sells out the entire galaxy.)

As you’ve probably read by now, Yoda does get to open up a little green can of whoop-ass. The audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cheer when he struck little digitally animated Muppet-style kung fu poses. I actually thought he was far more effective leading the troops into battle—he’s definitely got a Napoleon complex, and it suits him well.

As usual with just about anything George Lucas directs (American Graffiti being the obvious exception), there’s lots of wooden acting and cringe-inducing dialogue. (There's also an unbelievably hokey scene with the two love-smitten leads rolling in a hill that recalls another 20th Century Fox blockbuster from the past.) But there are also several far more emotionally satisfying scenes than The Phantom Menace. Hayden Christensen is a far far more tolerable future Darth Vader than the dreadful Jake Lloyd, one of the worst child actors of recent memory. Natalie Portman as Senator Amidala earns her place among previous Lucas action babes Carrie Fisher and Karen Allen, as someone who can be sexy, feminine and still open up her own can of whoop-ass. And Christopher Lee does his usual best as a classy villain.

But these actors have to struggle to overcome a script full of arch dialogue, and have their performances judged by a man who has demonstrated what happens when the auteur theory is taken to its ultimate extreme. Lucas is a brilliant editor, concept creator, and producer. But he’s his own worst enemy as a writer and judge of performances.

And given the amount of money he’s made for 20th Century Fox (Robert Altman basically owed him his career in the late 1970s, according to Peter Biskind’s book, Easy Riders/Raging Bulls.), there’s nobody to tell him “no”, or tell him that while the Emperor does have clothes, he might want someone else to tailor them.

So go see it—and see if you find yourself initially dazzled, but slowly worn down by a film that in terms of technique, just may be too amazing for its own good.

(By the way, Lucas has his work cut out for him for Episode III: In order to setup the real first Star Wars film, all of these characters are going to die, be banished to interstellar equivalents of Siberia, or become evil incarnate. This could be the first Hollywood big-budget film with a downer of an ending since 1970.)

ALL SPORTS TEAMS EVERYWHERE SHOULD CHANGE THEIR NAMES, lest they offend someone. That's Steve Den Beste's humorous take at people who have far more time and (especially in the case of California and PETA) money on their hands.

THE ROOTS OF ANTI-AMERICANISM: Found via InstaPundit, this essay by Brent Stephen, which appeared in the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition is an excellent primer into the roots of anti-Americanism--and Stephen makes an excellent case for its frequent paring with anti-Semitism. Stephen writes that:

at root, anti-Americanism is not a political platform. Anti-Americanism is a neurosis, both personal and cultural. It is a close cousin of anti-Semitism, and it is a cover for anti-Semitism. It is a mixture of a sense of betrayal, of envy, of exaggerated expectations born to collapse into cynicism, of a self-deception that turns, as it so often does, personal failure into political rage, and of what Friedrich Nietzsche rightly identified as the spirit of resentiment. It will remain with us, just as anti-Semitism will remain with us, so long as Americans and Jews exist on this earth, and it will have to be combatted if Americans and Jews are to remain on this earth.

It's quite good--do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Click here for the winner of the Arizona Department of Transportation's "Not My Job Award".

GROUP CAPTAIN MANDRAKE, have we got an Apple for you! (Found via Andrew Sullivan.)

CHOMSKY WATCH: Brent Bozell on Bozell's News Column -- 05/16/2002 -- The Washington Post and Noam Chomsky. where he writes that just after September 11th,

a very impolite cynic could have spoiled the moment by stating that all this rallying around our flag and our fellow Americans would eventually evaporate. The cynic would maintain that as memories faded, our resolve to fight the terrorist enemy would fade along with it, and the media elite would return to seeing America not as a beacon of freedom and democratic values, but as an arrogant cancer on the planet.

That cynic would be I-told-you-so’ing today. He could skip through the streets handing out copies of a Washington Post article on Noam Chomsky, a radical crank whose day job is linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Post headline prepares the reader for a rare treat at the feet of a daring and different thinker: "An Eminence with No Shades of Gray."

What does Chomsky have that caused the Post to sound this note of distinction, this declaration of lofty superiority? In one endeavor Chomsky stands nearly unrivaled. He hates the United States of America with a fiendish passion. He has no shades of gray when it comes to declaring that it is our country that is the primary state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and September 11 is a small piece of comeuppance.

"KICK ASS": Sgt. Stryker reviews Star Wars: Episode II: The Attack of the Clones.

I plan to see it today. I'll try and post my thoughts as soon as possible.

WOW. Christopher Cross, on his X Factor blog says that California "is so unbelievably screwed", and has the numbers to back it up.

Bill Simon, are you listening?

TONY BLAIR WATCH: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has a couple of items on, as he calls him, the "Vice-President of the USA, President of the UK, Prime Minister of the UK". Start here, then scroll down to the next item.

I especially like the "I am not Bush's poodle" quote. Down boy!

BAY AREA PEACE LOVE AND DIVERSITY WATCH. Israel News via InstaPundit:

After being surrounded by a mob of students shouting, "Hitler didn't finish the job," and "Get out or we'll kill you," pro-Israel students at San Francisco State University are finally finding an ally against hate.

The university president is so fed-up with the hate-filled atmosphere on the Bay Area campus that he has asked the local district attorney's office to help bring pro-Palestinian hate-mongers to justice.

The May 7 incident received widespread press attention after an e-mail was circulated by Prof. Laurie Zoloth, director of the Jewish studies program at SFSU, describing the virulence of the anti-Semitic rhetoric and the campus's seeming inability to halt such occurrences.

More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents, including graffiti, vandalism, hate speech, and violence have occurred on US campuses since January, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

UPDATE: Here's Glenn Reynolds' take on the issue, from his Fox News column.

DAVID BROCK UPDATE: Matt Drudge has a preview of a story "set to be published in the East Bay Express, a weekly newspaper", that refutes "Key portions of David Brock's college remembrances from his best-selling confessional memoir Blinded By The Right".

(For an introduction to who David Brock is, and the astonishing twists and turns of his career, see Byron York's retrospective on the American Spectator magazine and this essay by Jonah Goldberg.)

THE '69 JETS: Found this week in fairly short succession on Yahoo's NFL pages, here are two updates to the 1969 New York Jets, who defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, one of the great upsets in sports history. Joe Namath at age 58, is living in pain. Samuel Thaw Walton Jr., the starting right tackle was found dead this week at age 59.

ASPARAGIRL has a plan "to secretly undermine patriarchal oppression" in the Middle East.

UPDATE: I have a feeling Steve Den Beste would agree.

GIVE THIS ONE TO THE KID. George Stephanopoulos gets one right! Found on the Media Research Center's Web site:

on Monday’s Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos relayed how he learned that books people want to read are not so readily available as CNN claimed so Cubans set up secret libraries in their homes with books they’ve obtained from tourists. One woman told Stephanopoulos the book 1984 is the most popular “because many people see similarities with the life they live in Cuba." That prompted Stephanopoulos to note that her fear matched reality since “shortly after we left” the woman’s house “her phone line was cut.”

MRC noted that "compared to the reporting [about Cuba] on CBS, NBC and, especially, CNN, George Stephanopoulos is a cold warrior."

"A SILENT KILL". Byron York says that another Bush-appointed judge could be dead in the water in the Senate.

National Review and assorted bloggers and Web sites have been writing about this stuff for months. I wonder if it will be an issue for either party come November elections?

BLOG WARS, EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE PLUMBERS: Both InstaPundit and James Lileks have had recent plumbing problems at their blogging HQs.

Coincidence? Of course. But hey, you guys don't have earthquakes to deal with!

"GANGS OF NEW YORK": There's trouble on the set of Martin Scorsese's new film, "Gangs of New York", according to Matt Drudge, who has a sneak preview of a July Esquire article. Here's a sample:

The picture had been shooting for three months and the end was not in sight. With the price tag shooting past $90 million, the budget was busted. It was Weinstein's urgent wish that Scorsese should get on with it. So he gave Scorsese, the devout Catholic, a lovely gold Star of David, and exhorted, "Think like a Jew!"

"I'm trying," Scorsese replied. But whatever Weinstein had in mind--if he meant that Scorsese should speed it up, cut the script, save a buck -- none of that was on the director's agenda. Now, with the picture still not quite finished, Scorsese admits that he was so enraptured that he indulged his greed. "It's my kind of provoking the danger," he explains. "They would say, 'You have to finish,' and I'd think, 'Well, can I go a little bit further?'"

By the way, if you think the tip jar on this site is bad, wait until you read about Scorsese's "jar of ears"...

DARWIN AWARD NOMINEE: This photo, of an extremely overloaded car parked in front of a Home Depot, has probably made the rounds up and down on the Internet. But if you haven't seen it yet, it's a riot. And Snopes.com says it's true--and has proof.

ATHLETES AS WUSSES. Right after 9/11, when it was obvious that whenever airline flights resumed, they'd be at their safest, both due to airlines and (especially) passenger concerns, a number of NFL superstars expressed their fears about flying. I remember Vinny Testaverde of (ironically) the New York Jets, but there were several others. Here's the latest, running back Ricky Watters, who's debating continuing his career after being released by the Seahawks. But here's the kicker, from ESPN.com:

One factor in his decision-making is it has been difficult for Watters to fly on commercial airlines after the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks on the United States. Colts halfback Edgerrin James has also been a less frequent air traveler since them.

At least six teams have shown an interest in signing Watters, but trying to get him to make a visit hasn't been easy. At one point, he asked for a private jet to take him to a team. It wasn't because he was trying to be extreme in demands. The reason for the concerns is flying on a commercial airline in an age of terrorism and high security.

Ricky, you may be an incredible athlete on the field, but you're a wuss in real life.

"HAM-HANDED" is the word the Internet Movie Database to describe the entertainment industry's efforts to halt digital piracy--and they're right. Here's the full blurb, from their Movie & TV News page:

Focusing renewed attention on the entertainment industry's ham-handed efforts to halt digital piracy, Apple Computer has issued instructions on how to eject a protected CD from its popular iMac machines if it locks up the computer. The Campaign for Digital Rights reported last week that several protected CDs, including Celine Dion's new A New Day Has Come, will lock iMacs and prevent them from being restarted. Meanwhile, today's (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times reported that a group of Hollywood studios, technology companies and consumer-electronics manufacturers wants to place "electronic locks" on all over-the-air TV programs that would prevent them from being recorded onto blank DVDs.

GEE, HOW COULD YOU TELL? AP headline reads, "Carter Makes Live Speech in Cuba"

There's a National Review article online about Carolyn Cole, a Los Angeles Times staff photographer who on May 2 joined a group of "peace activists" who had clandestinely entered Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, in solidarity with the Palestinian militants holding dozens of civilians and clergymen hostage.

Andrew Breitbart, the NRO author, says "Upon her arrival inside the holy site, Cole took on the dual role of photographer and reporter for the Times, offering first-person accounts from within the church." He later adds:

Unfortunately, Cole doesn't have Stockholm Syndrome — she wasn't so much a hostage as an enthusiastic volunteer. Something you can't say about the priests, who were never asked if they wanted to be holed up in the church for 39 days. As talk-radio host and author Hugh Hewitt noted, "Nowhere in the entire article, not even a single phrase, mentions that these priests are hostages. Their captors are described in glowing and even gentle detail. There is nothing of reporting about this at all. It is, quite simply, propaganda."

But this isn't the first time Cole has stepped over a professional line in her career. In April 2000 — at the height of the Elián Gonzalez affair — Cole was arrested on felony charges of "throwing deadly missiles" at police during protests in Little Havana, apparently in an effort to stir up her subjects and thereby generate "better" news.

RUFFINI ON ED RENDELL, former mayor of Philadelphia for much of the 1990s (I lived and worked across the Delaware during much of his tenure in office) and likely Democratic nominee for governor of Pennsylvania. Ruffini, who studied campaigns and elections in a course taught by him has some insightful comments about him.

The Bay Area just had a 5.2 on the Richter scale earthquake.

For my wife and I, it felt like a short, slight rolling feeling, followed quickly by a longer rolling motion. The whole thing was over in about 30 seconds, with no obvious damage to our, or our neighbor's houses. The local news of course, is probably still covering it. As my wife said to me, they treat an earthquake that causes little or no damage, and no deaths with about the same coverage a snow storm back east would get that cripples traffic, kills people, and closes schools.

The last earthquake I felt here was about two years ago, on a Sunday while my wife, "Group Captain Lionel Mandrake" (on his first "tour of duty" in the Bay Area) and I were at a local theater watching "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". I always refer to that as "the movie that had everything": screaming toddlers, loud adult patrons, cell phones ringing, and in the middle of it all, a 3.0 earthquake--which was more of a quick THUMP than this rolling quake.

Speaking of snowstorms and earthquakes, here's Virginia Postrel's take on them--and interestingly enough, how they influence how California and Boston do business.

ZERO TOLERANCE, MEET SGT. STRYKER, who fortunately is still blogging on his Beers Across America site.

IN DEFENSE OF ELITISM: Jonah Goldberg says we need it. I think he's right. Read the whole thing, including this excerpt:

It's an old fable that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist. Today, the prevailing elite has pulled off a similar trick. It has convinced the world that only the ignorant, the unlearned, and the unsophisticated believe there are capital-T Truths; worthwhile standards for merit, beauty, or art; and bright-line distinctions between right and wrong. They've done all of this, mind you, while preserving their own privileged status for making such pronouncements — like a politician who champions campaign-finance "reform" just so long as it ensures his own incumbency. In this sense, they are more snobs than elites, because they spend so much time trying to assure the world that conservatives are fakers — "pseudo-intellectuals" and "pretend-journalists" — in order to keep them out of their clubhouses.

THE eMACHINE/INSTAPUNDIT CONNECTION: Glenn Reynolds tells all here. I retired my main eMachine last year for a custom-built Windows 2000 1-gig processor powered monster. Nice to know his is still going strong.

METAL STORM: No, it's not Ozzy Osbourne's opening act. It's a possible replacement system for the Crusader.

THE FUTURE OF TODAY'S STUDENTS: Eve Kayden ponders a question that I've been wondering about lately: what happens to today's college students when they graduate, having been exposed to anti-semitism, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and other toxic ideas?

In 1977, when Woody Allen joked in Annie Hall (Roger Ebert's Great Movie this week, by the way). that "Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college.", I was a kid who thought "What could be bad about college?"

Now I know.

UPDATE 1: This article in The American Prowler, suggests that there may be a glimmer of hope.

UPDATE 2: Or not.

BLOCKING GRADUATION: Linking to an article in the LA Times, Dave Kopel in National Review Online's The Corner reports on eight high schools in San Fernando Valley, California, which are refusing to allow seniors to participate in graduation ceremonies "unless they file proof with the school that they are going on to college, entering the military, getting a job, or entering vocational training." Kopel adds:

Of course none of these future plans have a legitimate connection to whether the students have completed the high-school course of study. Forbidding a graduation ceremony for students who plan to travel, get married, take time off and think about the future -- or engage in any other lawful activity -- is typical of the growing and inappropriate personal intrusiveness of American government high schools. Someone tell the control freaks in the administration to Celebrate Diversity.

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT IS "OFF ITS ROCKER", according to InstaPundit.Com.

THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS RELISH HEINZ FIELD. Its stadium revenues are a true condiment to the organization, as it allows them to pay out bigger bonuses to its talent, thus allowing the Steelers to ketchup with the rest of the league. It's mustard reading at ESPN.com.

ANOTHER FUNDRAISING SCANDAL for Gray Davis, according to InstaPundit.Com.

WITH CARTER MEETING CASTRO IN COMMUNIST CUBA, Andrew Stuttaford makes a good point:

CNN is describing Jimmy Carter's visit to Castro as an attempt to "mediate" between the US and Cuba. Call me old-fashioned, but shouldn't a former president want to represent his country, not mediate between it and some third party?

CHINA HAS A WEALTH GAP. Wow--in a corrupt, totalitarian communist regime. Go figure!

NATIONAL REVIEW ON A&E'S NERO WOLFE, one of my wife's favorite new series:

Archie [Goodwin, Wolfe's sidekick, played by Timothy Hutton], is at the center of the stories, but the real star, of course, is the eccentric genius for whom he toils. Maury Chaykin is just perfect as Wolfe, gliding effortlessly from thoughtful contemplation to manipulative cajoling to momentary perplexity to blustering contempt for his adversaries' stupidity. Chaykin quite simply is Nero Wolfe, playing the role with impressive confidence and subtlety. The rest of the cast, which operates as a repertory group playing different parts in the various episodes, is nearly as good, especially Kari Matchett, whose versatility in portraying a wide variety of young females is particularly impressive.

VATICAN, KREMLIN, SAME THING? The New York Times seems think so, according to Brent Bozell's latest column.

POOHPUNDIT.COM: Winnie the Pooh apparently his own blog--modelled even more slavishly than this one, on InstaPundit. Fortunately, Winnie has linked to our blog, proving that like another famous cartoon critter, he is indeed "smarter than the average bear."

(Check out the links the Poohpundit store and back-up page, by the way.)

What exactly is a Pooh, anyhow?

UPDATE: This site has a couple of answers for where the word "Pooh" derived from. And Group Captain Mandrake also has some additional Pooh links.

Happy Fun Pundit writes Star Wars from the point of view of Reuters or the New York Times:

In a surprise move that has left the world shocked and dismayed, the Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Empire's Death Star, claiming that the latter was an instrument of oppression and violence. The Empire has issued a press release staunchly denying this, claiming the Death Star was a hospice facility, and calling for an investigation into the massacre of thousands of Imperial hospice workers at the hands of the Rebels Alliance.

A spokesman for Jabba the Hutt also issued a statement, proclaiming that such actions by the Rebel Alliance are "unhelpful to the peace process."

I used to play guitar extensively from about age 17 until about 25. Over the past few years, after I moved out to California, I've been resuming my playing a bit, and also experimenting with home multitrack recording of music. (see my post here on the subject).

Over the past few weeks (I dropped it off after my day of jury duty, back on April 23rd), I had my 1982 Gibson Les Paul Custom electric guitar rebuilt by C.B. Perkins of San Jose. They basically took a 20 year old axe that had been very, very heavily played and abused by an exuberhant college-student with pretensions of Pete Townshend-hood and gave it a 50,000 mile tune-up, which included re-leveled frets, headstock repair, new circuitry...and a third pickup added, to better resemble the Les Paul Customs of the late 1950s.

(I won't bore you with a complete post-graduate doctoral thesis-level history of the Gibson Les Paul, which I'm quite capable of doing. But there were basically two popular versions of the guitar in its "golden era" of 1957 through 1960: the Les Paul Standard, which had a sunburst-style finish, such as this model. The Customs of that period were black with gold hardware. If you really want some Les Paul guitar minutia, visit these folks.)

Here are a couple of photos of my new/old axe. I love it. It not only looks nice, it's a real icon of Americana. One of the things I like about the three pick-up Les Paul Customs that were made from 1957 until 1960 is the sort of tension between the very rich tuxedo or piano black finish, and the three gold-plated humbuckers. It seems like an instrument perfectly at home in America's 1950s optimistic, exuberant can-do, but still elegant and innocent period. It reminds of Cadillac coupes from that era--very elegant interior and exterior, you could drive it to any destination--an expensive restaurant, a wedding, etc., and yet there are those rocket fins and aircraft style taillights--as if it wants to go into orbit at any moment.

That duality is reflected in the music the Custom is capable of. When I listen to the electric guitar playing in the jazz orchestra on Gil Evans' elegant Out of the Cool album from the early 1960s for some reason, I picture the three pickup "black beauty". But if I put on my laser disc of The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus, I can watch Keith Richards raunch out on that same guitar.

And I like something that contains both elegance and exuberance!

LILEKS ON TECHNOLOGY WHEN IT GOES WRONG, and the joys of Orange Julius. Just click here. (Assuming the technology goes right. Maybe I'm just posting this because our cable modem was down for much of the morning....)

POP-UP EBAY: Linking to a ZDNet story, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake says that eBay has announced it's trying pop-up ads on their Web site.

He is not happy about the idea, and says "Methinks it is time I looked for a piece of software that stops pop-ups - I am an eBay trader and don't need more irritation in my life."

As I wrote in mid-March, here's what I'm using to block both pop-up ads, and their newest cousins--Macromedia Flash ads.

BACK AND TO THE LEFT. BACK AND TO THE LEFT: Byron York describes a Chuck Schumer who sounds like he's seen one too many Oliver Stone movies.

DEN BESTE ON HAMAS SUICIDE BOMBERS:"Hamas says that its campaign of bombings against Israel will go on. I know some are probably wondering why. The reason is that the Hamas leadership has no choice. As long as the campaign continues, then it hasn't succeeded. But as soon as they call a halt to it, then it has failed. And then the supporters of Hamas will want to know why they didn't win, and what their sacrifice gained them. The top leadership of Hamas won't have any answers."

MORE BAD NEWS FOR AOL: Their bonds have been reduced to "Just Above Junk" according to this Reuters article.

GREAT START, POOR FINISH: InstaPundit links to this article by Dan Gilmour in the San Jose Mercury News (or "the Murky News", as it's sometimes called out here). Gilmour makes some excellent points about the recent California electricity crisis:

it's vital to remember that the fleecing of California in 2000 and 2001 didn't just happen because of some corporate malfeasance and federal nonfeasance, no matter how much we might like to think so. California itself bears much of the responsibility, starting with the bogus but ballyhooed deregulation.

The virtuoso finger-pointing among California politicians is a race from truth. Gov. Gray Davis, who was stampeded into ill-advised, massively expensive power purchases during the crisis, is one of the most ardent deflectors of blame. He shouldn't get away with this revisionism.

Gilmour loses me with the last paragraph however, which reads like is a cheap copout to end the article on:

Ultimately, the mess is a reminder to ourselves. Our energy gluttony plays into the hands of the manipulators. Think conservation. The energy we don't need to consume is our own weapon in this fight. Let's use it better.

A growing state simply needs more electricity--this is Economics 101 here. Which means that conservation really isn't the only answer here, if indeed it's an answer at all. Appealing to consumers, who use far less electricity than businesses, hospitals, state and local government-provided services, etc., is just silly. Besides, why should consumers suffer because their local governments don't have the sense to authorize what should be obvious: building more power plants, the lack of which is what got California in the crisis that Gray Davis only exacerbated.

THE 60s REVISITED: James Bowman reviews Steven F. Hayward's recent book, The Age Of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order:

In a larger sense his book is an argument with the Standard Heroic Account of the last 40 years. As such it is another shot in the battle over the historiography of the 1960s, which is what really lies behind the so-called “culture wars” of America today. Most academic historians and the media consensus, still dominated by now-aged reporters who were getting their start in the 1960s, hold to the view that the decade was a period of heroic liberations — most notably from colonialism, from racial segregation, from traditional sexual restraints and traditional male dominance or “patriarchy” — and that its twin achievements in America were the civil rights and the anti-Vietnam War movements. Hayward concentrates his fire on these two triumphs of the American left and purports to show how the first’s wrong turning after the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964 produced today’s racial “balkanization” while the second was fundamentally misconceived from the start — though not without the help of the inept and foolish Johnson administration — and gradually grew dishonest as well.

Not surprisingly, the media come in for rather a lot of bashing, not only in connection with Watergate, which is supposed to have been their finest hour, but also for the reporting, or mis-reporting, of the Goldwater candidacy in 1964, the Reagan phenomenon in the 1960s and again in the 1970s, the Tet offensive and the New Hampshire primary of 1968, which between them reversed the tide of public opinion on Vietnam (though both arguably because of misperceptions of what had actually happened), and the Nixon presidency as a whole. Hayward notes one after another the important facts that the Standard Heroic Account leaves out with respect not only to American successes in Vietnam and the real nature of Nixon’s failure but a host of other markers along the way from 1964 to 1980 — for example, the McGovern commission’s changes in the rules of the Democratic party nominating process after the fiasco of Chicago in 1968. These were “intended to ‘open up’ the Democratic Party, but in fact the effect of the rules changes adopted in the aftermath of Chicago was to lose the party to many of its traditional core constituencies and capture it for a new set of mostly left-leaning factions”.

Very good review of what sounds like a very good book, which is of course leading up to Volume II, when the real Age of Reagan begins.

OK, I promised my thoughts on Spider-Man: While I’m not as over-the-top, blown-away, dazzled, bursting with excitement about the new Spider-Man film as James Lileks is, I will I say I liked it one helluva lot more than Rex Reed (which admittedly, isn’t saying much).

The more I think about the film, the more I think that Lileks’ comparison to Casablanca is an apt one. They’re both run-of-the-mill, studio assembly line product but with one difference: they have soul, both via their scripts, and via their actors.

Here’s my comparison: Spider-Man is like the first Star Wars movie. (No, not the Phantom Menace, Episode I, from three years ago, dummkopf, the original 1977, Mark Hammill/Carrie Fisher/Harrison Ford Star Wars.) While the original Star Wars cost 10 million dollars, and Spider-Man cost $139 million, both are examples of fairly big budget films of their respective times. What they both feel like however, are hip b-pictures made good, because you can tell that the (mostly) young actors in it are having a lot of fun, and want you to have fun too. And in both films, they’re propelled by a script that’s very different from the typical cynical, morally bankrupt product that Hollywood generates.

And they both have a religious core to them. With Star Wars, it was the new age-y “The Force”, but at least they weren’t the typical existential characters living out their lives believing they’re going to be just so much dust when they die, and that therefore their lives don’t matter, that seemed to populate many of Hollywood’s films both then and now.

In Spider-Man, Peter Parker’s Aunt May actually wants Grace said before Thanksgiving dinner, and prays before going to sleep soon after. Think about this triple play: Grace, the Lord’s Prayer and Thanksgiving—and nobody’s poking fun at them! For Hollywood, this is a major step forward (or backward, to when movies had more respect for the audiences watching them).

And Spider-Man’s Manhattan isn’t the Fritz Lang/Leni Riefenstahl/Albert Speer Gotham City that Tim Burton’s Batman operates out of—as Lileks notes, this is a very real, very human feeling New York (and yes, the Flatiron Building for the Daily Bugle’s HQ was a great touch—and a flatiron is what J. Jonah Jameson’s hair looks like it’s combed with), filled with New Yorkers with a “you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!” attitude.

And yes, I have quibbles—the Green Goblin’s mask looks especially silly, and Spider-Man moves too digitally, too jerkily. And why is The Front Page still, after over 70 years, the role model whenever a director wants clichéd newsroom scenes?

But these are very minor quibbles. Spider-Man ends with Spidey swinging off an American flagpole, high above the damaged, bloodied, but still dazzling New York skyline. And the whole film feels so American, without rubbing the audience’s collective nose in its patriotism. This is a very right feeling film (and no, I don’t mean that in a political sense). All the big pieces work. Almost all of the little touches are right. And Cliff Robertson gets to deliver the film’s tagline, which is the only proper tagline it could have, since it’s been Spider-Man’s tagline for almost forty years now:

With great power, comes great responsibility.

By all means, go see Spider-Man, if you’re one of the two or three Americans left who hasn’t seen it yet.

SEGWAY CLAIMS FIRST VICTIM: Orrin Judd sent me the link to this story, which he found on the Enter Stage Right Web log. Apparently, the Segway has had its first public accident. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that an officer, whose name wasn't released, was injured recently using one. The Journal-Constitution says:

A member of the Central Atlanta Progress Ambassador Force toppled from one of the personal scooters on Cone Street near Luckie Street about 8:40 p.m. Thursday.

The officer, whose name was not released, injured his knee going up a driveway onto the sidewalk, said Atlanta Police Sgt. Michael Giugliano. He was taken to Grady Hospital.

ESR describes the picture as "priceless". I wonder if the injured officer will be calling these folks (or vice-versa)?

TRUE LEADERSHIP: Gary Dempsey of the Cato Institute on why it's a very good thing that the US bailed out on the International Criminal Court:

Most troubling, however, is the muddled understanding the president's critics have of the concept of leadership. Indeed, the president's critics seem to believe that it is an expression of American leadership to go along with treaties that are flawed, like the International Criminal Court, and treaties that are contrary to U.S. national interests, like the Kyoto Protocol. By that logic, following the bad policies of other countries is a form of American leadership.

True leadership, however, is something different than the president's critics imagine. True leadership means pursuing policies that are in America's national interest, and persuading other countries that the policies are in their national interest too. It does not mean, as some of the president's critics contend, doing things because they will make other countries happy. That's what we might more accurately call "followership."

CRUSADER KAPUT: Donald Rumsfeld has cancelled the Crusader artillery system, a 40-ton, self-propelled, rapid-fire cannon that was to have entered service by 2008. I'll be interested to see if the Sarge and the Group Captain have any thoughts on this.

UPDATE: Group Captain Mandrake weighs in, complete with photos--and this comment, which shows how cumbersome the Crusader would have been:

Crusader is a wonderful hi-tech system. Unfortunately, at 48 tons per unit, it was designed for the Cold War and the battles that it was assumed would be fought during it.

Crusader should ideally be in place long before the battle. Each Crusader system comprises the firing vehicle, the ammunition vehicle and crew. One C-5 aircraft Galaxy can carry one Crusader unit. That's a lot of Galaxys' needed to move a usable amount of systems into your theatre of operations.

Back during the Cold War, a system like Crusader would be in position long before any fight, and use its self-propelled ability to move around with the battlefield.

Found on The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today section. I was tempted to call this "outrage of the week" when I first read it, then immediately came to my senses--it ranks fairly low in the outrage department compared to the rest of the headlines so far this week:

What's Next, Yellow Stars?
Nazi Germany forced homosexuals to wear pink triangles. Cleveland's WEWS-TV reports on a student Lakeland Community College "who we'll call Ian," whom the college tried to force to wear a Nazi-style triangle. "The assignment was to wear a pink triangle around school for the day as a symbol of gay rights and then write about the experience," the station reports. Ian objected to the assignment on moral grounds. "I asked 'What if a student were to feel uncomfortable with this--would there be an alternate assignment? [The instructor] said no."

Ian got an F and was threatened with expulsion, but WEWS says when it contacted the college, it backed down. "When NewsChannel5 spoke with Ian later in the day, his teacher had given him an apology note that read, in part, that the requirement was waived."

Paging Tom Wolfe--here's more grist for the book on academia.

YUCK: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has a photo of the proposed new European Union flag--and it's really bad, especially when compared to the photo below it of the current EU flag, which is at least much easier on the eye.

I made two very silly points on the comment section of the good Group Captain's blog, which I'll repeat here:

Remember when I mentioned that I saw "Vanilla Sky" and started channeling Beavis and Butthead's "This thing sucks, but it sucks in like, ways we haven't seen stuff suck before" bit?

This flag sucks in ways we haven't seen stuff suck before.

Truly hideous.

And...

I would discuss the Orwellian implications of the barcode-like design of the flag, but I always feel a bit gouache invoking the original Mr. Blair's name.

But this flag really is bad. The esteemed InstaPundit also weighed in on the issue, on his blog. And he's right--the timing couldn't be better.

Political assassinations, anti-Semitism, taxing the Internet. When the chips are down--let's design a new flag!

ALASKA UNDER SIEGE? Kevin M. McGehee, the author of the Flyover Country Blog thinks it is, in this article from FOXNews.com's Blog of the Week series.

"IF WE ONLY HAD TANKS" Sorry for the double dipping of Jonah Goldberg today, but I loved the points he makes on the "'suicide bombers' are the only weapons the Palestinians have argument:

The most annoying argument made by apologists for these massacre-bombers is the one which begins with something like, "the Palestinians don't have American-made tanks and helicopters, 'suicide bombers' are the only weapons the Palestinians have...." The reason this argument is so annoying is threefold.

First, the explicit assumption in this formulation is that if indeed the Palestinians had helicopters and tanks, they would in fact use them. In other words, to make this argument is to concede that the Palestinians are at war with Israel which would put all of the peace rhetoric in a very different light.

Which leads to the second issue. Nobody who makes the "the Palestinians don't have tanks" argument will ever concede the logic of their assertion. If you say to them, "So if they had tanks they'd use them? That doesn't really sound like a desire for peace." You get eye-rolls as if you just don't get it.

And, lastly, contrary to what this argument implies and the assertions of countless Arafat apologists, the Israeli military was not designed nor intended to be aimed at the Palestinians. It was designed to fight wars with actual nations which, several times in the past, tried to destroy Israel. To suggest that the Israeli military is a weapon intended for the Palestinians is a form of moral equivalence. It assumes that Israeli weapons were intended for murder just like Palestinian bomber belts. And that's a lie.

THE WASHINGTON WARRIORS?? Found via NRO's The Corner, is this article which says that the days of the Washington Redskins as the Redskins could be numbered.

Hope they're wrong.

"FORTUYN TOLD OF EUROPE'S FUTURE". Jonah Goldberg's take on Pim Fortuyn and his assignation, from The Washington Times:

The overplaying of Le Pen and the underplaying of Fortuyn stem from the same elite ignorance about what is going on in Europe, and to a certain extent, in America. Mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, is dividing Western societies across the ideological spectrum.

Pim Fortuyn, who was shot five times on Monday apparently by a fringe environmentalist left-winger, was a rising political star who championed homosexual rights, favored the legalization of many drugs and the further liberalization of Holland's euthanasia laws.

Yes, Fortuyn was also for lower taxes and looked at the European Union with skepticism, but those positions alone don't get you called a "fascist," even in Europe. Indeed, Fortuyn was an openly gay man, something you don't normally associate with the forces of reaction. But Fortuyn was called a fascist — and worse — simply because he took a hard line on immigration.

THE EMPIRE HITS A TRIPLE: Hey, at least it doesn't strike out. Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits gets a sneak preview of Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones:

Okay... right now you're probably wondering one thing: is Episode II a better Star Wars film than Episode I? And the answer is a DEFINITE yes. Attack of the Clones is far more enjoyable than The Phantom Menace. It's a better film overall. And it's a darned good Star Wars film. BUT... it isn't a really great Star Wars film, and I don't think it's quite as good as a lot of early reviewers would have you believe. I'm not trying to throw cold water on your enthusiasm... I'm just trying to encourage you to temper it a little bit.

See also the review of Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News. Spider-Man rocked (more on this in a later post). Star Wars: Episode II is sounding pretty good. Men in Black II looks good from the trailers. This could be the best summer for movies in a long time.

GETTING IT WRONG: Charles Paul Freund of Reason writes that Pim Fortuyn's story is too complex to fit into the easy boxes that reporters want to put it in:

Pim Fortuyn, the assassinated Dutch politician who was highly critical of Muslim immigration, is being universally described in the major media as "right wing," "far right wing," "extreme right wing," etc. Most accounts lump him and his political movement, which was expected to do well in the national elections scheduled for next week, with various anti-immigrant movements elsewhere in Europe. The New York Times, for example, wrote on its front page Tuesday that Fortuyn "carried the same strong anti-immigrant message that has helped propel a resurgent far right to political triumphs in Austria, Denmark, Belgium, and, through Jean-Marie Le Pen, France."

This is a pretty lazy way to tell Fortuyn's story, and fails entirely to take into account his own rhetoric. It illustrates how the process of straining political events through the standard journalistic narrative templates - especially the right-vs.-left narrative -- can simplify a story so greatly that it emerges as a different story, perhaps even the wrong story.

UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini sounds like he agrees with Freund--he noticed the same cookie-cutter (and wrong) approach in Brian Williams' MSNBC telecast.

THE DEATH OF THE SAT: Found via NRO's The Corner, Heather McDonald has an essay in City Journal on the coming replacement for the SAT. Why do colleges want to junk the SAT in the first place? McDonald writes:

Under pressure from the University of California, which was forbidden from using race to override low test scores in 1995 and so was desperate to jettison the SAT, the overseers of the SAT are creating a new test that tries less to measure aptitudes like reasoning skills and more to measure knowledge of subject matter learned in school.

Which means, as McDonald says, "we have come full circle":

it was elite private schools that fought to preserve content-based exams for college admissions before World War II, against the growing movement for aptitude testing. Educational reformers like James Conant argued that aptitude tests would allow bright students in less demanding public high schools to compete with less bright but better-prepared prep school students. The prep schools, for their part, predicted that discarding content-based exams would drag down academic standards by devaluing actual learning. They may have been right, but they lost the day. The aptitude test proponents claimed victory for meritocratic democracy against inherited privilege.

Expect the race industry to resurrect the same arguments against content testing as were used in the 1940s, but without proposing aptitude tests in its place. There is no reason to think that the test score gap will go away with a different test, since the explanation for it lies largely in a culture that devalues academic achievement. So after spending millions on developing a new test, the education profession will be left with its old options: shooting the messenger by blaming the test for differential academic outcomes, or finally telling the truth about the cultural changes needed to overcome lagging academic achievement. The sky will fall before the latter option comes to pass, so get ready for another decade of covert racial preferences and explicit excuse-making around the new SAT.

The junking of the current SAT could have repercussions beyond college admissions--in Bobos In Paradise, David Brooks talks about (and yes, I'm really simplifying here) the introduction of the SAT in the first place, how it changed college admission policies, and how that lead to today's "bobo" ("bourgeois bohemians") culture, a very different American culture than that of the first two-thirds of the 20th century.

DVD-AUDIO IS DOA, according to the Digital Bits:

the folks over at AudioRevolution have written up a great story on the DVD-Audio and SACD formats, which seem to be pretty dead on arrival. Part of the problem is that consumers are reluctant to buy into formats with uncertain futures and few decent software titles. The fact that there are two competing high-rez audio formats, and few players that support both, doesn't help. And the record companies seem to have a very definite lack of interest in promoting the formats much beyond the connoisseur market, probably owing to nervousness about digital piracy. But there's another problem too, which the article discusses. Simply put, there's a lot of disagreement about how best to create multi-channel, 5.1 audio mixes of older 2.0 stereo studio recordings. The article is well worth a read, so be sure to check it out.

HOLLINGS AND ISRAEL: Joe Wilson, in an an article in The Washington Times titled Words unbefitting mood of the Senate writes:

In recognition of this urgent situation, the United States Senate overwhelmingly passed S. Amendment 3389, a resolution that stated the United States and Israel were "engaged in a common struggle against terrorism," and condemned homicidal Palestinian bombings.

Seldom is the moral clarity of a subject so obvious, and seldom is the closely divided Senate ever in such agreement. Yet, Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, South Carolina Democrat, and Sen. Robert Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, cast the only two votes against this resolution.

Wilson adds:

True to form, Mr. Hollings was not content with a simple vote against Israel. In a diatribe before votes were cast Thursday, he compared Israel's democratically elected Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with the evil and brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. This is a cruel and malicious slander.

Mr. Hollings also called Mr. Sharon "the Bull Conner of Israel." For those who don't remember, Bull Conner was the police commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who in 1963 unleashed attack-dogs and fire hoses on civil-rights protesters during the movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If in Mr. Hollings' mind Ariel Sharon is a modern day Bull Conner, he seems to be comparing Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah organization is directly linked to terrorist groups like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to King. It also equates the evil suicide-bombings being carried out by Palestinian terrorists to the protests of the civil-rights movement. This type of logic is out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Not to mention...this type of logic.

James Lileks really, really, really, really likes Spider-Man. And he's not afraid to tell you why:

this movie is more important, in the long run, than any other movie, novel, artwork or musical composition that will be produced in 2002. I’m not saying it has a higher degree of artistic accomplishment - it is, after all, a comic-book story splashed on a wall. But novels have little cultural impact these days. Even the most celebrated novels are discussed more than they’re actually read. Deeper, smarter, wiser movies will be released, but they will have small audiences of people who were already inclined to believe whatever point the movie made. Art - be it sculpture or painting - is culturally irrelevant, gazing into the Mobius strip embedded in its navel. Every art form has its moment when it sums up a culture, or an aspect of that culture, be it “J’Accuse” or Guernica or the Rite of Spring. But all these forms have been shouldered off to the wings by movies, because only movies have the killer combination of mass distribution, mass pre-publicity, a huge target audience, and the trebled appeal of story plus music plus acting plus visual effects on a scale unachievable in scope and size in any other medium.

In 30, 40 years, they’ll look back at the culture of 2002 just as we look back at the movies of WW2. Anyone look at the painting or novels of the 40s to discover the mood of wartime America? No. It’s the movies. The all-time WW2 movie, in retrospect, is “Casablanca,” because it sums up who we wanted to be. Cynical and idealistic. Selfish and altruistic. Lovable and lovelorn. Selfish entrepreneur and fighter for the greater good. We might have been Rick; we might have been Sam; in our weaker moments we knew we were capable of being Renauld; we really didn’t want to be Victor Lazlo, as much as we might have admired him, but we were damn sure we would never be Strassner. In the end, when it counted, we shot the Nazi, let the girl go, and found weary, bemused comfort in the camaraderie that would sustain us in the battle ahead.

Look, if you can read all that into a Hollywood studio assembly-line product like Casablanca - my favorite movie, as cliched as that sounds - then we ought to be able to find some cultural resonances in Spider-Man. And we can. All I’m saying is this: when historians sift through the pop-culture of America looking for hints and clues, they will notice that a character born in Vietnam-era 1963 reached a mass appeal in 2002, shortly before the Second Iraq War, and they will pay particular attention to the recurring phrase:

With great power comes great responsibility.

OK, I know I posted a big chunk, but go over and read the whole thing. Now I have to see the damn movie! (And when you're done with Lileks' column, you will too.)

BILL--TWO WORDS: STREAMING AUDIO. Matt Drudge's current headline is:

O'REILLY RADIO SHOCKER: STATIONS PAID TO CARRY SHOW

Bill--have you discussed Internet media as part of a complete broadcasting package? We here at EdDriscoll.com would be proud to be paid to carry your show. You can even name the media--Apple Quicktime, Real Player, or Windows Media--or all three! Have your lawyer call my lawyer--I'm sure we can work out a mutually agreeable price.

(And for everybody else, don't forget the tipbox on the left.)

...AND THE BANTHA IT RODE IN ON: Orrin Judd has a long excerpt from an essay by Hank Parnell in the Texas Mercury, on The Inadequacy of Science Fiction followed by his own thoughts on the subject. Parnell writes:

science fiction is now little more than a platform for ideological agendas that are half-baked, to be charitable. Leftist scholars such as Bruce Franklin, and later David Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer and John Huntington, have long berated Heinlein and the Campbellian school as being "right-wing reactionaries"; but one need only read Gregory Benford's essay "Reactionary Utopias" to understand how the writings of such left-wing icons as Ursula Le Guin are full of their own brand of intolerance, bigotry, and a desperate avoidance of reality.

Since I don't have all that much to add to Parnall's essay or Judd's comments about it, I'll add my two credits worth by discussing sci-fi from a different tack: Star Trek and American Liberalism.

I've long felt you can track the face of American liberalism by examining Star Trek in its various incarnations (Jonah Goldberg has written about this as well). When Star Trek first went on the air, Gene Roddenberry, and I would assume most of the folks who produced the show were Kennedy or FDR-style liberals who, while they believed in a big, active Federal government also felt that the US was a just, tolerant nation, that Judeo-Christian values and capitalism were good things. Star Trek had episodes that almost stated out loud that Vietnam was a just conflict ("A Private Little War"), that the Constitution was a good thing ("The Omega Glory"), that Abe Lincoln was a good man ("The Savage Curtain"). The Enterprise was forever opening new trade routes, meeting entrepreneurs ("The Trouble With Tribbles"), the youthful but extremely competent Captain Kirk was obviously inspired by JFK and the Federation was an obvious stand-in for the USA.

Somewhere between Star Trek: The Original Series (as it's now often referred to) and Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry went from a JFK/FDR-style liberal to a McGovern liberal. The Federation ceased being a capitalist system to some sort of vague benign communist intergalactic Sweden. Capitalism became evil--bad--really, really bad--hence the Ferengi and the greedy businessman from the twentieth century in the first season episode "The Neutral Zone" whom Picard gives a stern--and very intolerant in his lack of diversity--dressing down to. The Klingons and Romulans went from cold-war Russia and China stand-ins capable of the worst atrocities, to simply "differing forms of government which we must seek to understand". And of course, near the end of "Deep Space Nine", environmentalism, the then-current liberal obsession du jour was introduced, as Jonah Goldberg notes:

By the time Gene Roddenberry died, the various spin-offs were becoming hotbeds of gender hand-wringing, environmentalist pot shots (it turns out that warp technology was creating too many interstellar potholes and humans would have to learn to live within reasonable limitations). The last remaining Trek show — Star Trek Voyager — regularly sermonizes about the fate of the American Indian (we saw that coming at the end of the Star Trek Next Generation), the interstellar environment, and the limits of technology. The most recent Star Trek movie Star Trek VIII: Endive Salad and Mineral Water on Hollywood Boulevard was an unrelenting screed about the need for baby boomers to drop out of the rat race, give up superficial things like age and beauty and "appreciate the moment." It was a gitchy-goo travesty.

Of course, the beauty, or the danger of science fiction (depending upon how you look at it) is all of these elements can be explored without ramming the viewer over the head. The Brothers Judd list The Matrix as one of their favorite conservative films, and yet on the DVD's audio commentary, one of the film's directors (I forget which Wachowski brother) mentions, like a McDonalds or Starbucks-hating antiglobalist how much he hates corporations, and Joe Pantoliano's character, who sells out the rest of his team, is referred to as "Mr. Reagan". And yet, it's obvious why a film like The Matrix would appeal to conservatives.

The same is true with (the original, 1977) Star Wars: Lucas has explicitly stated that the Rebels were supposed to be the Vietcong, beating the evil Empire (America, of course), lead by a corrupt former Senator who has seized dictatorial power (Richard Nixon). But name a conservative or libertarian who doesn't like Star Wars--it's a wonderful way to spend two hours.

"QUALITY CONTROL": Two words of advice for the Libertarian Party from Happy Fun Pundit.

HFP's reader letters are quite amusing, also.

ANDREW SULLIVAN ON FORTUYN'S MURDER:

it's chilling to think that this combination of ideas - if poised to reach political power - could be grist for assassination. In Holland, of all places. The enemies of liberalism are many - on the far right, the far left, and the Islamist fundamentalist orbit. For these reasons, Fortuyn should be hailed as another martyr for gay visibility, along with Harvey Milk. But what's the betting that the gay left won't go near this story? Here's hoping they will.

Read the rest of Sullivan's post, and then ask yourself how an openly gay Dutch sociology professor (as Dave Kopel noted, via InstaPundit) gets dubbed "far right-wing" by Euro-cratic politicians.

UPDATE (via Matt Drudge): the gay & lesbian newsmagazine The Advocate has a pretty fair sounding take on Fortuyn and his assignation. Meanwhile, Rod Dreher has several more posts on Fortuyn on the Corner, and Glenn Reynolds has more items here.

"PROJECT GAP-TOOTH": Matt Drudge has a preview of an upcoming Vanity Fair article that goes behind the scenes at ABC and its news division. No one is spared, including Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings, Disney president Bob Iger and Ted Koppel (although Koppel comes off much better than several of the other folks mentioned).

(Incidentally, "Project Gap-Tooth" was Iger's top-secret codename for his attempt to woo David Letterman from CBS. To be a fly on the wall at 51 West 52nd Street...)

CALIFORNIA INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS: Nina Yablok (the world's best business lawyer, not to mention my wife) has news about the California EDD (Employment Development Department) and work for hire statutes. Reading between the lines, it's also a reflection on the unfortunate "us verses them" conflict which runs rampant through California's government when it comes to small businesses.

For more on the excesses of California's government, check out Steve Den Beste's take on the Oracle/California State Government scandal.

SWALLOW THE RED PILL NEXT SUMMER. The Internet Movie Database says that it will be an all-Matrix summer next year:

Two Matrix Sequels To Come Back-to-Back
Warner Bros. is planning to release the two sequels to The Matrix within months of one another next year, Time magazine reports in its current issue. The first one, Matrix Reloaded, is due to be released in May, and the second, Matrix Revolutions, in August or November, Time said. In an interview with the magazine, star Keanu Reeves said cryptically that the 1999 original was "about birth. The second is life; the third is death."

I.T. WORK FORCE SET TO GROW, Reuters says:

The outlook for hiring in information technology jobs -- one of the hardest hit sectors in last year's downturn -- was starting to improve even as the national unemployment rate touched its highest level in more than 7-1/2 years, a report released on Monday said.

Hiring managers report they will attempt to fill 1.1 million information technology jobs in the next 12 months, according to the report by the Information Technology Association of America industry group.

All signs point to an economic recovery, after an extremely mild recession (which some economists have argued wasn't a recession at all). So when will the stock market start reflecting this upturn? Or is its ability to be a leading economic indicator on the fritz these days?

In 21st century European news, Anti-immigration Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn has been shot dead.

In National Review's "The Corner" Weblog, Rod Dreher writes:

this will be a bombshell to the Netherlands' political world, which is benignly socialist. No word yet on who the attacker might have been, but if it turns out to have been one of Holland's peace-loving Muslims, Fortuyn's point about the need to stop accepting all these unassimilable immigrants will have been made far more forcefully than he ever could have hoped.

Found, oddly enough on the home page of
Wired News, under their "Ephemera..." column, with no link to any article for background material was this piece titled:

Judas Unmasked?
Who betrayed Anne Frank to the Nazis? The question has lingered since the end of World War II and now a British author thinks she has found the answer. Carol Ann Lee believes that a business associate of Anne's father Otto, Anton Ahlers, tipped off Dutch police to the whereabouts of the Frank family. German and Dutch security police raided the building alongside an Amsterdam canal and arrested the Frank family, including Anne. Only Otto survived the ordeal; Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp only weeks before the end of the war.

The title leaves me with a definite sense of moral queasiness, and a vague reminder of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's essay on "Defining Deviancy Down". Judas of course, "turned in" Christ. But Nazi Germany, and its conquered nations, were teeming with "Judases" , ready to turn in their fellow neighbors at a moment's notice.

What do you call Judas when he's but one of millions?

NOTE: For a variety of Anne Frank links, as well as a review of her diary, visit this Brothers Judd page.

EYE ON THE PRIZE: Orrin Judd looks at George W. Bush's Middle East strategy, and likes what he sees:

So long as Mr. Bush continues to keep his eyes on the prize--preserving Israel; cultivating Russia, Turkey, and India; nurturing Pakistan and Iran; quieting Palestine; deposing Saddam; and destroying al Qaeda--all of the sometimes contradictory steps that advance us towards our goals can be properly viewed as mere tactics and frequently nothing more than feints or dodges. It is the strategic vision that matters and to a shocking degree, it appears to be "the man who put the duh? in W" who has it.

Read the whole thing, including Judd's checklist of what the Middle East might look like in ten years.

"LET THE KIDS DRAW, OR THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON": Happy Fun Pundit looks at teachers who suspend students who draw stick figure parodies of their teachers. And I can't believe I just typed "teachers who suspend students who draw stick figures." What a weird, weird world the education system has become over the last 15 years or so.

Tom Wolfe has been threatening to do a book on the education system for years. He'd have lots of fun getting into the mind of the teacher that HFP describes above.

WELCOME TO THE 1970s: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake finds a Georgia high school that has held its first(!) integrated prom:

Until this year, separate High School Proms were held for black and white pupils at Taylor County High School, Georgia, USA.

I think I am unsettled more by the "Some of my best friends are black" comments I read between the lines of the quotes.

Perhaps that's just me.

Read the CNN report and make up your own mind.

In the early 1960s, comedian Mort Sahl once did a riff about a southern school sending exchange students to visit the 20th century. Looks like these kids are only just now arriving.

CHENEY ON OZZY: Matt Drudge has a piece on Lynn Cheney's embarrassment over the Blizzard of Oz's appearance at this weekend White House Correspondence Dinner in Washington.

"He's hardly someone we should be applauding... not a role model, I am rather embarrassed," Cheney said after the dinner, according to sources.

I haven't seen Ozzy's MTV series, but from everything I've read (including this piece), it sounds like the most powerful anti-drug campaign since Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" commercials of the 1980s. Parents should watch it with their kids and say "Son, don't do drugs. You do not want to end up as screwed up as Ozzy Osbourne."

Believe me, you don't!

VICTIMS OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS: Glenn Reynolds deflates the myth of a prosperous Sweden:

Though they think of themselves as prosperous, Swedes as a group are actually worse off than black Americans, according to this Swedish study. Swedes are trained from birth to view their society as a compassionate one in which everyone prospers, while the harsh capitalism of the United States makes some people rich and leaves other people destitute. Er, except that what it really does is make some people really, really rich, and leave other people just, well, richer than the Swedes. Best excerpt, highlighted by reader Todd Bass who sent this link:

"Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household," the HUI economists said.

If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said. . . .

THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS: Lots of good stuff by Bob Novak today, including a possible return of Karen Hughes to the Bush team in '04, and a possible return of arctic drilling (although I'm not holding my breath that it will actually make any headway).

Jay Nordlinger looks at Jimmy Carter's Middle East track record during and after Carter's years in the White House, and does not like what he sees.

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.

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.

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.

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.

GRAY OUT? Joanne Jacobs checks in with the latest Gray Davis scandals. But Orrin Judd says (unfortunately) they won't matter come November.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.)

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.

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.

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.