YOU DON'T PULL ON THE MASK OF THE OL' LONE RANGER--but he's entitled to remove it himself. Sgt. Stryker reveals his secret identity--and has lots more good stuff on his site since I last linked to it, but you probably knew that already.
Now, did you ever notice you never see Bruce Wayne and Superman together in the same room. Or Peter Parker and the Incredible Hulk. Hmmmm.....
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, CONSERVATIVE? That's Orrin Judd's take, in this post from The Brothers Judd Web log.
SAY THE SECRET WORD....Found on NRO's The Corner Web log today, this post by Andrew Stuttaford:
Nice comment from Putin earlier this week, while studying the names of delegates at a conference he was addressing on Monday:
"I see the name of a Mr. Engels from Germany on the list. Thank God he came without Marx."
SUCCESS GOES TO SPIDER-MAN'S HEAD, not to mention the rest of his body, according to Group Captain Mandrake. (Parents, don't let your kids look at the photos that accompany the good Group Captain's item. Trust me.)
Darn--I was really counting on Spidey to protect me from the various super-villains prowling Manhattan. I'm sorry to see that he's taken to spending his merchandising royalties and film percentage points on many, many visits to the Four Seasons and 21.
SANITY IN CALIFORNIA? The California Assembly rejects a ban on U.S. Indian Team Names. Good move, guys.
BAD DAY FOR JOURNALISTS, especially of the newspaper kind. Very funny item on the Fox News Web site, found via Chronwatch:
These are not good days for journalists. When people would rather plow their pickups into your building than share with you the medical records of their sub-human companions, it is time for a little soul-searching, and perhaps even a little image-mending.As to what that means, go check out the article--it's quite amusing.
CHRONWATCH: Found via InstaPundit, there's a Web site devoted to monitoring the San Francisco Chronicle, or as I've heard it described from time to time, "the Comical". If you're in the Bay Area, stop by Chronwatch sometime.
LIVE FROM NEW YORK, ITTTTTTTTTTT'S EDDRISCOLL.COM! After visiting my parents in New Jersey, I'm back online in Manhattan via my hotel room's DSL connection. (And yes, riding Amtrak into the city, I had my usual "there's something missing from the skyline" twinge after we passed the Newark station. Manhattan desperately needs a replacement for the World Trade Center. The skyline just doesn't look right without it.)
ABSENT FROM KEYBOARD: I'll be travelling to the East Coast on Tuesday, and may be away from a computer for a few days. In the meantime, click on the links page at the left for lots of good content.
Be back soon!
SPEAKING OF HISTORY: Here's a history of Outrageous TV Commercials, complete with Real Video files.
And now we finally know what killed off our hominid forefathers...
HISTORY, THE BIG MYSTERY: Suzanne Fields says our children don't know much about American history:
It certainly doesn't help the situation that more than half the teachers teaching history to junior and senior high school students didn't major or minor in history in college. That is crucial because, as smart as they might be, they haven't a conceptual foundation in the subject and probably teach more from someone else's lesson plans than from deep knowledge - or even from shallow knowledge.The "Nation's Report Card" was issued just as a 125-page paperback, "9-11," by the leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky, became a surprise best-seller, selling over 160,000 copies in the first few weeks. If anyone takes advantage of historical ignorance in interpreting American history, Chomsky does, but lots of people are buying his book. A lot of them would probably have flunked the history test, too.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION: This is a classic, found on Joanne Jacobs' Weblog:
So that's how it happensIf they're ever freed from their exile, these guys have a great future as potential drummers for Spinal Tap.
Palestinian gunmen sent to Italy in the Church of the Nativity deal are threatening to explode, Al Bawaba reports. They can't take the humiliation of being watched by the Italian police.The three Palestinians granted exile in Italy after the Israeli army siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity risk cracking under the strain of being so closely monitored, one of them told La Reppublica on Monday."When we arrived in Italy I asked the head of the Italian security service responsible for us not to track us too closely. I told him, “at least give us some personal space and autonomy or we could just explode”, Khaled Abu Nejmeh told the daily. -- 5/27
THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR FILLINGS:
Dental Fillings Targeted in Multiple Lawsuits.
First cigarettes, then fatty foods, then fillings. Fortunately, as the article states, unlike the tobacco industry, the ADA is fighting back.
BIG BROTHER DOMINATES AIRSTRIP ONE: Ingsoc has taken over the country formally known as England. Group Captain Mandrake reports that his children are forced to watch broadcasts of Big Brother for up to 18 hours a day on their telescreens, for party indoctrination and propaganda purposes. Writing from his office in the Ministry of Information, Mandrake says:
They are all hooked on Big Brother. We have cable service here, so we get the e4 channel. That means Big Brother can be on the tv as much as 18 hours a day. Even some of the soap operas (hanging my head in shame at this further admission of failure) are forgotten if they interfere with Big Brother (as Emmerdale does, I am told).Ooops, upon further research, I've discovered that apparently, this Big Brother isn't the head of a tyrannical socialist regime making permanent war with Eastasia, but an English game show.
But I do think fluoridation in the water might behind both forms of Big Brother...
CULTURE HAS CONSEQUENCES: Mona Charen on the ultimate consequences of America's fetish for "nonjudgementalism" and why it hamstrung the FBI when it discovered that numerous young Arab males were taking flight training lessons at American schools:
When your greatest source of pride is nonjudgmentalism, you will pretend not to see even what is patently obvious. In reality, it was perfectly legitimate and understandable for Americans to suppose, however briefly, that the perpetrators of Oklahoma City were Arab terrorists. Arabs had bombed the World Trade Center (the first time) only months before, and had attacked American officials in the Sudan, Lebanon and Egypt. They had brought down a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killed 241 American soldiers in their barracks in Lebanon. Truck bombs were a Middle East specialty.Read the whole thing--it's quite good (as usual for Charen).Culture has consequences. Before 9-11, our culture had elevated nonjudgmentalism to the level of civic religion. We've been told that "everything has changed" since then.
But not everything has. Some continue to worship the old civic religion. The Department of Transportation under Norm Mineta (the lone Democrat in the Bush Cabinet) has declined to examine young Arab-looking males more carefully than other airline passengers and has refused to permit pilots to carry guns. Both decisions defy common sense.
JAPAN THEN, ISLAM NOW: Orrin Judd compares our current struggle with Islamic extremists with our view of Japan in the 1980s and early '90s:
In many ways, the current hysteria over our confrontation with Islam resembles the Japanophobia of the 1980s. Then, as now, the emotionally labile, those who live in the moment, took a current situation (things like the Japanese buying Radio City Music Hall) and projected it forward in a straight line, never pausing to consider the catastrophic internal weaknesses of the culture they perceived as a threat. Today, without our having done a thing, Japan is a nation on the verge of collapse. The problems that the rest of the West shares with Japan are a far greater threat than Islamic extremism.
BUT WHAT DOES ADAM CLYMER THINK OF THIS? Bush Ridicules NBC Reporter.
WAR & POPCORN: Looking for something to rent from Blockbusters? Several National Review Online writers pick the best war films of all time. I'd add "Full Metal Jacket", and "Apocalypse Now" to the list, and maybe "Black Hawk Down". But I think I need to see "Black Hawk" a couple of more times on DVD to make up my mind on it.
THE SKIN TRADE: How much does the porn industry really make a year? Emmanuelle Richard runs the numbers, in an article called The Naked Untruth.
TARGETING A MYTH: InstaPundit links to this article, which discusses gun control in England . "The evidence suggests that gun control has not made England a safer, fairer society," its subhead reads.
No kidding--but as InstaPundit notes, this is a real breakthrough, being printed in the often very liberal Boston Globe, the same paper that banned Jeff Jacoby for several weeks for writing a pro-fourth of July column last year.
"MR. YAMAHA DIES": Group Captain Mandrake links to this CNN.com story, which reports that Genichi Kawakami, who took over his father's business and made Japan's Yamaha into a household name around the world through a combination of musical instruments and motorbikes, died on Saturday at the age of 90.
Having had my share of Yamaha musical equipment in the mid-1980s during my rock and roll days, I can attest to their high quality. And their synthesizer, the DX-7, was the sound of pop music during that period. it was heard on virtually every pop record, and its spin-offs are still popular to this day.
DEFENSE SPENDING COMPARED: Steve Den Beste compares American and European defense spending and technology, and finds Europe sorely lacking. He's also going on vacation this week at the Luxor in Vegas (good for him--he'll have lots of fun there) and asks us to "please not start World War III" until he gets back.
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE: After a previous Bleat full of vitriol, James Lileks has
a whole lotta love to give the world, including his love of the series finale of the new Star Trek spin-off, Enterprise:
I love the fact that the main villain was also the simpering shoe salesman in the ZZTop video, “She’s Got Legs.” I like the fact that the Captain has a dog. I like the fact that show has figured out very quickly who the good characters are, and shunted the lesser ones off the stage. I liked the fact that the EU Council de Science - sorry, the Vulcan Science Council - had decided that time travel was impossible, when we all know that the Federation figured out otherwise a few years later that it wasn’t. (Of course, the Vulcan Science Council knows better, but they keep things from the simplisme Earthlings.) I liked the special effects because I am, at heart, 12 years old, and a dork drawing Enterprise pictures in my notebook unaware of the KICK ME sign on my butt.I thought it was pretty good as well, although our local UPN affiliate ran it with a "viewer's choice" episode (apparently determined via Internet vote), which was just dreadful--a group of renegade Vulcans trying to get in touch with their inner emotions. Long, droning and very painful, it made "the space hippies" episode of the original Trek look good in comparison.
Still, the first season of Enterprise has had fewer cringe-inducing moments for a first season of Trek than any series since the first one. And after the pedantic Voyager, I never thought I'd be saying that.
WE DON'T. WE JUST FEAR YOU: AP headline: Castro to Americans: Don't Fear Cuba.
SMART TV & SOUND: I have two articles in this quarter's Smart TV & Sound magazine. They're both online, which of course, should only wet your appetite to run out and buy truckloads of copies of the actual issue.
Heck, buy boxcar loads--they slice, they dice, they make Julian French fries, and they make great gifts!
NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE: I've long wondered what transformed Richard Nixon from a staunch cold-warrior in the 1950s to a paranoid, liberal big government president in the 1970s. Virginia Postrel, on her Weblog, The Scene may have found the answer:
Is it just me, or is this very odd? From the NYT announcement that Rick Berke is the new Washington editor: "[A]s editor of the high school newspaper, he and a co-author wrote an article disclosing that in 1959, Richard M. Nixon, then vice president, was exposed to microwave radiation beamed at the United States Embassy in Moscow when he was staying there for the 'kitchen debates' with Nikita S. Khrushchev." And the point of that high school article was what exactly? (NYT piece via Andrew Sullivan.)See kids, mom was right--never run the microwave with the door open...
The anti-smoking zealots (God how it's tempting to type Nazis) visit the offices of National Review, in this William F. Buckley Jr. essay.
PROUD FRIEND OF ISRAEL Blog found via Group Captain Mandrake. Stop by and check it out.
ROBOTS, DUDE, REDUX: More on the Evolution Robotics robots that we posted about yesterday. Here's an update, from Reuters.
THE HISTORICAL MYTHS OF THE INTELLECTUALS is the subject of this essay currently online at the homepage of JamesBowman.net.
NFL SAFETY TO LEAVE FOOTBALL FOR THE ARMY: Read who and why here.
THE END OF ARAFAT? That's what Steve Den Beste says is coming soon.
KESHER TALK: Howard Fienberg's excellent Kesher Talk blog has a new URL:
Like this blog, he's still using Blogger's software, but is no longer on their server. Smart move, given all of their downtime. At least when Blogger's input mechanism goes down, by being on an independent server, the data already posted is still readable.
STRANGE HEADLINES PART II. Found on the Sacramento Bee: "Inmate has no right to mail sperm from prison, court rules".
I have no problem with the ruling--I just think it's an astonishing headline, very much indicative of what a strange, Helter Skelter, Koyaanisqatsi, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control world we live in.
Stop me before I start sounding like Dennis Miller. Oops--too late.
ROBOTS, DUDE! I spent much of the week finishing an article on Evolution Robotics for Nuts & Volts magazine. It's an interesting company, with the goal of creating a standardized robotics OS just like Windows and the Mac operating systems standarized and transformed the PC industry from a hobbyist market to a platform where applications could do some serious work.
To help promote their efforts, and the idea of robotics in general, they've released two small robots to the general public. At the moment, you can see them here. I wonder if Aibo will take to having the robotic company on the floor.
I'll let you know when the article streets. (And yes the above headline was inspired by this Wired cover. No, I didn't have the nerve to use it as the title of my actual article.)
AS OPPOSED TO WHAT HE'S BEEN DOING FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS? The BBC has an article titled "Bono makes a grab for US purse strings", complete with a photo of Mr. Vox and US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in nightshirts borrowed from the Marx Brothers in "Duck Soup".
And why is a US treasury secretary touring Africa with a rock star? And if he must tour with a rock star, why not Britney Spears? Jennifer Lopez? Somebody both American and babelicious?
And finally, what does The Edge think of all this? He's Irish. He's in U2. He goes by only one name (unless he counts "The" as his first name--I'll ask to see his driver's license next I see him). Why doesn't he get to discuss third world debt relief with treasury secretaries who should know better??
UPDATE: Drudge links to a larger view of the photo of Bono and and O'Neill as Groucho and Chico.
DEEP IN THE MULLET BELT: Day Two of Sgt. Stryker on the road.
THE NAME GAME: Virginia Postrel analysizes why you got the first name you have--and why you gave the name you did to your son or daughter.
PUTTING THE FUN BACK IN FUNDRAISING: Happy Fun Pundit gets an invitation to a White House fundraiser. Guess which magazine they rented the subscription list to? (Hint, it's not National Review or The American Spectator...)
(Found via Virginia Postrel's Weblog)
STRANGE HEADLINE: Why does this AP article have a headline that says "Deal With Iraq, Bush Tells Europe", making it sound like it's exclusively Europe's job to take out actually Saddam, when he's trying to get them to buy into helping us?
SAY IT AIN'T SO! The Onion discovers Factual Error Found On Internet! Someone should tell Pierre Salinger.
HOME THEATER ARCHEOLOGY PART ONE: On the Digital Bits site, how your den/media room/home theater got the way it is, by someone who should know, Robert Harris, who has restored numerous movies (Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Vertigo and many, many more) for theaters and home viewing.
DEAR MOM: Richard Reid, the accused "Shoe Bomber" writes home to mom, and may have further incriminated himself in the process, according to this FOXNews.com article.
PIZZAIDF.COM UPDATE: Back at the beginning of the month, a number of Web logs, including ours, mentioned that it was possible to buy a Kosher pizza online and a large bottle of Pepsi to be delivered to an Israeli Defense Forces patrol, section, or platoon.
Apparently this week however, military commanders decided to bar soldiers from accepting pizzas they did not order, "due to concern that hostile elements may exploit the pizza deliveries to soldiers,'' the army said in a statement.
Group Captain Lionel Mandrake checked with the London Israeli Embassy for confirmation. It's true--read their reply here.
(By the way, great digging and reporting, Group Captain!)
THE SOLUTION TO HIJACKING: There will never be another plane hijacked ever again, if Fritz Hollings' solution is implemented. Click here--I don't want to spoil it for you.
TIME MANAGEMENT IN SCHOOL: I don't often post education topics, because people like Joanne Jacobs specialize in their analysis. But after the last two posts (err, not including the plug for Group Captain Mandrake, whom I have provided a certain amount of education on how this country--not to mention this state works. Oh and how sushi works), I found this post on how much of a student's time in school is typically spent not learning.
It's from a Weblog written by a gentleman who calls himself the Cranky Professor, and found via the omnipresent, and exceedingly stylish InstaPundit.
MANDRAKE, DO YOU KNOW WHY I DRINK ONLY PURE GRAIN ALCOHOL? VodkaPundit has discovered the Weblog of Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. America may never be the same.
MEANWHILE...a ten year old home schooled boy from Washington state just become the youngest ever winner of the National Geographic Spelling Bee.
UNEDUCATED=POOR. Joanne Jacobs says that the Public Policy Institute of California is, like Claude Reigns in Casablanca, shocked, shocked! to discover that less education on average, leads to less income! She writes, on her Readjacobs Weblog:
Stop the presses! Or the electrons, or whatever. Mexican-American households earn 40 percent less than non-Hispanic whites because they're less educated, says a Public Policy Institute of California report. What's interesting is that more education leads to more earnings for second-generation Mexican-Americans, but not for the third generation, which has even more access to schooling.As to what, stop by her site, where Joanne does a great job of exposing what's keeping kids from succeeding.Immigration experts and community groups say Mexican-American children often must attend schools that lack up-to-date textbooks, credentialed teachers and access to computers, hampering the group from improving its lot as quickly as previous waves of immigrants.Did the second generation get better schools than the third? I don't think so. Something else is going on here that has more to do with culture than number of computers in school.
RYAN LEAF UPDATE: On Monday, we reported that Ryan Leaf had been cut from his third gig as an NFL quarterback--a backup in Dallas. He's getting shot number four, this time competing as a backup in Seattle, whose head coach and GM Mike Holmgren seems to like him.
LED ZEPPELIN DEBATES ANTI-CORPORATE FARMING SPOKESWOMAN AT CAPTAIN SCOTT'S ELECTRIC LOVE BUNKER!
(You won't see headlines like that at the New York Times, will you??)
YOU'RE EITHER WITH US OR... PART II: Roger Clegg, on The Corner on National Review Online says that there's progress in Florida:
An Associated Press story this morning reports that Jeb Bush and his cabinet have decided to end a particularly ugly state policy. In order to get into a public school’s “gifted and talented” program, you had to pass an IQ test—but the passing grade was lower if you were black than if you were white. Rather insulting, wouldn’t you say, even if done for the greater good of “diversity”? The change in policy was prompted, it seems safe to say, by a lawsuit filed with the backing of Ward Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute and an aggressive series of letters sent this year by ACRI and the Center for Equal Opportunity to a number of Florida school districts. The letter—now posted on CEO’s website, www.ceousa.org—informed the school districts of the lawsuit and their districts’ legal vulnerability if they didn’t stop discriminating.
THE BIG THREE, 50 YEARS LATER: Check out this cartoon on VodkaPundit.
BOYCOTT McDONALDS: If a National Review Online author calls for it, that means it's a campaign that's not just for anti-global leftists anymore!
Actually, the article is about Arab boycotts of American products--that's just the lead. And the author, James S. Robbins, makes an excellent point:
Arab consumers may not be willing to make this kind of sacrifice. They may forgo Western goods where there are Arab alternatives, but not give up consumption altogether. And in the final analysis, does it really make a difference from a globalization standpoint if the pizza being consumed in Doha has an American or a Qatari name? It is still pizza. A burger is a burger, whether or not it is a Saudi Burger. The Arab reactionaries cannot stop the westernizing of their culture simply by switching to domestic knockoffs of Western goods; in fact, that tactic marks their surrender to it.
DRUDGE HEADLINE: "D.C. Police: Remains found may be Chandra."
UPDATE: The Washington Post says it's her.
CAPT. KIRK'S CHAIR IS UP FOR AUCTION, according to Wired News, which has an article titled Trekkies Bid on the Holy Grail.
Naturally, Jonah Goldberg wants it for National Review. But what's the chain of command? Bill Buckley, then Rich Lowry, then Jonah? Or Buckley then Jonah then Rich? And when all three are down on the planet surface, will Cosmo have the conn?
THE SWINGIN' DAVE BARRY: The predictable hilarity definitely ensues.
But in defiance of his usually focused and controlled libertarian leanings, the complex and dangerous environment that Barry finds himself in somehow forces him to call for strict Federal Thong Control.
THE DICK CHENEY/SEGWAY CONNECTION revealed here.
NO SUCH THING AS NATURAL, according to Jonah Goldberg in his syndicated column.
I wonder what Francis Fukuyama thinks of that.
COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTS STILL DOMINATED BY LIBERALS, according to CNS.com.
The truly great thing about America's college campuses, is their emphasis on diversity. Exploring all sides of an issue. Letting kids think for themselves. And clearly, that commitment is reflected in the diverse ideologies of the speakers chosen for college commencements.
Way to go guys.
ARMED PILOTS UPDATE: Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee accused major American air carriers Tuesday of pressuring the Bush administration into keeping pilots unarmed during flights. Read the whole thing here, including a special surprise guest appearance by Fritz Hollings (D-Disney).
SGT. STRYKER HITS THE ROAD...and ends the day with an honorary Ph.D. in veterinary medicine.
Is the Sarge's adventure this summer's answer to Jonah Goldberg's infamous cross-country road trip? And what do Black Cat and Calico think of Cosmo?
LINKED TO BY VODKAPUNDIT! We may disagree on our elixir of choice, but I've been a big fan of Stephen Green's VodkaPundit site ever since I found it via InstaPundit (and I suspect a lot of other people are too).
Now I'm a member of the "Hair o' the Dog" club. Thanks, Stephen!
REBUILD IT BIG: Ronald Bailey has the right idea!
UTHANT UPDATE: A while back, the mysterious Uthant wrote a very funny piece called "Bush to Florida: You're Either With Us..."
Bush's Justice Department must have taken it to heart, according to this AP story.
I had more respect for the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, whose Gordon Bunshaft designed Lever House and the Union Carbide building in New York in the 1950s--both above-average examples of mid-century modernism (not to mention above average Mies van der Rohe knockoffs), until I read the quote that VodkaPundit found.
UPDATE: I just added my comments to the story on the VodkaPundit site.
THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE, 21ST CENTURY STYLE: Joanne Jacobs have several items on the culture war of the 21st century, on her readjacobs.com site.
IT MUST BE THE DAY FOR THE US TO BE LIMITING OUR DEFENSES, if this report is true.
BLOG CRASHES: Because my blog is on a separate Web server, we appear to be fine. But a number of blogs hosted by Blogspot appear to be down, due to a hiccup on their server, or a software glitch, or a disruption in the space/time continuum or who's know what. It looks like all the data's there, but they need to be republished by their users. Stacy Tabb, the designer of the new, improved InstaPundit site (which is also now on a different server), explains just how to do that.
CRIS CARTER RETIRES, JOINS HBO SPORTS. The ex-Minnesota Viking is calling it a career.
BROOKLYN BRIDGE, STATUE OF LIBERTY ON TERROR ALERT, according to this FOXNews.com report (via Drudge).
THE SGT. STRYKER/HILLARY CONNECTION: Revealed here.
ATTACK OF THE DRONES: The history of drone warfare, found via VodkaPundit.
SCARY JUXTAPOSITION OF AP HEADLINES on my "My Yahoo" home page:
NOT SERIOUS. Andrew Stuttaford's take on the administration's refusal to arm pilots:
Is the administration serious about counterterrorism in the skies? It would seem not. Speaking to the Senate today, Under-secretary of commerce John Magaw has testified that the White House will continue to oppose arming pilots. Add this stance to the continued presence of Norm Mineta in government, and air travelers have every reason to be concerned that the White House's attitude to their safety is a combination of the frivolous, the foolish and the feeble. When it comes to flight security, the Bush administration seems to put PC over protection and bureaucracy over imagination. What a disgrace.I can understand the Bush administration's fear of giving a Second Amendment issue to their opponents (especially when read hysterical quips like the one at the top of this page). But Stuffaford is right.
THE GOOD THINGS: Asparagirl takes time to appreciate them.
I LOVE THIS PHOTO. There's something really hilarious about seeing Star Wars Stormtroopers stroll past New York's finest.
I have the utmost respect for the New York police. But my first thought when staring at this photo was "But is there a Duncan Donuts in the Empire"?
INSTAPUNDIT UPDATE: As InstaPundit.Com is in the process of propagating to a new Web host, its former URL at Blogspot seems to be down. Here's where to find it.
UPDATE: The old URL is up at the moment. But at least you have the numeric version of the new one in case Blogspot sputters again.
TEDDY KENNEDY HOSTS HEARINGS ON OBESITY: No, we're not making that up. But over at VodkaPundit, they're having lots of fun with the concept....
NO KIDDING: Well, last week it was Star Wars. Today it seems to be England. So in keeping with our Verrrrry English Theme today, found via NRO's The Corner Weblog, here's an article that says that the hotelier that Fawlty Towers was based on was pretty bonkers himself, according to his former waitress.
But what does Manuel think?
NIGHT TO REMEMBER AUTHOR DIES: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake says that Walter Lord has died. Lord wrote the book that A Night To Remember was based on.
If I ever get into digital video editing, I'd be tempted to take the first 3/4 of that film and the last 1/4 of the more recent Titanic and splice them together. You'd then have a Titanic story with solid drama and acting, followed by blow-'em-out-of-the-water (err, maybe not the best analogy for film about the Titanic!) special effects.
US WON'T ALLOW GUNS IN COCKPITS: I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of this issue.
AP HEADLINE: Kashmir Dispute Flares Anew. Geez, can't Led Zeppelin fans ever make up their minds about which version of "Kashmir" they like? Personally, I like the Unledded orchestral version. But I can see where many fans would prefer the original on Physical Graffiti.
Grab the Danelectro--this could be war!
FORCED SILENCE: Reason's Daily Brickbat column says:
In Bournemouth, Great Britain, unsavory speech is dealt with strictly. Ask street preacher Harry Hammond. After denouncing homosexuality from his curbside pulpit, a crowd gathered around him and began to pelt him with dirt and water. He was then fined £300 for “trying to incite people to attack homosexuals.” Finally, the magistrates ordered that his placard -- “Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality” -- be destroyed.Why do I get the feeling that this sounds more like Portmeirion than Bournemouth?
"MAYBE THEY'LL BAN MARKERS": Sony's CD anti-piracy scheme can apparently be cracked with a black magic marker. I had a flashback to about ten years ago, when the rumor was that tracing a green magic marker around the edge would improve playability. Hey, they were write. Err, right!
WOW! The new look InstaPundit.Com site is active--it preserves the red and white color scheme of the old site (which in terms of design, if not color scheme, looked a lot like this site. I can't believe how shamelessly Reynolds copied my design on his old site. He even started blogging a good eight months before I did, just to cover his tracks!) Like NRO's redesign, it's going to take me a little while to get used to his site's new look, but it really does stand out (hence the "Wow!" headline). Nice logo, too.
Perhaps most importantly, the InstaPundit site finally has a search engine--no more having to do advanced Google searches to find something on Glenn's site. Way to go!
IT WASN'T ME--I'M NOT IN JERSEY ANYMORE! CNS.com says that a columnist for "the Pulitzer prize-winning Newark Star-Ledger", New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, last week "used a number of fabricated quotes from a parody published five weeks earlier by Cybercast News Service in authoring his May 17 column on 'politically correct' university research."
Oops!
NAME A PRESIDENT WHO DIDN'T. Here's another amazing Washington Post headline: "Bush Turns More Partisan With Coming of Elections".
THIS SHOULD HELP DELAY ANY OF HIS PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS: A Washington Post headline says, "Lieberman Urges Congress to Delay Future Tax Cuts."
BUSH VS. CASTRO: The AP headline Sunday on my "My Yahoo" homepage read "Bush Won't Ease Hard-Line Vs. Cuba" In National Review Online, Joel Mowbray gives much more detailed reasoning behind Bush's stance in Cuba. He writes:
Without lifting the travel ban or trade embargo, Bush is attempting to infiltrate Castro's island prison with humanitarian assistance and democratic values in an approach dubbed by a senior State Department official as a "frontal assault against Castro."If Bush plays his cards right, he could have the most effective foreign policy since Reagan. The Gipper brought down the Soviet Union. Assuming Dubya gets reelected, by the end of his second term he may very well have not only reshaped the Middle East, but liberated Cuba from its tyrannical dictator.The basic thrust is that the U.S. will attempt to make an end-run around Castro to both engage the Cuban people and sow the seeds of democracy.
Not too shabby, if he pulls it off--and if he does, what an astonishing first decade of a new millennium this will be for this nation.
UPDATE: Speaking of geopolitics, the Times of London says "On the eve of his six-day trip to Russia and Western Europe, the White House said that he would use his visit to Berlin, where he is due to make a keynote address to the Reichstag, to urge backing for the removal of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons of mass destruction."
COMING SOON ON DVD: In their Rumor Mill section, the Digital Bits has very tentative dates for when a number of very big budget films will be out on DVD (several of which aren't even out yet in theaters!)
Which films? Think webs, clones, scorpions, Reese's Pieces-eating aliens and time travelling DeLoreans, among others...
LEAF LEAVES: The Dallas Cowboys say "Seeeee ya!" to Ryan Leaf, the former number two pick in the 1998 draft, who will be a quarterback with his fourth team in a year and a half if anybody signs him.
WORKIN': I have several articles that need to get out the door in fairly short order--so don't expect much content until this evening at least.
STRAIGHT MAN: Terrific article by Howard Kurtz on Ari Fleischer, the White House's press secretary. It's a good look at not only Fleischer's style, but Bush's, with an emphasis on both of their abilities to minimize leaks, unlike the previous administration.
Oh, and Bush's nickname for Ari is "Ari-Bob", making a nice Jewish boy from the affluent Westchester County town of Pound Ridge, N.Y., an honorary Southern good old boy.
THE PHANTOM MENACE: Incidentally, the Drudge Archives were found in this excellent essay by James Taranto on the 20/20 hindsight of Bush's recent Monday morning quarterbacks. Scroll down Taranto's column for some dead-on comments from a reader of the "Little Green Footballs" Weblog.
DRUDGE REPORT ARCHIVES: Found via the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web" column, there is an archive of Matt Drudge articles.
I have no idea if this is run by Drudge, or someone independent of him, but it's a pretty slick collection of the stories that Drudge has broken over the years.
BUSH PET NICKNAME FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN IS 'POOTIE-POOT': Nothing like fumbling out of bed on a Sunday morning, turning on your PC's monitor and finding that as Matt Drudge's headline of the day, in what looks like 30 point Helvetica Bold type all in caps.
As Newt Gingrich once said, the president has his hand on the nuclear button, so we're entitled to know as much about him as possible. But I didn't need to know that.
Here's the story the headline links to.
Pootie-Poot. 'Scuse me while I try and get that phrase out of my head. Where's my sledgehammer?
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: It's not just for American students anymore!
UPDATE: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has more on this, including some of my comments and links to articles on American flag-phobia. Click here to read it.
ANTI-SEMITISM MUCH NASTIER IN EUROPE THAN AT SFSU, according to Howard Fienberg's Kesher Talk blog.
Which is really saying something, when you read this.
WHERE WERE TEACHERS LIKE THIS WHEN I WENT TO SCHOOL?? Matt Drudge links to an astonishing article about a 29 year old band instructor who is accused of showing pornographic videos to students in her home and at a hotel, and has been cited with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor. More grist for the Tom Wolfe education novel, which could probably write itself.
A band instructor at Beyer High School in Modesto could face felony charges on allegations that she showed pornographic videos to students in her home and at a hotel, the Modesto Police Department said Thursday.Meanwhile, in other Bay Area news, Happy Fun Pundit has news of a 13 year old child who could go up the river for eight years for an errant spitball....Deidra Ann Brauns, 29, already has been cited with furnishing alcoholic beverages to a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, department spokeswoman Gina McWilliam said.
Those charges, both misdemeanors, were made Tuesday. The Stanislaus County district attorney's office will decide whether to pursue felony charges on providing pornography to a minor.
There have been no reports of sexual activity between the teacher and her students, but Brauns provided students with alcohol and pornographic videos in her home on several occasions, McWilliam said.
NEWSPAPER WARS: InstaPundit has been touting an alternative to the L.A. Times headed up by professional journalists and frequent bloggers Matt Welch and Ken Layne and backed by former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan. Earlier today, he linked with an article by Joel Kotkin, which appears in The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles. Kotkin does a great job of explaining just how of touch newspapers have gotten with the bulk of their readers, and why the combination of the Web, cable TV and the Internet (especially blogs: The New York Sun (content not yet online) grew out of Ira Stoll's SmarterTimes.com psuedo-blog) may help to right the balance (pun definitely intended). Kotkin says:
In the dark days of the early 1990s the Times’ increasingly reflexive pro-Third World, racially obsessed and often almost hysterically pro-labor politics colored its coverage of local events. A generally "progressive" tilt became so entrenched as to not even be noticeable to editors and reporters themselves. The paper’s perceived tilt against Israel may have its roots in these attitudes, as leftist opinion has turned against the Jewish state.I remember in the late '80s and early '90s, watching the Philadelphia Daily News make a similar transformation from a decent tabloid-sized newspaper to the exact style of pandering that Kotkin describes. I don't mind a moderately left-leaning newspaper, but reading rococo Marxist bias more at home in a typical Village Voice-wannabe alternative newsweekly masquerading as objective news isn't my idea of a good time--or objective news, for that matter. (Oh wait, objectivity is largely jettisoned by postmodernism and political correctness. Sorry, I've got to get with the program here!)Since the recent takeover of the Times by the Chicago-based Tribune Co., the political bias seems to have somewhat eased, and at least a patina of professionalism has made something of a welcome comeback. Yet, the paper all too often seems still inhabited by the spirit of Coffeyism — pandering to various constituencies made up of presumed "victims" of color, while often seemingly contemptuous of the values of middle-class suburbanites, who make up the bulk of the readers.
Added to this problem are those brought on by having a great newspaper now owned by out-of-state interests and run by editors with often little firsthand knowledge of the admittedly complex, often difficult to fathom, megalopolis of Los Angeles.
THE IMPERIAL NETWORK: Mat Honan has created a one stop shopping list of Star Wars Episode II blog reviews. (Found via Capt. Scott's Electric Love Bunker. Which gives me an excuse to say a cool phrase like...Capt. Scott's Electric Love Bunker.)
Meanwhile, over on NRO's The Corner, they've found an essay which probably would have been titled "An Empire, Not a Rebellion", had Obi-Wan Buchanan written it.
IN 1997, TOM CORRIGAN, SFSU'S PRESIDENT, SAID "San Francisco State is considered the most anti-Semitic campus in the nation".
Doesn't look like they've improved their reputation any. (Quote via InstaPundit.)
OUTER SPACE: I wasn't planning to turn this into all Star Wars day here on the ol' blog. But Jonah Goldberg makes a pretty convincing case that Cynthia McKinney's brain is off somewhere in a galaxy far, far away....
THAT'S IT, IT'S RUINED: Well, not really. The Star Wars films have always had huge plot holes in them if you thought about them for a second. My current favorite is, in the first (1977) one, the Rebel Base is on a moon orbiting a gas giant--a planet, like Jupiter, made up largely of hydrogen. The Death Star can blow up planets. Just blow up the friggin' gas giant, and you'll take out the Rebel Base! (But of course, that would have eliminated the need for the bitchin' X-Wings and Tie Fighters battle in the Death Star trench, arguably the single coolest scene in the film--and certainly the best edited.)
Daniel Frank, an LA comedian whose nom de blog is (ala the great Groucho), Captain Spaulding, has found another.
(found via VodkaPundit)
COMPARE AND CONTRAST BUSH before and after 9/11. Jonah Goldberg does in his The Washington Times column, and yearns for the pre-9/11 version:
Much of the country has grown to love President Bush since Sept. 11, giving him the highest and most sustained approval ratings of any president since polling began. Good for him. Me, I liked the pre-9/11 Bush better.Read his column to find out why.
MORE STAR WARS: The Digital Bits has news on when to expect both Attack of the Clones and the original trilogy on DVD. (The Phantom Menace has of course been out for some time.)
NYU, POST 9/11: Jeffrey Sackmann, a recent graduate of NYU on his way to obtaining a Ph.D in English Literature at UW-Madison has started a blog to focus on education and social issues ("but the blog may drift far afield") called The Confidence Man. In one of his first posts, he looks at the state of patrotism on NYU, which sounds much better than it does at several Bay Area colleges. Sackmann says:
9/11 didn't change my values or ambitions, but mine weren't typical of a college senior to begin with. It has been entertaining chatting with friends who would be better fits for Berkeley: after 9/11, they found themselves in a disapproved minority. They did not handle it well, though they eventually receded into a smug, shrill corner.
Well, I saw Star Wars: Episode II: The Attack of the Clones today (and there’s a very good chance you have as well. This review is mostly for the three people in my audience who haven’t seen it yet.)
Here’s my verdict: It’s a technical knockout. But…
The original 1977-1983 Star Wars trilogy, as well as lots of other science fiction films made since, tend to feature great special effects combined with reasonably conventional set pieces. The result is that it’s obvious when the big orgiastic mind-expanding special effects blowout scenes arrive, we’re knocked out because they work in contrast to the set pieces. (Spider-Man, one of only a handful of Hollywood blockbusters since the original Star Wars to emerge with its humanity intact, is a good example of that principle in action.)
Part of the problem with both Attack of the Clones and The Phantom Menace is that they’re so bursting with amazing images, impossible camera angles and compositions filled to bursting with movement, those images become a bit old hat. You can only be knocked out so many times that your brain stops thinking of them as amazing effects, and you start thinking “OK, this is how this corner of the universe works. This is what it looks like. This is how its technology works.” We get that it looks amazing. (By the way, I’m really going to try to see the film digitally projected. The digital photography certainly looked impressive translated into 35mm film, however. I doubt most people are even aware when watching this that it wasn’t “filmed on film”.) So get on with the story.
And Episode II does a better job of getting on with the story than The Phantom Menace. The pacing is much tighter, the humor is held much more in check, Jar-Jar is onscreen for a relatively bearable amount of time—less than five minutes. (He does prove why everybody hated him though: he’s so naive and gullible, he unwittingly sells out the entire galaxy.)
As you’ve probably read by now, Yoda does get to open up a little green can of whoop-ass. The audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cheer when he struck little digitally animated Muppet-style kung fu poses. I actually thought he was far more effective leading the troops into battle—he’s definitely got a Napoleon complex, and it suits him well.
As usual with just about anything George Lucas directs (American Graffiti being the obvious exception), there’s lots of wooden acting and cringe-inducing dialogue. (There's also an unbelievably hokey scene with the two love-smitten leads rolling in a hill that recalls another 20th Century Fox blockbuster from the past.) But there are also several far more emotionally satisfying scenes than The Phantom Menace. Hayden Christensen is a far far more tolerable future Darth Vader than the dreadful Jake Lloyd, one of the worst child actors of recent memory. Natalie Portman as Senator Amidala earns her place among previous Lucas action babes Carrie Fisher and Karen Allen, as someone who can be sexy, feminine and still open up her own can of whoop-ass. And Christopher Lee does his usual best as a classy villain.
But these actors have to struggle to overcome a script full of arch dialogue, and have their performances judged by a man who has demonstrated what happens when the auteur theory is taken to its ultimate extreme. Lucas is a brilliant editor, concept creator, and producer. But he’s his own worst enemy as a writer and judge of performances.
And given the amount of money he’s made for 20th Century Fox (Robert Altman basically owed him his career in the late 1970s, according to Peter Biskind’s book, Easy Riders/Raging Bulls.), there’s nobody to tell him “no”, or tell him that while the Emperor does have clothes, he might want someone else to tailor them.
So go see it—and see if you find yourself initially dazzled, but slowly worn down by a film that in terms of technique, just may be too amazing for its own good.
(By the way, Lucas has his work cut out for him for Episode III: In order to setup the real first Star Wars film, all of these characters are going to die, be banished to interstellar equivalents of Siberia, or become evil incarnate. This could be the first Hollywood big-budget film with a downer of an ending since 1970.)
ALL SPORTS TEAMS EVERYWHERE SHOULD CHANGE THEIR NAMES, lest they offend someone. That's Steve Den Beste's humorous take at people who have far more time and (especially in the case of California and PETA) money on their hands.
THE ROOTS OF ANTI-AMERICANISM: Found via InstaPundit, this essay by Brent Stephen, which appeared in the Jerusalem Post Internet Edition is an excellent primer into the roots of anti-Americanism--and Stephen makes an excellent case for its frequent paring with anti-Semitism. Stephen writes that:
at root, anti-Americanism is not a political platform. Anti-Americanism is a neurosis, both personal and cultural. It is a close cousin of anti-Semitism, and it is a cover for anti-Semitism. It is a mixture of a sense of betrayal, of envy, of exaggerated expectations born to collapse into cynicism, of a self-deception that turns, as it so often does, personal failure into political rage, and of what Friedrich Nietzsche rightly identified as the spirit of resentiment. It will remain with us, just as anti-Semitism will remain with us, so long as Americans and Jews exist on this earth, and it will have to be combatted if Americans and Jews are to remain on this earth.It's quite good--do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Click here for the winner of the Arizona Department of Transportation's "Not My Job Award".
GROUP CAPTAIN MANDRAKE, have we got an Apple for you! (Found via Andrew Sullivan.)
CHOMSKY WATCH: Brent Bozell on Bozell's News Column -- 05/16/2002 -- The Washington Post and Noam Chomsky. where he writes that just after September 11th,
a very impolite cynic could have spoiled the moment by stating that all this rallying around our flag and our fellow Americans would eventually evaporate. The cynic would maintain that as memories faded, our resolve to fight the terrorist enemy would fade along with it, and the media elite would return to seeing America not as a beacon of freedom and democratic values, but as an arrogant cancer on the planet.That cynic would be I-told-you-so’ing today. He could skip through the streets handing out copies of a Washington Post article on Noam Chomsky, a radical crank whose day job is linguistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Post headline prepares the reader for a rare treat at the feet of a daring and different thinker: "An Eminence with No Shades of Gray."
What does Chomsky have that caused the Post to sound this note of distinction, this declaration of lofty superiority? In one endeavor Chomsky stands nearly unrivaled. He hates the United States of America with a fiendish passion. He has no shades of gray when it comes to declaring that it is our country that is the primary state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and September 11 is a small piece of comeuppance.
"KICK ASS": Sgt. Stryker reviews Star Wars: Episode II: The Attack of the Clones.
I plan to see it today. I'll try and post my thoughts as soon as possible.
WOW. Christopher Cross, on his X Factor blog says that California "is so unbelievably screwed", and has the numbers to back it up.
Bill Simon, are you listening?
TONY BLAIR WATCH: Group Captain Lionel Mandrake has a couple of items on, as he calls him, the "Vice-President of the USA, President of the UK, Prime Minister of the UK". Start here, then scroll down to the next item.
I especially like the "I am not Bush's poodle" quote. Down boy!
BAY AREA PEACE LOVE AND DIVERSITY WATCH. Israel News via InstaPundit:
After being surrounded by a mob of students shouting, "Hitler didn't finish the job," and "Get out or we'll kill you," pro-Israel students at San Francisco State University are finally finding an ally against hate.UPDATE: Here's Glenn Reynolds' take on the issue, from his Fox News column.The university president is so fed-up with the hate-filled atmosphere on the Bay Area campus that he has asked the local district attorney's office to help bring pro-Palestinian hate-mongers to justice.
The May 7 incident received widespread press attention after an e-mail was circulated by Prof. Laurie Zoloth, director of the Jewish studies program at SFSU, describing the virulence of the anti-Semitic rhetoric and the campus's seeming inability to halt such occurrences.
More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents, including graffiti, vandalism, hate speech, and violence have occurred on US campuses since January, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
DAVID BROCK UPDATE: Matt Drudge has a preview of a story "set to be published in the East Bay Express, a weekly newspaper", that refutes "Key portions of David Brock's college remembrances from his best-selling confessional memoir Blinded By The Right".
(For an introduction to who David Brock is, and the astonishing twists and turns of his career, see Byron York's retrospective on the American Spectator magazine and this essay by Jonah Goldberg.)
THE '69 JETS: Found this week in fairly short succession on Yahoo's NFL pages, here are two updates to the 1969 New York Jets, who defeated the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, one of the great upsets in sports history. Joe Namath at age 58, is living in pain. Samuel Thaw Walton Jr., the starting right tackle was found dead this week at age 59.