MY NAME, "GERARD VAN DER LEUN," IS AN UNUSUAL ONE. So unusual, I've never met anyone else with the same name. I do know of one other man with the name, but we've never met. I've seen his name in an unusual place. This is the story of how that happened.

It was an August Sunday in New York City in 1975. I'd decided to bicycle from my apartment on East 86th and York to Battery Park at the southern tip of the island. I'd nothing else to do and, since I hadn't been to the park since moving to the city in 1974, it seemed like a destination that would be interesting. Just how interesting, I had no way of knowing when I left.

August Sundays in New York can be the best times for the city. The psychotherapists are all on vacation -- as are their clients and most of the other professional classes. The city seems almost deserted, the traffic light and, as you move down into Wall Street and the surrounding areas, it becomes virtually non-existent. On a bicycle you own the streets that form the bottom of the narrow canyons of buildings where, even at mid-day, it is still cool with shade. Then you emerge from the streets into the bright open space at Battery Park.

Tourists are lining up for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. A few people are coming and going from the Staten Island Ferry terminal. There are some scattered clots of people on the lawns of Battery Park. Everything is lazy and unhurried.

I'd coasted most of the way down to the Battery that day since, even though it appears to be flat, there is a very slight north to south slope in Manhattan. I arrived only a bit hungry and thirsty and got one of the dubious Sabaretts hot dogs and a chilled coke from the only vendor working the park.

The twin towers loomed over everything, thought of, if they were thought of at all, as an irritation in that they blocked off so much of the sky. It was 1975 and, Vietnam not withstanding, America was just about at the midway point between two world wars. Of course, we didn't know that at the time. The only war we knew of was the Second World War and the background humm of the Cold War. It was a summer Sunday and we were in the midst of what now can be seen as "The Long Peace."

In front of the lawns at Battery Park was a monument that caught my attention. It was formed of an immense stone eagle and two parallel rows of granite monoliths about 20 feet wide, 20 feet tall and 3 feet thick. From a distance you could see that they had words carved into them from top to bottom. There was also a lot of shade between them so I took my hot dog and my coke and wheeled my bike over, sitting down at random among the monoliths.

I remember that the stone was cool against my back as I sat there looking at the stone across from me on that warm afternoon. As I looked up it dawned on me that the words cut into the stones were all names. Just names. The names of soldiers, sailors and airmen who had met their death in the north Atlantic in WWII. I was to learn later that there were 4,601 names. All lost in the frigid waters, all without any marker for their graves -- except those in the hearts of those they left behind, and their names carved into these stones that rose up around me.

I read across several rows, moving right to left, then down a row, and then right to left. I got to the end of the sixth row and went back to the beginning of the seventh row.

At the beginning of the seventh row, I read the name: "Gerard Van der Leun." My name. Cut into the stone amongst a tally of the dead.

If you have an unusual name, there's nothing that prepares you for seeing it in a list of the dead on a summer Sunday afternoon in Battery Park in 1975. I don't really remember the feeling except to know that, for many long moments, I became suddenly chilled.

When that passed, I knew why my name was in the stone. I'd always known why, but I'd never known about the stone or the names cut into it.

"Gerard Van der Leun" was, of course, not me. He was someone else entirely. Someone who had been born, lived, and died before I was even conceived. He was my father's middle brother. He was what my family had given to stop Fascism, Totalitarianism and genocide in the Second World War. He was one of their three sons. He was dead before he was 22 years old. His body never recovered, the exact time and place of his death over the Atlantic, unknown.

As the first child born after his death, I was given his name, Gerard. But as a child I was never called by that name. I was always called "Jerry." "Jerry" is not a diminutive of "Gerard." There are none for that name. But "Jerry" I would be because the mere mention of the name "Gerard" was enough to send my grandmother into a dark state of mind that would last for weeks. This was true, as far as I know, for all the days of her life and she lived well into her 80s.

My grandfather could barely speak of Gerard and, being Dutch, his sullen reticence let all of us know very early that it was wrong to ask.

My father, who was refused service in the Second World War due to a bout with rheumatic fever as a child that left him with the heart murmur that would kill him shortly after turning 50, was ashamed he didn't fight and wouldn't speak of his brother, Gerard, except to say "He was a great, brave kid."

My uncle, the baby of the family, spent a year or two of his youth freezing on the Inchon peninsula in Korea and seeing the worst of that war first hand. He was my only living relative who'd been in a war. He would never speak of his war at all, but it must have been very bad indeed.

I know this because, when I was a teenager, I was out in his garage one day and, opening a drawer, I found an old packet of photographs, grimy with dust at the back under a bunch of rusted tools. The black and white photos with rough perforated edges showed some very disturbing things: a helmet shot full of holes; a boot with most of a leg still in it, some crumpled heaps of clothing on patches of dirty snow that proved to be, on closer inspection, dead Korean soldiers; a pile of bodies on a snowbank with black patches of blood seeping into it. The full horror show.

He had taken them and couldn't part with them, but couldn't look at them. So he shoved them into a drawer with other unused junk from his past and left it at that. He never spoke of Korea except to say it was "rough," and, now that he lives but has quit speaking of anything, he never will. His only comment to me about his brother Gerard echoed that of my father, "He was a great kid. You can be proud to have his name. Just don't use it around Grandma."

And I didn't. No one in my family ever did. All through the years that I was growing up at home, I was "Jerry."

In time, I left home for the University and, in the manner of young men in the 1960s and since, I came upon a lot of new and, to my young mind, excellent ideas. A minor one of these was that it was time to stop being a 'Jerry' -- a name I associated for some reason with young men with red hair, freckles and a gawky resemblance to Howdy Doody. I decided that I would reject my family's preferences and call myself by my given name, 'Gerard.' In fact, in the callous manner of heedless boys on the verge of adulthood, I would insist upon it. I duly informed my parents and would correct them when they lapsed back to 'Jerry.'

This attitude served me well enough and soon it seemed I had trained my bothers and my parents in my new name. Of course, I'd taken this name not because of who my uncle had been or because of the cause for which he gave his life, but for the selfish reason that it simply sounded more "dignified" to my ears.

I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley and it was 1965 and we had no truck with the US military that was "brutally repressing" the people of Vietnam. We were stupid and young and nothing that has happened at Berkeley since then has changed the youth and stupidity of its students. If anything, my era at the University just made it somehow possible for Berkeley students to think that their attitudes were as noble and as pure in their minds as they were stupid and selfish in reality. I was no longer a "Jerry" but a "Gerard" and I was going to make the world safe from America.

My name change plan went well as long as I confined it to my immediate family and my friends at the University. It went so well that it made me even stupid enough to try to extend it to my grandparents during a Thanksgiving at their home.

At some point during the meal, my grandmother said something like, "Would you like some more creamed onions, Jerry?"

And because I was a very selfish and stupid young man, I looked at her and said, "Grandma, everyone here knows that I'm not Jerry any longer. I'm Gerard and you've just got to get used to calling me that."

Immediately, the silence came into the room. It rose out of the center of the table and expanded until it reached the walls and then just dropped down over the room like a large, dark shroud.

Nobody moved. Very slowly every set of eyes of my family came around and looked at me. Not angry, but just looking. At me. The silence went on. Then my grandmother, whose eyes were wet, rose from the table and said, "No. I can't do that. I just can't." She left the table and walked down the hallway to her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

The silence compounded itself until my grandfather rose from his chair and walked to the middle of the hallway. He took a framed photograph off the wall where hung next to a framed gold star. It had been in that place so long that I'd stopped seeing it.

My grandfather walked back to the table and very gently handed me the photograph. It show a smooth-faced handsome young flyer with an open smile. He was dressed in fleece-lined leather flying jacket and leaning casually against the fuselage of a bomber. You could see the clear plastic in the nose of the plane just above his head to his right. On the picture, was the inscription: "Folks, Here's my new office! Gerard."

My grandfather stood behind me as I looked at the picture. "You are not Gerard. You just have his name, but you are not him. That's my son. That's Gerard. If you don't mind, we will continue to call you Jerry in this house. If you do mind, you don't have to come here any more."

Then he took the picture away and put it back in its place on the wall. He knocked on the bedroom door, went in, and in a few minutes he and my grandmother came back to the table. Nobody else had said a word. We'd just sat there. I was wishing to be just about anyplace else in the world than where I was.

They sat down and my grandmother said, "So, Jerry, would you like some more creamed onions?"

I nodded, they were passed and the meal went on. My parents never said a word. Not then and not after. And, to their credit, they continued to call me Gerard. But not at my grandparents' house.

In 1975, I sat against a monument in Battery Park in New York and read a name cut into stone among a list of the dead. That long ago Thanksgiving scene came back to me in all its dreadful detail. I tried to understand what that name in the stone had meant to my family when it became the only thing that remained of their middle son. A man who'd been swallowed up in the Atlantic during a war that finished before I drew breath. I tried to understand what it meant, but I could not. I was a child of the long peace who had avoided his war and gone on to make a life that, in many ways, was spent taking-down the things that my namesake had given his life to preserve.

These days it makes me feel cheap and contemptible to think of the things I did to point out all the ways in which this country fails to achieve some fantasied perfection. I was a small part of promulgating a great wrong and a large lie for a long time, and I'm sure there's no making up for that. My chance to be worthy of the man in the photograph, the name on the wall, has long since passed and all I can do is to try, in some way, to make what small amends I can.

Remembering these long ago moments on this Memorial Day of 2004, I still cannot claim to understand the deep sense of duty and the strong feeling of honor that drove men like the uncle I've never known to sacrifice themselves. Lately though, as we move deeper into the Fourth World War, I think that, at last, I can somehow dimly see the outlines of what it was. And that, for now, will have to do.

Since finding his name on the stone in 1975, I've been back to that place a number of times. I once took my daughter there.

After September 11th, I made a point of going to the monument as soon as the way was cleared, sometime in 2002. It was for the last time.

But if you go the monument, you can see the name in the stone. It's not my name, but the name of man much better than most of us. It's on the far left column on the third stone in on the right side of the monument looking towards the sea. The name is usually in shadow and almost impossible to photograph.

Like most of the other names carved into the stone it's up there very high. You can see it, but you can't touch it. I don't care who you are, you're not that tall.

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

--Mark Steyn, "Recalling a time when setbacks didn't deter us"

There is something not just ridiculous but unbecoming about a hyperpower 300 million strong whose elites -- from the deranged former vice president down -- want the outcome of a war, and the fate of a nation, to hinge on one freaky jailhouse; elites who are willing to pay any price, bear any burden, as long as it's pain-free, squeaky clean and over in a week. The sheer silliness dishonors the memory of all those we're supposed to be remembering this Memorial Day.

--Mark Steyn, "Recalling a time when setbacks didn't deter us"

THE FILM SHOWS YOU how they UN_FOLD .

THE FILM SHOWS YOU how they UN_FOLD .

On the Internet, no one knows you're not the dog you claim to be. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]

On the Internet, no one knows you're not the dog you claim to be. [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]

THINK ABOUT TAKING SOME TIME OFF FROM TELEVISION, THE BEACH, AND THE COOKOUTS and doing something that matters this Monday:

Visit a national cemetery and honor those who've died for America.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER

CALVERTON, N.Y.--Here at Calverton National Cemetery, a place of sandy soil and quiet trees on eastern Long Island, workers are putting up American flags that will line the roads on this Memorial Day weekend. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts will arrive tomorrow to place small flags on each of Calverton's 146,000 grave sites. This is Calverton's busiest weekend.

But on a rainy afternoon in midweek, Calverton was empty and calm. It was probably like this in all of the 120 national cemeteries around the United States, which hold the remains of American soldiers all the way back to the Civil War.

I saw an old man at Calverton park his pickup and head out with a bad limp across an expanse of white grave markers. He seemed to know where he was going. I stopped by two new graves, side by side, with very white headstones. They had fresh flowers and a votive candle still burning from morning visitors. Someone had left an unopened bottle of Bud beneath the flowers, meaning I guess that the soldier liked his beer.

Both of these men, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony S. Lagman and Sgt. Michael J. Esposito Jr., winners of the Bronze Star with valor, were killed the same day in Afghanistan in March. Sgt. Lagman's headstone says: "Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Afghanistan." To the right of their graves lies Marine Lance Cpl. William Wayne White, who died last year, early in the Iraq war.
-- OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

The list of National Cemetaries and their Memorial Day Services can be found: Here.

Some give all. You can give some.

THINK ABOUT TAKING SOME TIME OFF FROM TELEVISION, THE BEACH, AND THE COOKOUTS and doing something that matters this Monday:

Visit a national cemetery and honor those who've died for America.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER

CALVERTON, N.Y.--Here at Calverton National Cemetery, a place of sandy soil and quiet trees on eastern Long Island, workers are putting up American flags that will line the roads on this Memorial Day weekend. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts will arrive tomorrow to place small flags on each of Calverton's 146,000 grave sites. This is Calverton's busiest weekend.

But on a rainy afternoon in midweek, Calverton was empty and calm. It was probably like this in all of the 120 national cemeteries around the United States, which hold the remains of American soldiers all the way back to the Civil War.

I saw an old man at Calverton park his pickup and head out with a bad limp across an expanse of white grave markers. He seemed to know where he was going. I stopped by two new graves, side by side, with very white headstones. They had fresh flowers and a votive candle still burning from morning visitors. Someone had left an unopened bottle of Bud beneath the flowers, meaning I guess that the soldier liked his beer.

Both of these men, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony S. Lagman and Sgt. Michael J. Esposito Jr., winners of the Bronze Star with valor, were killed the same day in Afghanistan in March. Sgt. Lagman's headstone says: "Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Afghanistan." To the right of their graves lies Marine Lance Cpl. William Wayne White, who died last year, early in the Iraq war.
-- OpinionJournal - Wonder Land

The list of National Cemetaries and their Memorial Day Services can be found: Here.

Some give all. You can give some.

LAW AND ORDER FANS can fill up on the one episode where absolutely nothing happens and the tedium overwhelms the whole cast: "Law & Order: Artistic Intent"--Shanan Kurtz and Gareth Long

[Needs Quicktime]

LAW AND ORDER FANS can fill up on the one episode where absolutely nothing happens and the tedium overwhelms the whole cast: "Law & Order: Artistic Intent"--Shanan Kurtz and Gareth Long

[Needs Quicktime]

So that we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water. The pool of blood which lies round the heart is the ocean, and its breathing, and the increase and decrease of the blood in the pulses, is represented in the earth by the flow and ebb of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is the fire which pervades the earth, and the seat of the vegetative soul is in the fires, which in many parts of the earth find vent in baths and mines of sulphur, and in volcanoes, as at Mount Aetna in Sicily, and in many other places.

-- The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

So that we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water. The pool of blood which lies round the heart is the ocean, and its breathing, and the increase and decrease of the blood in the pulses, is represented in the earth by the flow and ebb of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is the fire which pervades the earth, and the seat of the vegetative soul is in the fires, which in many parts of the earth find vent in baths and mines of sulphur, and in volcanoes, as at Mount Aetna in Sicily, and in many other places.

-- The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci

ALESSANDRA STANLEY DEMONSTRATES HOW DEEP THE ROT GOES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES with a smarmy bit of drive-by drivel in: 'Ike: Countdown to D-Day': Macho Swagger Overpowers D-Day Valor.

In the midst of a predictable screed by this put-out-to-pasture correspondent, Stanley bemoans the certified American triumphs of history. She finds the story of D-Day and Eisenhower's role much too "macho." It doesn't seem to occur to her that an amphibious assault on a series of heavily fortified beaches is by definition a "macho" endeavor.

Not content with denigrating a day when heroes and sacrifice was common, Ms. Stanley reserves her most stinging denunciation for the American People today:

But when it comes to D-Day, American viewers do not need to be wooed into admiring their supreme commander. For the most part, they are like the prostitute played by Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," who gently reminds her overly solicitous client, Richard Gere, that she is what is called a "sure thing."

That this sort of tossed-off insult can be written by a career hack for the Times is not surprising. We see it seep into all aspects of the paper every day -- from the front page to the food page. It is not even surprising that there are no editors at the Times who think twice about passing this drivel without at least picking up the phone and asking Stanley, "Hey, are you sure you want to call all Americans whores?" What, I guess, is surprising is the extent to which all those "whores" out there in America are not surprised by this sort of thing.

It's all just business as usual at the New York Times. I used to wonder what it would take to make the career America-haters at the Times rethink their perceptions and beliefs. I once thought it would probably take a small nuke going off at 4:00 PM on a Wednesday and killing everyone in the building as well as a few hundred thousand in the immediate blast radius.

Now, I don't think even that would do it. The rot has reached the marrow.

ALESSANDRA STANLEY DEMONSTRATES HOW DEEP THE ROT GOES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES with a smarmy bit of drive-by drivel in: 'Ike: Countdown to D-Day': Macho Swagger Overpowers D-Day Valor.

In the midst of a predictable screed by this put-out-to-pasture correspondent, Stanley bemoans the certified American triumphs of history. She finds the story of D-Day and Eisenhower's role much too "macho." It doesn't seem to occur to her that an amphibious assault on a series of heavily fortified beaches is by definition a "macho" endeavor.

Not content with denigrating a day when heroes and sacrifice was common, Ms. Stanley reserves her most stinging denunciation for the American People today:

But when it comes to D-Day, American viewers do not need to be wooed into admiring their supreme commander. For the most part, they are like the prostitute played by Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," who gently reminds her overly solicitous client, Richard Gere, that she is what is called a "sure thing."

That this sort of tossed-off insult can be written by a career hack for the Times is not surprising. We see it seep into all aspects of the paper every day -- from the front page to the food page. It is not even surprising that there are no editors at the Times who think twice about passing this drivel without at least picking up the phone and asking Stanley, "Hey, are you sure you want to call all Americans whores?" What, I guess, is surprising is the extent to which all those "whores" out there in America are not surprised by this sort of thing.

It's all just business as usual at the New York Times. I used to wonder what it would take to make the career America-haters at the Times rethink their perceptions and beliefs. I once thought it would probably take a small nuke going off at 4:00 PM on a Wednesday and killing everyone in the building as well as a few hundred thousand in the immediate blast radius.

Now, I don't think even that would do it. The rot has reached the marrow.

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.
-- Crosby, Stills, Nash

Tip: Apropos of Something

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.
-- Crosby, Stills, Nash

Tip: Apropos of Something

Six Apart announces more changes to Movable Type license

With the release of Movable Type 3.0014d, users will pay as they blog on a per-word basis (billing will be handled through the increasingly versatile TypeKey service). As a result, the license no longer penalizes those users who choose to maintain multiple blogs or host blogs with multiple authors. Instead, all users pay equally based on how much they use Movable Type.

Of course, we recognize that not all words are created equally. Therefore, the new pricing structure breaks down as follows:

Prices:

Prepositions, conjunctions, articles (definite and indefinite), interjections: 1¢ per word

Pronouns: 2¢ per word

Nouns (common): 4¢ per word

Nouns (proper): 6¢ per word

Verbs (passive): 5¢ per word

Verbs (action): 7¢ per word

Adjectives and adverbs: 8¢ per word

Proper nouns comprising names of other blogging software (i.e. "WordPress" or "Expression Engine"): 30¢ per word

Gerunds: TBA

Naturally, punctuation and HTML markup will remain absolutely free. Furthermore, hyphenated words will count as a single word for billing purposes (if the hyphenated form is the preferred usage according to the Oxford English Dictionary).

First noted by: Apropos of Something

Six Apart announces more changes to Movable Type license

With the release of Movable Type 3.0014d, users will pay as they blog on a per-word basis (billing will be handled through the increasingly versatile TypeKey service). As a result, the license no longer penalizes those users who choose to maintain multiple blogs or host blogs with multiple authors. Instead, all users pay equally based on how much they use Movable Type.

Of course, we recognize that not all words are created equally. Therefore, the new pricing structure breaks down as follows:

Prices:

Prepositions, conjunctions, articles (definite and indefinite), interjections: 1¢ per word

Pronouns: 2¢ per word

Nouns (common): 4¢ per word

Nouns (proper): 6¢ per word

Verbs (passive): 5¢ per word

Verbs (action): 7¢ per word

Adjectives and adverbs: 8¢ per word

Proper nouns comprising names of other blogging software (i.e. "WordPress" or "Expression Engine"): 30¢ per word

Gerunds: TBA

Naturally, punctuation and HTML markup will remain absolutely free. Furthermore, hyphenated words will count as a single word for billing purposes (if the hyphenated form is the preferred usage according to the Oxford English Dictionary).

First noted by: Apropos of Something

Click to enlarge

"AFTER WE WERE SUCCESSFUL in our Pencil Carving , one thing came up to us for a change in it...."

"To take carving in the wood of a pencil", is certainly what pencil carving is all about. But we are required to be skilled enough for delicate woodwork in carving out a pattern like some kind of a tracery without making any miscut on the naked lead inside.

And to think you've been just chewing on them all these years.

Click to enlarge

"AFTER WE WERE SUCCESSFUL in our Pencil Carving , one thing came up to us for a change in it...."

"To take carving in the wood of a pencil", is certainly what pencil carving is all about. But we are required to be skilled enough for delicate woodwork in carving out a pattern like some kind of a tracery without making any miscut on the naked lead inside.

And to think you've been just chewing on them all these years.

Senator Jack Scott,
Democrat, Pasadena:
If you want a bullet, this
man wants your fingerprints.
senator.scott@sen.ca.gov

YET MORE REASONS FOR CALIFORNIA CITIZENS TO DRIVE TO NEVADA: SB 1152 Senate Bill - AMENDED

(c) No vendor shall sell or otherwise transfer ownership of any ammunition without at the time of purchase recording the following information on a form to be prescribed by the Department of Justice:
[snip]
(d) The vendor shall also at the time of purchase or transfer obtain the right thumbprint of the purchaser or transferee on the above form.
[Snip]
(f) (1) ... If the right thumbprint is not available, then the vendor shall have the purchaser or transferee use his or her left thumb, or any available finger, and shall so indicate on the form. If the purchaser or transferee is physically unable to provide a thumbprint or fingerprint, the vendor shall so indicate on the form.

Ah, the latest proof that the law is an ass on which every one gets a turn. You've got to admire that last bit where, if you have no fingers or thumbs,you get a pass on the fingerprint requirement.

This extension of government power and intrusion into your life passed the California Senate last week, 22-16. The record of those who voted for and against is: Here.

You'd think that requiring citizens to fingerprint other citizens when they go out to buy legal products would have something like the ACLU up in arms. But no. They don't care about this. Maybe you don't either, but think for a minute about the power of precedent in law. A fingerprint for a bullet now, a fingerprint for a bottle of vodka later, a fingerprint for those deadly cigarettes a bit after that, a fingerprint to vote, a fingerprint to buy a book, a fingerprint to buy anything.

Of course, this law requires that the person selling the ammo keep the fingerprints at his place of business. This year. Next year it will be, "You know all those fingerprints we made you keep, well send them in. We not only need to know who has the guns, we need to know how many rounds they have. Why? We're the Democrats, we're the Buttinsky Party. We don't need a reason."

Senator Jack Scott,
Democrat, Pasadena:
If you want a bullet, this
man wants your fingerprints.
senator.scott@sen.ca.gov

YET MORE REASONS FOR CALIFORNIA CITIZENS TO DRIVE TO NEVADA: SB 1152 Senate Bill - AMENDED

(c) No vendor shall sell or otherwise transfer ownership of any ammunition without at the time of purchase recording the following information on a form to be prescribed by the Department of Justice:
[snip]
(d) The vendor shall also at the time of purchase or transfer obtain the right thumbprint of the purchaser or transferee on the above form.
[Snip]
(f) (1) ... If the right thumbprint is not available, then the vendor shall have the purchaser or transferee use his or her left thumb, or any available finger, and shall so indicate on the form. If the purchaser or transferee is physically unable to provide a thumbprint or fingerprint, the vendor shall so indicate on the form.

Ah, the latest proof that the law is an ass on which every one gets a turn. You've got to admire that last bit where, if you have no fingers or thumbs,you get a pass on the fingerprint requirement.

This extension of government power and intrusion into your life passed the California Senate last week, 22-16. The record of those who voted for and against is: Here.

You'd think that requiring citizens to fingerprint other citizens when they go out to buy legal products would have something like the ACLU up in arms. But no. They don't care about this. Maybe you don't either, but think for a minute about the power of precedent in law. A fingerprint for a bullet now, a fingerprint for a bottle of vodka later, a fingerprint for those deadly cigarettes a bit after that, a fingerprint to vote, a fingerprint to buy a book, a fingerprint to buy anything.

Of course, this law requires that the person selling the ammo keep the fingerprints at his place of business. This year. Next year it will be, "You know all those fingerprints we made you keep, well send them in. We not only need to know who has the guns, we need to know how many rounds they have. Why? We're the Democrats, we're the Buttinsky Party. We don't need a reason."

P. J. O'ROURKE LOOKS AT THE BENEFITS of going home: America, Recuse Thyself!

A NATO alliance that does not include the U.S. will acquire a new sense of mission and purpose, especially in Gdansk, Istanbul and maybe Hamburg, when Russia resumes its historic quest for warm-water ports.

The threat of nuclear proliferation will abate as dangerous stockpiles of atomic weapons are quickly used up. The loss of life will be regrettable. But this will be counterbalanced by the welcome disappearance of long-standing international flashpoints when the India-Pakistan border is vaporized, Tehran disappears in a mushroom cloud, and whatever is left of the Korean Peninsula becomes reunited.

P. J. O'ROURKE LOOKS AT THE BENEFITS of going home: America, Recuse Thyself!

A NATO alliance that does not include the U.S. will acquire a new sense of mission and purpose, especially in Gdansk, Istanbul and maybe Hamburg, when Russia resumes its historic quest for warm-water ports.

The threat of nuclear proliferation will abate as dangerous stockpiles of atomic weapons are quickly used up. The loss of life will be regrettable. But this will be counterbalanced by the welcome disappearance of long-standing international flashpoints when the India-Pakistan border is vaporized, Tehran disappears in a mushroom cloud, and whatever is left of the Korean Peninsula becomes reunited.

STEPHEN DEN BESTE says clearly what most people of good will already know:

The implication that heroes are unusual, better than the rest of us, is wrong. Most real heroes are not extraordinary men; they are ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances.

And they know it, which is why they do not brag. They may have been heroes, but they saw many others be heroes. They know they are not extraordinary.

Uncommon valor is a common virtue. That's why hundreds of firemen charged into the WTC towers on September 11, 2001, and died there. And after one tower collapsed, that's why the firemen in the other tower did not flee, and in their turn also died.

Real heroes know that decorations are only given to those who were lucky enough to be heroic while someone important was watching. Real heroes will have seen many other heroic acts which were never acknowledged by anyone, except by the other members of the team. And ultimately that is the only acknowledgement they truly value, for only their teammates really understand what they went through.

A man who brags about his heroism is no hero. And the men who served with him will know it.

From -- The price of heroism

STEPHEN DEN BESTE says clearly what most people of good will already know:

The implication that heroes are unusual, better than the rest of us, is wrong. Most real heroes are not extraordinary men; they are ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances.

And they know it, which is why they do not brag. They may have been heroes, but they saw many others be heroes. They know they are not extraordinary.

Uncommon valor is a common virtue. That's why hundreds of firemen charged into the WTC towers on September 11, 2001, and died there. And after one tower collapsed, that's why the firemen in the other tower did not flee, and in their turn also died.

Real heroes know that decorations are only given to those who were lucky enough to be heroic while someone important was watching. Real heroes will have seen many other heroic acts which were never acknowledged by anyone, except by the other members of the team. And ultimately that is the only acknowledgement they truly value, for only their teammates really understand what they went through.

A man who brags about his heroism is no hero. And the men who served with him will know it.

From -- The price of heroism

JOHN BATTELLE'S INSIGHTFUL ARTICLE Toward the Endemic: What's missing in PPC/Behavioral/Contextual Ad Nets has a lot to say about why advertisers and blogs just don't understand each other.

Something is lost when advertisers don't buy based on the publication. I'm not arguing that buying based on context or content isn't valuable, it certainly is. But in the long run, not considering the publisher's role devalues both the publication *and* the advertiser in the minds of the publishers' audience.

So what, you might be saying. Most major publications utilize both network-based and more traditional "display" advertising - look at the NYT or CNET or CBS Marketwatch. True enough - Martin mentioned yesterday that his "display" advertising at NYT.com is up dramatically and starting to show real traction. (And, by they way, the NYT is steering clear of AdSense image, for obvious reasons....) But the real problem is with smaller sites, sites that can't afford to be understood or purchased any other way but through a network. Sites where there is simply too much transactional friction to make the advertising purchase worthwhile. Sites like....blogs, for example.

Advertisers can't grok all the blogs which might be potential fits for their marketing dollar. Besides the tedium of finding and evaluating them, blogs have no standardized marketing or advertising practices, so working with each is a handrolled labor of love.

Essential reading if you'd like to find a way to have an enduring relationship with advertising. Still, it led me to wonder if we are going to see it anytime soon without the creation of a whole new kind of salesman. As I remarked in the comments to this article:

I found this to be a valuable article with a number of insightful points. At the same time, the push towards "conversational" advertising leads me to wonder who there will be to bell the cat.

In my experience, ads appear in magazines not merely because there is a mystical conversation going on between the reader and the magazine, but because there has been a real converstation between an ad salesman for that magazine and a media buyer. And not just a conversation, but a relationship that has been built up from many meetings and conversations.

To whip out and old chainsaw, you can have the best product and the best ideas in the world but nothing happens until someone sells something. Who are going to be the salesmen for these micro-accounts? Good media salesmen can make well into the six figures every year. Who is going to actually do the legwork and make the phone calls and send the emails and present the numbers and demographics to make microadvertising work? Where's the living to be made?

It seems to me that if you can solve that you can solve the other. Perhaps it is some sort of media-buyer to media-placer situation that has to evolve. One person with the ability to place ads across a spectrum of small outlets with a "conversational" understanding of all of them and has gained the trust of a media-buyer to do this effectively. A kind of ubersalesman who has put together a big sheaf of like minded blogs/minipublications and sells the package. It seems to me that that sort of scaling is required.

Perhaps what we need is a new class of salesman: The BlogRep.

JOHN BATTELLE'S INSIGHTFUL ARTICLE Toward the Endemic: What's missing in PPC/Behavioral/Contextual Ad Nets has a lot to say about why advertisers and blogs just don't understand each other.

Something is lost when advertisers don't buy based on the publication. I'm not arguing that buying based on context or content isn't valuable, it certainly is. But in the long run, not considering the publisher's role devalues both the publication *and* the advertiser in the minds of the publishers' audience.

So what, you might be saying. Most major publications utilize both network-based and more traditional "display" advertising - look at the NYT or CNET or CBS Marketwatch. True enough - Martin mentioned yesterday that his "display" advertising at NYT.com is up dramatically and starting to show real traction. (And, by they way, the NYT is steering clear of AdSense image, for obvious reasons....) But the real problem is with smaller sites, sites that can't afford to be understood or purchased any other way but through a network. Sites where there is simply too much transactional friction to make the advertising purchase worthwhile. Sites like....blogs, for example.

Advertisers can't grok all the blogs which might be potential fits for their marketing dollar. Besides the tedium of finding and evaluating them, blogs have no standardized marketing or advertising practices, so working with each is a handrolled labor of love.

Essential reading if you'd like to find a way to have an enduring relationship with advertising. Still, it led me to wonder if we are going to see it anytime soon without the creation of a whole new kind of salesman. As I remarked in the comments to this article:

I found this to be a valuable article with a number of insightful points. At the same time, the push towards "conversational" advertising leads me to wonder who there will be to bell the cat.

In my experience, ads appear in magazines not merely because there is a mystical conversation going on between the reader and the magazine, but because there has been a real converstation between an ad salesman for that magazine and a media buyer. And not just a conversation, but a relationship that has been built up from many meetings and conversations.

To whip out and old chainsaw, you can have the best product and the best ideas in the world but nothing happens until someone sells something. Who are going to be the salesmen for these micro-accounts? Good media salesmen can make well into the six figures every year. Who is going to actually do the legwork and make the phone calls and send the emails and present the numbers and demographics to make microadvertising work? Where's the living to be made?

It seems to me that if you can solve that you can solve the other. Perhaps it is some sort of media-buyer to media-placer situation that has to evolve. One person with the ability to place ads across a spectrum of small outlets with a "conversational" understanding of all of them and has gained the trust of a media-buyer to do this effectively. A kind of ubersalesman who has put together a big sheaf of like minded blogs/minipublications and sells the package. It seems to me that that sort of scaling is required.

Perhaps what we need is a new class of salesman: The BlogRep.

NOT ONLY THAT, THEY'D BE STYLING ON the New Schwinn Sting-Ray Muscle Bike

Part chopper. Part cruiser.
100% muscle bike --
The new Schwinn Sting-Ray is all about the ride. Built with customized parts -- like the Big Boa Tire and signature V-back Handlebars -- it's no wonder Schwinn Sting-Rays are endorsed by Orange County Choppers. Straddle the saddle and hit the pavement... the rebirth of cool has arrived.

Don't miss the Schwinn Sting-Ray - TV Spots. Go for the 60 second one.

NOT ONLY THAT, THEY'D BE STYLING ON the New Schwinn Sting-Ray Muscle Bike

Part chopper. Part cruiser.
100% muscle bike --
The new Schwinn Sting-Ray is all about the ride. Built with customized parts -- like the Big Boa Tire and signature V-back Handlebars -- it's no wonder Schwinn Sting-Rays are endorsed by Orange County Choppers. Straddle the saddle and hit the pavement... the rebirth of cool has arrived.

Don't miss the Schwinn Sting-Ray - TV Spots. Go for the 60 second one.

"Have you already been subjugated by the ideal post-modern marriage of aesthetic ugliness and materialist idolatry?"

-- From Coffeehouse at the End-Of-Days: McMansion Invasion

"Have you already been subjugated by the ideal post-modern marriage of aesthetic ugliness and materialist idolatry?"

-- From Coffeehouse at the End-Of-Days: McMansion Invasion

WE'VE ALL HEARD THE EXPRESSION, "He's trying to cram 20 pounds of BS into a 10 pound bag." It implies that the source of our annoyance is so full of BS that he hasn't got room for it all. Given the incessant repetition of the Democrats and their fellow media travelers working overtime to demoralize their own country, you might think that this is a classic example of the cramming behavior referenced above.

You might think that but you would be wrong. Just the reverse is true. What we are seeing is a shortage of BS sloshing about in a very large bag. This is why all these memes hang around and pollute our shared spiritual commons these days. For when you are short on actual examples to buttress your argument, what you have to do is repeat them in as endless a variety as you can imagine. This is to create the impression that there is a vast body of weighty evidence propping up your argument when it is, in reality, as thin as the gruel once doled out to orphans in Victorian work houses. Feed them the same slop over and over, they might think they're full.

If you want to show just how evil your country is and all you've got is a dozen or so twisted individuals running a prison in Iraq, just repeat the statement 10,000 times and show the same pictures from different angles. Voila, you've got 120,000 impressions of evil. You've smeared your own country with thousands of brush strokes and you've gotten to feel good about yourself while you're doing it.

If your lie is that "Bush Lied," repeat it like some magic incantation one million times and print up a lot of posters for it. You've learned from tyrants and dictators how to inflate your lie into the Big Lie. If a lot of you, because of the way you were raised, have your hands on the media, you can repeat the reports about the lie and through sheer dint of amplification make the Big Lie bigger.

Then, when your examples and your 'proof,' gets lighter and lighter until it barely fills the bottom of your BS bag and starts to smell, shall we say, less than fresh -- you can always root around in all that sludge down there and pluck out the dripping and foulest morsel you carry with you in case of extreme emergencies -- The Nazis. You will be breaking Godwin's Law, but you'll hope nobody'll notice you're overdrawn at the Bank of BS. If you can't prove it, tell everyone your opponents are Nazis. It won't work, but you'll continue to get invitations to dinner parties and afternoons in the Hamptons and paychecks, so what the hell. What's a little BS among friends that desperately need some more BS to fill up the empty sacks of their souls?

Matthew Yglesias has obviously come up with his own critical BS shortage in The Return of the 'Stab In the Back' at the woefully named redoubt for those whose BS just isn't playing like it used to, - Center for American Progress. Matt tells us:

The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the "stab in the back" myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq, the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war, but rather on those who had the temerity to note that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.

Connoisseurs of fine BS have to stop to savor that one. It is a brilliant example of prime, well-aged and finely marbled BS.

Let's look at how much high-density BS is in that one:
1) It predicts a Naziesque crackdown that is just around the corner, much like the manner in which people's rights have been ruthlessly repressed since the advent of the Patriot Act.
2) It whips up a brief period of mourning for the tragedy of Weimar Germany -- that all too brief spring of free absinthe and cocaine l'entre deux guerres, that one fragile thing that could have stood against Hitler -- a warns America that it too could be a Weimar Republic.
3) It then gives to the critics ( the few, the select, the brave enough to run a typewriter four thousand miles from a war zone and tell us what's wrong with it) the virtue of having "temerity" as if bravery in this world was found by just shooting your mouth off in the center of a vast circle of like-minded friends.
4) It then warns of the looming disaster that awaits truth, justice and the American Way, just by noting that there's a lot of people working the media who would be really pleased to see their own country lose no matter what the cost.
5) It wraps the whole thing up by referencing the "journalistic food chain" and warning how ugly it is down there, as opposed to the finer, brighter, whiter realms that Yglesias and his band of snobs inhabit.

Fine, fine, fine BS. It may even fill up the Democratic BS bag a bit so that the sloshing sounds from within don't echo so much and make the bag seem so hollow.

But hollow it is. We can tell that is the truth from the blunt fact that Yglesias has evoked, in his desperation for just a little more BS to fill his bag, Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law     prov.     [Usenet] "As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

Thus, for all that we are afflicted by the endless replays of Yellowcake, the Plame Game, the Bush Lied Lie, the Clarke Testimony, the Woodward Access, the Abu Ghraib Gambit, the WMD Goalpost Moves, we can hope to see an end to it at some point. We know, from this masterful effort at scraping up some refuse and shaping it into a new cake of BS that, in fact, the Democratic BS is getting in short supply.

So little BS remains in the Left's Strategic BS Reserve that there may not be enough on hand for John Kerry to mount a serious BS attack on the President. This may account for his grudging agreements dressed up like differences of the last few days. Yes, the BS shortage is real and critical for the Left. They've used too much ammunition too soon and may well have to "save the last BS for themselves."

Witness to this is found in Yglesias' own article when, in searching for "fresh evidence" of his enemies willingness to trash the press he can only come up with the 'transgression' of

Glenn Reynolds,... campaign to incite the defacement of New York Times distribution boxes .

This is mind-boggling BS that refers to a couple of photos of NYT boxes that some benighted souls had scribbled on. It is wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling BS. But it is of something so slight that , even if it were true, would still leave Yglesias in the position of have only one ounce of fresh BS for his twenty pound sack. The sloshing would still be audible from a thousand yards.

I don't know what they're thinking other than "We just hate that stupid, stupid President...," but they'd better get some fresh BS in massive quantities, because at this rate they don't have enough BS to win a national election, no matter how many times they put their two horse apples on national television.

WE'VE ALL HEARD THE EXPRESSION, "He's trying to cram 20 pounds of BS into a 10 pound bag." It implies that the source of our annoyance is so full of BS that he hasn't got room for it all. Given the incessant repetition of the Democrats and their fellow media travelers working overtime to demoralize their own country, you might think that this is a classic example of the cramming behavior referenced above.

You might think that but you would be wrong. Just the reverse is true. What we are seeing is a shortage of BS sloshing about in a very large bag. This is why all these memes hang around and pollute our shared spiritual commons these days. For when you are short on actual examples to buttress your argument, what you have to do is repeat them in as endless a variety as you can imagine. This is to create the impression that there is a vast body of weighty evidence propping up your argument when it is, in reality, as thin as the gruel once doled out to orphans in Victorian work houses. Feed them the same slop over and over, they might think they're full.

If you want to show just how evil your country is and all you've got is a dozen or so twisted individuals running a prison in Iraq, just repeat the statement 10,000 times and show the same pictures from different angles. Voila, you've got 120,000 impressions of evil. You've smeared your own country with thousands of brush strokes and you've gotten to feel good about yourself while you're doing it.

If your lie is that "Bush Lied," repeat it like some magic incantation one million times and print up a lot of posters for it. You've learned from tyrants and dictators how to inflate your lie into the Big Lie. If a lot of you, because of the way you were raised, have your hands on the media, you can repeat the reports about the lie and through sheer dint of amplification make the Big Lie bigger.

Then, when your examples and your 'proof,' gets lighter and lighter until it barely fills the bottom of your BS bag and starts to smell, shall we say, less than fresh -- you can always root around in all that sludge down there and pluck out the dripping and foulest morsel you carry with you in case of extreme emergencies -- The Nazis. You will be breaking Godwin's Law, but you'll hope nobody'll notice you're overdrawn at the Bank of BS. If you can't prove it, tell everyone your opponents are Nazis. It won't work, but you'll continue to get invitations to dinner parties and afternoons in the Hamptons and paychecks, so what the hell. What's a little BS among friends that desperately need some more BS to fill up the empty sacks of their souls?

Matthew Yglesias has obviously come up with his own critical BS shortage in The Return of the 'Stab In the Back' at the woefully named redoubt for those whose BS just isn't playing like it used to, - Center for American Progress. Matt tells us:

The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the "stab in the back" myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq, the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war, but rather on those who had the temerity to note that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.

Connoisseurs of fine BS have to stop to savor that one. It is a brilliant example of prime, well-aged and finely marbled BS.

Let's look at how much high-density BS is in that one:
1) It predicts a Naziesque crackdown that is just around the corner, much like the manner in which people's rights have been ruthlessly repressed since the advent of the Patriot Act.
2) It whips up a brief period of mourning for the tragedy of Weimar Germany -- that all too brief spring of free absinthe and cocaine l'entre deux guerres, that one fragile thing that could have stood against Hitler -- a warns America that it too could be a Weimar Republic.
3) It then gives to the critics ( the few, the select, the brave enough to run a typewriter four thousand miles from a war zone and tell us what's wrong with it) the virtue of having "temerity" as if bravery in this world was found by just shooting your mouth off in the center of a vast circle of like-minded friends.
4) It then warns of the looming disaster that awaits truth, justice and the American Way, just by noting that there's a lot of people working the media who would be really pleased to see their own country lose no matter what the cost.
5) It wraps the whole thing up by referencing the "journalistic food chain" and warning how ugly it is down there, as opposed to the finer, brighter, whiter realms that Yglesias and his band of snobs inhabit.

Fine, fine, fine BS. It may even fill up the Democratic BS bag a bit so that the sloshing sounds from within don't echo so much and make the bag seem so hollow.

But hollow it is. We can tell that is the truth from the blunt fact that Yglesias has evoked, in his desperation for just a little more BS to fill his bag, Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law     prov.     [Usenet] "As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

Thus, for all that we are afflicted by the endless replays of Yellowcake, the Plame Game, the Bush Lied Lie, the Clarke Testimony, the Woodward Access, the Abu Ghraib Gambit, the WMD Goalpost Moves, we can hope to see an end to it at some point. We know, from this masterful effort at scraping up some refuse and shaping it into a new cake of BS that, in fact, the Democratic BS is getting in short supply.

So little BS remains in the Left's Strategic BS Reserve that there may not be enough on hand for John Kerry to mount a serious BS attack on the President. This may account for his grudging agreements dressed up like differences of the last few days. Yes, the BS shortage is real and critical for the Left. They've used too much ammunition too soon and may well have to "save the last BS for themselves."

Witness to this is found in Yglesias' own article when, in searching for "fresh evidence" of his enemies willingness to trash the press he can only come up with the 'transgression' of

Glenn Reynolds,... campaign to incite the defacement of New York Times distribution boxes .

This is mind-boggling BS that refers to a couple of photos of NYT boxes that some benighted souls had scribbled on. It is wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling BS. But it is of something so slight that , even if it were true, would still leave Yglesias in the position of have only one ounce of fresh BS for his twenty pound sack. The sloshing would still be audible from a thousand yards.

I don't know what they're thinking other than "We just hate that stupid, stupid President...," but they'd better get some fresh BS in massive quantities, because at this rate they don't have enough BS to win a national election, no matter how many times they put their two horse apples on national television.

JUNKYARDBLOG HAS CREATED a brilliant short film summing up the tectonic shift of Al Gore and the Democratic Party in the last few years. Conclusion: They are the disaster for our country that Al Gore speaks of.

Stream this film and pass it on. Quicktime version at: Gore Speaks

Now, if we could just convince the Republicans to put up a little money to get this on the air.

JUNKYARDBLOG HAS CREATED a brilliant short film summing up the tectonic shift of Al Gore and the Democratic Party in the last few years. Conclusion: They are the disaster for our country that Al Gore speaks of.

Stream this film and pass it on. Quicktime version at: Gore Speaks

Now, if we could just convince the Republicans to put up a little money to get this on the air.

OPINION JOURNAL REPORTS ON THE long and tedious operation of finding and reading Saddam's Files

Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.

We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix.

We'll soon find out that they did mix, but then the standard chant will be that "they didn't mix enough." When we find that they mixed often and frequently and are, indeed, mixing today to kill our soldiers, the chant will change to "they need to mix more."

So it goes. You cannot wise up fools.

OPINION JOURNAL REPORTS ON THE long and tedious operation of finding and reading Saddam's Files

Coalition forces have found--literally--millions of documents. These papers are still being sorted, translated and absorbed, but they are already turning up new facts about Saddam's links to terrorism.

We realize that even raising this subject now is politically incorrect. It is an article of faith among war opponents that there were no links whatsoever--that "secular" Saddam and fundamentalist Islamic terrorists didn't mix.

We'll soon find out that they did mix, but then the standard chant will be that "they didn't mix enough." When we find that they mixed often and frequently and are, indeed, mixing today to kill our soldiers, the chant will change to "they need to mix more."

So it goes. You cannot wise up fools.

What is the sound
of one ear flapping?

FROM: The Revealer: The First Noble Truth of Charlie Brown

Revealing religion in pop culture requires looking beyond the artist's intentions, to the swirl of cultural influences in which he or she worked and the whirlwind of cultural influences in which we receive the fruits of the artist's labor -- the pop culture blizzard in which the zazen of a silent beagle offers some kind of serenity, if not redemption.

What is the sound
of one ear flapping?

FROM: The Revealer: The First Noble Truth of Charlie Brown

Revealing religion in pop culture requires looking beyond the artist's intentions, to the swirl of cultural influences in which he or she worked and the whirlwind of cultural influences in which we receive the fruits of the artist's labor -- the pop culture blizzard in which the zazen of a silent beagle offers some kind of serenity, if not redemption.

SLATE'S LONG RUNNING EXERCISE IN ELITIST SMARM Bushism of the Day By Jacob Weisberg is part of the ongoing "isn't the President stupid' meme that liberals love to drench themselves in. It has always been a scrape-the-bottom feature and, on occassions too numerous to count, slants and distorts the speech for the sake of a cheap laugh. It also never, ever links to the news item that inspired it. Context, you see, might spoil the joke with the truth.

On Wednesday, Weisberg -- who's made some pocket change off this "concept" -- gave the world this as a Bushism:

"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein."-- Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004

The man was one of a group of Iraqi men whose hands had indeed been chopped off by Hussein. They had been given new hands by a team of American doctors in America. That's the plain and simple truth of the matter.

That anyone would look to mine this moment for the sake of making it seem other than it was is despicable. But being despicable seems to be what Weisberg and his ilk are all about these days.

If there was ever an example of unalloyed good being done for individual Iraqi citizens, you would think that giving men new hands would be one of them.

But for Weisberg and his ilk, it is merely another chance to steal a march on the good and reinforce evil.

You would think that Weisberg would be ashamed of himself, you would think that Slate would be ashamed. But you would be wrong. The sense of shame has long abandoned these people. All they have is hate. And, in due course, hate shall be their reward.

SLATE'S LONG RUNNING EXERCISE IN ELITIST SMARM Bushism of the Day By Jacob Weisberg is part of the ongoing "isn't the President stupid' meme that liberals love to drench themselves in. It has always been a scrape-the-bottom feature and, on occassions too numerous to count, slants and distorts the speech for the sake of a cheap laugh. It also never, ever links to the news item that inspired it. Context, you see, might spoil the joke with the truth.

On Wednesday, Weisberg -- who's made some pocket change off this "concept" -- gave the world this as a Bushism:

"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein."-- Washington, D.C., May 25, 2004

The man was one of a group of Iraqi men whose hands had indeed been chopped off by Hussein. They had been given new hands by a team of American doctors in America. That's the plain and simple truth of the matter.

That anyone would look to mine this moment for the sake of making it seem other than it was is despicable. But being despicable seems to be what Weisberg and his ilk are all about these days.

If there was ever an example of unalloyed good being done for individual Iraqi citizens, you would think that giving men new hands would be one of them.

But for Weisberg and his ilk, it is merely another chance to steal a march on the good and reinforce evil.

You would think that Weisberg would be ashamed of himself, you would think that Slate would be ashamed. But you would be wrong. The sense of shame has long abandoned these people. All they have is hate. And, in due course, hate shall be their reward.

IN ANOTHER OF A SERIES OF BRILLIANT OBSERVATIONS, Belmont Club shows us where on the battlefield we are. Indeed, he shows us exactly what the "battlefield" has become:

" [F]oreign battlefields and home front have merged into one integrated area of operations. There is now no real distinction between winning the "media war" and cleaning out a sniper's nest in Ramadi; between Abu Ghraib the prison and Abu Ghraib the media event. Many readers have criticized the Belmont Club's An Intelligence Failure as being too "soft" on the liberal press, arguing that the media's distortions are not simply the effect of incompetence but the result of a deliberate campaign of partisan information. Doubtless many in the liberal press harbor symmetrical resentments. Yet I have held back from framing the argument in these terms until I could place it in the framework of Col. Leonhard's concept of a global battlefield: one in which the WTC towers and the New York Times newsroom are front line positions no less than any corner in Baghdad; and where victory is measured not simply by the surrender of arms but the capitulation of ideas. We have begun the 21st century just as we inaugurated the 20th: at the edge of old familiar places and on the brink of the unknown.

IN ANOTHER OF A SERIES OF BRILLIANT OBSERVATIONS, Belmont Club shows us where on the battlefield we are. Indeed, he shows us exactly what the "battlefield" has become:

" [F]oreign battlefields and home front have merged into one integrated area of operations. There is now no real distinction between winning the "media war" and cleaning out a sniper's nest in Ramadi; between Abu Ghraib the prison and Abu Ghraib the media event. Many readers have criticized the Belmont Club's An Intelligence Failure as being too "soft" on the liberal press, arguing that the media's distortions are not simply the effect of incompetence but the result of a deliberate campaign of partisan information. Doubtless many in the liberal press harbor symmetrical resentments. Yet I have held back from framing the argument in these terms until I could place it in the framework of Col. Leonhard's concept of a global battlefield: one in which the WTC towers and the New York Times newsroom are front line positions no less than any corner in Baghdad; and where victory is measured not simply by the surrender of arms but the capitulation of ideas. We have begun the 21st century just as we inaugurated the 20th: at the edge of old familiar places and on the brink of the unknown.

(for Thom Gunn 1929-2004)

Perhaps our dances, in a thousand years,
will tattooed be as drums,
And our bright minds, forged by fate,
will in the musk of eons drown.

Our souls will all rise glorified
as a pod of whales weaves waves.
Our flesh, once firm, relaxed as stones
that serve to mark our graves.

Our pleasures seen as ancient rites
describable as dreams;
Our voices, in a million years,
insubstantial as starbeams.

Perhaps our minuets, in a billion years,
will as steel stiffened be.
Our arabesques as smooth and gestural
as drowned paintings of the sea.

Our nods but inclinations
of the folds beneath the eyes.
Our plans but vague intentions
of the wind beneath the skies.

Our breath, a transpiration
of dust immured in dust.
Our lives, a visitation
of a rush light drowned in musk.

All these, our words and scattered songs,
May come, in time, to less than naught,
As Mayan blocks of hard hacked stone
Embalm the skin we once sloughed off.

But now, like rattles kept within
A jeweled bone box, our hollowed skin
Is shaken in the rambles of the park
To frighten schoolgirls after dark.

(for Thom Gunn 1929-2004)

Perhaps our dances, in a thousand years,
will tattooed be as drums,
And our bright minds, forged by fate,
will in the musk of eons drown.

Our souls will all rise glorified
as a pod of whales weaves waves.
Our flesh, once firm, relaxed as stones
that serve to mark our graves.

Our pleasures seen as ancient rites
describable as dreams;
Our voices, in a million years,
insubstantial as starbeams.

Perhaps our minuets, in a billion years,
will as steel stiffened be.
Our arabesques as smooth and gestural
as drowned paintings of the sea.

Our nods but inclinations
of the folds beneath the eyes.
Our plans but vague intentions
of the wind beneath the skies.

Our breath, a transpiration
of dust immured in dust.
Our lives, a visitation
of a rush light drowned in musk.

All these, our words and scattered songs,
May come, in time, to less than naught,
As Mayan blocks of hard hacked stone
Embalm the skin we once sloughed off.

But now, like rattles kept within
A jeweled bone box, our hollowed skin
Is shaken in the rambles of the park
To frighten schoolgirls after dark.

THE LONG RUNNING WASHINGTONIENNE CHARADE continues to suck in the credulous, but sometimes with amusing results. The best riff today is an extended item at The Ace of Spades Sex Blog

Today I met with a fellow blogger to commiserate. We'll call him -- just to give him a name -- "Joshua Micah Marshall."

"Life is tough," I told him.

"Tell me about it," he said, and then sipped his double-latte mochaccino.

"I'll tell you," I said. "I'm desperate. Actually, I was desperate three days ago. I'm beyond desperate now." I sighed. "I've really got to get laid."

He fixed me a look as he wiped the froth from his lip. He extended a gentle hand out and caressed the side of my face. "I know someplace we could go," Josh told me.

Now, it's times like this that make you decide just how much your dreams mean to you.

Book deal, said one part of my brain.

Gay sex with Josh Marshall, countered the other part of my brain.

I did a quick calculation. How bad could it be, really? A lot of people seem to like having gay sex. How could I be sure I wasn't one of them? I've never really given it a fair chance, I reasoned.

And so we began walking to an alley behind the store.

He began pulling the rings off his fingers. "Just for safety's sake," he told me.

What the hell did that mean?

Top marks for humor, low marks for gullibiiity.

THE LONG RUNNING WASHINGTONIENNE CHARADE continues to suck in the credulous, but sometimes with amusing results. The best riff today is an extended item at The Ace of Spades Sex Blog

Today I met with a fellow blogger to commiserate. We'll call him -- just to give him a name -- "Joshua Micah Marshall."

"Life is tough," I told him.

"Tell me about it," he said, and then sipped his double-latte mochaccino.

"I'll tell you," I said. "I'm desperate. Actually, I was desperate three days ago. I'm beyond desperate now." I sighed. "I've really got to get laid."

He fixed me a look as he wiped the froth from his lip. He extended a gentle hand out and caressed the side of my face. "I know someplace we could go," Josh told me.

Now, it's times like this that make you decide just how much your dreams mean to you.

Book deal, said one part of my brain.

Gay sex with Josh Marshall, countered the other part of my brain.

I did a quick calculation. How bad could it be, really? A lot of people seem to like having gay sex. How could I be sure I wasn't one of them? I've never really given it a fair chance, I reasoned.

And so we began walking to an alley behind the store.

He began pulling the rings off his fingers. "Just for safety's sake," he told me.

What the hell did that mean?

Top marks for humor, low marks for gullibiiity.

Al Gore Giving His Fans
That "Kennedyesque" Look

FROM "THE CORNERED" -- INTERNAL WEBLOG AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Embittered Demented Democratic Gerbil Spews Froth at Move-On Fornication Festival Nope. Too long, detailed and accurate.

Amnesia Strikes Gore As He Calls Bush Most Dishonest President Since Nixon
Nope. Nixon's dead and most Move-On'ers slept through their American History class. They won't get it.

If he had a tenth as much passion in 2000, Al Gore would be President today.
Nope. Too close to the painful truth.

Al Gore Has Full-Blown Dean Episode. Closet Deaniacs Snort Bathtub Meth and Cheer
Nope. Reveals too much about the Democrats energy source

Gore Leads Democratic Party in Defection from Prozac Nation
Nope. It'll piss off our pharmaceutical advertisers

Gore Joins Kennedy as Full-Time Hit Man for the Kerry/Soprano Family
Are you kidding. That was our idea. Don't want to leak that.

Gore Calls for Rumsfeld and Rice Resignation. Stops Short of Calling for Bush Assassination
Close but cut that down a bit. No sense in telling them the news we've got lined up for next week.

Gore Calls for Rumsfeld and Rice to Resign
That's it! It's got it all and it doesn't tell anything about his behavior. Nice and calm. Who could object to a headline like that? It gives the news without giving the news. That's what we're about down here in the New York Times Headline room. Take the rest of the week off.

Source -- The New York Times

Or try Here for a more penetrating analysis. Short form: "That Al. He crazy."

Al Gore Giving His Fans
That "Kennedyesque" Look

FROM "THE CORNERED" -- INTERNAL WEBLOG AT THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Embittered Demented Democratic Gerbil Spews Froth at Move-On Fornication Festival Nope. Too long, detailed and accurate.

Amnesia Strikes Gore As He Calls Bush Most Dishonest President Since Nixon
Nope. Nixon's dead and most Move-On'ers slept through their American History class. They won't get it.

If he had a tenth as much passion in 2000, Al Gore would be President today.
Nope. Too close to the painful truth.

Al Gore Has Full-Blown Dean Episode. Closet Deaniacs Snort Bathtub Meth and Cheer
Nope. Reveals too much about the Democrats energy source

Gore Leads Democratic Party in Defection from Prozac Nation
Nope. It'll piss off our pharmaceutical advertisers

Gore Joins Kennedy as Full-Time Hit Man for the Kerry/Soprano Family
Are you kidding. That was our idea. Don't want to leak that.

Gore Calls for Rumsfeld and Rice Resignation. Stops Short of Calling for Bush Assassination
Close but cut that down a bit. No sense in telling them the news we've got lined up for next week.

Gore Calls for Rumsfeld and Rice to Resign
That's it! It's got it all and it doesn't tell anything about his behavior. Nice and calm. Who could object to a headline like that? It gives the news without giving the news. That's what we're about down here in the New York Times Headline room. Take the rest of the week off.

Source -- The New York Times

Or try Here for a more penetrating analysis. Short form: "That Al. He crazy."

THE SELF-PROCLAIMED CREATOR EMERITUS OF THE ENTIRE BLOGSPHERE takes careful aim at foot and pulls trigger at Scripting News: 5/27/2004

"I did something realllly stupid this morning, I installed a free program that offered me a choice: $29.95 with no ads or $0 with ads. Since I was just checking it out, I opted for the $0 version. I figured a few ads, no problemmo. If I like it I'll pay the bucks. Big big mistake. Popups all over the place. Tons of virusware installed. I expect to be digging out all day."

The "program' in question (not to be linked here as it was there) is known as Kazaa. That's right, Kazza. A program whose malign effects are only known to 99.99999% of everybody with network access. A search term that returns nearly 28 MILLION Google hits. "Kazaa- All spyware, All virus, All popups, All the time!" Who knew?

Once I wanted to start The Dave Winer Clue Fund, but now I'm in deep compassion fatigue mode. Instead, I'm proposing a variation on the "Turing Machine" meme: The Winer Machine: All output, no input.