In the Future

. . . everyone will be Hillary Clinton for 15 minutes.

I plan to throw every lamp in my house, BTW.

So.

Tori Amos, or Kate Bush?

I'm, um, agnostic.

Whoa.

Now he's messin' with the crew at Johns Hopkins.

Oh, Those Brits.

They really put the kids at UCSB to shame.

The Cotillion Girls

. . . have been comparing notes on who is and isn't a dirty old lady.

The stats aren't all in yet, but it appears to be a 50-50 split between those who vote "yum" and those who perceive the pic linked above to be "gross."

The marriage of a woman, earlier in her life, to a slender man appeared to be predictive of potential child-molesting sensibilities.

Oh, and . . . sometimes, when we're not talking about sex or margaritas, we discuss politics. Sometimes.

Are Americans Really

. . . that car-happy?

Well, I am. But in my case it's genetic.

John McCain:

voted most unpopular.

Strategy Page

Has a list of the top ten myths about the war in Iraq.

I'm Back. Sort Of.

After a stressful family weekend, I'm catching up around the house and the office.

Blogging should pick up toward the end of the week, but next weekend is also a big family fandango (cousins this time, instead of the nephews we hosted this past weekend).

So hang in there. And visit a lot, even though I won't be posting. Just because I'm not blogging doesn't mean I won't be obsessively checking my traffic, you know.

The Best Argument for Hillary

Right here.

Of course, if the GOP nominates McCain, I won't have much of a choice, unless it's a protest vote for the Libertarian candidate. And that's not out of the question, either.

But perhaps it's time to be a real CUNT.

The Thing About That Rand Chick

. . . is that she seemed awfully didactic in her fiction. Or perhaps I'm mistaken?

Brad and Angelina as Objectivists? Color me surprised, though I've always respected Pitt for several reasons. One of them: some years ago, when asked his opinion on China, he demurred, explaining that people shouldn't really be too impressed by whatever political philosophy he managed to muster up: "I'm a grown man who wears makeup."

H/t: Heathcliff of the spreadsheets.

Nibras Kazimi

. . . suggests that—contrary to appearances—we are at the "tipping point" in Iraq:

Sadly, it took many thousands of young Sunnis getting abducted by death squads for the Sunnis to understand that in a full-fledged civil war, they would likely lose badly and be evicted from Baghdad. I believe that the Sunnis and insurgents are now war weary, and that this is a turnaround point in the campaign to stabilize Iraq.

Still, major bombings will continue for many years, for Al Qaeda will remain oblivious to all evidence of the insurgency's eventual defeat. The Baathists, and jihadist groups like Ansar al-Sunna, the Islamic Army of Iraq, and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, may be collapsing due to aimlessness and despair, but Al Qaeda still enjoys the clarity of zealotry and fantasy. Right now, they are arm-twisting other jihadist groups to submit to them and are also taking credit for the large-scale fighting that continues in Iraq.

Al Qaeda will continue the fight long after the Iraqi battlefield becomes inhospitable to their cause, and they will only realize the futility of their endeavor after they are defeated on the wider Middle East battlefield and elsewhere in the world.

Via Insty.

There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

. . . well, right now.

Greg Gutfield

. . . on how to recognize patriotic terrorists.

Jonathan Rauch Rawks!

Here he is on what is to be done about gay marriage.

He may not change your mind, but he will challenge you.

Glenn Reminds Us

. . . to crunch the numbers on alternative fuels.

The point about oil-producing countries is very good: most of them will let the price of crude ease down when they sense that we are getting serious about alternative energy sources for our cars.

Hybrids and biodiesel both sound promising. Ethanol—at least, when it's made of food-grade corn—still makes me uneasy, and I can't quite say why: the idea of turning food into fuel for cars just sounds backward to me.

But anything we can do to bring production of energy inside the States is a beautiful thing.

The State of the Union

Yeah, I missed it: I was working tonight (well, last night—it is after midnight). So,

1) How are we doing? I mean, the Union? Still holding up okay? Starting to get shabby after 225+ years?

2) How did Bush do on the speech? I hear he sucked less than usual with that large a crowd.

3) Where's the best video? (No, I am not going to go downstairs and watch TV just to get a recap on Fox or whatever. I'm going to bed.)

The Also-Rans in the Hybrid Race.

It looks like Saturn is developing a hybrid, after all: Attila the Hub mentioned this to me, and I assumed he'd somehow gotten it wrong. Because I know everything, you see: surely I would have known that.

The GM idea of plugging in the car into a regular outlet is intriguing, but it seems to me that feature is only useful if the car can run entirely without gasoline—if the battery can carry the entire load from time to time.

The Business Week article glosses over the fact that Ford got into the hybrid game before GM did, but it makes a good point about how Ford's Escapes and Explorers get better gas mileage than Toyota's comparable vehicles.

Even with gas prices going down, I just don't think people are in the mood to pay a lot for gasoline: it's something the right and the left can largely agree upon these days.

Hitchens

. . . comments on Mark Steyn's America Alone.He grants Steyn's general argument, though he brings a bit more nuance to the discussion, along with that athiest liberal perspective that's been missing in so many quarters.

And that lovely, lovely mind of his.

Insty turned me on to this one. I go to Steyn's digs multiple times a week, but I do neglect Hitchens a bit. No more: Hitchens really is what I took Sullivan for several years ago. He's a truly independent thinker, and an important voice.

DataBase Programs?

I'm looking for a good contact-management program that will run on a Mac. This is for a home-based business, so it doesn't have to be super-powerful: we're talking hundreds rather than thousands of companies.

The Clutter Lady Came Today.

It was four difficult hours, but we accomplished a lot. Also—she charges less than my last clutter lady, and has more experience.

Call me if you want good organizational help in the L.A. area.

I'm exhausted, but I am working from my actual desk, which we dug out from under a pile of papers and books.

I pointed out to her helpfully that you can always recognize those who aren't serious about getting organized, because they only have one file folder for each subject: some of us have two or three or four. We're not like the lightweight psuedo-organized: We're overachievers.

Mileage, Shmileage

Just tell me they're going to be making it less ugly.

Stephen Bainbridge

. . . sez:

To be sure, when it comes to their area of expertise, elite professors deserve a degree of deference. When it comes to matters outside their area of expertise, such as whether God exists . . . elite faculty deserve no more deference than any other smart people. Indeed, they may deserve less deference than a representative cross section of the general public. University faculties tend to be highly self-selected and appointments tend to be dominated by network effects that produce a remarkable homogeneity of belief . . . . Outside their areas of expertise (and sometimes even inside it), their beliefs tend to be colored by their ideology and by the need to conform to the expectations of their colleagues.

Good point, with all apologies to the academics in my life—Professors Purkinje and Fractal in particular. Because even when they're wrong, they do it in the right way.

Academics are often, in fact, some of the finest moonbats around.

Via another elite professor.

But Where Will She Get Her Traffic?

The Insta-Mom now has a blog devoted to children's books.

Can the Insta-Daughter be far behind? How about the Insta-Brothers?

The family that blogs together eventually develops its own podcasting format, you know.

Running on Empty

A couple of computer crises made the newsletter for my nonprofit group an adventure this week. The beautiful thing is that I do that work as a volunteer, but my responsibilities as a paid employee kick into high gear once we send the beast to the printer. That week of hell each month culminates in two Saturday meetings held in dusty rooms that trigger my allergies. During the 4-5-hour ordeal I'm expected to give four written/oral reports (two as a volunteer, and two as the office manager).

I generally stay at my mother's place those Friday nights, so I can get into the office earlier on meeting mornings. Under the best conditions this means I sleep a bit more than if I had stayed in the Pasadena area. Under the worst conditions it doesn't work because her dog chews up the couch I'm sleeping on, and that disturbs me in the night.

And by the time I leave the Center on those Saturday afternoons my mind has often turned into whatever that stuff is they make Vienna sausages out of.

It's like that now. I'm tired, but content, in that sicko feminine codependent way.

[Yeah. I end sentences with prepositions; ya wanna make something of it? I mean, is there something you would like to make it into?]

Ranger X

. . . on that silly claim by PEER about how the NPS is carrying water for creationists in the Bush Administration.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility has yet to retract its false claim, by the way, even as it waxes hysterical over the sale of an evolutionary account of the Grand Canyon in NPS bookstores. Why not go further?—they should just publicly burn the book. (If you follow the first link, you'll see that the NPS is not responsible for the contents of the bookstores at National Parks and Monuments.)

More: Drunkablog, Tim Blair, and Jim Treacher, who takes the paddle to Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau (who in turn doesn't seem to be aware that he's slowly being supplanted by Chris Muir and Day by Day.)

How Can We Mitigate Sectarianism in Iraq

. . . when the sectarianism in this country is so pronounced?

Cassandra:

. . . We're not going to find a way to make Iraq work if the Democratic Party has anything to do with it because 49% of the people who put them in office either don't want us to win the war or "aren't sure" yet whether they want us to win.

It's that simple.

Month after month our media ask why we're unable to bring the violence under control in Iraq. The truth is that most of Iraq isn't awash in Sunni/Shia violence we read about every day from Baghdad.

A Little Touch of Harry in the Night.

Unfortunately, it's Harry Reid, and one has to take a shower afterward.

I'm more at the Goldstein end of the spectrum than the Hackbarth end: this blog-registration idea is very troubling to me. It does, indeed, seem like the first step in a massive effort to curtail free speech. So though I'm sure there have been overreactions, the whole proposal makes me queasy.

There's also the idiocy involved: if legislators want to figure out who's getting traffic and buzz, can't they just have their staffers check out Technorati, and monitor the Ecosystem? Why should the onus be on bloggers to get in touch with the government? It's not like buzz is a big secret: by definition, it's pretty easy to figure out where it is.

Oh, but money. Right. We must ferret out where money might be changing hands.

Sorry, guys: that's also pretty easy to figure out. When someone is taking dough and doesn't disclose it, he/she always gets caught—generally by fellow bloggers. And there's something worse than government fines involved: his/her reputation always takes a hit for that sort of conduct.

The whole thing is patently ridiculous.

The Jewish Lobby.

Is that, like, a hotel lobby, or one at a doctor's office? And is it decorated in an early 20th Century style, or is it more Middle Eastern?

Just curious.

Via Insty, who remarks that "you're supposed to call them 'New York Money People.'"

I Bought a Little Crate of Mandarins Today.

These might be the last ones we can afford for a while. Please keep the farm workers and farmers of California in your prayers. Three-quarters of the citrus crop lost, and nearly every crop affected. Shit.

I hope one of the trees in our yard decides to produce this year: the lemon tree is reliable, and the orange tree usually produces, but the tangerine tree is flakey in the best of times, and it's tangerines that we like the most.

Perhaps I can find someone who likes grapefruit, and work out an exchange.

Classical Values:

"The Eighteenth Amendment proves that the Constitution once meant what it said."

Do We Really Intend

. . . to do to the Iraqis and the Iranians what we did to the Vietnamese and the Cambodians?

Do we really want to write the invasion off as a "disaster," pretend the Iraqi people would have been better off getting fed into plastic shredders?

Think about the killing fields. And choose carefully.

Ya Wanna See

. . . the birth of conservatism? Here you go.

Jeff Goldstein

. . . is back.

For good, I hope.

Dear Diary,

It feels so good to write this all out. It's clarified my thoughts tremendously, and made me see that my problems aren't insurmountable.

Now—how do I post this?

Glenn Reynolds on Municipal "Gun Control."

If you didn't read his op-ed in The New York Times, go take a peek.

Steyn Is a Stud.

I'm reading America Alone. Demographics, Mark Steyn argues, are destiny—and America is way ahead of Europe and Japan in terms of replacing its citizenry with another generation that shares the same cultural imprint.

He continually concedes that most Muslims are not terrorists, but reminds us that the vast majority of them do want to live under Sharia law, and points out that Europe's future is likely to be a sort of "good cop/bad cop" routine between the jihadis and their more moderate fellow travellers.

He points to the U.S. as the only place where we are reproducing and continuing to assert a national identity. We require some assimilation on the part of our immigrants, and Steyn sees this as a healthy thing.

Very provocative, and mostly correct. More later on the divine Mr. Steyn.

More Journalistic Malpractice

. . . from AP.

"Oh, Ick."

"What?" Attila the Hub is concerned.

"They made my martini with vodka, rather than gin. Do you know why?"

He appears to sigh, just a little. "Why?"

"Because of the patriarchy, silly. It's the same reason I have dry skin."

He raises an eyebrow. "Dry skin is caused by patriarchy?"

I take a sip of my thoroughly inadequate drink. "Absolutely. The Man is keeping me from getting my share of emollients. And gin. Just like in the Third World: not enough hand lotion, and too much vodka. And women bearing the brunt of it."

Read This M. Simon Piece

. . . on timetables and renewable energy.

Thanks.

Yeah. We Missed Him.

The husband made such good time today that by the time we went out to the 18-mile checkpoint to cheer him on, he'd passed it by twenty minutes before. This is partly due to his wife's problems with time management, but more of it had to do with his habit of always making the conservative, "safe" judgement: the range he gave us of when he might pass by just didn't allow for the possibility of his getting across the start line early, and keeping up his best pace.

Attila the Hub finished the marathon in four hours and twenty minutes—an hour and forty minutes ahead of how he did last year in Hawaii.

At a certain point his sister urged me to give up the vigil. I agreed, and went to the Circle K for ice. Once I got back here, I checked with Mr. Internet, and found out that he'd finished—and made good time. So I went down to check the shuttle buses; he stepped off one of them just as I reached the lobby.

Running has done great thing for A the H. And I'm very proud of him.

Glenn Reynolds

. . . on healthcare in Europe vs. the United States:

Because I'm unhappy with our current state of medical progress, the most important single issue to me is which system encourages research and development. The answer, of course, is that neither does it nearly as well as I'd like, though the U.S. system is pretty clearly better than the European.

Live from Phoenix!

I'm here in the Valley of the Sun. I'm supposed to have lunch with Desert Cat today, and then tomorrow I'll be cheering my husband on in the Phoenix Marathon.

Blogging will be more-than-light for the next few days, as I'll be occupied fetching ice to soothe sore spousal muscles.

Christophe

. . . has a new blog. Oddly enough, it mentions the sex industry.

Christophe has always been an extraordinary prose stylist. And, yes: that has greatly enhanced Blowfish's descriptions of sex toys over the years. He is a writer's son, and a good writer hiimself. It shows.

He is part of the Malibu Mafia, too. In high school I used to imagine him, Sean Penn, Margaret Baumgartner, Sandra Tsing Loh, Karen Jerome, Joel Kopitz, and Audrey McNulty having wonderful, erudite conversations on board the yellow buses that took them from Samohi and our dirty little beach town up the coast to the Land of Dreams.

Though I'm sure it never happened quite like that in real life. What a shame.

Bob (The Good One, Not the Bad One) Points Us To This Bitchin' Video.

I think no matter where we stand on the political spectrum, or how we feel about the war, we can all agree that zombies are cool.

"I'm not a monster,
Well—technically I am.
I guess I am."

"You Know," Hog Remarks,

"I hear people who were raised by permissive parents tend to be impulsive and demanding."

"Wow," I respond. "I'll bet your parents were really permissive."

There is a pause as he shovels cilantro sauce onto his tamale. "Do you know anyone else who fits that mold?" he asks me.

"No," I reply. "But should I meet anyone like that, I'll be sure to tell them you were looking for them." *

Later on I drop by my mother's house, which has been half-destroyed by her spirited pit bull puppy. I pet the dog and relate in a sing-song way what Hog has asserted.

"Do you know anyone who is impulsive and demanding?" I ask the dog. My mother laughs.

* The careful reader will note that I adapted this line from Harvey.

Carlson-ing

We in the online community have got to stop coining new verbs. But surely we need just one more. What do you call it when someone asserts that we need more of something and less of it at the very same time . . .?

Via Insty, who has some interesting thoughts and links on the surge issue.

Gosh. I Hope Iran Stabilizes Soon.

It's, like, a cauldron of sectarian violence. Had you noticed?

In and Out Surge

The Anchoress has a roundup of reactions to Bush's speech, and the state of the war right now.

Hog Takes a Bite from His Tamale.

"Val invited me to an anti-surge rally tomorrow," he remarks.

"All without knowing the specifics of the plan. You going?" I ask.

"Well, I was going to stay home because these political things bore me so much. But then he told me there might be girls there. I figured, 'hippie chicks, free love . . .' I might drop by."

"Right. Don't forget your sign," I tell him. "'Honk if you want to cut and run.'"

I Love the Smell . . .

of creeping fascism in the morning.

Quote for the Day:

"I am content now that I'm taller than James Bond. It took me years to accomplish that."

—Darrell

More on the "Captain Hussein" Mess

. . . over at Malkin's digs.

Here's a Restriction on Free Speech

. . . that I think we can all support.

Does someone have a phone number for Senator McCain? I'm sure he'd be happy to help muzzle the lower house.

Well, If Even Arnold Gets Squishy Around the Middle

. . . then it must be okay.

On the other hand, he's a good deal older than people think, and has at this point a few responsibilities beyond those of the average actor—which have to cut into the time he has available for doing crunches.

It's Important to Talk to People Where They're At.

Jules Crittenden knows it. I know it, too.

Oh. So I Guess Apple Isn't

. . . bringing the Newton back.

Of course, it's possible this is an eensy step up from the Newton . . .

Love on an Escalator

The Democratic Party: we're here to help. Sort of.

So, Which Is More Destructive?

Fear, or envy?

I'm talking about on the individual level, here: which emotion tends to be more corrosive to someone's personal development? Discuss.

This Is Your Window.

This is your window on drugs.

H/t: My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

I Want the One

. . . that makes science cuddly and cute. Like DJQ Linden does.

When I Plagiarize

. . . I certainly try to cover my tracks better than this.

Maybe the page was set up by a Coast snob: "Wisconsin, Nebraska—what's the difference? All flyover country to me."

All I can think is that they were just copying this as a template, and they accidentally went live with a draft of the site. But you'd think they'd get someone to read it over first . . .

Breakin' Like the Fire at Malibu

Such a tragedy. And it happens way too often: the 1978 fires earned a few pages in the 1979Santa Monica High School yearbook. I watched the '93 blazes from my next-door neighbor's house back in West Los Angeles: a part of the Malibu Mafia from our Samohi days, he was able to tell me how close the fire had come to the homes of those we knew.

Does anyone know how Sandra Tsing Loh's father is? I don't think he was right on the beach. But I don't know the area well enough to be sure, and I no longer have her e-mail address. Someone get back to me on that.

I should have thought of this; it was so warm today, we had the windows open again. It seemed nice at the time. Fuck.

Okay. Traffic is Leveling Off.

Let's review the rules:

On other sites, they provide content. If you like it, you come back.

Here, I wait until my traffic stats come in. If you've been good readers and have stopped by frequently enough, I give you something to read.

It's the "tough love" approach to blogging, and I feel that it's good for you.

Making Sense of a Surge

Ace has some hard-headed thoughts.

Live From Las Vegas!

The Popular Mechanics CES blog.

Holy Shit!

There are stem cells in amniotic fluid:

Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.

They reported they were able to extract the stem cells without harm to mother or fetus and turn their discovery into several different tissue cell types, including brain, liver and bone.

"Our hope is that these cells will provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for engineered organs as well," said Dr. Anthony Atala, head of Wake Forest's regenerative medicine institute and senior researcher on the project.

It took 'em seven years to figure out how to extract the cells, but it sounds promising.

As Glenn put it: "If this pans out, it will be bad news for politicians, but good news for the rest of us."

Over at Tammy B's

. . . Maynard discusses the possibility of a nuclear exchange in the Middle East. It isn't a cheerful prospect.

Of course, I have no interest in watching Israel lie down and die, or the Western World being subject to nuclear blackmail (beyond what Kim Jong Il has already attempted).

There's No Such Thing

. . . as a Catholic-Muslim "Ecumenical Temple."

Via Insty.

Little Steven

. . . is running a tribute to the old Batman TV series on The Underground Garage this week.

I figure until The Sopranos comes back I'll just listen to Silvio on Sunday nights.

Rules for the Ivory Tower:

Limit the number of banjo players in any one department.

Fortunately, they didn't ask about recorders.

Body Parts:

It takes more than twelve weeks to build a military culture from the ground up.

Americans are not patient people, and it's getting worse.

The More Things Change . . .

the more I begin to think all congresscritters should be shot with varmint rifles.

And then killed.

Via Glenn, who's blogging CES from Las Vegas.

Stuck Mojo

and Islamic Extremists.

(Please note Darleen's caveat: the video she posted isn't the official Stuck Mojo vid: it's a remix that integrates other material. This becomes clear once you begin to watch it.)

Bomb Bomb Iran

Sorry; bad joke. But the fact that it dates back to the 1970s is telling.

Melanie Phillips makes the case for taking the war to the mullahs, and otherwise trying to win the one we're fighting in Iraq.

Via Insty.

The Blond Bond

There's more to James Bond than haircolor and height.

Attila the Hub and I finally got around to seeing Casino Royale tonight, and it was wonderful: they are transforming the character of Bond back into a human being rather than a cartoon superhero.

"Craig's got an odd build," A the H points out.

"He's got an unfashionable build," I respond. "He's stockier than the previous Bonds have been, and he's got a tremendously muscular midsection."

"And a longer torso. He's not fat, though."

"No," I reply. "No fat at all. I checked."

It's not just the stunning body, though: Craig's acting is tremendous. As is the fact that he was asked to do it. I happen to be a fan of Timothy Dalton's and Pierce Brosnan's, but it's been a while since the Broccoli franchise has make that sort of demand on the Bond of the day. It was refreshing, and a treat.

Jules Crittenden

. . . sees the choice right now as very stark: surge or withdraw.

Remember what happened in Southeast Asia? I say, surge.

Ugh. Potential GOP Nominees.

Please not Romney.

I pretty much agree with Joyner, presuming Condi is serious about staying out of the fray: Guiliani's baggage is lightened by his performance in the aftermath of 9/11, but that won't make it go away completely.

Still, he's one of the few possibilities that I'm willing to vote for. As I've said many times, if it's McCain I'm not voting for President in '08. I won't do it.

"If God Were to Humiliate a Human Being, He Would Deny Him/Her Knowledge."

Simon at Classical Values writes about the handicaps foisted upon Arab populations by their "leaders."

Don't Bury Ford;

it's not dead yet.

"Surge, Shmurge."

John Hinderaker is skeptical; he points out that "the lions don't have to lie down with the lambs for our interests to be vindicated," and explains:

I am deeply skeptical of the "Goldilocks" theory of victory in Iraq: we have to have just the right number of troops to be successful; not too many, not too few. It's hard to imagine what 149,000 troops can accomplish that 140,000 couldn't--especially if the mission of most of those additional 9,000 is to pacify Baghdad.

Via Insty, who has a few more surge links here.

David Linden

. . . discusses how he decided on brain research over marine biology.

Funny stuff.

He and his girlfriend were living a mile south of me at the time, in a slightly-less-slummy area of Venice, California. He spent all his time fixing up a van he planned to take on a trip around the country. It was a Ford, or maybe a Chevy.

Because this was David rather than someone else, the preparations actually led to a road trip around the country in that same van. He and his girlfriend went into Canada, where he used the subjunctive while conversing in French.

I made them a tape for the trip. It was during my Elvis Costello/Graham Parker phase. One hundred twenty minutes of new wave silliness, with a bit of Joan Armatrading thrown in.

How fun to remember.

Malcolm Gladwell

On Pit Bulls and Profiling.

The segment about dogs is reassuring, given that my mother owns a pit; the material about profiling humans is provocative. I think a few of my readers will find it especially challenging.

Pour a fresh cup of coffee, read the whole thing, and let me know what you think.

Fight the Power!

Protest the New Year!

Oh, and—maybe government-mandated 35-hour workweeks, while you're at it.

Via Sed Contra.

My Kinda Nature Film.

And I love spiders! This rawks.

Via Tammy B.

After Lunch with She Who Will Not Practice Law,

I confide in her rather earnestly that I'm considering growing up this year.

She giggles. "Don't be hasty," she tells me.

"Oh, I'm not going to just jump in blindly," I assure her. "I'm still doing a cost-benefit analysis."

For Pete's Sake.

Excuse me. I meant, Pete's sake.

H/t: Darrell. As he points out, this is a perfectly legitimate use for RFID.

I'm a bit staggered by all the negative comments: turns out there's a huge anti-sake lobby out there! My feeling is, almost any wine that is served hot is good. And red wine is better than white not just because of all the interesting tannins and whatnot, but because it's served closer to room temperature.

Those of us with a high surface-area-per-volume have an interest in such things . . .

Okay, So He Exists.

He's still a dork.

But apparently he's not suffering too much.

H/t: Ace.

Captain Jamil

Sez:

Why are all these American women haranguing me? Do they not have husbands to keep them quiet?

I believe Attila the Hub has been wrestling with this issue for years. On the one hand, there are days that he'd love to keep me quiet. On the other hand, if he managed to do that I wouldn't make him laugh. So there's that.

I get the feeling there are some Middle Eastern men who do not look to their wives for intellectual stimulation.

I Hear the Sand

. . . gets into everything.

Why, Exactly,

do I have to fight for my right to party?

I mean, I could simply party, and cut out the middleman. Saves time.

Hm. Great Idea.

I love the idea of exposing Leftist hypocrisy, but I think the contest should be expanded beyond the Bay Area.

Also, I'm not sure about including the Honda Civic in the winner's circle. Thirty MPG may not be outstanding, but it's hardly awful. (Of course, I realize that if we're really waging war for oil, and it's a bad thing to do, these people shouldn't be driving at all. So there's that.)

Via Ace.

There's an Interesting Discussion Going On

. . . over at Tammy Bruce's place regarding the morality of pay raises for public servants in general, and Federal judges in particular.

It reminds me of Catherine Beecher's campaign to get women into the teaching profession, especially on the western frontier. Her argument was precisely this: cash-strapped towns in the West could get a qualified female teacher for a quarter or a third of what a male teacher would cost.

And a lot of women got work in those "pink-collar" jobs for years: it became an easy and respectable way to get out of the house. But now the entire profession is underpaid because the tradition of underpaying was established. All this flows from the notion of work as something one does from civic-mindedness, a desire to give. I believe deeply in that, but it does lead to "brain drains" in any number of fields.

The reasons for which society is willing to pay for certain skills are often bizarre and arbitrary.

Now This Is Politically Incorrect.

A pretty girl, some old vehicles, and morale-boosters for the troops. How fun. And it's tax-deductible! Get a headstart on next year's deductions.

Via Iowahawk, whose link on my sidebar is still messed up. (And, yes: it's that weird problem with my memory that won't let me fix it just yet. Stupid Mac. Stupid Movable Type.)

Captain Jamil Is Here!

He has his own blog now. Huzzah!

He cops to making stuff up for AP, but explains:

They had this girl call and she sounded hot, so we started doing a phone sex thing. She'd say something like, "I want to brush your fanny with the hem of my very modest garments," and then I would reply with, "I saw six burning corpses outside a mosque today, you dirty bitch!"

So you can see how something like that can get started.

"Grim Milestones"

Don Surber takes a look, and points out that in Iraq, this war beats the hell out of Saddam's "peace" with respect to civilian casualties.

H/t: Insty.

Hybrids and Electrics!

There's a nice update here.

Oooh.

Ace has dug out some fun facts about Jamil Hussein—stuff AP never told us about the guy at all.

There's Something Cool

. . . about a guy who still tends bar at the age of ninety.

Oh, But This Is Sick.

In the good way.

Well, Sure.

I don't go out of my way to kill spiders in the house: I keep a few around to dispatch any bugs that make their way in, and then I try to trap the others and take 'em outside, where they are perfectly fine.

And there are some local animals such as squirrels that my husband will use humane traps for, and relocate.

But it sounds like an awfully dicey idea to use the "humane" strategy with mice or rats. By the time rodents make it in, there are generally too many of 'em to trap humanely: they need to be killed, just like ants do.

"I'm From the FEC."

"And I'm here to help you."

Beyond the silliness, this is very scary.

H/t: Reynolds.

Happy New Year!

. . . from the California contingent of Tiara Media (including honorary Cotillionite Tammy Bruce, whom we deputized on the spot)!

Thanks to Flap for documenting the latest Bear Flag League social event—in a dark corner, using nothing but a digital camera and a direct flash. Naturally, none of us looks good. Except Tammy, who always manages it.

Now This

. . . is a race.

A mini against an itty bitty.

Another Member of the Fake-But-Accurate Club.

CBS. Reuters. AP. And now The New York Times.

Which MSM outlets do we trust to make an honest effort to get facts straight, and own up to it when they don't? The only people I still sort-of-trust are those at WaPo. And even NPR, because their biases are on the table and they don't make up their own facts.

It seems that at least once a year one of the most venerable newsgathering institutions sticks a knife in the public's back. Staff up, Pajamaz people: we may need you more than ever in the years to come.

Oopsie Daisie.

Turns out Jesus didn't exist after all, because it took a while for the Gospel stories to be written down.

I wonder if those who don't believe the accuracy of documents that had origins in oral history are willing to apply this standard to any other sort of anthropological study. It's a new approach to sociology! "That's an oral tradition, not written down within the five years allowable. No facts may be contained therein. Sorry!"

And what's this about the Gospel of Mark being the sole source for the other three gospels? This is very sloppy: I could have done better myself. Actually, I'll be handling all the psuedo-scholarly Christianity "debunking" around here from now on. ("Jesus never existed! My imaginary friend Binker told me so.")

So Far, So Good On the West Coast.

I'm liking 2007; it already feels like a good fit.

Alaska, Hawaii—get back to me. I think you'll dig it, too.

I'm signing off soon; you might check in with Tim or Reverend Pixy when you wake up.

For I'll be watching the Rose Parade until late in the day (from indoors, Silly—where it's warm).