We interrupt your regularly scheduled content for a note from Mrs. VDL. Don't worry, Mr. American Digest will return tomorrow.

The December issue of Coast magazine (which is tossed on our driveway monthly for free) includes the obligatory gift guide for befuddled holiday shoppers. Just to show how culturally-savvy my dad is, one of the presents that he gave Gerard last year is featured in the magazine’s collection of this year’s hot-hot gifts.

Yes, I’m talking about Mr. Wonderful, and when I wrote about him last year, it was my first-ever post:

"The biggest laugh of Christmas morning came when my witty and urbane husband Gerard opened a large package containing Mr. Wonderful, a 12” talking doll that spouts off 16 different phrases when you squeeze his palm. He’s every woman’s dream come true, in plastic, anyway. Handsome, sensitive, and a good listener, he says things that women want to hear, but seldom do, like:

You know honey, why don't you just relax and let me make dinner tonight?

Why don't we go to the mall? Didn't you want some new shoes?

You know, I think it's really important that we talk about our relationship.

You've been on my mind all day. That's why I bought you these flowers."

The original post is here.

Blogger baldilocks relates an incident en route to a concert where a the blackness of Colin Powell and Condi Rice's thoughts were called into question. To illustrate she proposes a thought experiment at baldilocks: More Than A Notion . At the conclusion of the experiment she notes:

Simply consider why those blacks who have been accused of bad behavior or demonstrate questionable character do not have their "blackness" questioned, but those who are conservative and/or preach the virtues of hard work do.

I, for one, would be very interested to see a good answer to that.

The utterly virtual but still cute and modestly amazing Nintendo Pups!

They cute too!

What?

"Imagine a means for fish to swim out the top of your aquarium, up to the ceiling, across the room and then down into another tank. That's a fish highway ."

After the Florida Election fiasco of 2000, masses of the outraged losers at The Well [ better known as The Leisure World of Online Conferencing] descended into a depression that deepened into what can only be described as a political psychosis. The same elements we see now were born then -- Liberalosis, Bushophobia, Halliburtonhallucinogenia, Dumbmentia, MovingOutItus, Progressophrenia, and a tendency to froth at the mention of the word "Florida."

I'd been a member of The Well for over ten years at the time and, as the months dragged on, I became an increasingly unpopular member. Not that I didn't deserve it. My many issues with their manias grew apace. Nobody likes a person who, once insane, returns to his senses in the middle of the asylum and informs the inmates that they are stark raving mad. It's a buzzkiller and the inmates of the Well loved their BushBuzz more than life itself. Following the attacks of September 11, many of The Well's manias went into remission -- some for nearly 90 minutes before roaring back.

For some weeks now I've viewed the mental diseases previously held in check behind the conferencing wall of the Well metastasize into the general population of online political losers across the blogsphere. For some time I had hoped it was a temporary mania of the type chronicled in Charles Mackay's classic 19th century work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds . In this tome, Mackay notes the subject of the book in the Preface:

In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

Yes, I had hoped some "new folly more captivating than the first" would present itself to these sufferers and that they would, at last, "go gentle into that good night."

But this, alas, is not to be. The Democrats dementia deepens and darkens across the cyberscape. Indeed, listening to the unremitting moans, screams and quiet sobbing of the Damned it is impossible not to think of that other 19th century classic, Poe's The Raven wherein we read:

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered-not a feather then he fluttered-
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before-
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore-
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden more
Of 'Never-nevermore.'"

I admit I thought that analogy somewhat melodramatic, but then I learned it is not nearly melodramatic enough.

Reality has outstripped Poe's literary classic in the form of the "new, improved Raven," with the advent of one Mel Giles, whose sopping wet effort The Politics of Victimization is the current Cloverine-Brand Mental Salve for those now in orbit outside the political realities of our planet.

Ms. Giles, introduced as one "who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse," has it all worked out and blended into a rich brew of caramel-laced, non-fat, decaf Dysfunctional Latte. It is strange that the "complex and highly intelligent " minds that make up the shrinking remnant of true believers lust for simple answers, but they do. And Ms. Giles is not slow to spoon the froth onto the cup.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

This is a classic example of what is called "The illusion of central position." Ms. Giles simply takes the pap she's conjured up from endless hours of swapping suppositions at domestic abuse clinics and slaps it onto electoral politics. She also likes to play with the word "beat," substituting the act of slapping someone around with the situation in which one is bested in a democratic election.

It's important for her to get that little verbal slight of hand in early because once the sufferer accepts it, everything else follows. It is also handy to slap on the label "abuser" since who can argue that an abuser who slaps someone else around is an evil person, or persons, or group? Typically, the victims of a domestic abuser are women and who likes a woman-beater? Nobody. The lowest of the low.

Now that we've got that little bit of intellectual slight-of-hand out of the way, we're ready to be "looped into the cycle of violence." Well, this is more loopy than looped, but we must descend deeper into this dab of dementia.

According to Ms. Giles, she and her fellow sufferers are going to have to get used to the notion that they are undergoing an non-stop stream of "verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence." I note that very few American voters are in Iraq and, if election reports from there have any merit, the vast majority are not only for President Bush but exceedingly well-armed. For the rest of Ms. Giles millions of "patients," I suggest that they tune out of the info-stream for a few days and see if that doesn't quiet the "verbal and mental" violence of the voices in their heads.

Fortunately for the sufferers, Ms. Giles, the Compassionate, does not just reveal to them their debased state, she offers them a kind of "Dummys Guide to Abuse Avoidance." It's a fascinating insight not so much for the advice, but for the insights into the deeply rooted wrongheadedness and woolly thinking of the author and her cohorts:

As victims we cant stop asking ourselves what we did wrong.

Actually, you can. In fact one of the best ways stop beating on yourself is to stop beating on yourself.

We cant seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Humm, I was under the impression that the losers in this election were the "smart" people. This phenomena, if true, seems to betoken a set of people that are either born dumb, achieve dumb, or have had dumb thrust upon them. Perhaps all three. Still, if true, it is terrible to see so many reduced to intellectual servitude at the hands of an oppressing race. There must be a way out! And Ms. Giles does not disappoint.

How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.

Again, the simple answer for the self-proclaimed complex minds. And what is the way, the truth and the light?

First, you must admit you are a victim.

Catchy, but I can help feel the phrase is a bit derivative. Maybe I've heard it somewhere before.

Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable.

"I hereby declare I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Okay, done. What's next?

Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You dont do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right.

Ah yes, no dialogue over questions of law, policy or taxation. No examination of the self or the Party to see if you can't alter your behavior, your policies or your programs to make them more mainstream. No arguments from logic -- ever. And above all do not attempt to use persuasion. Sounds like a Platform for No Power Ever to me, but what do I know?

You also dont do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you dont resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away.

Am I alone in finding this metaphor weak, wet, ill-conceived, and more revealing of the author's troubled psyche than any actual political situation? I hope not.

You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up.

Here we descend directly into the asinine. The concept that everyone -- 56 million! -- are afflicted with psychological political injuries on the order of a sucking chest wound is inane in the extreme.

Fifty-six million people have about 56 million different sets of reasons for voting one way or another. The proposition that they all "share the pain" is one of the bigger myths being floated. The reason for it is clear. You need to cite a big number to make yourself important in political terms. The underlying human reality has nothing to do with it. In politics no lie is useful unless it is a big lie.

You tell them what youve learned, and that you arent going to take it anymore.

Howard Beale, come on down!

You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell.

First off, you're not tall, you are cramped and bent over with an internally generated rage that less effect on the world than the least dogcatcher elected in the fifth ward of Podunk.

Second, you do not have "56 million people at your side." You might be able to fill the Meadowlands if the Boss plays for free, but don't all head for the parking lot at the same time, okay?

Third, looking into "eyes of the abuser" assumes you can get an appointment. With this attitude, I wouldn't count on getting more than a form email back and then being dumped in the spam filter.

Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But its better than the abuse.

Well, as we used to say on The Well, "Door. Ass. Bang." But if all 56 million are going, you'd better make sure Canada has a homestead act ready for places somewhat above the Arctic Circle. As for the Pied Piper moment that has erupted from your skull, I'm sure more than a few parents, minority and other wise, will have something to say about the kids. Plus, even though there may be some members of the Gay community that favor Lumberjack garb, I don't think they'd be all that crazy about the lifestyle.

With that said, you'd think Ms. Giles cup of froth runneth over. You'd be wrong. She needs to share more of her fantasy with you.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we dont know how.

Except for the weeping part, this little excursion back to the time of Trotsky certainly should chill the blood of the Oppressive Regime of Amerika. The vision of 56 million of our fellow citizens, even the godless ones, humming about and building God-Knows-What in "church basements" (Of all places!), and elsewhere, should have Homeland Security checking out known outlets of fertilizer across the country. Me, I'm shaking in my boots even as I feel their pain.

Ms. Giles then begins, at long last, to take her leave of us with a semi-sweet coda:

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this:

With this we are back to one of the core fantasies of the addlepated Left; that violence against a single woman is equal to the enforced enslavement of millions of people by a Dictatorship or a Theocracy. The mass graves of Cambodia and Iraq, the genocides of Africa and the Balkans give the lie to this concept, but these little facts cannot be seen by the delusional Left.

Finally, Ms. Giles is ready for her close-up:

There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Dont let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (hell win, not because hes right, but because force works).

This little packet neatly assumes that there's nothing wrong on the 'victims' side and nothing correct on the other side. A handy point of view to have if you are addicted to losing elections. Handier still if you actually have no ideas that will work if they are ever implemented.

Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, loose, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct.

Really? Are you sure? Care to run another reality check on that in 2006? Keep it up and you will.

We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Oh, puh-lease! This is just pure tripe and beneath contempt. Any person or group that asserts or, worse still, believes that they have "the mandate of the world" is simply delusional to the Nth degree. If anyone knows where, exactly, one applies for a "World Mandate" this side of Funky Town, please let me know.

What Ms. Giles has is a mandate from the Heart of Her Own Darkness to believe in porcine aviation. Those that choose to join her in her Children's Crusade are advised to pack a lunch and take a candle, for the way will be long and the path dark.

And, oh yes, also put on a lot of protective padding because, as Ms. Giles notes at the bitter end of her bitter buffet of bombast and balderdash:

Even if you do everything right, theyll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they dont even know they are being hit.

You'd think someone so "informed" would have a deeper understanding of the vast array of different people that voted against her tattered fantasies, but that is obviously not the case. She begins in darkness and she ends in ignorance. It's a kind of intellectual Black Hole of Calcutta. I don't know how many others are going to join her in there, but it is already feeling very overcrowded. Would some compassionate conservative please go over in the morning and let the survivors out?

I will wait here for you.

Soros to Shields:"If I'm buying, you're flying."

In a stunning move to reverse the threat to democracy in the Ukraine George Soros wrote a check on Sunday to take possession of the Kiev Holiday Inn and Bali-Themed singles Bar in order the guarantee housing for some 15,000 Blue State Human Shields now inbound to the beleaguered Republic.

Working closely with the recently unemployed staff of MoveOn.org, Soros raised the money from himself during a tense, non-stop negotiating session at his wet-bar last Friday.

"I thought of all the angst and agita I've experienced over the last three weeks," said the reclusive billionaire at a press conference attended by Graydon Carter, Annie Leibovitz and the entire newroom of The New York Times. "What good is money to me when there are democracies to save? And after all, isn't MoveOn.org's motto 'Democracy in Action' ? It is. But what can a humble billionaire do in a world ruled by Halliburton?" Mr. Soros paused as Ms. Leibovitz made a few deft adjustments to his hair.

"Then it came to me. The Human Shields have been out of work and gathering rust and dust in the remainder bins of history for well over a year. The millions of depressed Democrats who have been considering relocation to a Bush-Free Zone have run out of gas long before the petroleum exporting countries ruled by Halliburton. Kerry isn't giving the $16 million back, and I don't know what to think about the rumors that Teresa is out buying a house and new suits for Obama.

"I'm an entrepreneur who's always looking to make lemonade out of lemons, and this thing in the Ukraine seems to have more than its share of lemons. So I thought, hey, we could get the Human Shields back in the game, move MoveOn.org on, give the Democrats another chance of saving democracy, and show up that Boston bozo for the stiff that he is. On top of that, if it works out and democracy is actually saved in the Ukraine, I can flip my Holiday Inn for a nice appreciation ride. The left profile is my best, Annie. How many times do I have to tell you?"

What's this, a film review? Indeed it is. I'd once hoped to have a regular film reviewer for this page, but that person hasn't happened along as yet. Instead, I'll go with this insightful review of National Treasure by the one person I know who's not only quick to sum up a film correctly, but quicker still to find out what's really of value, my wife:

If you've read the reviews, which are pretty snarky for the most part, you might think Nicholas Cage's new quasi action-adventure movie would be a pass. But you'd be wrong. 

Because I was there, at the end of the movie, when a surprisingly healthy round of applause erupted. Gerard looked at me like, "What?" and I said, well, you know there's something to be said for a movie with no sex, barely any violence, and a body count of one (and that was accidental).

She's right. It is suprising how surprising a decent movie can be these days. Perhaps because there are so few of them. Maybe, given the success of National Treasure, there will be more. Read the rest at :

            Cheaper Than Therapy: "National Treasure" on a National Holiday

Until Then

[In Flash so it takes time to load but is well worth it.]

Homeward Bound

In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing and the sky is clear and red.
When the summer's ceased its gleaming,
When the corn is past its prime,
When adventure's lost its meaning,
I'll be homeward bound in time.

Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I'll return to you somehow.

If you find it's me you're missing, if you're hoping I'll return.
To your thoughts I'll soon be list'ning, and in the road I'll stop and turn.
Then the wind will set me racing as my journey nears its end.
And the path I'll be retracing when I'm homeward bound again.

Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling and I'll return to you somehow.

In the quiet misty morning when the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing,
I'll be homeward bound again.

Words and music by Marta Keen.

Lyrics found by RickinVa @ Brutally Honest: Homeward Bound

The peace movements of the last 150 years have been animated by "wishful thinking," which helps to explain their often self-destructive behavior. But .... it's not merely a wish for, but a lust for peace that's the root of this evil. -- Demosophia: Lust for Peace

It isn't always the case that a politician's promise is the birth of a lie. More often than not, it just turns out that way. It turns out that way not because, I hasten to add, the politician lied at the time of the promise, but because the promises of politicians are most often descriptions of a future that can never come to pass.

The promises of our politicians are but articulations of our own fantasies about the future and, since we know in our bones these things can never come to pass, we hear the promises as lies, but go with them anyway if they reflect our own childish wishes. In the political theater of our days, each side gets the audience to chant, "I do believe in fairies," that Tinkerbell might fly. And Tinkerbell does, while all agree not to notice the wires.

The big lie of the bitter season just past was unusual in that, at the bottom, it was a promise not about the future (although both camps insisted it was), but about the past. The big lie promised a return to the lost lands of September 10, 2001 when all was calm and secure. The big lie was "We'll keep you safe."

Neither side wanted to go too deeply into the "how" of this in very specific terms. But a nod is as good as a wink to a willfully blind electorate, and we all knew "how" our candidate of choice would handle things.

Continued...

Those of us who have cast the legacy media of printed newspapers behind can, for all the advantages of electronic news, miss out on certain crimes against the language that are being committed every day. Crimes so disgusting that I for one believe the perps should be sought out and given a long swing on a short length of knotted hemp.

This morning my wife, who for parenting purposes still believes in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and printed newspapers, brought a two disturbing examples of the Lost Angeles Times' continuing felonious assault on the English language to my attention -- a misdemeanor and a felony.

The misdemeanor headline can be seen online:

Bringing Serious Bling to Colorado Boulevard

But the deeper shame is on the continued or jump page from that story where the innocent and utterly unprepared reader is greeted with the overwhelmingly awful headline:

Rose Queen Will Bling in the New Year

I knew that there would be no stopping the penetration of the spoken language by "bling" more than a

Continued...

I'm not a fan of online polls and am even less sanguine about "stuffing the ballot box," but Matt at BLACKFIVE makes a strong case for:

SI Sportsman of the Year - Vote For Ranger Pat Tillman

Patrick M. sends the link to Sports Illustrated's fan poll for Sportsman of the Year.

Background:  Sports Illustrated is conducting it's annual fan poll for Sportsman of the Year.  This year there is one athlete who stands out.  Tim Layden of CNN/Sports Illustrated lays it out for you.

I'd appreciate it if you took some time to go there, select Pat Tillman on the sliding window on the left of the site (he's second from the bottom and wearing a red football jersey), click on his picture, then hit the vote button.  Just in case you have trouble finding his picture, here is a screenshot of what Pat Tillman's ballot looks like.

Currently, he is in third place behind Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps.

I admire Lance Armstrong and am agnostic on Phelps, but it seems to me that this should be the year of Pat Tillman above all others. If you don't know why, click on the link above and find out.

Then do the right thing for this brave and nobel man.

Excuse me, can I get to the blogsphere from here? Butter up the popcorn, grab a beverage and settle in for two classics.

First the cutting edge,

NYblogs - The Movie,

and then the ever-popular

Digital Convergence - 1994

completes our Thanksgiving double-feature!

Cassini continues to amaze as this item called Hovering Over Titan shows.

"A mosaic of nine processed images recently acquired during Cassini's first very close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan on October 26, 2004 constitutes the most detailed full-disk view yet made of the mysterious moon...." -- Ciclops

The image above echoes in the mind. We know it is impossibly cold down there. We know the atmosphere is a lethal smog of nitrogen, methane, and ethane. We know that the seas shimmering in the faint light of the distant sun are liquid methane.

All these things we know and yet, from this image sent back to us by our instruments, there is somehow the shock of recognition. Unlike any other planet or moon we've seen in our brief glimpse of the solar system, this image and this image alone sends an echo. It resembles, despite what we know about it, nothing so much as the Earth itself, and that resemblance alone causes the soul to rise. For if a moon of Saturn can resemble our own planet, it signals that somewhere, perhaps very far away or perhaps not all that far, there is another planet where the resemblance is more than an echo, but a mirror image.

In January

Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

       ----{*}----

After Years

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

Ted Kooser is America's new Poet Laureate

From the Department of "Be Careful What You Wish For," comes this 8-Minute film concerning EPIC 2014.

In 2014, what will you have in your wallet? Will it be one of these?

Continued...

Native Man in Gut Parka with Small Carved Boat
Photographer: Dobbs
Location: Nome, Alaska
Date; Unknown

An immense and deeply fascinating collection of photographs from Alaska during the late 19th and early 20th Century Alaska. Over 13,500 available online @ The Gallery of the UAF Rasmuson Library

• No Joke @ Comedy Central: Hackers co-opted several popular Web sites including comedycentral.com over the weekend, using them to infect thousands of computers with a virus that can be used to steal passwords, bank accounts and other personal information. -- Washington Post
• The TV Dinner Was Born from a Half-Million Pounds of Leftover Turkey: It began as a solution to that All-American holiday problem - what to do with the leftover turkey. But executives at C.A. Swanson & Sons weren't talking about just the remainders of the family meal. They were talking 520,000 pounds of poultry. -- Christian Science Monitor
• Pillars of Wizdum: The Common Assumption, the False Consensus Effect, and the Law of Group Polarization. -- The Chronicle: Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual
• The Definitive Bladerunner Noodle Bar Translation -- Finally! After all these years! Deckard: {Points}Give me four.

  Sushi Master: Futatsu de jubun desu yo. [Japanese: "Two is enough!"]

  Deckard: No. Four. Two, two, four.

  Sushi Master: Futatsu de jubun desu yo. [Japanese: "Two is enough!"]

  Deckard: {Resignedly} And noodles.

  -- BRmovie.com

"The rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated. Dan Rather, reporting."

Victory laps are being run without surcease across the blogsphere today on the news of Dan Rather's resignation. The heady atmosphere of having "bagged him" is rent with triumphant trumpets and the whoops outnumber the de-doos.

I might suggest that the loudest whoops, most brazen trumpets, and fastest lap times are being turned in by those without the slightest experience of how large media institutions are actually structured. Because no matter what you may think of Dan Rather, he's only the front man for an institutionalized attitude that shows no signs of change other than the most cosmetic.

Indeed, the problem of the media's petrified mind-set goes far beyond the institutional. Just as the Groves of Academe are now vast stands of petrified forest, so the paralysis of the MSM is lodged deep in questions of class, clique, money and status.

The main stream media is not the way it is because of this or that individual at this or that company, but because all those who make their livings in it, and who draw their identities from it, have long ago thrown away any elements of their character that would set them apart and inhibit their advancement. Those that have done so and prospered are careful to vet the young that are allowed entry for a carefully monitored and calibrated set of attitudes. Those that do not exhibit the correct head set never get to the first interview. Those that do almost all have a recommendation in order to elevate their resumes out of the slush pile. It helps to go to the right school, but it helps more to have the right parents with the right connections. This isn't unusual or even wrong, but it is a fact.

Last June Peggy Noonan offered some reflections on the graduating class of 2004:

I have been paying attention to the graduates of Ivy League universities. Every one I see the past few weeks is beautiful. They are tall and handsome and gay-spirited; they are strong and laughing and bright. I ask them what they are going to do now. I am repeatedly told things like, "I want to go into TV." And "I'm going to drama school." And "I'm going to journalism school." It occurs to me that all young people who graduate from elite American universities now want to go into communications. It's a whole generation that wants to communicate.

But what do they want to communicate? They don't seem to have a clue. For this is a question that involves the area of Deeply Held Beliefs, and as far as I can see it the deeply held beliefs of these particular graduates is a uniform leftism whose tenets involve reciting clichés. They believe racial and sexual diversity is good, peace is better than war, religious fanaticism is bad. But they don't want to spout clichés--that's not why they went to Cornell. And they know their work will not draw attention if it is marked by tired and essentially noncontroversial ideas. No one thinks war is sweet, there's no market for racial segregation or male chauvinism.

I see no sign they are going to start thinking anything truly unusual for their time and generation--that religious conversion can be a wholly beneficial and life changing event, for instance, or that breaking with liberal orthodoxy might be the beginning of wisdom.
-- Opinion Journal

What Noonan does not say because it goes, indeed, without saying is that the most assertive of the applicants to media glory from these schools will, indeed, get jobs and that their various masses of received wisdom will play a large role in their acceptance. Plus a bit of grease from their parents or the friends of their parents.

Again, this is the way of the world and I'd expect no less from the various tenured or established adults involved, but it does not make for a meritocracy. Nor does it make for the kind of diversity that would indeed reverse the slide of the mainstream media into irrelevance. That can only come from the top and only across the decades. It took more than 30 years for the media and academe to complete their strategic retreats into the castles of elitism and reaction, and it would take the same time to move out of them. But they don't have that kind of time any longer and besides, who would hire their children if they didn't?

UPDATE: And finally, Scrappleface says it all in one headline --     Bloggers Force Retirement of 73-Year-Old Newsman

I'll be going north to Chico, California for a few days for my mother's 90th birthday party. Just the family and about 200 close friends. Back Sunday. My mother promises that she'll take the time to play a set or two of tennis with me, but only if I follow her new rule: "After my birthday, I get two bounces."

Donald Sensing cycles back to something that bears repeating:

Not understanding the intentional lethality of battle is a very common misperception among people of the comfortable classes such as Mrs. Joel - for example, the graduate students I had dinner with one night just after the air campaign began against the Afghan Taliban. They apparently thought that our bombing was a form of posturing, a symbolic display, intended to yield psychological, not lethal, effects on the enemy.

One guest said that the bombing "wouldn't intimidate" the Taliban.

"We're not trying to intimidate them," I said.

"Then why are we bombing them?" came the question.

"To kill them," I answered. There was a long silence at the table. The concept seemed not to have occurred to them. -- One Hand Clapping

As we witness our irreconcilable party of bitterness and defeat retreat from our shared comity through their eagerness to pillory our troops and equate our enemies as, in the words of Chris Matthews of MSNBC, "a rival, I mean they're not bad guys especially, just people who just disagree with us," we are reminded on the same day of the depravity they champion.

We are reminded by an execution a woman at the hands of animals. A woman whose video-taped execution was termed "too upsetting" to be viewed by Al-Jazerra. Too upsetting to be viewed? This from an Arab institution that has no qualms about airing in an endless loop war footage of shootings in mosques? That displays the dismembered remains of Americans hung like slabs of meat on bridges? From whence comes this new found daintiness and delicacy in an institution that both before and after this footage will be only too pleased to wallow in blood and offal?

May I suggest that it is too upsetting not because of the content, but because of what it reveals about the corrupted souls of our enemy, the friends and primary audience of Al-Jazerra. It is too "upsetting" because it does not advance the aspriations of Islamic jihad, but shows all too vividly what this religious disease looks like inside its rotted interior.

The video of this woman's slaughter, placed next to the beheading video of Nick Berg and the mass executions of children in Beslan, completes the trifecta of terror.

Last July, I wrote:

Our unluckiest citizens have had their heads severed from their bodies as pilot episodes of what promises to be a long running reality television series in which American heads are held up, to our horror and for the delight of those many millions that support those that take the heads. The message beyond this madness is that they would be pleased to extend this television series to 300 million beheadings in which each of us would have his "star" turn. Our enemy has not yet taken a woman or a child for a beheading, but both clearly on their programming schedule. -- American Digest: The Sacrifice and the Reckoning

This was written early last July. And now we are there. And it is only the very beginning. All this, and fresh horrors yet unknown except in the insect minds of those we fight, will be repeated and repeated until so common they are unworthy of comment at all, or until those that commit and relish them are expunged.

Who was Mrs. Hassan, the woman kidnapped, tortured for weeks and finally killed yesterday? There have been thousands of stories about her background published, but in the end, this from a young Iraqi woman in Baghdad, is the single brief testament that answers "Who was she?"

She was my English teacher

In the memory of my teacher and a fellow aid worker colleague Mrs. M. Hassan

Mrs. Hassan was my English teacher in The British Council in Baghdad in Al-Wazirya district, I remember her years ago with her Irish accent telling me it's not Important how many words I must learn but the pronunciation of the words I already knew must be perfected.

Mrs. Hassan speak s perfect Arabic and she has a heart of gold, she's been kidnapped today killed by (men in pajamas), turn Iraq upside down and save her find them.

-- Baghdad Dweller » Blog Archive » She was my English teacher

Late yesterday evening, my wife finally came home from an exceedingly long day at work. As she walked towards the door I said, as husbands will, "At last. How was your day?"

She paused and looked at me, "I'm not complaining. I wasn't killed for doing my job. I wasn't killed."

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

         -- Sir Walter Scott - The Lay of the Last Minstrel - Canto VI

By Pat Oliphant.

Pat "Some of my best friends are..." Oliphant

Published this day in the Washington Post . Syndicated too.

I grant that there may have been a more racist cartoon published in a major newspaper in the last 40 years, but I'm not aware of it. If you are, please enlighten me.

[see site for large version]

That last bastion of Grouchoism-Lennonism, The Politburo Diktat has published the retro-definitive Empire of the Blogs map:

In the pre-Marxist era, corrupt aristocrats, bloodsuckers of the people, dominated Central Europe. Not content to oppress the people individually, they joined together, to form a Blogging Empire.

The unusual suspects are revealed. I am pleased to note that my undisclosed location remains undisclosed.

Why take your nuke to town when just standing on the other side of the fence gets you all the way there?

Time Magazine is roiling the blogsphere with its warning of terrorist nukes to be smuggled into Mexico and from there into the the United States

Sharif al-Masri, an Egyptian who was captured in late August near Pakistan's border with Iran and Afghanistan, has told his interrogators of "al-Qaeda's interest in moving nuclear materials from Europe to either the U.S. or Mexico," according to a report circulating among U.S. government officials.

Masri also said al-Qaeda has considered plans to "smuggle nuclear materials to Mexico, then operatives would carry material into the U.S.," according to the report, parts of which were read to TIME. Masri says his family, seeking refuge from al-Qaeda hunters, is now in Iran.

And they would "carry material into the U.S.?" The question that occurs to me in that statement is: Why would they bother?

Once you have smuggled a nuclear weapon into Mexico what reason would you have to take another, bigger risk and try and get it across the border into the United States?

Wouldn't it be much simpler and more straightforward just to take the bomb to Juarez, get as close to the border as possible, and then detonate the device. Given the right set of conditions you could achieve your terrorist aims and never have to set foot in the United States. Why risk two security rings when you can risk only one?

Detonating a nuclear weapon in Juarez, Mexico is the same thing as detonating one in El Paso, Texas:

Walk seven blocks south from the heart of downtown El Paso and you’re on the bridge that empties into Avenida Juárez, the tourism center of Juárez, and you’re a few blocks from the city’s cathedral and main plaza. Nowhere else in the world are two major cities of two different countries so closely connected — or so easy to visit from either side. --El Paso Tourist Guide

What would be the advantages of Juarez/El Paso from a nuclear terrorist's point of view? There are several:

• 1) A combined population of around 2.5 million people. Casualties would be high.
  
• 2) A regional manufacturing center using cheap labor and access to the US market has drawn in GM, Sony, and many other plants and factories. Especially popular are plants that can operate with less regulation in Mexico than in the US, particularly chemical plants. The economic consequences would be dire.
  
• 3) Right on the north-eastern nub of El Paso, about 7 miles from the border, you have the US Army's Fort Bliss.

  Fort Bliss is the home of the Air Defense Artillery Center of Excellence and is responsible for air defense artillery training of U.S. soldiers and various allied nation soldiers. It also the home of seven Forces Command warfighting units - the 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command, 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, the 204th MI Battalion, and the 978th Military Police Company. .... With 1.1 million acres, this post is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and can accommodate every weapon system in the Army. Excellent ranges and training area, coupled with the third longest runway in the nation, make Fort Bliss a premiere facility for training, mobilization and deploying combat forces. -- Global Security.Org

  Needless to say, a nuclear "event" could have severe consequences for the base.
  
• 4) El Paso is Texas, the home state of the President of the United States and a deep red state as well. This would be a propaganda coup of the first order. The symbolism would not be missed by those who wish America harm.

All of which goes to show that the security of the United States doesn't start at the border, but south of the border, down Mexico way. I don't know what Homeland Security is doing about this, but if I was in the organization, I'd be very concerned about the ports of Mexico right now and be looking very hard at truck traffic coming north towards El Paso.

Then, of course, there's the Canadian border.

EWeek has a fascinating wrap-up of the Jaynes Spamming Trial. Short form: 10 Million emails a day = $750,000 per month = 9 years in jail. Trial Shows How Spammers Operate: "Jaynes' business was remarkably lucrative; prosecutors say he grossed up to $750,000 per month. If you have an e-mail account, chances are Jaynes tried to get your attention, pitching software, pornography and work-at-home schemes. The eight-day trial that ended in his conviction this month shed light on the operations of a 30-year-old former purveyor of physical junk mail who worked with minimal assistance out of a nondescript house in Raleigh, N.C. A state jury in Leesburg has recommended a nine-year prison term in the nation's first felony trial of spam purveyors. Sentencing is set for February. "

Michael Totten observes in They Ain’t Studying War No More: "The fewer intellectuals there are on the left who study military history and strategy, the less likely any otherwise left-minded person who is interested in such things will want or be able to work with or for liberals and Democrats. What has been happening is a nation-wide brain-drain from the left to the right – at least in certain areas. "

(Via IP .)

Michael J. Totten: They Ain’t Studying War No More: "The fewer intellectuals there are on the left who study military history and strategy, the less likely any otherwise left-minded person who is interested in such things will want or be able to work with or for liberals and Democrats. What has been happening is a nation-wide brain-drain from the left to the right – at least in certain areas. "

(Via Glenn .)

Pardon my preening, but my amazing, omni-talented and beautiful wife Sheryl, has another article in today's Washington Post. I think you'll find it says, to quote Pope, "what oft was thought but n'ere so well expressed":

Indecent Exposure
When Did Cookware and Fly-Fishing Go X-Rated?
By Sheryl Van der Leun

So there I was, perusing the Perfex salt grinders at my local Williams-Sonoma store, when I overheard an excited thirty-something shopper exclaim breathlessly as she walked by the $1,999 Jura-Capresso Impressa S8 Super Automatic Espresso Coffeemaker, "Oh, this is pure kitchen-porn. Get me out of here...."
-- Indecent Exposure (washingtonpost.com)

There's more on this full frontal assault on our traditional linguistic values. Take a look.

This just in.

I really wish a lot of people would drop the concept that Michael Moore is the chief reason for the loss of the election and is, by extension, one of the 'Big Losers' of 2004. Nothing could be further from the truth. Moore is one of the biggest winners of 2004 and I am sure he'd have it no other way.

Look at it this way: Playing to the obvious hates of the Democrats: Big Corporations, Outsourcing, Guns, George Bush, and Pets Sold As Meat has been a cornucopia for Moore that just keeps getting bigger. So big, in fact, that Moore has, in the last year alone, gone from being your average millionaire to a man of real wealth.

The grosses tell the story. Here's the estimate of revenues and costs of 911 from Box Office Mojo

World Boxoffice Gross: $218,000,000
Budget and Marketing Costs: $21,000,000

Say that half the gross comes back to you and you are looking at a net profit to be split between Moore and his partners of around $88,000,000. If Moore pockets even half of that, and his split is probably more, he takes in $44,000,000. Assuming he pays the standard 'Heinz-Kerry' tax rate of 12%, he nets something north of $38,000,000. And that's before we even start into record shattering rentals and DVD sales of 911:

Moore's eagerly anticipated video of Fahrenheit 9/11 turned 1.36 million copies and earned more than $4.7 million on DVD alone in its first week.
-- Box Office Mojo

Oh yes, let's not forget the sales from all his previous films, the book deals, and the speaking fees of $30 to $50K that he's racking up from wounded associations and colleges around the country.

On top of that, you have the lionizing awards from the French and the Oscar from the "Academy." Put it all together and you have one fat and happy winner who is, first and foremost, looking forward to continuing this streak now that he has helped keep the Democrats out of power.

After all, if they had won, Moore's streak would have been severely curtailed. It was in his interest to do everything he could to make sure this would not happen. We can't blame him if the Democrats helped him along.

All in all, a brilliant performance by a genius at manipulation. I'm sure that every morning, Moore looks deep into his mirror and says, "I'd like to thank all the little people for four more years! Oh, yes, and not forgetting those stupid white men, John, John, Teddy and Jimmy."

N.Z. Bear types for me in Memo to the Left:Time's Up

Alright kids. It's been over a full week now. I left you alone and let you have your pity-parties. Hopefully you've had a good long sulk and gotten it out of your system.

But now, it's time to get your asses back to work. You might not expect me to be saying this, but here's the bulletin: this country needs you.

Continued...

A solid bit of astronomical insight from one of our favorite pages, Laputan Logic

This is Eta Carinae, the seventh star of the southern Carina constellation and the most massive and luminous star known in our galaxy. It's 100 times as massive as our sun and 5 million times brighter. Its diameter is about the size of Jupiter's orbit and it is extremely unstable. Currently it is in the process of rapidly exhausting its fuel supply and is on the brink of self-destruction. It could collapse into itself and form a black hole at any moment.

Eta Carinae is also interesting because it's probably the only star in the night sky that could conceivably kill you.

You'll want to know why.

A rich and stunning proposal for getting along by Orthodox & Heterodox . Every clause is pure gold and worth deep reflection and consideration. Herewith a few, and only a few, choice excerpts:

We, the bold, free-spirited peoples of the Diverse Lands of Blue America, hereby contract with you, the safe, ordinary drabs of the Nearly-contiguous Lands of Red America to exist peaceably and amicably in the manner to which we've become accustomed.

We will continue to exist in heavily-impacted urban centers in areas where our explosive growth and profligate lifestyle are completely unsustainable -- deserts, swamps, mountains, frozen wastelands, coasts and islands -- and so we will be needing to pull heavily from your water and other natural resources. We will need you to have power plants, waste recycling plants and refineries in your areas, since we can't stand to look at the ugly things.

We will need to convert some of the more inhabitable areas you have into parks and bedroom communities for us, since our cities are too disgusting for any of us to consider living in them. We will come out in droves, build densely and go elsewhere to work. We won't care about these communities or put any work into their governance. You are welcome to stay if you'd like -- and if you can afford the housing costs once we're there -- but please don't alter the opinion landscape that we'd like to exist in. In other words, please either be like us or aspire to be like us ... or shut up.

Continued...

Our Neighborhood, 35,000 Lightyears to the Inch

The Galaxy Crystal is a cosmic paperweight: an optically perfect glass block 3" square by 1 1/2" deep, laser etched with a 3D model of the Milky Way.

Data for this sculpture comes from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

For sale at: Bathsheba Grossman - Galaxy Crystal

On October 27th this Sidelines posting which requests speed:

========{*}========

WHO SAYS THERE'S NO GOOD NEWS?

"Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:

`Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.'"

-- Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

========{*}======== And yesterday a request fulfilled.

Same old, same old, noted by Anticipatory Retaliation: Same As It Ever Was

Hostage Slaughterhouses, Death Camps, Gulags

Anyone recognize The Beast?

For some years now we have been hearing the clarion calls for the Islamic "Moderates" to speak out. This oft-repeated request has gone out from a wide-spectrum of voices here and abroad. But it would seem that the standard response is that "We hear very little from Islamic Moderates about Terrorism."

I think this is utterly wrong. I think we have been hearing a great deal from the "Islamic Moderates" over the last three years. In fact, we hear from them constantly.

The problem is not that we do not hear from the "Moderates," but with our current assumption of exactly what "Moderate" means. We've been, indeed, entirely too conservative in our understanding of "Islamic moderates."

In the brave new world of "Radical Islam," a conservative Muslim would be one who seeks to live in peace with those of other faiths, does not look for a global or even regional theocracy, and in general would just like to get on with life in a peaceful, diverse, tolerant society. And while it is true that there has not been a lot of speaking out from this group, there has still been some and we can assume it is not a total loss. Fear of Islamic moderates probably mutes an otherwise large segment of the Islamic population.

In contrast, an "Islamic Moderate" currently means those members of the Islamic faith committed to a regional caliphate and willing to use conventional terrorism to achieve these aims. This includes beheadings, mass murder, random bombing of civilian targets, infiltration of Iraq, Afghanistan, New York, Cleveland, etc. to kill Americans and other unbelievers with conventional arms and explosives. At the moment, these moderates are being extremely vocal and noisy in Iraq. This moderate group has been extremely vociferous in the past few years and, if the present is any guide, will continue to speak out with explosives, arms and manifestos until they either triumph or are eliminated.

Virtually silent at present, are the "Islamic Radicals" who seek to achieve a global caliphate through the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to kill unbelievers wholesale. We hear them every so often in the current safe haven of Iran where plutonium futures are traded with the cheers of "Death to America." We hear less from the dispersed members of this cult with the exception of intermittent claims on Muslim websites that, yes, they have a nuclear bomb and they are going to use it.

Whether or not they actually have that bomb is open to question. What is not is their devotion to using it as soon as possible.

Under these conditions, it strikes me that as long as we are hearing from the "Islamic moderates' " through propaganda and through weapons we need not be too worried.

It is when these "moderate voices" fall silent that we need to look out for the big and booming voice of the Radical Islam. But by that time, it is my sad opinion we will be, once again, in a reactive mode.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
        -- Richard Brautigan , 1967

Bambi's brood, known as either "cute," "rats with antlers," or "the most lethal animal in North America" when you hit them with your car, are up for some genetic modification @ NIGHTSAVE DEER

With over 500,000 deer/auto collisions every year, the cost in lives and money is staggering

While insurers pay over a billion dollars in claims annually, over 200 people are killed. Countless other drivers and passengers suffer injuries and other serious medical complications.

By implanting the gene of a special jellyfish into deer, the transgenic NIGHTSAVE deer produced by GENETIATE (patent pending) have fluorescing hair and skin when illuminated by car headlights. The implanted gene has no other effect on the deer, who appear normal in daylight.

The NIGHTSAVE project aims to reduce the number of night time deer/auto collisions, saving the lives of both deer and people.

But what about the jellyfish? Are we to IGNORE the billions of jellyfish lives that will be destroyed just to save a few Bambis. Is it because jellyfish aren't cuddly that we consign them to doom? Just what is PETA's position on jellyfish anyway? What haven't we heard from them?

Long Live Miss Ronald Mc Donald ! The clown make-up's been ditched and the shoes are to die for. The Japanese might go for it, but I really don't think the American mind is ready for this intense variation on the Ronald McDonald theme. On the other hand, this could cause donations to Ronald McDonald House to go through the roof.

The first casualty of war isn't truth, notes a soldier, but innocence. That's why the Ma-Deuce .50 caliber machine gun is a man's best friend: Heavy Weapons & The First Casualty

Faced with declining web revenues in the wake of the election, the execrable Kos is starting to back and fill in order to scuttle towards the center. Here he's actually used the word "thugs" to describe the people we're trying to eradicate in Fallujah. A much earlier Kos remarked when American bodies were strung up on the bridges of Fallujah, "Screw 'em," so there's little reason to think he's changed that much since then. But when called out by his loyal if demented readers on ascribing thuggishness to animals, his response is a hearty "F*** You!" Ah, the garbage does not fall far from the dumpster @ Kos Looks to Sustain His Cash-Flow

The big lie that refuses to die. In the waning days of the election, one big gun fired without stop over the heads of the voters was the "100,000" dead citizens of the Iraq meme. Besides the obvious fact that we have not seen the 186 funerals every day reported for even one day, the study on which the lie was based was also deeply flawed. For political purposes? Almost certainly. After all it is much easier to hide bias inside statistics than to hide it in editorial columns. Fred Kaplan, however, eviscerates the lie in terms of statistics @ 100,000 Dead‚ or 8,000 - How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?

Afghans have casualties too. To underscore the continuing use of casualties for propaganda purposes (Who knew!?), the Winds of Change has some background @ Winds of Change.NET: Fraud #2: Herold's Afghan War Casualties

The Unbearable Sadness of Being [Blue]: The binge drinking of the bitter herbs continues without letup at "The New Yorker. Yes, The New Yorker." Once again it is not the Democratic Party that's at fault, but the country itself: "The system of checks and balances has broken down, but the country remains divided -- right down the nonexistent, powerless middle. " claims Hertzberg in his bring-out-the crying-towels memory/dream/reflection called, sigh, Blues.

Continued...

Posted by Vanderleun Nov 12, 2004 9:21 AM | Comments (2)  | QuickLink:

Everybody talks about tinfoil hats, now...

Sure, your hat allows you to subvert your oppressors, but let's face it; it makes you look ridiculous. Chances are it's the same origami hat/ship that kids make. What is the alternative, you ask? Designer tin foil hats. Where to find them? Look no further.

-- tfh - tin foil hats

Seems that global warming isn't confined to the Earth these days, but that greenhouse emissions evidently extend across the void to Mars. This from an interesting observation at The Speculist: Getting Warmer .

Things are heating up on Mars...literally. The planet is experiencing its own version of global warming. The dry-ice polar caps are diminishing. Paul Hsieh speculates that this must be on account of our failure to sign Kyoto. Wow, when somebody close to me told me that I could vote for Bush if I wanted to, but I would have to accept the fact that everything that happens from now on is my fault...well, I just didn't grasp the cosmic implications.

On the other hand, I can't help but wonder — if two planets so close to each other are both experiencing a rise in surface temperature, isn't it just possible that it might have to do with that nearby star they both orbit? I'm just asking is all. I mean, what if...

Fret not, Dear Speculist, for I am sure that soon you will hear from those that note this "warming" only really began when we started landing probes on the surface with parts made by.... Halliburton!

Because nobody asked me, here are my current picks in the Wizbang 2004 Weblog Awards.

MOST IMPORTANT CATEGORY! Best Essayist: AMERICAN DIGEST aka "ME." Because I would like to get at least 2% of the vote. And by the way, why isn't The Belmont Club in this list? He'd give Hanson and Lileks a run for their money.

Best Overall: Has to be Glenn ( PostBot) Reynolds @ Instapundit. I know it was an election year. Oh, I do know. But look... Up every day at the crack of dawn for an email stack as tall as Jack's Beanstalk. Most important portal site in the sphere. All upside except for the infrequent slips back into the abyss of cat-blogging. (Hey, who's drug free these days?)

I would vote for The Belmont Club but it really is out of category here. Wretchard is one of our best essayists and that's where he should have been. Putting him here is inexplicable.

Best Group? : No contest. Winds of Change for reach and depth. Not to mention the spiritual edge on the weekends.

New Kid on the Block: INDC Journal For advanced moonbat research if for nothing else.

Big Yucks: protein wisdom. Because Jeff promised me three wishes.

Continued...

Last Saturday at the local cinema in Laguna Beach, we went to see the opening of "The Incredibles." Other than state the obvious that it was, indeed, incredible, I won't bother to add to the 386,457 reviews of this film.

I did note one thing that struck me. The film is on many levels state-of-the-art, and the sound track does no less. The sound track is so dense and so fully-packed that it frankly overwhelmed the equipment of this little local theater. The staff either didn't know how to balance the speakers or the speakers themselves couldn't cope with the sound track. Either way, a lot of the track was incomprehensible during the last 40 minutes of the film.

But this theater is a decent, local business. It lost no time in having a staff member stand out in front at the end of the film, and offer free passes or money back to anyone who felt they hadn't been satisfied by the film's outcome. There were a lot of takers. It was the decent thing to do.

Which made me think: If you make a film that promises a satisfying outcome to millions and millions of people, and if you make millions upon millions of dollars with this promise, and if that film, in the end, doesn't deliver a satisfying outcome to the millions who bought tickets, shouldn't you offer to give them their money back?

Wouldn't that be the least, the very least, decent thing to do?

It would be one thing to "Vote or Die," quite another to choose between "Vote or play Halo 2."

He's 10 years old and living with him is, at times, like living with a surfing Tom Sawyer who studies Karate. He's getting very good at Karate very fast. I think if this goes on I'm going to have to either arm myself, or at least fortify the office, since he's fond of demonstrating what he's learned for his mother and the handiest demonstration object is me.

But, like most 10 year olds in this world, his real love isn't surfing, or chess, or even leaping off the stairs so we can re-enact Kato Vs. Detective Clouseau. No, he worships, adores and lives for video games.

And right now, as if anyone in the cosmos didn't know it, the video game of the century is Halo 2.

To describe his emotions as the long ballyhooed release of Halo 2 approached as anything less than pure pre-adolescent lust would be understate it by a factor of 10. He'd put in a reservation for the game 10 months ago -- a bit of forward planning seldom seen in Pentagon war planners; and an eternity in the life of a 10 year old. He'd sold off old and used up video games at the GameSpot and hoarded the store credits. He'd begun stashing money away a few months ago with the single-mindedness of a squirrel preparing for winter at the North Pole. As the days ticked down to a precious few, his eyes grew larger. It was like waiting for Christmas Eve in November.

Then, late Monday night, THE CALL came. "This is GameSpot. We will begin selling Halo 2 at midnight tonight. Your reserved copy is here and it will be held for 48 hours and then sold. Please come in and collect it. Click."

Joy. Buckets of bouncing joy. Joy similar to watching Road Runner careen about the landscape beeping. But then... despair.

The awful realization hit that Tuesday was a "school day," and you are not sprung from school to collect a video game no matter how universe shattering it may be. This would mean, at best, you would have to wait all through school ("Oh, eternity!"), then attend your Karate class after school ("Oh, eternity cubed!"), then come home, do homework, have dinner, and then beg to be driven to the GameSpot and then be driven back. ("Not even God has this much time!") Why it could be almost 9 PM before you even got home with Halo 2 and then bedtime would be 9:30 and.... the agony could not be more protracted. What to do? What to do?

Solution: Draft the Stay-at-Home Stepfather. Ask, plead, whine, wheedle, bribe with 50% of remaining Halloween candy stash, and beg for him to pick it up during the day. Chance of success -- 75%.

Superior solution: Get mom to ask the Stay-at-Home Stepfather. Chance of success 125% and rising.

And so it was that I found myself traveling out into the midday mall scene in southern California to pick up his "Precious."

Continued...

With 'Scramjet,' NASA Shoots for Mach 10

They call it a "scramjet," an engine so blindingly fast that it could carry an airplane from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in about 20 minutes -- or even quicker. So fast it could put satellites in space. So fast it could drop a cruise missile on an enemy target, almost like shooting a rifle.

Next week, NASA plans to break the aircraft speed record for the second time in 7 1/2 months by flying its rocket-assisted X-43A scramjet craft 110,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean at speeds close to Mach 10 -- about 7,200 mph, or 10 times the speed of sound....

About 50 miles off the California coast, the B-52 will drop the craft at an altitude of 40,000 feet. The booster rocket will ignite and bring the X-43A's speed close to Mach 10 at an altitude of 110,000 feet. At that point, controllers will fire two small pistons to jettison the rocket. Then they will open the cowl covering the X-43A's air intake and light the engine.

The Scramjet process explained @ How the Scramjet Works

Many thanks for the letters and expressions of concern about my well-being after last month's unfortunate incident: American Digest: Blogger's Head Explodes

To update you all, my recovery is almost complete even though the recent elections and the sad state of the Democratic Party has complicated matters considerably.

In physical terms I have been rebuilt from the ground up and am in better shape than I have been in months. Here's a recent photo and I think you will all agree it is an improvement:

On the internal front, things are not as well advanced. It seems that in replacing my motherboard and controlling OS, the boffins at JPL were running a little short of parts and hence had to make do with stripping the essentials from a Roomba:

This has resulted in a painful bumping into ideological corners during the last week since the election. Symptoms also include an increased build up in pressure within my new head. The chances of a new explosion are therefore increased.

Hence, under orders from my doctors and the head of the Replicant Bureau at JPL, I have been placed on a one-week news and politics fast. As you can see below, I have already had the "small slip."

So, in order to preserve my new head and return to full functionality, I will be staying away from the News and from Politics for at least a week. Longer if necessary.

One of my favorite "interesting links" pages is the elegant things magazine , an offshoot of an annual magazine out of Britain. I recommend it highly. Still, like everything else in the world, it too is infected by a political virus that explodes even things' collective head from time to time. Case in point, this amazing bit of drive-by nonsense:

.... things grow better with Coke: Indian farmers discover the pest-controlling qualities of the world's favourite thirst-quencher. Ironic, given Coke's alleged habit of extracting too much ground-water in the country.

Up until that moment I'd never fully realized that the groundwater crisis in India was due to Coca Cola. I always thought it had something to do with being unable to get basic environmental controls in place and the thermonuclear population bomb. Silly me. It was Coca-Cola all the time.

At any rate, that's what 10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris claims to be providing.

Every hour, 10x10 scans the RSS feeds of several leading international news sources, and performs an elaborate process of weighted linguistic analysis on the text contained in their top news stories. After this process, conclusions are automatically drawn about the hour's most important words. The top 100 words are chosen, along with 100 corresponding images, culled from the source news stories. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. In this way, a constantly evolving record of our world is formed, based on prominent world events, without any human input.

The feeds currently being scanned are Reuters, BBC World, and New York Times International, so I think we can assumed there's human input in there somewhere.

Still, this is an amazing tool to look at and play with. Well executed and elegant. [Requires Flash]

File under "Holiday gifts for people I hate" : The Jones Soda Co. Holiday Pack

Jones Soda Co. (the "Company" or "Jones Soda" or "Jones"), announces today its limited edition holiday pack of five new seasonal flavors which includes: Green Bean Casserole Soda, Mashed Potato & Butter Soda, Fruitcake Soda, Cranberry Soda and Turkey & Gravy Soda.

"Our holiday pack takes the work, worries and cost out of preparing a turkey dinner, so our consumers can spend more time with their loved ones. We even included utensils," says Peter van Stolk, President & C.E.O. "We realized consumers are concerned about the 2,000 calories that each full holiday meal contains. That’s why we made our sodas zero calories and zero carbs. Now, you can enjoy all the mashed potatoes and butter without worrying about the carbs."

Good News: The online ordering store is closed for repairs.
Bad News: It opens November 11.

When most American eyes were focused on the nation, a few took notes on the heavens. One note was this time-lapse photograph of the recent Lunar Eclipse by Forrest Egan @ Digital Astro! [Larger images at the site.]

Nine days into the votingI just noticed this morning that American Digest is a nominee in Wizbang's 2004 Weblog Awards in the