DOW 36,000 REVISITED: James Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett take an updated look at their 1999 book, Dow 36,000 in The Wall Street Journalin light of the recent gyrations of the market, and find its principles still sound. The whole piece is a very good, especially these paragraphs:
For students of modern finance, the real mystery is how to reconcile these two facts: Over the long term, stocks return much more than bonds, but stocks are no more risky than bonds. This paradox is called the "equity premium puzzle"-- the premium being the extra return that stocks provide over benchmark bonds. For decades, economists were at a loss to explain the puzzle. A 1997 paper by Mr. Siegel and Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago concluded that the answer was "myopic risk aversion." In other words, investors are so frightened of short-term losses in the stock market that they can't see beyond their noses.We argued, to the contrary, that investors were finally solving the equity premium puzzle. Starting about 20 years ago, irrational risk aversion to stocks began to decline, thanks mainly to the spread of new research, better financial education, the rise of defined-contribution retirement plans, and increased world stability.
HAPPY 90th, MILTON FRIEDMAN! National Review Online has two articles in honor of the great economist (including one by Donald Rumsfeld), and so does Reason magazine.
MORE BAD PRESS FOR AOL-TIME WARNER: Time Warner to charge flood victims for cable boxes, according to this Houston Chronicle story.
Just when AOL-Time Warner's reputation is at its worst, they could have looked like big heroes for replacing the boxes for free, but no....
DYNAMIC DUO REUNITED: John Stallworth and Lynn Swann are together again in the NFL Hall of Fame.
MARSUPIAL LIONS AND WOMBATS THE SIZE OF CARS: Come for the incredible headlines, stick around for the multi-part series on reductions in English civil liberties on Group Captain Mandrake's Weblog.
ELECTRIC CAR BURNS SUPER MODEL'S HOME: The New York Post's Page Six says "Veronica Webb's eco-friendly electric car turned into a fire-spewing death machine the other night, burning down her Key West house and killing her beloved dog, Hercules." Here's more:
Firefighters who rushed to the scene told Webb that good intentions often turn lovely homes into blazing death zones. "They said they see this kind of thing with electric cars all the time," she says. "Electric cars and golf carts are always overloading their chargers and burning up, but no one knows about it."Among the hidden dangers, Webb says, were four hidden high-powered batteries. "There are four extra batteries that aren't shown in the [owner's manual] diagram. They need to be serviced but you can't service them if you don't even know that they're there."
Luckily, Webb was in New York shopping for baby furniture when the blaze erupted, but her new husband, Wall Streeter turned amateur archaeologist George Robb, was asleep in bed. He barely escaped with his life. "By the time the fire department showed up, they didn't even go inside to look for survivors because they assumed that anyone left inside was long dead. They said George got out with 30 seconds to spare."
THE ULTIMATE TAILGATE PARTY: The NFL is planning a Times Square bash to kick off the upcoming season.
DOA: That's what the UK Sun says is the condition of George Michael's career, with his current single, the one with that generated all the controversy in the Blogosphere selling only 3,000 copies.
I actually liked the elegiac sound of "Playing for Time" on his Listen Without Prejudice album. But I'm not at all sure why entertainers like Michael feel they have to insert politics into their songs, when most people listen to music to escape from the events of the day. Having heard my share of Crosby and Sinatra from my father, I can't remember a political statement from either of them (except maybe for obvious WWII, let's kill Hitler and Tojo stuff--that's not politics, that's common sense). The Beatles and Stones of the 1960s kept their political statements sufficiently vague so that most of their late '60s stuff is still very listenable today.
The exception of course are John Lennon's political songs, both with the Beatles and with Yoko--and those songs had a very, very short shelf life--their expiration date expired with the arguably the end of Vietnam and most definitely the end of the 1970s. (I cringe whenever I hear "Imagine" these days, whereas most of Lennon's stuff with the Beatles is still amazing and fresh.)
I do think that pop music fans have short memories--and if Michael starts thinking of making music that entertains--and sells--rather than proselytizing, his career could rise from the grave. In the meantime, RIP, you old Whammer.
HOORAY FOR JOE BIDEN!, says Jonah Goldberg. As to why, read his syndicated column.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER: Tres Producers boils it all down to what we'll miss about Jim Traficant: his unbelievable hair and muttonchop sideburns, and compiles a list of media quotes (and creates a few of their own) of the most incredible hair in politics, the anti-JFK, the Bizarro-Gipper, the alternative Star Trek universe where Lt. Uhura wears a uniform with a bare midriff, and Spock sports a goatee Trent Lott (insert the name of your favorite politician with incredible hair--real or Sy Sperling-created, here).
It's easy to feel sympathetic to the Traficant locks, (although to be honest, I suspect they'll be spared prison time, if you get my drift...), and to agree with Eric Olsen's comments that:
Perhaps the hair should have been afforded independent counsel and mounted its own defense. The thought of it shorn, constrained or incarcerated is hardly bearable. Traficant may be more concerned with locks of another sort, as he plays his final act on the public stage, but the rest of us should behold it while we can.
What is hair today will be gone tomorrow.
TURNING JAPANESE: Niners ready to take American football to Japan.
ANTI-GRAVITY PROPULSION comes ‘out of the closet’, in a way cool Jane's Defense Weekly article.
(Link via InstaPundit.)
Martin Amis' new book, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million has definitely generated some good discussions on Stalin and the Soviet Union. Here's Andrew Stuttaford's book review, Andrew Sullivan on The Times and Stalin, James Lileks on Diego Rivera, and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake on communism's lasting appeal to intellectuals.
Meanwhile, Orrin Judd has a long reader letter and his rebuttal, on the wintry George Orwell, arguably the first neo-conservative. Or the last honest socialist. Or something.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE MILITARY: Sgt. Stryker and Tres Producers are on the story, which involves the killings of four military wives in the past six weeks, allegedly by their husbands, who are based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
THE PASSOVER MEAL THAT WASN'T A BIG SELLER: Hilarious photo of an not-very-well thought out ad on Howard Fienberg's Kesher Talk blog.
WHITHER WI-FI, asks Duane Freese in Tech Central Station.
(Freese did a superb job editing my earlier piece on Wi-Fi for TCS--which he links to in his story--by the way. Thanks on both accounts.)
THE GOOSE AND GANDER AMENDMENT, as proposed by Dave Kopel & Robert Racansky.
WOW, DREHER REALLY IS A GRANOLA CONSERVATIVE...
HEAVY HANDED BIAS IN ACTION: Little Green Footballs finds the New York Times running roughshod over an op-ed critical of the United Nations.
Andrew Sullivan also weighs in, in a post called "Even Op-Eds Get Neutered".
JEWISH SUPERHEROES (The comic book kind, not Milton Friedman), were the debate of the day on The Corner on National Review Online. If you're interested, start here (with the New York Post's announcement that Benjamin J. Grimm, aka The Thing, one quarter of the Fantastic Four is Jewish), then scroll up.
BEST SERVED COLD: The Digital Bits reviews the new deluxe director's edition DVD of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
AS HEADS IS TAILS: Victor Davis Hanson finds an interesting duality amidst the usual tired old cliches that Europeans give for hating America:
[W]hen these criticisms are probed, a startling revelation appears: Far from being radicals, Europeans are, in fact, in a fundamental sense more reactionary than Americans. And here things get interesting. In conversations, the Europeans very soon begin to voice all the old right-wing complaints about America that explain why they see our country as so insular, crass, and dangerous: We have no respect for tradition; our movies and television are uncouth; our volatile citizenry is increasingly ignorant, multicultural, and lawless, and so blinkered to the concerns of others. Welcome to radical democratic culture.Read the rest of the article--as is usual with Hanson, it's very, very good.
THE TEN MOST SHOCKING MOMENTS IN NFL HISTORY, on ESPN.com's "Page2" section.
Can't argue with #1.
FALSE PROPHET: Tech Central Station looks at the long strange history of Kevin Phillips, who got things right in 1969 and rarely has since.
GEORGE MCGOVERN: LUDDITE: The Walter Mondale of the 1970s has an essay in the Wall Street Journal, complete with these eye-popping lines:
The computer has become a new weapon of mass destruction to overrule our minds and our common sense. Did I tell you that I am terrified by computers, e-mail and the Internet? The only things worse are automated telephones that tell you to press numbers 1 through 99 and then inform you that the item you want is no longer in stock. Civilization is crumbling before these awful gadgets--although my grandsons are threatening to show me that they are not any more dangerous than the atomic bomb or AIDS.Well let's see, computers first started showing up right after World War II. The Altair, Apple II and TRS-80, those first home PCs, arrived in the mid-1970s. So you've had well over 25 years to "yield to the computer age", and haven't yet?I'll probably yield to the computer age eventually despite my strong instincts against it.
Keep 'em flying, George!
SNORT: Speaking of time warps, the Brothers Judd finds a writer at the Washington Post with a rather short memory...
SURFING USA: Eric Olsen has long essay, and lots of links on the subject.
I've never surfed, but I was an avid skateboarder in my teens, which combined similar skills with the appealing expectation (at least to someone who was never a very good swimmer) of not drowning!
FAULK, RAMS, INK SEVEN-YEAR DEAL: "We want to make sure Marshall finishes his career as a Ram,'' Martz said. The impact he's had not just on this team but this entire organization is pretty extreme.''
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: The great Milton Friedman turns 90 this week.
INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY, 101: Check out this astonishing quote by Joe Lieberman:
"In just eighteen months, this administration has unraveled the fiscal discipline it took us eight years to build," said Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who spoke to the Democratic Leadership Council's annual policy meeting along with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.Let's parse this out, shall we?The economy of the 1990s would have been in the dumps if (a) Hillary-Care had come to pass. Fortunately, it didn't, but Americans were royally p.o.'ed by it, resulting in them electing (b) a Republican-held House and Senate in 1994, which attempted to balance the budget and blocked the most egregious of wealth-destroying Democrat ideas. (c) The Nasdaq began to tank during the Microsoft Lawsuit, in mid-2000. Who was President then? (d) It was at its peak during the late-1990s, when both parties were too distracted by Clinton's impeachment to monkey with the economy. And finally (e) the current economy has its roots in the combination of early-80s tax cuts by the Reagan administration and inflation destroying actions by Paul Volcker.
Lieberman must be caught in the same distortion of the space-time continuum that Al Gore is in.
AL GORE IS A VICTIM OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM, according to Jonah Goldberg.
DOW 9000, NASDAQ 1500: I know, I know, we're not there yet, but a man can dream...
THE ROLLING LAPTOPS GET THEIR YAH-YAHS OUT: I have a major geek-a-palooza in the August issue of Nuts & Volts, complete with a profile of Evolution Robotics and their two pre-fab commercial robots, and a product review of Line6's GuitarPort product, which allows electric guitarists to plug their axes into their PC's USB port, and then simulate the sounds of vintage tube amplifiers (and a lot of other nifty features). It's also a great interface for recording the guitar via multitrack recording programs.
The Evolution Robotics piece is the centerpiece of a separate, robots only mini-mag that's bagged with the main issue! Call R2-D2 and Robby! It's robot mania!
Seriously, robots and electric guitars--what more do you want? Run out and buy an R2D2-sized stack of copies today!
AUDITED BY CLINTON, UNDEFENDED BY BUSH: I guess Judicial Watch really is bipartisan.
UPDATE: Jonathan Adler has more.
A 'BERG TO REMEMBER: Group Captain Mandrake says that the only known photograph of the iceberg that sank the Titanic may go on display in the UK.
AIR TRAVELERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR BOXED LUNCH! British passengers stage EasyJet revolt.
WHAT'S AETNA GOT TO DO WITH IT? Patrick Ruffini says we need to rein in awards from huge malpractice lawsuits.
NIFTY ANALYSIS OF LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, by Orrin Judd, on The Brothers Judd Blog.
THE BLEAT IS BACK! James Lileks' Weblog returns after a month of...well, read his latest post to see what Lilek's month was like.
...And to check out the spiffy California Zephyr Vistadome illustration at the top of the page!
DASCHLE EXEMPTION UPDATE: Michelle Malkin says what's good for Daschle is good for the rest of the country.
Click here for our original coverage of this item.
MEN ONLY NEED APPLY: Not at Field & Stream or The American Rifleman, but...The New Yorker according to this Matt Drudge piece.
It is pretty staggering, considering that I'm sure the vast majority of the readers of The New Yorker are suburban housewives who want to feel some sort of psychic connection to the Big Apple, as well as peruse The New Yorker's endless classified ads. (We get The New Yorker delivered to us, thanks to my wife's mother, who wants to make sure that we pioneer settlers in the hinterlands, living in our little house on the prairie, have some culture in our lives.)
I guess male tiny mummies only should apply for a gig there.
THE BEST COMPANY NAME, EVER. As found by Neal Boortz.
RESTORING THE VERY BADLY TARNISHED REP OF THE FOREST SERVICE: Excellent article in The Washington Times by Valerie Richardson on the Forest Service's currently exceedingly poor reputation, how it got that way, and how to restore it.
THE FINAL CUT: A fan has created "The Kubrick Edit" of Steven Spielberg's A.I. (which of course Kubrick had gestated for nearly 20 years before Spielberg finished the film after Kubrick departed for the great Castle Hackton in the sky.)
Link via Nick Denton.
PARTYING LIKE IT'S 1933: Larry Kudlow's latest column on banks and liquidity begins with a lead that sounds straight out of the era of FDR:
We dodged a bullet yesterday. A threatened run on the banks — on top of the plummeting stock market — was halted.Kudlow calls for a combination of sound medicine: a Fed rate cut, and some jawboning:
[S]ources also tell me that President Bush and senior advisors are catching their breath and realizing they need to get back on message — which was the optimistic growth message of 2000 and 2001. It would also be nice to hear some new thinking on regulatory and tax reform that would promote growth and offset the negative effects of higher regulatory costs for accounting, securities, and corporate governance.Yesterday, the market stayed up — marking its largest one-day gain in more than a decade and a half — and we dodged a bullet. One day at a time is the best way to get through this financial crisis — and just about everything else in life, too.
FREE MUSIC: Tres Producers wants to turn the Blogosphere into a critical mass. Or a mass of critics. I'm game, but I suspect I'd write a number of brutal reviews of most new music.
Come to think of it, that used to be exactly what Rolling Stone did, back when it was fun to read.
REPRESENTATIONAL SECURITY: Now this is just silly.
Instapundit linked to this story in the LA Times about San Francisco tourism down. I can't help but think that if I were from the so-called "Red States", San Francisco would be the last place I'd want to go: Liberal politics run amok (9th Circuit Court, anyone?), homeless people running amok, anti-Semitism, lots of rundown areas, a city government that oozes corruption, etc., etc. This quote probably says it all:
Patrick Tierney, a tourism and hospitality professor at San Francisco State University, said that at least until business travel fully rebounds, the city may have to do more to position itself as a family-friendly destination.As I said before, the city is where Philadelphia and New York were in the late 1980s. If even a liberal Republican like Guliani is unelectable, is there a West Coast equivalent to the former mayor of Philadelphia, Democrat Ed Rendell, who will step forward and try to clean up the mess?The city's reputation as an adult playground, with its pricey restaurants, urbane nightlife and sexually liberal ambience, may not be the most desirable in a climate in which families are looking to spend less money--and more quality time together--on vacations, Tierney said.
"Forget about business travel meltdowns and the dot-com exodus," he said. "To survive right now, you have to be affordable and you have to have a family market. San Francisco is becoming a little more affordable--but only out of desperation. So now it has to highlight its family attractions too."
(By the way, the LA Times email registration I had to go through is just silly. I simply used my rarely checked Yahoo email address, registered my name to John Doe at 123 Any Street, Beverly Hills 90210 and registered to read the article. If the LA Examiner had had enough of it quoted, I wouldn't have even bothered to do that.)
GOD, MAN AND HACKERS AT YALE: Jane Galt, in her Live from the WTC blog, looks at the declining moral standards of the Ivy League, by way of the Yale hacking Princeton story. (By the way, at one point do standards simply hit rock bottom, instead of declining?)
Link found via Group Captain Mandrake.
IT TOOK 'EM 90 YEARS, BUT...The New York Times discovers that proper insurance planning helps reduce estate taxes and preserves wealth.
(And of course, this is a big deal that must be stopped now...)
ADVANTAGE ED: Yesterday, I posted:
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN: Ryan Leaf calls it quits.Today, AP quotes Chargers safety Rodney Harrison, a frequent critic of Leaf, as saying, "It was probably the best thing for him to do. He took his money and he ran."
EdDriscoll.com: influencing opinion in the NFL, the blogosphere and beyond!
THE HIGH WIRE: Stanley Crouch of the NY Daily News says Sharpton just can't get off it:
Those are the elements of a Sharpton performance. He takes the high ground too infrequently - and too frequently proves himself addicted to standing before TV cameras and microphones. Even the idea of backing away and letting things settle down appears beyond him.His inflated rhetoric and willingness to appeal to the true believers who see everything in terms of black victims and white conspirators keep the prize of serious recognition beyond him.
THE GREATEST SHOW ON TURF RETURNS: Super Bowl loss isn't haunting Rams, who have 20 of 22 starters returning.
The Rams are one of the reasons I'm happy we purchased the DirecTV Sunday Ticket package. If any other games are blow-outs, the Rams are always fun to watch--kind of the like the high-powered offenses of the Cowboys in the 1970s and the Chargers of the early '80s.
PUNK MEETS THE GODFATHER, BUT WHO'S WHO? Elliott Marc Davis, who tipped Little Green Footballs off about Noam Chomsky’s expensive capitalist tastes, has been carrying on an email exchange with Chomsky himself, with often (unintentionally) hilarious results!
THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED TRAFICANT: Found this in an email sent to me a few minutes ago:
"Am I different? Yeah. Have I changed my pants? No. Deep down, you really want to wear wider bottoms, you're just afraid."--Rep. James Traficant during the debate over his expulsion on the House floor.T.S. Elliot, call your office...
MICHAEL JACKSON, CALL A FINANCIAL PLANNER! (Actually, the reverse is true. If I were still doing financial planning, I'd probably use this article as exhibit one about how a celebrity's assets can go to hell--and beyond.)
Check these paragraphs out:
for the first time we can see how Jackson came to be in such tremendous debt.How does one man (person? eunuch? space alien?) go through $140 mil in a single year??For example, there is the widely discussed loan against the Beatles catalog. According to Lee, it was he who arranged for Bank of America/Nations Bank to loan Jackson $140 million in 1998. The bank required Jackson to put up his portion of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which was then valued at $272 million.
In the middle of 1999, Lee says Jackson told him he'd gone through the $140 million and needed more money for his divorce settlement.
Coming soon: The MC Hammer/Michael Jackson bankrupted former multi-millionaire superstars tour!
THE AUSTIN POWERS/ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI CONNECTION REVEALED, on Tres Producers. OK, it's really, really, really, really, really tenuous, but I did get a kick out of this paragraph:
The vague details of a plot are now coming into focus: the buffoonery; the mangled language and logic; the social ineptitude; the insistence on defending himself although he is neither a lawyer, an American, nor (apparently) possessed of half a brain. Is it all a very clever defense strategy by real al Qaeda mastermind Sheikh Z. Moussaoui? The brains behind the operation, smooth operator, and international man of mystery?
THE NEW YORK SUN IS NOW ONLINE! (Thanks go to InstaPundit for pointing it out.)
I'm glad to see them online. My wife and I had a real challenge actually tracking down a hard copy of it during our last trip to New York. Hopefully when we go back next time, their circulation will have grown that much more. God knows the Times needs the competition!
NEAR DEATH WEIGHT-LOSS EXPERIENCE: Seeking a new image, New England Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis nearly lost his life.
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN: Ryan Leaf calls it quits.
THE VIBRATOR POLICE: Matt Drudge links to an article about a Tampa Bay woman who is suing Delta for $15,000 because they allegedly "took her to the bag on the tarmac and forced her to open it 'and remove the adult toy and hold it up for visible view.'". The article goes on to say:
One side of the plane's passengers witnessed the scene, the lawsuit says, as three male Delta employees nearby "began laughing hysterically" and offered "obnoxious and sexually harassing comments."Now, leaving the batteries in the thing was dumb. But Delta's treatment was dumber. As is this quote by Michael Boyd, an airline planning and security consultant from Colorado, said embarrassing incidents have become more common with increased security by all airlines since Sept. 11.After being forced to hold the item up for a minute, the suit says, Koutsouradis was allowed to re-pack and return to her seat for the flight to Tampa.
Uh, I thought we wanted to encourage folks to travel, not humiliate them. Hey, isn't that one of the reasons Norman Mineta gives for why we can't profile folks?
THE FENDER FORUM: A new forum for fans of Fender guitars and amps, from the folks who brought you the Les Paul Forum.
Stop on by there, today!
IF YOU WANT TO GET DOWN, DOWN ON THE GROUND: Cocaine led to death of Who bassist John Entwistle.
(Link via The Brothers Judd Blog.)
DISCOVERY WINGS: I don't know if many cable companies have added this channel, a spin-off of the Discovery Channel, but the Discovery Wings channel, which basically consists of 24 hours of their assorted excellent Wings series is lots and lots of fun.
Via DirecTV, I'm currently watching their episode on the role of the Marine Corp's Harrier jets in Desert Storm (which hopefully is also a nice preview for their role in The Mother of the Mother of all Wars, coming soon to a Baghdad near you).
I'm not a real airplane buff, but the shows are usually so well structured and edited, that this network is highly recommended if you have DirecTV, or its on your local cable channel.
BIG WHEELS ROLLIN', MOVIN' ON: Cold Fury has some News, Views, and Random Cursing on what it's like to drive an 18-wheeler, and deal with crazed automobile drivers everyday. The whole post is excellent, but I particularly love this one:
7) This one is so obvious, I still can't believe the number of people who simply refuse to do it. So I'll put it in caps and throw in some profanity for emphasis, to make sure you remember: USE YOUR F**KING TURN SIGNALS, YOU G****MNED DOPE. It's truly difficult for me to comprehend why, but nobody does this anymore. What in the name of all that's holy is so difficult about this? Are you arthritic and find it hard to move your hand the 3 or 4 inches required to activate the little lever? Is the signal lever in your car hooked up to a half-ton of bricks in the trunk, therefore requiring the strength of an unshorn Samson to move the few millimeters required to activate those pretty blinking lights? Perhaps you belong to a heretofore-unknown sect of militant Islam that advocates bringing on the Jihad by fomenting Terror On The Highways? Whatever, just use the damn things. Make it a habit - it's not a hard thing, I promise. I can't react to whatever boneheaded move you're planning and maintain a safe distance between 80,000-pound me and 4,000-pound thee if you don't at least give me some hint of where you're going.I don't know if it's a Silicon Valley thing, or if American driving schools in general have gone to pot, but since moving to California five years ago, I can't believe many drivers never use their turn signals. It's just astonishing.
Excellent post by H.D. Miller on his Travelling Shoes Weblog about the dangers of presidential candidates emulating JFK.
I think that compared with the liberals who followed him, Johnson, Nixon(!), Carter and Clinton, Kennedy was an OK guy, and a reasonably conservative Democrat (despite what Bill Clinton and Oliver Stone would like you to believe) whose rep has gotten knocked into the stratosphere because of his assignation. (I once bought a 1960 Mort Sahl comedy album in a used bookstore, and it was interesting to compare how similar he thought Nixon and Kennedy were, and how exceedingly average he thought both were, long before one was shot and the other embroiled in Watergate).
It is interesting how desirable a pre-fab image is to a presidential-wannabe in the era of television. And of course, Kennedy, his handlers, his follicular genetics, and barber essentially created the concept of "the television-friendly politician". (Marshall McLuhan spent thousands of words on this topic--amazing how out of everything he wrote in the 1960s, his ideas on television-friendly politicians are one of only a handful of his concepts that live on--often unknowingly by those who embrace them--to this day.)
And yet, Americans will embrace a maverick, quirky personality, if they feel that that man embraces their interest. As Miller notes, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and the Bushes all have unique styles, and all were successful at presidential politics.
One comment though. Miller writes:
While there have been scores of politicians who've done a good job of JFK mimicry, there are no politicians who've managed to successfully evoke the memory of Reagan. It's apparently not possible to do.It's not. And this is not something we want to encourage. Al Gore looked absolutely ridiculous made up in Reagan-style ruddy colors during the first presidential debate. And while I'm glad if it contributed to his defeat, the amount of therapy required by voters on both sides of the isle was considerable, and is still being calculated.
(Link found via the Brothers Judd Blog.)
One of the many gulty pleasures of my mispent youth were taco-flavored Doritos. James Lileks understands what it's like to be addicted:
Doritos came along in early childhood. One flavor: Taco. That was it. How they reproduced the flavor of lettuce I'll never know. They were brownish and delicious and capable of producing acne in truly amazing quantities, even if you ground them up and inhaled them. But Taco was just the warm-up; in the late '70s, I think, Doritos rolled out Nacho Cheese, and Taco didn't stand a chance. Now and then I see a bag; I buy them, eat them, wash them down with Mr. Pibb and curse progress in all its forms.He's right. If ever a snack food cared too much, it was taco-flavored Doritos.Taco flavor failed because it gave too much. It cared too much. Every bite was bursting with chemicals. Nacho Cheese, on the other hand, was indifferently dusted; the amount of Nacho particles varied from batch to batch. Why? Why not douse every Dorito with Nacho flavor? Was there a strike in the Nacho mines, and production had halted? Had the Nacho Cartel cut back on supply to boost the price? Then you'd buy a bag that just plain got it right -- your hand would wear a furry orange Nacho mitt after a few dips in the package. You could only imagine that some employee had fought his way into the control room, duct-taped the engineers to their chairs, commandeered the machinery and set the Nacho dials to 11 while his captives gaped in horror: Good Lord, man! American palates cannot handle that amount of savory Nacho flavor! "I say they can! I strike this blow for under-Nachoed mouths across this land!" Then the next bag would be back to normal. (Recently Doritos relabeled their bags "Nacho Cheesier!" as if to say "sorry about the insufficiently flavored machine-formed corn triangles." Apology accepted.)
(Later on, I discovered they go very...interestingly with Martinis. Especially when watching The Harder They Come in your appartment at 1:00 in the morning.)
LEAVE IRAQ: The Aussies have been warned.
THE NO-FUN LEAGUE: Kids selling drinks and cookies booted out of Redskins camp.
THE RUBIN FALLACY: Excellent analysis of Robert Rubin's tenure as Treasury Secretary during the infamous Clinton versus Republicans budget standoff by Patrick Ruffini.
THE JONAH "AXE" GOLDBERG/ISAAC HAYES CONNECTION REVEALED: Start here, watch the video clip (warning kids: definitely PG-13 rated), scroll up for theme song.
IT HAS BEGUN: FOXNews.com is reporting that "Ailing Man Sues Fast-Food Firms".
Hopefully "big hamburger" won't cave as fast as big tobacco did when faced with these suits, and the rest of the insanity that goes with them.
FIVE POTENTIAL BLOCKBUSTERS THIS COMING NFL SEASON, according to DallasNews.com's Rick Gosselin.
(Registration may be required.)
ARE THE 49ERS PRIME TIME PLAYERS? John Clayton of ESPN.com says first they must solve the Rams' puzzle.
TERRELL OWENS UPDATE: Skip Bayless of the San Jose "Murky News" has some thoughts.
NASTY BREAKING SCANDAL IN PERU, according to Rod Dreher on The Corner Weblog on National Review Online.
Dreher writes "former President Alberto Fujimori forcibly sterilized 200,000 (!) poor women as part of a population control plan. This human-rights horror was partially paid for by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which the Bush Administration is refusing to fund."
THE ZIMBABWE VIRUS! Very, very scary details found on Mad Musings of Me.
Link found via Group Captain Mandrake. I wonder if Apples can be infected...
UPGRADE UPDATE: Speaking of Apples, Joanne Jacobs is tapping out her typically excellent Weblog on a snazzy new iMac. Silicon Valley thanks you for stimulating the economy!
GREIL MARCUS, POSEUR, according to Andrew Sullivan. Having seen the commercial in question about five times in two hours of watching DirecTV tonight, I'm with Sullivan--trying to implicate Dubya's role in American culture via a Subway ad is one helluva stretch.
NEGROPONTE GROKS 802.11: The director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab says that the wireless technology is behind a sea change that is developing worldwide in the telecom industry.
PREMIERE KISSOFF IS ON THE PHONE WITH THE REPOSSESSORS, AND HE'S HOPPING MAD! Pejman Yousefzadeh says that the Russians are withholding some of their top fighter jets from air shows for fears that they will be seized by creditors.
ROBERT RUBIN RECONSIDERED: Excellent letter from a reader to Andrew Sullivan.
TELL ME SOMETHING I DIDN'T KNOW: InformationWeek has an article whose headline is Book Business Keeps Amazon Afloat.
WAY TO GO AP: It's rare when you see stuff like this in newspaper articles, so I'd like to give Associated Press some congratulations for getting something right.
Buried at the end of an article titled "Woman Arrested in California Wildfire", were these two paragraphs:
Thomas Bonnicksen, a forest science professor at Texas A&M University and a national sequoia expert, said mammoth fires that have burned nearly four million acres this year in Western states should sound a warning to environmentalists whose opposition to forest management have allowed the undergrowth to proliferate."My only hope is that this threat to a national treasure will make people understand that the forests have to be managed," Bonnicksen said. "The sequoia is one of the most durable trees in the world, but it cannot resist this kind of fire -- it's too hot."
HOUSE EXPELS JIM TRAFICANT. AP says:
Representatives voted 420-1 to remove the nine-term Democrat for taking kickbacks from employees, encouraging the destruction of evidence, soliciting bribes and other gifts from businessmen and filing false income tax returns. A federal jury in Cleveland convicted Traficant of all of those offenses in April.UPDATE--this is perfect:The expulsion takes effect immediately.
The only member who voted against expulsion was Rep. Gary Condit, a California Democrat who was defeated in a reelection bid this year after being romantically linked to a missing federal intern.
NOAM CHOMSKY, CLOSET CAPITALIST: Little Green Footballs looks at some of Chomsky's larger acquisitions.
To paraphrase another famous radical, imagine no possessions, indeed!
TOXIC GREEN: Jeff Stier, an attorney for the American Council on Science and Health plans to use a little political jujitsu against a California organic foods company for violating state law.
ANOTHER REDESIGN: James Bowman's Website gets a redesign. It's very clean and handsome, but I'll definitely miss the Bowman-as-Sterling Hayden-as-Gen. Jack Ripper photo that used to be on every page!
CATS AND DOGS, PART II: Eric Alterman agrees with Podhoretz.
HAMAS KILLS ITS OWN: John Podhoretz is right on the money.
UPDATE: Here's Steven Den Beste's take on things.
THE MOUTH THAT BORED: The 49ers' Terrell Owens is at it again.
THE DOW IS UP AND DONAHUE'S DOWN: Sanity returns to America, if only briefly.
WHO'S OUR QB? The Cincinnati Bengals face their annual riddle.
MERE ALCOHOL DOESN'T THRILL ME AT ALL: Protein Wisdom links to a New York Daily News article about Al Sharpton's alleged use of high-powered white powder--and I don't mean his barber's talcum powder.
THE ANTI-CHE! Bitchin' pro-capitalism products now available from Patrick Ruffini!
THE DASCHLE EXEMPTION: Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle quietly slipped into a spending bill language exempting his home state of South Dakota from environmental regulations and lawsuits, in order to allow logging in an effort to prevent forest fires, according to this Washington Times story.
Hopefully he'll get it, so that every state will as well.
EVER SPARK UP A DUBER? Forget about joining the FBI, no matter how talented you are, according to this post on Instapundit.com
POST AND RUN: VodkaPundit makes a surprise guest appearance in the Blogosphere, in-between house guests, wedding plans and de-balling and de-clawing his cat.
THERE ARE WORSE WAYS TO GO: Pa. Man Dies in Vat of Chocolate.
CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: The Brothers Judd defend David Corn, editor of that far left house organ, The Nation.
THE FAT TAX IS COMING, says Jonah Goldberg in his syndicated column.
MEDIA BIAS EXHIBIT A: Brent Bozell looks at the changing image of Larry Klayman as he goes from suing Clinton to Cheney.
"BUT OFFICER, I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!" The Tampa Tribune has an article about cops pulling motorists over for a light-rail survey.
They claim it's perfectly legal, but I'll bet they got some choice responses from their interviewees.
SPURRIER'S SECRET: Unlike Marty Schottenheimer, the new Redskins' coach is breaking in footballs, rather than breaking players' balls in his first NFL training camp as a head coach.
Will Spurrier's approach work? See you in September...
SIMON VERSUS DAVIS UPDATE via The Brothers Judd Blog.
SONGS THAT MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD SICK: Tim Blair has some examples of the worst in songwriting on his eponoymously-titled Weblog.
Links via The Blogger Formally Known as Sgt. Stryker.
Incidentally, the article that used quotes from my interview with the Sarge can be found here.
HOW TO BLOG IF THE WEB GOES DARK: Survival instructions from The Truth Laid Bear.
Link found on Group Captain Lionel Mandrake's Weblog.
FCC SAYS HIGH-SPEED INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS SOAR, according to this Reuters piece.
And here's James Glassman's recent piece on broadband.
WIFI METRO POSSIBLY "WINDING DOWN". I've written before about WiFi Metro, the company who created wireless Internet "hot zones" in several blocks of Palo Alto and San Jose. Its parent company, hereUare is on the block. If no buyer is found, the article says that WiFi metro could "wind down" and close up shop.
Link sent to me by Glenn Fleishman, the proprietor of the 802.11b Networking News Weblog.
THE OTHER WIRELESS FORMAT: I just discovered (via the 802.11 Networking News Weblog), that there's a Bluetooth Weblog!
While 802.11 has gotten the lionshare of recent publicity, due to its flexibility and ability to work over fairly large distances, Bluetooth is a short range wireless format that may have a variety of office and home automation uses (for example, sending data wirelessly to printers, and that sort of thing).
If you need a technology fix, stop by The Bluetooth Weblog!
FATHER KNOWS BEST? Reason looks at John Walker Lindh's parents--nonjudgmental open-mindedness taken to its very extreme.
SHORT THE NEW YORK TIMES, says this post by Jane Galt.
EX-MARINE, EX-U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR HAS GONE OFF THE DEEP END, says Travelling Shoes, in an excellent post found via the Brothers Judd. "For whatever reason, [Scott] Ritter, who I briefly thought was one of the good ones", H.D. Miller writes, "has become a serious crank, one who can be safely ignored." Read the whole post to see a stunning transformation in action.
SAN FRANCISCO MAN'S FLAGS ANGER PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT: Foxnews.com says Ed Yee was fined $5000 for putting American flags in flagpoles in Little Italy. The public works department cited him for "defacing" more than 70 light poles and fined him $5,000.
the Fox News article had this wonderful quote:
"You just can't go around and start sticking things you know anywhere you want," said Mohammad Nuru, deputy director for the San Francisco Public Works Department. "This city will not tolerate that."Umm....errr.....it won't? San Francisco?? Where people come all the time to stick things anywhere they want?
Hey, irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
(Link found on Flyover Country.)
THE IRAN-AGENTINA CONNECTION? The New York Times reported today that Iran bribed Argentina's then-President Carlos Menem $10 million to cover up an anti-Jewish bombing in 1994. (Not suprisingly, the report was rejected by both Iran and Menem's family.)
Here's what Reuters says:
Argentine and Israeli security services have long blamed Iran for the car-bomb attack on a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. Victims' families also blame the Menem government for failing to find culprits beyond a car thief and policemen who provided the vehicle and are only now on trial.UPDATE: Matt Drudge says "Former Argentine President to Sue NY TIMES over Iran/Bribe Story; Says 'Defamatory' and Politically Motivated..."Two years before a bomb razed the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association, a strikingly similar attack hit the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people.
THAT CAGEY OLD CAGE: If we remain silent, the terrorists may or may not have won, but we'll definitely owe John Cage thousands of dollars in royalties.
TOBACCO ROAD: Bruce Bartlett looks at the reasons why high cigarette taxes are worse than the effects of smoking, in National Review Online.
BEWARE THE ECONOMICS TEACHER WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND HIS SUBJECT, says Joanne Jacobs in Tech Central Station.
Back in the early to mid '90s, when I was doing financial planning, I can't tell you how many new clients would say something like "man, I never learned that in school", when I explained the basics (and I do mean basics) of the stock market, investing, the long term record of the DJIA, mutual funds, etc.
Jacobs' article explains why.
STARSKY AND HUTCH, CROCKETT AND TUBBS, AND OTHER COPS WITH COOL WHEELS have nothing on these guys.
INSTAPUNDIT GOES HIGH-TECH!
Yep. I'm typing this on an Altair 8080 in Electric Pencil. I'll upload it to my BBS (new 1200 baud modem! it's blazing fast!) where dozens of people will see it. Then I'm putting on my white suit and going dancing to the sounds of Evelyn Champagne King.My TRS-80's modem is only 300 baud. No wonder that Insta-guy can crank out posts so quickly!
But disco, like totally sucks, dude. At least he didn't mention anything about roller-skating.
NOW THIS IS JUST SILLY: The Washington Times says that the Forest Service ordered removal of poles flying the American flag.
(By the way, sorry for the lack of posting this weekend. Much time was spent cleaning out the garage (which was starting to resemble the Xanadu storage rooms at the end of Citizen Kane) and getting the home ready for some much-needed improvements and renovations.)
HOW TO BE POST-MODERN: Will Wilkinson explains the Stanley Fish school of post-modernism and why po-mo is so evil.
See also this recent essay by Jonah Goldberg.
9/11 PILOT'S WIDOW SUPPORTS ARMING PILOTS, according to this CNSnews.com article.
UPDATE: And here are Thomas Sowell's thoughts.
ANN COULTER: I can't say I'm Ann's greatest fan, but this is one riot of an interview with her. Check out this riff:
At the moment, she is without a boyfriend; curiously, her last beau happened to be a Muslim. "The relationship was complicated by his interest in committing jihad," she jokes. "I took away his box cutters. At first, I thought he was a terrorist. I just kept on running into this handsome Muslim on the street. He was a fan of mine."UPDATE: Here's Coulter's take on Phyllis Schlafly, who received as many brickbats in the 1970s as Coulter gets today. (See also Orrin Judd's thoughts on Schlafly, complete with hyperlinks to her books and his reviews of them.)So was he stalking her? "He was, but he was a good-looking stalker. I'd been so looking for one of those."
OUT OF OPTIONS: Just as Group Captain Mandrake has been exploring the loss of civil liberties in England, the Brothers Judd Blog links to an excellent post by Iain Murray on England's crime, rapidly dwindling civility and what its options are. Orrin adds some of his thoughts on what the US's option are, and says that while we're a little better off (in general), the clock is ticking for us as well.
THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, A DEAN KAMEN PRODUCTION: Segway News says the Segway has come to San Francisco, if only for a temporary trial by the US Post Office.
OK, MAYBE WE ARE GOING TO PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999: Assorted headlines on the Drudge Report today:
Hillary Clinton Shouts Down Senator...I don't mind the retro-thing, but I don't do Regis ties, OK?Little Rock Library Dogged By Controversy...
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts on that last headline. If he's right, personally I can't wait to see the '08 model Gore run!
AMERICAN MUSLIM COUNCIL THREATENS JEWISH JOURNALIST: Howard Fienberg has the details on his Kesher Talk Weblog. Check out these quotes, from the Eli Kintisch, the journalist who was apparently threatened:
Could you imagine, I asked him, the outrage that would have followed if an official at a Jewish organization had kicked a reporter from an Arab paper out of an event? He apologized, saying he retracted any comment that I may have found threatening. "Sometimes people flare up," he told me, referring to the crowd. "I just wanted to protect us, the council, and you from that."... Alamoudi may have been inclined to muzzle me because he's "been burned" in the past himself. In 2000, he told a Washington rally that "we are all supporters of Hamas." He added that he supported Hizbollah. Alamoudi says that he supports Hamas for its humanitarian efforts. In 1995 in The Washington Post, however, he defended Hamas leader Abu Marzook as "a moderate man on many issues. If you see him, he is like a child." American authorities deported Marzook to Jordan in 1997 after an American judge found probable cause that he had he had helped plan 10 terrorist attacks against Israeli targets.
I wish my run-in with Alamoudi, mentioned in this week's Weekly Standard, was an isolated case. But for all of my good relationships with officials at Arab-American organizations, Arab reporters and Arab diplomats, many members of the "other side" in town won't speak to me. Some Arab reporters in town are unwilling to meet a Jewish reporter, and I've never gotten my calls returned from Saudi, Syrian or Iranian diplomats here.
COMRADE FORD PILOTS DRIPPY SHIP: Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News says K-19: The Widowmaker has just enough pizzazz and novelty to keep it afloat, an