Things Found in My Pajamas

A reader asks if "American Digest" shall fade away.

Never. But as noted below I've become quite busy with a number of new projects Editor-in-Chief @ Pajamas Media. Briefly put, this job equals about 2.5 jobs. There's a lot of work being done behind the scenes, but there is still work being done out front. Here are a few of the things that caught my eye at Pajamas Media over the last couple of days.

There's much, much more at Pajamas Media where I am only one-sixth of the 24/7/365 round the world Blog Squad.

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Getting rapidly growing buzz this week is BumpTop a new 'desktop' that seeks to replicate the world by "Keepin' it Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen"

Here's the presentation video on how it works.

• Newman @ American Spectator continues the web-wide downgrading of Andrew Sullivan: "Isn't it annoying when authors ride a hobbyhorse to the point of saddle sores? "

• Tim Chapman @ Townhall observes, "Absent any plan to win the Global War on Terror, Democrats are left unified around one goal related to the war: scoring maximum political points."

• Peggy Noonan @ Opinion Journal: "Democratic leaders in Washington are in a worse position than Republican leaders in Washington. Neither likes their base, really, and both think they are smarter. But the Democrats think, deep down, that their base is barking mad. The Republicans don't. They just think their base is a bore."

• The Note dutifully notes: "Tune into the "This Week All Week" webcast to see ABC News' George Stephanopoulos and Sam Donaldson hash through the winners and losers of the Iraq war debate in the Senate this week."

• Sam Donaldson? Shouldn't he be warming a bench with Dan Rather in Mark Cuban's driveway and trying to put Stephanopoulos through the hoop from the free-throw line?

• "Three cops and an American resident too. But not much press attention. Why? Maybe because it didn’t happen 6000 miles away in Baghdad, but 25 miles away in Rosarito Beach, Baja California Norte, Mexico (near Tijuana)." Gardner @ OTB has other details and sources.

• Every day, James Lileks gives you a new reason to read him every day: "As long as I can remember I have been fed end-times scenarios – death by ice, death by fire, death by famine, death by smothering from heaps of clambering humans scrabbling for purchase on an overpopulated world, death by full-scale nuclear exchange, death by unstoppable global AIDS, death by a two-degree rise in temperatures, death by radon, death by alar, death by inadvertent Audi acceleration, death by juju. Doesn’t mean we won’t die of juju. But somehow we survive. "

• "As I watched the umbrella sales guy doing his job I asked myself what I could learn as a blogger from his strategy."

• Guy Kawasaki on The Art of Sucking Down

• What that says is, roughly, here are high-def closeups of 32 bugs -- amazing color and detail. But not for those who are bug-o-phobic.

• Merlin Mann knows best: "Reduce your folders: Cut down on the amount of e-mail folders you have, and define each by the kind of action that the messages inside it require."

• "A braided leather whip, a sniper rifle, six jars of fertiliser and a copy of the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook were among the presents foreign leaders have given George Bush."

• File under Ready for Their Closeup: "Now that the nauseating overload of those pious and hyper-masculine gay cowboys has subsided, it’s great to see good old-fashioned effete, wicked old queens holding court on the big screen."

• Coming soon: "a new economic paradigm, where knowledge, innovation, and creativity are key. At the cutting edge of this shift is the creative sector of the economy: science and technology, art and design, culture and entertainment, and the knowledge-based professions." From Cato Unbound.

• Displayed @ Regions of the Mind: "Using data on a county-by-county basis, these maps focus on various aspects of religion."

• You don't need to be apocalyptic, but it helps. Spengler reviews Standing with Israel by David Brog.

• Dilbert creator Scott Adams on lame terrorist names: "Most terrorists probably don’t say, “oy vey,” but it sounds like the sort of thing that Turki would have said, probably right before trying to behead himself with a plastic spoon while recording the whole thing on Betamax."

• Classical Values is afraid, very afraid: "What this means is that by the mere act of saying I didn't care about Kos's sex, I may have inadvertently assisted the Coulter-Clinton-Reynolds, Marxist-Leninist conspiracy."

• Victor Hanson has a few posers: "How do you arrange a marriage, insist on a beheading for adultery, conduct a proper honor killing of your daughter, or calmly call Jews “pigs and apes” when the wider Westernizing world broadcast into your living room, car, and workplace thinks you are some groveling zombie?"

• Bob Dylan's XM Satellite Radio Show Theme Time Radio Hour episodes in mp3 format.

• Strategy Page looks at why there are so many loose lips in the media: "Because the war on terror is fought in a peacetime atmosphere, treason can be presented as dissent, and you can get away with it."

• "Manolo says, here you see the craft project that has gone horribly, terribly awry: the plastic grocery bags crocheted into the pair of the sandals."

• al-Qaida's Video Production and Distribution Methods: "[Last winter] a courier brought a summons [to cameraman Qari Mohammed Yusuf] from al-Qaida's No. 2: "The emir wants to send a message." The emir, meaning prince or commander, was Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. He wanted to send a message to the world that he had safely survived a U.S. attempt to kill him."

• A gentle reminder from Bill Quick: "America is a Jacksonian nation. And when America finally realizes with what loathing we are regarded by the rest of the world, the result will not be what the rest of the world thinks will occur. There will be no sudden American need to apologize and submit ourselves to the world's judgment. We are a nation founded on telling the rest of the world to go to hell, and shedding our blood to send it there."

• Iowahawk's got his hands on a 32 Deuce Coupe and he's going to work: "I plan to restore this long-dormant Deuce in a style befitting its glory days: a no-nonsense, nasty ass 1950s street racer, fenderless/hoodless, blackwall 'stones on 16" Ford rims, juice brakes, 4 speed. For power, I've acquired a beefy little 1953 Dodge Red Ram Hemi." This is the place to go for pix and a history of the greatest street rod in the world.

• Trouble sleeping? This keynote "speech" by Dave Winer @ Bloggercon 4 will put you down like a poleaxed puppy. To hear it, click here, but do not operate heavy machinery while listening.

• State of the Union (SOTU) provides access to the corpus of all the State of the Union addresses from 1790 to 2006. SOTU allows you to explore how specific words gain and lose prominence over time, and to link to information on the historical context for their use.

And yes, there are several longer essays forthcoming in the near future. Thanks for bearing with me during this period of adjustment.

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Posted by Vanderleun at February 25, 2006 4:16 PM | TrackBack
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