HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF ARTHUR ANDERSEN? Lawrence Kudlow says that Paul Volcker--the man who licked inflation in the early 1980s as the then head of the Federal Reserve--is planning "a hostile takeover" (Kudlow's phrase) of Arthur Andersen:

At 74 years old, and with nearly four decades at the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve under his belt, Mr. Volcker appreciates full well the importance of the regulatory fine print. He is aware that Andersen is responsible for a string of government scrapes that includes Lincoln Savings and Loan, Colonial Reality, Waste Management, Home State Savings Bank and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona — with the document shredding at Enron topping the list.

Incredibly, not once did the accounting firm ever acknowledge wrongdoing, nor fire guilty executives, nor internally reform its operating practices following each of these cases. It was this inability to show any level of corporate contrition — in addition to the document shredding — that led the Justice Department to take such highly punitive action.

But Mr. Volcker's survival plan would change Andersen across the board, on the condition that the government drop its criminal case against the firm and instead reach a large financial settlement. Also, Andersen must finally acknowledge wrongdoing.

THE DOWNFALL OF NATE NEWTON: How did jovial Nate Newton, considered by many one of the best NFL guards of his era (1986-99) go from making millions of dollars playing in the NFL to shuffling handcuffed and humiliated into jails in Louisiana and Texas? The Dallas Morning News explains.

FINANCE ON THE FRINGE: Reason has a good article on check cashers in poor neighborhoods:

Here’s the irony: Markets are actually succeeding quite well in serving the financial service needs of Americans with low and moderate incomes. Such people have far more options and choices than they did 20, 30, or 40 years ago. To be sure, the steel bars and Plexiglas that cover the teller windows at check cashing outlets may not be pretty or genteel, especially when compared to the marbled lobbies and high ceilings of conventional banks. They may offend bourgeois sensibilities and notions of what’s just. But they also undeniably provide a unique and valuable service to their customers. Contrary to the opinions of critics who would regulate or legislate "fringe banking" out of business, the booming check cashing industry represents a market success worthy of celebration, not a market failure that demands more regulation.

THE PEOPLE'S BLOG: Oh, and it's April 1st in Norway as well...

SHIRLEY YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS: It's April Fools day over at Sgt. Stryker's--err, Ted Striker's.

I wonder if Otto will ever get his own Web site...?

FRENCH CONSPIRACY UPDATE: Back on March 9th, we mentioned a French conspiracy Web site, which claimed the US faked the crash into the Pentagon of Flight 77. Orrin Judd says that now, it's not only a Web site, it's a book! Naturally, it's a best seller in France.... (shaking head).

Yahoo! News has an otherwise good Reuters article titled "Internet Making Steady Inroads Into Health Care", with this curious piece of bias in it:

As Hillary Clinton (news - web sites) found in trying to reform U.S. health care as first lady in the early 1990s, Clark was taking on a multiheaded beast that is mightily resistant to "fixing."

Geez, I thought only at Winston Smith's Ministry of Truth is an attempted takeover of an entire sector of the US economy called reform.

HAPPY EASTER AND PASSOVER: We'll be back with live stuff tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, we have lots of articles here, essays here, photos of me doing silly stuff here, and for the latest news, Drudge and Instapundit are on the case today.

PRICELESS: Just click over to this link at Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing.

802.11 UPDATE: Good article in Forbes.com, called "The Great Wi-Fi Hope", picking up the 802.11 and Starbucks theme we mentioned here yesterday. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for mentioning us today on Instapundit!) Forbes says:

The Wi-fi wave has already linked up an estimated 10 million laptops, Palm handhelds and other gadgets in hundreds of small, extremely local wireless networks. Some of these are commercial--one firm put them in several hundred Starbucks coffee shops. Many others are "freenets," access points provided gratis by 802.11 devotees who are, in essence, seeding the business. Mesh enough of these networks together and you have a mini-Net free of the phone and cable monopolies that control the "last mile" of wiring into your house. That's why 802 threatens them the most.

"LIONEL MANDRAKE" ON THE QUEEN MOTHER:

The Queen Moher has died at the ripe old age of 101.

I am not a Royalist, by any stretch of the imagination. However, I did respect the Queen Mother. She was the only member of that family not tarnished by scandal, and had worked hard all her life.

Hitler apparently called her "The most dangerous woman in England". He was referring to the propoganda value behind the decision not to move the Royal Family out of London during WWII when Buck. House was hit by German bombs.

The Queen sends a telegram to each British citizen on their 100th birthday. She did send one to her Mother, signed "Lillybet".

The Royal Family will be weaker for her passing. It remains to be seen whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing.

HOLLINGS' HOWLS WILL HAVE TO WAIT: Wired News says:

Sen. Patrick Leahy says a controversial proposal to embed copy protection in electronics gear will not become law this year.

Since Leahy is the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, his opposition instantly boosts the difficulty Hollywood studios will encounter in their attempts to enact sweeping copyright legislation.

The Vermont Democrat said through a spokesman that he "does not" support the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), which Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) introduced this month.

Leahy had said during a hearing March 14 that he would block an earlier measure -- the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act -- that Hollings had circulated privately. But that was before Hollings had introduced the revised CBDTPA, which is not as far-reaching.

Jonah Goldberg's syndicated column references then-Senator Patrick Moynihan 1993 essay, titled "Defining Deviancy Down", which Goldberg describes as "one of the most influential articles of the last decade":

Moynihan argued that deviancy - crime, mental illness, out-of-wedlock births, etc. -- had become so rampant, had so thoroughly soaked into the culture, that we simply had to redefine the abnormal as normal to cope. By setting the bar lower, we comforted ourselves with the notion that the percentage of abnormal behavior was still manageable.

Moynihan's most famous example was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. That event was a major turning point in American history, credited with helping to convince Americans to abandon prohibition. It warranted two entries in the World Book Encyclopedia. The actual details? Four gangsters murdered seven gangsters.

In the early 1990s, Moynihan noted, Los Angeles suffered from the equivalent of one St. Valentine's Day Massacre every weekend.

And, of course, we can say much the same about suicide bombings in Israel. Perhaps it's an admirable inclination to want to depict something like Wednesday's "Passover Massacre" as an aberration. But the fact is, suicide bombings and other violent acts are part of everyday life for Israelis and Palestinians. The aberrations are cease-fires and truces.

Both essays are well worth reading.

T.S. ELIOT ON JESSE JACKSON: OK, so he never said anything directly about Jesse Jackson, but Kathleen Parker quotes some very apropos Eliot at the beginning of her column on the man she calls "a nation of one":

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

MARCH 27, 2002: There aren't all that many dates that are on the tip of the average person's consciousness. June 6, July 4, September 11, December 7 are probably the biggest dates (I'd add December 25, but last time I checked, most historians agree that Christ probably wasn't born on that exact date).

It's a safe bet that Wednesday, March 27, 2002 probably won't be memorized as a date by most folks. But what do you call a day that has three celebrities (Dudley Moore, Milton Berle, and Billy Wilder) die, along with 16 Israelis killed by a suicidal Palestinian; and also has President Bush signing Campaign Finance Reform into law (and being promptly--and quite appropriately--sued by the NRA)?

TREKKIES UPDATE: As I said here, we watched Trekkies earlier this week. The Digital Bits has an extensive interview with the film's director, Roger Nygard, including how the strange guy who built his own Capt. Pike wheelchair (complete with "one for yes, two for no" blinking lights) ended up in the film.

THIRD PLACES: Good article by Catherine Donaldson-Evans on FOXNews.com about "Third Places", an term which grew out of The Great Good Place, a book by Ray Oldenburg, was advanced by Virginia Postrel in her book, The Future and its Enemies, and lately has been picked up by Glenn Reynolds on his Instapundit site, and in a December 2001 Wall Street Journal article (reprinted here).

Donaldson-Evans says that:

The offices-away-from-the-office are frequently the ubiquitous chain coffee shops like Starbucks, or the loungy café bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble, where no one hovers over customers — even if they buy nothing and stay for hours.

Starbucks has actually capitalized on and encouraged the trend by making some of its stores "wireless." Patrons who subscribe to a Voicestream plan can bring their wireless-enabled laptops or pocket PCs to some Starbucks locations, boot up and connect to the Internet.

"We’ve known for quite some time that folks use our locations for work. People really tailor it to their needs," said Starbucks spokeswoman Megan Behrbaum. "We’ve heard of photo-desk folks in Starbucks uploading their images to the [news]papers."

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, a Foxnews.com contributor who has written about the phenomenon, said people have for centuries had the need for a "third place" to gather, other than home or work. And there's something about cafes that gets the ideas percolating.

Incidentally, the one problem I've had with Starbucks' wireless Internet service, is that often the clerks don't even know that they have the service! We have two Starbucks close to our house, and one knows they have wireless, the other is clueless. Fortunately, MobileStar, Starbucks' wireless 'Net provider, publishes an extensive list of wired Starbucks, and has fairly helpful customer support people.

ZERO TASTE: Rod Dreher, on The Corner on National Review Online says that t-shirts with "GROUND ZERO" on them are selling briskly in New York--too briskly for Dreher:

Look, I understand that tourists who come to New York want to go see Ground Zero. And I understand that they want to buy FDNY and NYPD t-shirts; we've all done that, and it's good to show solidarity with the Bravest and the Finest. But I do not understand the people who sell and who buy caps and t-shirts that say "GROUND ZERO." Honest to God, you see them downtown. I passed some dippy tourist moron wearing a brand-new GROUND ZERO ski cap the other day, and I wanted to slap him. A site of atrocity, a mass graveyard, a place of war crime -- commemorated as a souvenir! I bet that guy also has a t-shirt that says, "Somebody Who Loves Me Went to Auschwitz, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." Hell, why not?

I suppose if New Yorkers are actually buying them, it could be taken simply as a sign of how tough they are, but as far as the tourists, I'm not at all surprised--at either the merchants selling the t-shirts, or the people buying them.

There are lots and lots of people out there with bad taste, weird taste, or no taste, and there's not much that can be done about them. As far as the merchants, they're simply responding to demand. When I toured the area in early October, with a friend who works in the financial district (in a building very, very close to the WTC) who took me down there to see the atrocities, already there were numerous street vendors selling trinkets, postcards and souvenirs.

A DOG'S LIFE: Gregory Hlatky, whose blog is called A Dog's Life, recently included us on his list of links. Greg describes his site as "Second-hand analysis, trite reflections, ill-informed opinions, ignorant observations, incoherent blitherings, beautiful dogs" (Greg's wife raises and shows Borzoi (Russian Wolfhounds)).

Thanks Greg!

NFL SCHEDULE UPDATE: John Clayton of ESPN has his take on the games with the best storylines in 2002.

FIRST THE OSCARS , THEN THE RAZZIES, NOW THE RINOS:

They're called RINOs - Republicans in Name Only, and now, they've even got their own awards, dubious to be sure, handed out by the anti-tax Washington group, Club For Growth.

Club For Growth President Stephen Moore said the RINO awards recognize certain Republican office holders around the nation who have advanced what he called "anti-growth, anti-freedom or anti-free market policies."

The chief Senate RINO is not too surprising...

OUR SOURCE WAS THE NEW YORK TIMES: Actually, a reader tipped us to this--The Times has a semi-regular column where they get a director to watch a classic film and comment on it. This time, it's Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of the Men In Black films, watching the legendary Dr. Strangelove. In many ways, especially compared to his later films, Strangelove seems to be Kubrick's most effortless film--but that's only because so much preproduction and preparation went into it. When I watched this month with 'Group Capt. Mandrake', I said to him, "I don't know if this is the best script ever written, but it's right up there. This is incredible writing."

And incredible directing as well. Speaking of Sonnenfeld, when we saw Black Hawk Down last weekend, we saw one the first trailers for MIB II. If the trailer is any indication (and we all know often they're not), It looks hilarious--with Tommy Lee Jones beginning the film as a Cliff Claven-like postal worker, complete with navy blue shorts and nobby, hairy knees, since Will Smith has zapped his memory at the end of the first MIB.

And speaking of Kubrick, on February 22, Nichole Kidman watched and commented on The Shining for the Times. At the moment, it's still available to read online. Good thing too, as Kidman's insights into how Kubrick directed The Shining are even more insightful than Sonnenfeld's into Strangelove.

REMEMBER SEALAB? I do, but just barely, from reading about it when I was a kid. It was the US Navy's 1960's deep-sea equivalent to NASA's manned space program. (Scott Carpenter played a role in both programs). Apparently, the program also had some Cold War applications:

Although a military oath prevents SeaLab participants from describing much of their work, some details have been unclassified. Some emerged in "Blind Man's Bluff," a 1998 bestselling account of Cold War submarine espionage.

In 1971, a specially-designed submarine, the USS Halibut, reached the floor of the Soviet Sea of Okhotsk. Divers, using work pioneered at SeaLab, ventured into the depths and retrieved Soviet test missiles. They also installed a tap on a phone cable that gave U.S. intelligence officials an inside look at the Soviet Navy.

"We proved it could be done," Tomsky said.

Details of the Navy's Okhotsk cable-tapping operations emerged after the arrest of a former employee of the National Security Agency who sold the secret to the Soviets. But SeaLab's role in the affair has remained classified until recently and the full story has never been told.

HOW TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT YOUR FORMER EMPLOYER: Michael Lewis (who wrote Liar's Poker, one of the very best) tells all. Found via Bizquick.org, here's a sample of Lewis's advice:

If you don't want to actually write your book yourself -- if you're just hoping to be paid for dealing some inside dope -- it's unlikely what you have to say, or think you have to say, will make for an enjoyable reading experience.

Oddly enough, many of the Old Enronians who hope to tell their story are in exactly this position. They simply want money for what they saw and heard, and perhaps a bit of literary celebrity to go along with it. It doesn't occur to them that the primacy of their economic motives is what got them -- or, at any rate, their evil former employers -- into trouble in the first place.

5) If before you write a word of your story you are writing to people for advice about how to get started, forget about it. It's time to find another real job.

COMMUTER LANES RANT: Just added "I Really (HONK! HONK!) Hate (Get Out of the Way, you $&#*@!!) Commuter Lanes!", a "rant" I wrote for the last page of the Summer 2001 issue of Sport Z magazine. Normally, I tend to smoke a very, very mellow version of Tom Wolfe for my essays, but on this one, I combined it with a P.J. O'Rourke filter and a Joan Didion cigarette holder, with a pinch of Dennis Miller chewing tobacco. The result is a definite rage against bureaucracy (not to mention commuter lanes).

JAMES LILEKS' COLUMN IS A MUST-READ. He powerfully contrasts carefree life in America with death by terrorists in Israel. And I tip my fedora to his incredible writing chops.

ROBOT REPORTER UPDATE: Back on March 14th, we mentioned Wired's article on robot reporters, and later, suggested combining them with virtual sets. Tim Blair (by way of Christopher Cross) has some suggestions for model types.

VIRGINIA POSTREL ON HOUSING PRICES: Postrel's latest New York Times column looks at the difference in housing prices between "red" and "blue" America, and concludes:

[P]erhaps there is more to it than voters acting in their economic self-interest. Places like Charlotte, N.C., and Las Vegas seem able to grow and grow without ever setting off land-use protectionism.

"Outside of the coastal areas of California and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor, you don't see this phenomenon," Professor Gyourko said. "It may be that the civic culture is really different in those areas." Maybe there really are two Americas. "One allows development, and the other puts a lot of restrictions on it."

As to why, read her column.

KOYAANISQATSI IS COMING TO DVD! One of my favorite “head films” (Geez, I’m really dating myself with language like that) is coming to DVD as early as this fall. Despite its unreadable title, Koyaanisqatsi is a dazzling film, filled with stunning time-lapse, slow motion and speeded up cinematography overlaid on top of the music of Philip Glass. (It also has a not very subtle pro-environment, anti-human and anti-technology bias to it, but there’s no dialogue, and the film is ambiguous enough to also be read (as Roger Ebert noted) as a film celebrating the incredible cities and structures that man can build.)

One of the best movie double-bills I’ve ever attended, was when Philadelphia’s TLA (Theater of the Living Arts) Theater showed Koyaanisqatsi and 2001: A Space Odyssey one Saturday night in the mid-1980s. (You didn’t need drugs to feel like a space cadet after viewing those two movies back to back.) I’ve owned a laser disc copy of Koyaanisqatsi ever since, and can’t wait to get it on DVD.

In any case, here’s what the Digital Bits has to say about the subject:

we've gotten word that the classic 1983 film Koyaanisqatsi, which depicts life in motion in all its visual splendor, is finally coming to DVD. In late January IRE and MGM reached an amicable agreement that will allow the release of Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi on DVD as early as the Fall of this year, hopefully coordinated with the theatrical release of Naqoyqatsi by Miramax. Naqoyqatsi's release will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Koyaanisqatsi.

GEEZ, BILLY WILDER DIED AS WELL YESTERDAY. The Internet Movie Database's home page says: "In an unbelievable boost to those who love to claim that famous people die in threes, Variety is reporting that writer/director/legend Billy Wilder died Wednesday night (3/27/02) of pneumonia in Beverly Hills. Mr. Wilder was 95." Wilder's most famous films include Some Like It Hot, the original Sabrina, Stalag 17 and The Apartment.

UPDATE: Here's an AP report on Wilder's death.

802.11 WIRELESS NETWORKING BLOG: As I posted on March 14, I'm a huge fan of wireless computer networking and Internet access. Turnkey Networking is a good looking blog full of 802.11b wireless networking news. Here's one item:

First wireless movie theater? It's not what you think: the Austin Wireless Group announced today that the Alamo DraftHouse Movie Theater at 2700 W. Anderson Ln. in North Austin, Texas, has full Wi-Fi access....From the press release: Typical theaters may not work well for this concept, but the Alamo DraftHouse has table seating for movie goers, so they can order drinks and food while watching the movie. So Internet use would not add anything more to the tolerated commotion that already exists with wait staff taking and delivering orders to the crowd. The group invites all comers on March 25th for Revolution OS.

NFL SCHEDULE ANNOUNCED: The NFL announced the schedule for their 2002 season today, according to this Yahoo Sports article. The season will:

kick off with the New York Giants hosting the San Francisco Giants on Thursday, September 5, on ESPN. It will mark the first time that the league has opened a season on a Thursday.

The first full slate of games will be on Sunday, September 8, capped by the debut of the expansion Houston Texans, who will host the Dallas Cowboys in another prime-time game on ESPN.

The first Monday night game has the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers in a rematch of the AFC championship game. The contest also will mark the Patriot's first game in their new home, CMGI Filed.

The full schedule is available online here.

UPDATE: Peter King of Sports Illustrated lists his picks and pans of the upcoming season.

FLIGHT ATTENDENT MADE BOMB THREAT: The Washington Post is reporting that a Virgin Atlantic flight attendant was arrested for allegedly writing a bomb threat aboard a plane in January, forcing the London-to-Orlando flight to be diverted to Iceland:

Michael Phillipe, a 25-year-old French citizen, was charged with interference with crew members on an international flight, the FBI announced. He was scheduled for a hearing in federal court in Newark, N.J., on Thursday afternoon, a day after FBI agents arrested him there.

Phillipe faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

On Jan. 19, Virgin Atlantic Flight 27 was en route to Florida when a threat was found scrawled on a bathroom mirror. The message, "American must die," was written in soap, officials said.

A second message, written on an air sickness bag, stated, "Bin Laden is the best Americans must die there is a bomb on board Al Quaida." It was Phillipe who reported finding the threats, authorities said.

If the charges are correct, it's clearly a Franco-American-style byproduct.

HOLLYWOOD VERSUS REALITY: Good essay by Ellen Goodman, comparing Hollywood's mangling of history with the outcry over Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin's alleged plagiarism:

For Goodwin, sloppiness is cast as a career breaker. For Howard, a deliberate distortion of biography is a career maker. In one academy, a bad mistake is a capital cause; in the other Academy, editing and rewriting truth into falsehood is "just a movie."

What an odd, upside down, unbalanced sense of what's right and wrong and important. It reminds me of how John Nash--the real John Nash--described his return to reality: "I became disillusioned with some of the delusions."

This is the award-winning message: In Hollywood, the moviemaker was smeared with the truth. And won anyway.

TAKE THE CALVIN TEST! (What, I can't be Calvin Coolidge or Calvin Hill?) As seen on Bill Sulik's "Blithering Idiot" Blog--and curiously, he's Spaceman Spiff as well. Or maybe it's simply because Nina and Group Capt. Mandrake and I watched the horrifically frightening Trekkies last night (Mandrake is safely aloft on his mission, by the way). Trekkies, if you haven't seen it, is quite an astonishing documentary, with a cast that makes Reform Party conventions and the Star Wars cantina each look like a PTA meeting.

You are Spaceman Spiff! Zounds! You are the intrepid Spaceman Spiff, the engaging explorer ensconsed in an unending universe of exotic and evil extraterrestrials! You're brave, but you should give that dictionary a rest. Take the What Calvin are You? Quiz by contessina_2000@yahoo.com!

NEW YORK TIMES SAYS: FUN HARD TO FIND ON THE WEB. The Blogosphere replies: "speak for yourself!"

LORD OF THE RINGS JUNKIES UNITE: It's coming on DVD, on August 6th, and November 12th. Confused? The Digital Bits has all the answers. (Scroll up above where this link deposits you for even more LOTR info.)

TOGETHER AGAIN: CLINTON, STEPHANOPOULOS AND LUCIANNE: Did you ever see Nicolas Roeg's 1985 film Insignificance? (That's OK, nobody else did either). It was all about a fictitious mid-1950s meeting of Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio and Joe McCarthy in a New York hotel room. Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post reports that Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos and Lucianne Goldberg decided to recreate that movie in a Manhattan restaurant this week. Their meeting sounds even more surrealistic than Roeg's film.

MAY THE TEXT BE WITH YOU: Ever wonder what Star Wars would like if it was done in moving ascii text animation?

Nope, me neither. But these guys did--and it's the NRO Cool Site of the Day. (Maybe because of the other page on the site--watch Jar Jar die in ascii...)

Speaking of NRO, their "redesign number 9,023.02" is going some time to get used to--it's definitely a radical departure from their previous site designs.

ABOUT ME PAGE UPLOADED: Despite the often narcissistic feel of this Blog, it's amazing how much writer's block you can get when you have to write an "about me" page. I finally got around to it. Click here to read everything you ever wanted to know about me--and probably much, much more.

A TOM WOLFE MOMENT: Subtly ironic moment at Borders--buying a paperback copy of Hooking Up for Group Capt. Mandrake (a closet-Americaphile, which he hides under layers of stiff-upper-lipness), as part of a few going away presents, as he wends his way back to England. (His route is top-secret. He kept mumbling something about Wing Attack Plan R, OPE, CRM-114...)

On the cover of Hooking Up is Tom Wolfe, resplendent in his cream-colored custom tailored peak-lapeled double breasted suit, faux spats, and clock socks. The clerk, meanwhile, is somewhat less resplendent in lime green hair (much brighter than the institutional green of Mandrake's Blog), strange "My First Pony" T-shirt, and the most amount of piercings I've ever seen in one lower lip. There must have been close to ten of them.

Would her look qualify as Radical Chic? Funky Chic? Or merely Rococo Marxist?

MILTON BERLE, AGE 93, DIES: The Washington Post is reporting that Milton Berle, "the acerbic, cigar-smoking vaudevillian who eagerly embraced a new medium and became "Mr. Television" in the dawn of the video age, died Wednesday, a spokesman said. He was 93.

"He was responsible for the television set in your home today," [publicist Warren Cowan] said. "He put television on the map."

"Uncle Miltie" was the king of Tuesday nights, and store owners put up signs: "Closed tonight to watch Milton Berle." The program's popularity spurred sales of television sets and helped make the new technology a medium for the masses.

HOME AUTOMATION TIMELINE: Back around the middle of 2000, Home Automation magazine (then known as Popular Home Automation) changed editors, and a number of projects I was working on for the magazine got scuttled. Several of the articles went to Nuts & Volts, and the Virginia Postrel profile I had written eventually ended up in Flak, in an updated and abbreviated form.

Also in the works (until the idea was dropped) was a timeline of home automation and an accompanying article, which I had already begun to sketch out. While I would heavily revise it, here's that draft, which is hopefully a fascinating (if convoluted) look at the history of several of the components that would be considered part of home automation, including television, the personal computer, and X10 lighting and appliance control.

(I was of course, also planning to cover the the Internet. However, I was going to rewrite and condense material I had already written, and have since already uploaded to my site, so I deleted it from the draft for brevity's sake.)

BEYOND A DROUGHT: The New York Post is reporting that Mayor Bloomberg yesterday declared Manhattan's first drought emergency since 1989.

THE NEW HIGH GROUND, 21ST CENTURY STYLE: Brink Lindsey says that China intends to land a man on the moon by the end of this decade:

On Monday China launched Shenzou 3 into Earth orbit -- the third in a series of unpiloted test flights leading toward an eventual manned space program. China's stated objective is to achieve manned spaceflight by 2005, but analysts think that the first flight with Chinese "taikonauts" could come sooner. And the Chinese don't intend to stop in Earth orbit: Their goal is to get back to the Moon by the end of the decade.

I wonder how the United States would react if China does develop a serious manned space program. Could this be the ticket to shake the U.S. program out of its brain-dead space shuttle/space station rut?

REYNOLDS WRAP: Glenn Reynolds' latest Tech Central Station column is on the subject of Democrats vs. New Media:

There's nothing more likely to inflame the Web than a copy-protection bill that is a complete sellout to corporate interests, and that's what this one is.

Then there's the loss of moral legitimacy: It's hard to pose as friends of the little guy against Big Business when you're taking money from Big Business while taking long-established rights away from the little guy. (Scott Harshbarger of Common Cause calls this move "a shocking fire sale.")

If the Republicans have any sense, they'll be making an issue of this in the next elections, painting the Democrats as hypocrites who have sold out to Hollywood, and who are trying to reach, Big Brother-like, into the hearts of American televisions and computers. But even if they don't, a lot of Web denizens will be saying it, and it's likely to have a lot of resonance. Because it's true.

DUDLEY MOORE DEAD AT 66: The Washington Post is reporting that Dudley Moore, "who became an unlikely Hollywood heart-throb portraying a cuddly pipsqueak whose charm melted hearts in "10" and "Arthur," died Wednesday at his home in New Jersey, a spokeswoman said. He was 66."

Moore died at 11 a.m. EST, said publicist Michelle Bega in Los Angeles. The British-born actor died of pneumonia as a complication of progressive supranuclear palsy, she said.

There was more than a touch of autobiography in "10," the 1979 film in which Moore played a musician determined to marry a perfect woman. But the happy ending eluded him in real life. Four marriages ended in divorce.

He confessed to being driven by feelings of inferiority about his working-class origins in Dagenham, east London, and because of his height of five feet, 2 1/2 inches. In later life he also spoke of the pain of being rejected by his mother because he was born with a deformed left foot.

Moore starred in one of my favorite guilty pleasure films--"Bedazzled", a kooky British psychedelic takeoff on Faust, co-starring Moore's frequent sidekick, Peter Cook (recently remade into a surprisingly watchable, if far less silly version with Elizabeth Hurley).

DEADLY EXPLOSION HITS ISRAELI HOTEL: The Washington Post is reporting:

JERUSALEM –– A suicide bomber blew himself up in a hotel in the coastal resort of Netanya on Wednesday evening as guests gathered for a Passover Seder, the ritual meal ushering in the Jewish holiday. Witnesses said they saw five bodies; medics said at least 51 people were wounded.

Some of the wounded were seen staggering out of the lobby of the Park Hotel, which was plunged into darkness by the explosion. One man was covered by a blue blanket, and had blood dripping from his face, said witness Joel Leyden.

Leyden said he saw five bodies lined up on the sidewalk outside the hotel, including a woman dressed in her holiday best. Paramedics said at least 51 people were wounded, some of them critically.

It was not immediately clear if the attacker set off the bomb in the lobby or in the dining hall of the hotel.

MAXIM-UM SUCK UP: Andrew Sullivan has a story about a hilarious screw-up by the not-so-bright, chock-full-of-babes Maxim magazine, which tried to suck up to its readers by telling each city how wonderful it was:

Of course, the truly funny thing about Maxim's goof-up is when it got the delivery wrong and sent New York's copies to Philadelphia by mistake. If you received the wrong copy in Philly, you were informed that Philadelphia is " "a glorified piss break between New York and D.C." You were also told that the average inhabitant of such a city is "a lard-ass with arteries packed as tight as a Colombian airline passenger's G.I. tract." If only they'd had the balls to send that out in every copy, I'd respect them.

The whole thing reminds me of a story in Ray Coleman's biography of Eric Clapton. One evening in the 1970s, when Clapton was on tour, and piss-drunk, he asked his chief roadie what city he was in. "Cleveland", the roadie replied. Clapton went on stage, and dutifully shouted the standard clichéd, "GOOD EVENING, CLEVELAND!!!!!!!!" Dead silence. He was in Detroit, but his roadie had decided to play a little joke on his employer...

SPANISH PRIEST JAMS CELL PHONES: Good for him. But, as the article says:

The controversial technology is designed to create quiet zones in places like restaurants, movie theaters and libraries.

Commercial jamming systems are illegal in the United States, Canada and Britain, but some countries such as Australia and Japan allow limited use.

Spain has a legal vacuum, says NiceCom, the only Spanish company which markets the technology. It has been doing so for two years, and lawmakers are now discussing the issue, NiceCom spokeswoman Inma Jimenez said.

I've frequently read that cell phone jamming technology is illegal in the US, but I've never read why, or when this law was passed. If anybody knows, please email me--I'd love to hear the answer.

DEATH TOLL LOWERED IN AFGHAN QUAKE: Yahoo News is reporting that the death toll in Monday's Afghan Quake was dramatically lowered from 1800 to a current estimate of about 200.

The toll could go somewhat higher, he said, but was not expected to exceed "the low hundreds," [Ros O'Sullivan, project coordinator from Concern Worldwide] said Wednesday. That conclusion was reached Tuesday night during a meeting of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the International Organization for Migration, Medecins Sans Frontieres, Concern Worldwide, and other relief groups working at the scene.

Good. But still, it goes without saying that a nation of mud-brick houses faces huge risks when there's an earthquake. Back in early 2001, Jonah Goldberg wrote about the then recent earthquake in India which killed an estimated 20,000:

Modern buildings have a tendency to fall down less than squalid tenements or shantytowns. Especially when you're rich enough to make them quake proof.

So again you ask, why is this relevant?

Well, if you listen to what the anti-globalization protesters are saying at the World Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or at my local coffeehouse, you'd get the impression that they have the best interests of poor people at heart. Of course, it turns out they don' t.

Globalization is generally something rich people are against and poor people are for, which is funny since rich people are supposed to be greedy and poor people are supposed to be content. This is true about both certain conservatives and liberals but for different reasons. Conservative anti-globalists and trade unionists fear what globalization will do to people inside our borders. That creates problems to be sure, but it's not nearly so evil as a certain breed of liberal nostalgia which wants to make the world safe for righteous tours of impoverished lands where noble savages still live in huts and starve with surprising regularity.

Okay so maybe most of them don't live in huts, but they do live in a crushing poverty that so many liberals think is preferable to being forced to eat at McDonalds or drink Starbucks coffee.

OSCAR ROUNDUP: Reading John Podhoretz's column on the Oscars really pounds home what I missed by going to a movie rather than watching their awards ceremony. Apparently, I wasn't alone--since the ratings were the lowest ever. Which is why...

Matt Drudge says that Whoopi Goldberg is done as a host.

"Whoopi will likely be the fall gal," a top network source said the morning after the night before. "Next year, we want one person: Oprah Winfrey! It would be great!"

Just as NBC TONIGHT SHOW host Jay Leno has emerged as a new favorite to host the Oscars among influential Academy insiders."

Meanwhile, the Happy Fun Folks over at Happy Fun Pundit say:

There has been much written today about various problems with last night's awards, such as "In The Bedroom" being shut out, "Lord of the Rings" only winning a few technical awards, having to look at Whoopi Goldberg for four and a half hours, etc.

But most of the pundits are missing the real problem with the awards, which is that THEY ARE GIVEN OUT TO FREAKING MOVIE PEOPLE! It's like God himself came down and said, "You know what the problem is with movie people? Their egos just aren't big enough. How can we create a gigantic televised cluster jerk that will ensure that these clowns make even more outrageous demands and drag around even larger entourages of sycophants and losers? Because if there is one thing I can't stand, it's a humble Hollywood star."

They suggest replacing the Oscars with the Skunkies, an award show named after the Lockheed Skunk Works.

No, really.

UPDATE: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake links to an astonishing rant in Salon by Cintra Wilson. I can't help but read this and think that if this tone was used in say, National Review, the outcry would be staggering. Here's an excerpt:

The Academy sensed this attitude was lurking like a murky cloud of spiritual unease over Middle Earth, and it is my (admittedly hostile) perception that they said to themselves, "Well, the Oscars are already fucked this year, so let's honor our Negroes! It's been a while. Call Whoopi."

I used to call it the "Noble Cripple and Spade Year" -- it comes around every five years or so. When the Oscar Winner's alumni circle starts to look like the meeting table in "Judgment at Nuremberg," the Academy devotes a year to not looking like racist, Aryan-celebrity-eugenics-worshipping, cracker peckerwoods, and either gives an Oscar for the best dribbling retard performance, or jerks us off with a big, obvious, Slather the African-Americans With Trophies orgy to make up for the previous insulting, five-to-seven-year stretch when barely anybody of color was recognized at all, for anything.

SORRY FOR THE LACK OF UPDATES TODAY: An editor needed an article revised and turned around ASAP, so I haven't been able to update the Blog today. Look for new content tonight or tomorrow.

The X Factor Blog links to an article in Wired, which says that Cuba has banned PC sales to its citizens. Wired says:

Early attempts to confirm the information independently were unsuccessful. Dozens of messages to Cuban retailers and government officials in Cuba went unanswered. Cuba's spokesman in Washington, Luis Fernandez, was consistently evasive.

"If we didn't have an embargo, there could be computers for everybody," Fernandez replied when asked this question: Are computer sales to the public banned in Cuba?

The X Factor adds"That's like asking: "What did you want for dinner tonight, honey?" And getting the response: "I'll tell YOU a thing or two about Disneyland!" WTF?"

I'm surprised that they didn't do this sooner. Alvin Toffler has consistently written about how photocopiers and computers have almost always been illegal in totalitarian regimes, because they allow for easy dissemination of information (such as books and articles about how the free world differs from totalitarian regimes!). Toffler once mentioned how successful The Third Wave and Future Shock were in China and the Soviet Union, but he didn't see a dime of it, because it was largely distributed in bootleg form via photocopiers.

As I said earlier, I saw Black Hawk Down with a couple of friends and my wife on Sunday night. I had seen it previously, when it first came out, and loved it. I was surprised when the reaction of the rest of my group ranged between anger and indifference. One friend was angered because of the film’s story--our incursion into Somalia, and how our failure there lead to an effectively neutered foreign policy, and our weakened stance to the rest of the world, especially the folks in the Middle East. My wife was confused by the ambiguous, sort of hyper-documentary style of the film.

In a way, our disparity of views was shared by the critics themselves. Roger Ebert loved it. But over in National Review Online, John Podhoretz hated it, and Rich Lowry felt obliged to counterpunch. It didn’t help of course, that the Last Outpost-like theater we saw it had a lousy sound system (and a badly scratched print). The line that Sam Shepard, as General Garrison, says about “Washington, in its infinite wisdom, denied us the use tanks and an AC-130 Specter Gunship” was said so quickly, and not elaborated on, that the significance of it was easy to miss. When I showed her an article on what exactly an AC-130 is, she replied, “oh, now that would have been nice to have!”. No kidding. But as Podhoretz writes:

we cannot understand why Americans are in Somalia or why it's important to be watching the movie. Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer salute the bravery of the soldiers, which is funny, because they're both cowards. They can't bear to face the fact that the proximate cause for the disasters that befell the Americans that day in Somalia — and the horrifying consequences to America and the West in the quick pullout that followed — are due entirely to Hollywood's hero, Bill Clinton.

Oh, they know it. But they won't say it. And that tentativeness is one of the causes for the failure of Black Hawk Down to do much besides make you feel ill.

On the other hand, I loved it—when I saw it in February, I immediately ran out and bought Mark Bowden's book. (The Brothers Judd has a review of the book, and some excellent links afterwards, by the way). The book does a far better job of explaining the geopolitics and the impact of our disaster in Somalia, but the film itself is (to me at least—your mileage may vary, as witnessed by the rest of my gang last night) is a powerful, visceral look at the horrors of modern battle, and an huge, ringing endorsement of Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force.

Oh, and by the way, The Digital Bits says it will be out on DVD on June 11 of this year.

THE RAZZIES: With all of the talk about the Oscars, I've seen little in Blogland about the Razzies, their annual competitors, who handout awards for the worst films in Hollywood. This year, for the first time, a "winner" showed up in person--Tom Green, for Freddy Got Fingered. "Green was cited as 2001's Worst Actor, Worst Director, co-author (with Derek Harvie) of the year's Worst Screenplay and as Worst Screen Couple (Green and "Any Animal He Abuses")." Congratulations, Tom!

The other big "winner", with three Razzies, was Tim Burton's awful remake of Planet of the Apes. Hard to believe that the guy who directed the first two Batman films and Mars Attacks and other very quirky but watchable films could have directed such a mess. The day after we saw Apes, my wife and I saw Apocalypse Now Redux, during its brief run in cinemas, reminding us just how far it sometimes feels, that Hollywood has fallen.

WOODY, FATTY, AND DERSHOWITZ MEET AT INSTAPUNDIT: Woody Allen's appearance on the Oscars, Fatty Arbuckle, Alan Dershowitz and more--the secret connection revealed at InstaPundit.Com.

Actually, I was rather happy to hear that Woody Allen was on the Oscars. I still think he's a talented filmmaker, in spite of numerous films that seemed like he was trying to derail his own film career, and of course, the infamous Soon-Yi scandal. Allen had talked about making an appearance on the Oscars years ago (in Eric Lax's hagiography), and the first post 9/11 Oscar must have seemed like the perfect opportunity. Of course, I'm an old softie when it comes to Woody--he and Kubrick were favorite filmmakers of mine, when I was in college.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DVD! According to Bill Hunt of the The Digital Bits, "today marks the 5th anniversary of the debut of our favorite format into its initial test markets."

On this day, 5 years ago, I high-tailed it out to my local Good Guys and bought a Toshiba SD-3006 DVD player and three DVDs - Blade Runner, Dr. Strangelove and Legends of the Fall. And I watched them each about a dozen times that first week. Back then, there were only about 20 titles available and just a few thousand players were sold in the first week. Now look at us... more than 15,000 titles and over 28 million players later. DVD... you've come a long way baby!

Hunt wants the early adopters of DVD (from March and April of 1997) to email him with their stories. I guess I don't qualify, because I bought my player in January of 1998. On the other hand, I had a laser disc player since 1988. As I wrote in my Spintech essay on Citizen Kane, it's really pretty astonishing to see beautiful, crystal clear DVDs selling for $24.95 (and often less)--I can remember buying numerous titles on laser disc at prices ranging from $49.95 to $124.95. And I had to drive 30 miles to Philadelphia or Trenton to find 'em. Today, I can buy DVDs in my supermarket! Nice to see a technology succeed.

JUDD, RUFFINI, GOLDBERG ALL AGREE: Chris Matthews sounds like he's losing it. Orrin Judd writes on the Brothers Judd Blog:

Patrick Ruffini is right, These are the final days of the Chris Matthews show, Hardball, on MSNBC. How can we be so sure? Because he's making the same mistake that Geraldo Rivera made during the Clinton scandal, turning against his audience.

Geraldo Rivera became a cable hit by beating OJ Simpson like a rented mule. This made him a hero to middle Americans, sick of the mainstream media pussyfooting around the issue. Then he decided to defend Bill Clinton and has never been heard from since. He was supplanted during Impeachment by Chris Matthews, who despite impeccable liberal credentials, simply couldn't stomach Clinton's myriad outrages. But now, whether reverting to type or genuinely alarmed, Mr. Matthews has turned against the expansion of the war on terrorism and thereby risks losing his audience.

Judd says, "Look for Mr. Matthews to join Mr. Rivera in a yurt in Afghanistan soon..."

CLEMENZA WAS RIGHT: Writing in National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson says "In some ways in our war against the terrorists we are like the democracies of the late 1930s. They knew that there was more to Hitler than his avowed quest for the return of the Sudetenland or the Alsace-Lorraine. They sort of suspected that an entire, venerable culture in Germany and Japan had gone off the deep end."

The truth is that there is a great storm on the horizon, one that will pass — or bring upon us a hard rain the likes of which we have not seen in 60 years. Either we shall say "no more," deal with Iraq, and prepare for a long and hard war against murderers and terrorists — or we will have more and more of what happened on 9/11. History teaches us that certain nations, certain peoples, and certain religions at peculiar periods in their history take a momentary, but deadly leave of their senses — Napoleon's France for most of a decade, the southern states in 1861, Japan in 1931, Germany in 1939, and Russia after World War II. And when they do, they cannot be bribed, apologized to, or sweet-talked — only defeated.

In the first Godfather movie, Clemenza told Michael Corleone , "You know you got to stop them at the beginning, like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich, They should never've let him get away with that. They were just asking for big trouble. " Hopefully we're smart enough to stop the new Axis, before history repeats 1939 all over again.

LIVE BY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS/DIE BY POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: I didn't watch the Oscars last night (my wife, "Group Capt. Mandrake", and another friend and I went to see "Black Hawk Down" before it left the theaters again (I had seen it before, during my "PB" (pre-blog) period) but I'm glad to see Halle Barry and Denzel Washington win--they're both fine actors, who've built solid careers in Hollywood. But I wonder if we'll ever see the day that race isn't an issue in Hollywood. (I'm not holding my breath.)

In the meantime, James Chen (by way of Instapundit), writes that Hollywood hasn't done a very good job of respecting Asian actors:

Why don't we ever hear about how Hollywood portrays and treats Asian-American actors and actresses? Can you imagine the crappy roles and stereotypes that Asian-American actors have had to endure through the years--even to this day? Sure, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon won a few awards last year, but that movie featured non-American performers and was made and produced outside of this country. Asian-American actors and actresses almost never get lead roles in feature films, and if they do, it's usually time for them to either sign-up for karate lessons or apply the dragon lady make-up. And don't get me started about The Joy Luck Club.

Of course, if you live by this kind of political correctness, you die by it as well. By making such a big deal about race, Hollywood now faces the wrath of every minority. By the way, my take on "Black Hawk Down", and the very divergent reactions of my friends is coming later today. Meanwhile, Capt. Mandrake sees how it stacks up to When We Were Soldiers.

AOL A DRAG ON TIME/WARNER: The New York Daily News Online is reporting that AOL has been a significant drag on the performance of Time/Warner's stock price.

In one more stroke of bad news for the world's largest Internet and media empire, last week Lehman Bros. analyst Holly Becker shaved down her earnings estimates, hammering AOL Time Warner's already battered shares. The stock, which has underperformed peers like Viacom and Fox, closed Friday at $24.50, down 57% from its high of $56.60 last May.

Becker's concern is the same one that's plagued the media giant for months. Its AOL Internet division, once seen as the company's hot growth engine, just isn't generating high enough subscriber fees and ad dollars.

It's a stark turn of events for AOL Time Warner, which two years ago said it would lead the Internet revolution by combining the world's top online company with Time Warner's powerful old media assets, from magazine giant Time Inc., to cable TV titan CNN, to movie studio Warner Bros.

"There have been so many disappointments," said media investor Hal Vogel. "Their old media is underperforming and the new media is not moving ahead fast enough."

While in theory, (how does Matt Drudge type it out?) AOLTIMEWARNERTURNERBROADCASTINGCOMPUSERVE (and whatever else is in there) makes sense, when it was first announced, it sounded like one of those Beatrice-type companies that Michael Milken was so successful at busting up and getting more money for their original components than the combined enterprise was worth. Synergy doesn't always work, and it looks like this one is failing badly.

Now pundits are saying Time Warner shareholders would have been far better off if they hadn't agreed to sell to AOL. They're noting that, in hindsight, AOL chief Steve Case was the shrewdest guy at the podium back in January 2000 when he shook hands on the deal with Time Warner's Levin, just months before the Internet bust.

"Steve Case pulled off the ultimate in brinksmanship," said media investor Uri Landesman of Arlington Capital. "Where would AOL be trading now? It looks like he made a tremendous deal for AOL shareholders, and Levin made a poor deal for Time Warner."

DONALD RUMSFELD, HOSS: Matthew Hoy writes on his Hoystory Blog that there's:

More proof that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is cool. Earlier this week a Fox News cameraman was briefly detained and had his videotape confiscated as he filmed a traffic stop near the Pentagon. Fox News screamed bloody murder and got the tape back the next day. It also turns out that the cameraman got a $55 ticket for unauthorized photography. Well, when the cameraman went by the Pentagon on Friday to pick up his annual media credential, he found a handwritten note from Rumsfeld: "Greg - I'll pay your ticket, give Torri the amount. Best, D.R."

JUST IN TIME FOR EASTER: Marshmellow Peeps get their own official Web site. Just when you thought the Web wasn't complete enough...

LAW CATCHES UP TO ECOTERROR: The Washington Times has an excellent article by Valerie Richardson on the subject.

PICTURE OF WEBLOGS UPDATE: Back on Thursday, I mentioned Casey Marshall's Picture of Weblogs site. It's now listing this site. Through it, I found Kesher talk, a Blog on Jewish issues run by Howard Fienberg. Howard has listed me under "Sci-Tech Blogs". Thanks guys!

CHINA, A POLICE STATE. WHO KNEW??!! Glenn Reynolds, on his InstaPundit.Com site, has a link provided by a reader about a BBC reporter who seems honestly surprised that the People's Republic of China is a Police State. As Glenn says, "Even though it has, like, Starbucks and Pizza Huts and stuff! I can't improve on the description from reader Holly Watson, who forwarded the link:

The tone is priceless - he seems genuinely surprised at all this. At first I thought his defiance of the Chinese police thugs was brave - then I realized it was just stupid.

Next up: Beneath the brilliant orange sunsets of Houston's skyline, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes finds pollution-belching petrochemical facilities.

The BBC article, and its genuinely surprised tone reminds me of Jonah Goldberg's essay on (actual) headlines like "Scientists Say Men, Women Not Alike.", "Study: Parents Can Affect Teen Sex", and an article surprised that researchers have concluded that "Adolescents with tattoos are much more likely than other teenagers to be involved with drugs, alcohol or even gang violence."

Indeed, if you were to read any one of the stories I cited at the beginning of this column — men and women aren't the same, men dig sex while women like security, having two dads but no mom has an effect on the kids, etc, — to my great-grandmother, she'd say "I need a newspaper to tell me this?" (of course they'd have to be translated into Yiddish first). But today, and for the foreseeable future, we're gonna be treated to headlines that say, in effect, "Your Father Was Right: Bears Do Sh-t in the Woods."

And yes Virginia, China is genuinely repressive.

UPDATE: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake sees the BBC article a little differently:

The position [on Instapundit] is that the BBC reporter has only just woken up to the fact that China is a police state. That is not, in my not very humble opinion, true.

The article is written in very BBC-type language. The BBC tries hard (but doesn't always succeed) in remaining impartial with its reporting. It rarely comments, tries to stick to the facts and is unemotional in its reporting. That would be a rarity from what I've geberally observed in typical news reporting here.

I don't think the reporter was surprised to find out that China is a poice state - he just reported it in a very understated British way.

ANDREW SULLIVAN ON GAYS AND LIMITED GOVERNMENT: Sullivan writes in his latest “Daily Dish” Web log that “the natural politics for homosexuals is conservative-libertarian. Homosexuals have historically never done well under repressive leftist or rightist regimes; they are far more likely to flourish under limited government, low taxes, and a robust foreign policy.”

What the current war has further done, I think, is reveal how those alleged allies (in leftist fantasies) of gay people in the developing world are nothing of the sort. The "oppressed" of the Islamic world, with whom the gay left identifies, would throw most actual homosexuals off tall buildings or bury them under rubble. Islamo-fascism is one of the most powerful and terrifying homophobic movements since Soviet and Cuban communism and Francoite or Nazi fascism. So how on earth have some gay leftists instinctively sided with the allegedly oppressed other? The first political principle for any gay movement worthy of the name is freedom. That's what the left doesn't understand; and that's why their hold on the gay population is tenuous and eroding fast.

I think Sullivan is absolutely right on his first point—it seems absurd for homosexuals to identify with the left and its emphasis on statism, stasism, bureaucracy and regulation over freedom and laissez-faire policies. (And I suspect The Nation knows this all too well, hence their recent and hysterical attack on Sullivan. (Although Sullivan has gotten a hilarious slogan for his Web site out of it: “Makes Kissinger look like St Francis of Assisi.” I love it!)

As for Sullivan's second argument (the left's "hold on the gay population is tenuous and eroding fast"), I'm more skeptical of seeing any immediate results. But if they truly want to be a “big tent” party, there’s a huge opportunity for Bush and the Republican Party here. The question--the big, big question--is, how can they bring in gays without alienating their religious base? But if anybody can do it, it’s George W. Bush, with his soaring popularity, and he seems to understand how important inclusion is.

Read the rest of Sullivan’s thoughts on the subject—I’d like to think he’s a leading indicator of a real sea change in politics. If so, this should be quite an interesting decade.

UPDATE: Orrin Judd sent me a link to his review of Sullivan's recent book, followed by "a ton of links (the man is prolific and controversial) by and about him and these issues."

KUDLOW ON THE ECONOMY:Larry Kudlow's slant on Alan Greenspan and the current state of the economy:

On the economic side, the Fed statement confirms that official Washington now believes the recession is definitely over, and that a stronger-than-expected recovery has begun. How strong? Today, what we're looking at is much more of a normal recovery cycle than most people — including Mr. Greenspan — expected a month or two ago. In fact, we're actually looking down the barrel of a noninflationary economic recovery, one that will provide basketfuls of profit.

Kudlow goes on to describe how the recovering economy could impact the upcoming elections.

I'll believe the economy is really recovering when I start to see some sign that the markets are heading north. Right now, they appear to be locked in a trading range--and while the Dow may be creeping upwards it's like watching paint dry. I don't think most voters will believe the economy is recovering until they see significant upward movement in the stock markets--a few of those hundred or more point rally in the Dow days that make the evening news would be nice--and the Nasdaq has even more work cut out for it.

MUHAMMAD ALI, SONNY LISTON, GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE MIDDLE EAST: The secret connection will all be revealed by reading this post from the eclectically named Captain Scott's Electric Love Bunker.

BLOCKING ADS: I always feel a twinge of guilt when I employ a new program to block Web advertising. Having been self-employed for the last 12 years, I understand that everybody is in the self-promotion business, to one degree or another. I have ads for my tip boxes, and am an Amazon.com associate. My previous businesses have, at various times, relied on newspaper ads, telemarketers, and direct mail to build up clients. And today as a freelancer, I send out truckloads (OK, maybe cardboard box loads) of queries every year both via snailmail and email.

But the latter half of the twentieth century in America has had a constant running battle with advertisers and the general public. The answering machine and caller-ID help to cut down on telemarketers interrupting dinner. The VCR and ReplayTV help to cut down on TV commercials. In fact, I think it was George Gilder’s Telecosm, where he wrote that the next big trend in business is respect for their customers’ time, and not wasting it. (I think Gilder's usually pretty accurate in his predictions. But it would be nice if that trend would finally arrive!)

I believe that X-10 did their reputation a lot of damage with their seemingly omnipresent pop-up ads. Originally, X-10 was only known by us home automation freaks, because they developed the first (fairly) reliable home automation technology, back in 1977. Today, millions of Internet users know X-10 as “those jerks that put out the annoying pop-up ads for their webcams. I see them on every site I visit!”

I started using Pop-Up Stopper Pro with Internet Explorer a few months ago, because I was sick of those ads, and similar pop-up ads. (I’ve already given X-10 a reasonable chunk of my cash, and wife gave me a subscription to National Review, so it’s not like I’m boycotting those folks who use pop-ups).

Lately, I’ve started seeing those really annoying Macromedia Flash ads, where Alka-Seltzers fizz across a Web page, or ET flies across your monitor or things go splat, creepy crawlies creep and crawl, or other silly things interrupt a Web page you were trying to read. In a way, they're worse than pop-up ads, which usually open up behind a Web page, or can quickly be deleted. So earlier today, I downloaded FlashSwitch, to toggle Flash on and off.

I can’t help but think that somewhere hidden in the boilerplate of the CBDTPA, formerly known as the SSSCA, or whatever Fritz Hollings is calling it this week, is some legislation to block our attempts to block ‘Net advertising. I know Replay TV’s automatic commercial zapping feature has the TV networks annoyed. But geez folks, it’s not like we don’t see enough advertising already!

Nina and I saw Gunga Din on Friday night at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto. What a fun movie--and one that there's no way could be made in these PC times. Unless of course, the producers hired Noam Chomsky as their technical advisor, to add a postmodern subtext that informs us how evil those mean old empire building Brits were.

The other curious element of Gunga Din is that it's one of the few films where Hollywood actually cast Cary Grant to play an Englishman. Most of the time of course, he was all-American, often as a Madison Ave. advertising man (Mr. Blandings, North by Northwest), or working for the US government (Notorious, Destination Tokyo). Today, whenever Hollywood employs Sean Connery, they build an elaborate backstory to explain why he's a Scotsman in a film full of Americans. Back then, audiences suspended disbelief and assumed Cary was all-American--because he was so terrific to watch.

Speaking of which, if you're reading this from the Bay Area, it will be playing these for the next few days, as the Stanford is in the middle of a Cary Grant retrospective.

PHOTO PAGES ADDED: I have no idea how these will load, or look, on other browsers. But I just uploaded a collection of photos of myself, playing with trains, battleships, and rockets, as well as a couple of my run-ins with celebrities. (That Chewbacca--what a nice guy. Some stars let their fame go to their heads, but he's one wookie who's got a solid, if extremely furry, head on his shoulders.)

NOTE: These pages are both fairly large (over 400K each) and best viewed via a broadband connection. Click here to view photo section.

Back in late January, the omnipresent Instapundit had a link to Bjørn Stærk's comments about the two types of people who quote George Orwell:

those who quote his fiction, and those who quote his non-fiction. When fiction-quoters find themselves in a debate way over their heads, they drag out their handy little Orwell toolbox, and throw out some ominous buzzword (Orwellian! Big Brother! Doublethink!), and then leave, considering the debate won. To them, Orwell is an excuse not to think, because any complex issue can be reduced to some 1984 or Animal Farm analogy. To non-fiction quoters, Orwell is a painful reminder never to stop thinking. You can read 1984 and emerge as much a blathering fool as you ever were, but read his essay on language, and it'll haunt you, forever poking at your self-importance and lazyness, as it has mine.

1984 is a brilliant book, and I'm sad to find yet another example that confirms my theory: It is always quoted foolishly.

I think the difference between Orwell's fiction and non-fiction quoters is a terrific observation, one that Jonah Goldberg runs with today. Goldberg quotes a couple of reporters who have recently used the phrase "Big Brother is back" or variants of it to describe cameras in schools or around monuments.

I could go on for pages. Variations on the phrase come up all of the time, in congressional testimony, editorials, news reports, press releases, political debates. But nobody sees the irony. Not only was Big Brother never here in the first place, but the knee-jerk belief that he was here reflects precisely the sort of ideological brainwashing 1984 was supposed to be warning us against. It is a popular myth, a bit of self-reinforcing hysteria that civil libertarians and the simply unthinking buy into without even knowing it. To ask "Is this return of Big Brother?" is only slightly more reasonable than to ask "Are we looking at the rebirth of Narnia?" or "Is the Bush administration concerned that when Superman returns, he might handle Saddam Hussein without consulting the White House?"

The roots of this Big Brother mythology are deep and intricate, but surely it arises in part because of the general liberal conviction that the past is bad and Big Brother is bad, thus — since we don't have Big Brother now — he must have existed in the past. I'm sure there are kids in Ivy League English classes right now who think that Big Brother existed in 1984 (the year) because that was the name of the book.

As much as I hate the idea of cameras at intersections (and they seemed to be all over the roads in London when I was there in 2000), I have to agree with Jonah when he says:

If the slippery slope is the rule, why have civil liberties become more secure since the internment of the Japanese or the isolated abuses of the 1960s — or the suspension of habeas corpus by Abraham Lincoln, for that matter? If we are going to use slippery-slope arguments, let us at least use the real-life examples Edmund Burke spoke of rather than invoke the fictitious apparition of a past that never was.

FROM QUAGMIRE TO "MISSION-CREEP": Yet another call the beware the Ides of March. Oh wait, we're past those. OK, yet another call (humorously issued by Jeff Jarvis) to beware The dreaded Afghan springtime:

Remember when we were told that winter in Afghanistan would be a killer, assuring us a quagmire?
Now we're supposed to dread the melting snows of springtime.The Guardian:

American military and intelligence chiefs are bracing themselves for an upsurge in guerrilla-style attacks from al-Qaida and Taliban forces in Afghanistan when the snows melt in a few weeks time.

As concern continued to grow among British backbench MPs of a possible "mission creep" in Afghanistan, the CIA director, George Tenet, warned that al-Qaida terrorists were poised to step up their activities following the spring thaw.

We advance from guagmire to "mission-creep."
I dread that Afghan summer.

LET'S PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER: A while back, we mentioned the Robo-Scribe, the robot news reporter. Last week, the New York Times ran an articled called Where the News, but Almost Nothing Else, Is Real. It's about the construction of a virtual reality set for KJTV's news in Lubbock, Texas.

The set, an enormous high-ceilinged room, would have remote-controlled cameras capable of swooping above and around it. Announcers would be able to take an open elevator up to a sweeping second story and walk across the exposed higher floor.

But this set would not be an elaborate wood, glass and metal affair. It would exist virtually, inside the hard drive of a Silicon Graphics workstation and the brain cells of its viewers.

OK, we've got the robot reporter, we've got the virtual reality set, need I say more?

Hey, Max Headroom, tanned, rested and ready...

POSTAL RATE INCREASE APPROVED: AP is reporting that Americans will be paying an additional 3 cents to mail a letter this summer.

The independent Postal Rate Commission on Friday gave its approval to an unprecedented agreement on postage prices, reached by the post office and nearly all of the businesses and organizations that normally fight rate changes vigorously.

All that remains now is for the postal governing board to set the date, probably around June 30.

The decision gives the post office "breathing room" after it was strapped by the economic slowdown and costs related to anthrax-tainted mail, said Rate Commission Chairman George Omas.

A couple of years ago, Rick Merritt, Executive Director of the non-profit watchdog group PostalWatch, while calling for a hiring freeze said,

“The Postal Service seems to be the only organization on the face of the planet that has invested Billions in automation technology without deriving any significant increase in workforce productivity. Only a government-sanctioned monopoly could raise prices and increase its workforce in the face of reduced demand for its services.”

Merritt went on to say, “The Postal Service is in a Death-Spiral, prices keep going up, quality of service is going down and the Postal Service continues to become a bigger and bigger mouth to feed. What America really needs is a Postal Patron’s Bill of Rights which; requires postal head-counts to shrink along with first-class mail demand, strictly prohibits the agency from regulating competitors and outlaws rate-payer subsidized forays into non-postal ventures.”

Given that big chunks of the American population have email, and electronic bill paying, the Post Office has to be the only enterprise not to understand that to increase business, you have a sale, not raise prices. Instead of letting the Microsoft trial grind on, couldn't we try to break this monoply up--finally?

Oh, and while a virus could kill my computer (in Norton we trust), you can't get Anthrax from an email. (But if you're reading this, you knew that already.)

AP is reporting that Maryland Public Television is retooling Wall Street Week, and in the process, Louis Rukeyser, its host, is being shown the door:

"They decided unilaterally not to proceed with me as the host of the show I created, wrote and maintained for 32 years," Rukeyser said.

"They then tried to get me to remain with the program in a senior-commentator capacity, but I decided I didn't want to have anything further to do with them."

MPT and Fortune magazine are creating a new version of the weekly program called "Wall $treet Week With Fortune." The show, slated to air in the fall, will feature Fortune editorial director Geoffrey Colvin and an undetermined co-anchor, MPT said.

Rukeyser's contract runs through June. He said the final edition of the show will air June 28.